The Halstead Fire on the Salmon-Challis National Forest has burned more 18,500 acres, but winds thus far have pushed the fire to the northeast away from the town of Stanley. Boise State Public Radio reported that firefighters are focused on keeping the fire away from Highway 21.
Fire managers say the Halstead Fire will probably burn till the area experiences a “season-ending event.” Bruce Palmer, information officer on the NIMO team managing the fire, says the fire’s burning in rough terrain. “It’s nasty country with a lot of bug kill and heavy fuels,” he says. “And fire behavior has been extreme. The Halstead Fire will be a long-term event and will likely burn until September or even October.”
Halstead Fire morning inversion 07/31
Though the fire is in the wilderness, crews will continue active suppression to keep the fire out of the Middle Fork of the Salmon and other recreation areas. The NIMO team managing the fire brings a lot of flexibility to the assignment; agency administrators sometimes prefer the NIMO team because of its long-term staffing option. “We can draw from the four different teams,” explains Palmer, “so we offer continuity in incident management for a fire that may burn for weeks or even months.” The NIMO teams aren’t subject to the 14-day time-outs in the same way that’s required of other incident management teams, because they can stagger their rest days or days off to maintain continuity of the command for the duration of the incident.
Several ranches and a Boy Scout camp were recently threatened by the fire; the camp was evacuated, according to the Idaho Statesman. The fire’s at 21,915 acres today with 332 personnel assigned.
The lightning-caused Halstead Fire northwest of Stanley, Idaho, is mapped at 5,047 acres. Resources assigned include six T1 crews, two T2 crews, two T1 helicopters and a T3 helicopter, two T6 engines, and two T4 engines.
Halstead Fire in Idaho
The fire started on July 27 between Beaver Creek and Marsh Creek; it’s burning in subalpine fir and lodgepole pine. Firefighters are building fuel breaks along Beaver Creek Road; they’ve reported single and group tree torching on the fire. Houseman’s National Incident Management Organization team took command of the fire early this morning.
An Emergency Area Closure was issued yesterday for all access points to the Cape Horn Area, all access to the Seafoam Bubble, all access to the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness east of the Middle Fork Wild and Scenic River Corridor, east of Bluebunch Ridge, and north of Lola Creek, the area northwest of the Knapp-Loon Trail and west of the Pinyon-Feltham Road. In addition, the Pinyon Peak Road in its entirety is closed.
On April 20 Wildfire Today covered the jury verdict following a trial that awarded $730,000 to the owners of a Montana ranch, part of which burned in the Ryan Gulch wildfire in 2000 during a period that saw numerous fires burning across the state. The heart of Fred and Joan Weaver’s case was their contention that firefighters used poor judgement in selecting and implementing an indirect strategy of backfiring, rather than constructing direct fireline on the edge of the fire. In the process, they argued, more land burned than was necessary, including 900 acres of their ranch. The jury decided that of the monetary award, $150,000 was for the loss of timber, $200,000 was for the rehabilitation of pasture land, and $350,000 was to compensate them for the mental suffering and anguish of seeing their ranch threatened by the fire.
In the 18 hours since we posted the article, seven comments have been left by our readers, including two from the Weaver’s attorney, Quentin Rhoades. Mr. Rhoades is not your typical barrister. He worked as a wildland firefighter for eight seasons between 1987 and 1994, serving on the Helena Hotshot crew and later as a smokejumper at West Yellowstone and Missoula. He told Wildfire Today that he was in the first planeload of jumpers on the South Canyon fire in Colorado in 1994, the fatal fire on which 14 wildland firefighters were entrapped and killed.
The Ryan Gulch fire was managed by a Type 1 Interagency Incident Management Team from the southeast, the “Red Team”, with Mike Melton as Incident Commander working under a delegation of authority from the state of Montana.
The list of witnesses for the State of Montana included:
George Custer, the Type 1 Operations Section Chief on the fire, who recently retired as the Incident Commander of a National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) Team. (As this is written on April 21, 2012, Mr. Custer is still listed on the NIMO web site as the IC of the Atlanta NIMO team.
Three firefighters who work for the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation — two initial attack firefighters, Mark Nenke and Todd Klemann, and Jonathan Hansen, who according to Mr. Rhoades “was in charge of the Red Team for the State”.
Stephen Weaver (no relation to the Plaintiffs), the Planning Operations Section Chief for the Red Team on the fire. Mr. Weaver has been working for the U.S. Forest Service for 38 years.
Ron Smith, who was a Division Supervisor for the Red Team, presently working as a USFS District Ranger in Mississippi.
Shelly Crook, retired from the USFS, served as the State’s expert witness as a Fire Behavior Analyst
Chuck Stanich, retired from the USFS, was the State’s Type 1 Incident Commander expert. He is a former Fire Management Officer for the Lolo National Forest and Type 1 Incident Commander.
Red Team members who worked on the fire but did not testify included the Incident Commander Mike Melton, retired from the USFS; Tony Wilder, the Night Operations Section Chief; and Keith Wooster, the Fire Behavior Analysist, now retired from the USFS.
The Plaintiffs called one expert witness, Dick Mangan, who retired from the U.S. Forest Service Technology & Development Center in Missoula, Montana in 2000 with more than 30 years of wildfire experience. He is a past president of the International Association of Wildland Fire and currently works as a consultant in wildland fire, instructs fire courses, and raises black angus cattle in Montana.
Mr. Rhoades told us that local firefighting resources from the area staffed some divisions on the fire, and they employed direct tactics, not burning out or backfiring, and never used a drip torch or a fusee for igniting vegetation. He said they offered their local expertise to the Red Team but it was refused. Instead, the Red Team “planned and used all kinds of firing operations from day one”.
According to Mr. Rhoades, the firing operations were approved by the Incident Commander and were planned by the Day and Night Operations Section Chiefs, and the Planning Operations Section Chief, who consulted the fire behavior forecasts prepared by the Fire Behavior Analyst. However, no records could be found in the incident files that any backfires were ever lit or that there were any written planning or oversight documents related to backfires. While 272 pages of Unit Logs were found in the incident records, none of them were completed by Division Supervisors. George Custer, one of the Operations Section Chiefs on the fire, testified that Unit Logs were not necessary for Division Supervisors, but the 1998 Fireline Handbook uses the word “must” when talking about Division Supervisors completing Unit Logs. Members of the Red Team said the Fireline Handbook was “not authoritative”.
Mr. Rhoades got Chuck Stanich, a witness from the State, to admit under cross-examination that from studying the documentation, it was clear that no backfires were ever lit. Mr. Stanich and Mr. Mangan both held the opinion that if backfires were ever lit, they were done without adequate planning, documentation, and oversight. But locals, as well as George Custer, the Operations Section Chief who planned the backfires, testified that backfires were used on the fire. Apparently, the jury was convinced that backfires were used on the fire, but since there were no written records of planning or approval of them in the incident files, then they must have been conducted without adequate planning and oversight.
The jury also heard testimony about two near misses on the fire which were not documented or investigated. One involved two volunteer firefighters, and the other involved a Division Supervisor and two dozer operators. Regarding the second incident, Mr. Rhoades wrote in a comment on Wildfire Today April 20:
I stood on the spot, on the ridgetop, with one of those who nearly died. We could see right down to the Clark Fork from where they were about to be burned over. They would have all three died if a Type 1 helicopter had not been already operating within a mile of the blow-up. It dropped load after 2000-gallon load from the river right on top on them or they’d be dead, as they hurried their dozers down 40 and 50% slopes. Not to mention the 9,000 extra acres of land that burned.
These incidents may have helped to create in the minds of the locals serving on the jury that the Incident Management Team from the southeastern United States, where fires burn differently than in the west, was out of their element in Montana.
It may also be difficult to convince a jury pulled in off the street that setting fire to more vegetation can be a successful strategy of wildfire suppression, especially if local volunteer firefighters say they did not use that technique. There could also be an us-versus-them attitude, with rural Montana residents failing to see the benefit of the Federal Government’s fancy-dancy team from the other side of the country coming into their area and doing their own thing without adequately respecting ranchers and the expertise of local firefighters.
What can firefighters and Incident Management Teams learn from this?
First, do all the damn paperwork that’s required, especially Unit Logs. It’s not the most fun part of the job, but grow up. You can’t ignore this. Some teams attach a blank Unit Log form to every Incident Action Plan.
Document all major decisions, especially those that could be controversial.
*Conduct outreach with locals, have town meetings, personally interface with landowners that are directly affected by the fire, use web sites and social media, including but not limited to InciWeb and Twitter, updating them many times a day. Provide updated maps once or twice a day.
Talk with local firefighters. Become informed about local weather and fuel conditions, as well as local firefighting tactics that have been successful in the past.
Ensure that the final incident paperwork package is complete.
Follow-up on near misses. Document and investigate as necessary and required.
If the Fireline Handbook, Red Book, or other manual says something must be done, don’t interpret that as a tip, hint, or suggestion.
*Over the last few years, especially in 2011 in the Southwest, I observed that some Type 1 IMTeams really suck at stakeholder outreach and keeping the public informed. During the fatal Lower North Fork fire near Denver in March the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office did a wonderful job before the Type 1 IMTeam assumed command of the fire. They updated their web site numerous times a day, briefed the media on a regular schedule, held briefings for local residents after the media briefings, and used Twitter, providing a great deal of information to their community of very concerned citizens. They did not use InciWeb, but plenty of information was available on their own web site. Organized IMTeams could learn a lot about public information from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s office.
UPDATE April 23, 2012:
The Ryan Gulch fire was 30 miles west of Missoula and 8 miles east of Drummond, Montana. The trial was held in Philipsburg, MT (map), a town with a population of 930 in 2009.
The National Incident Management Organization has written a Social Media Guide for Incidents. Centered around the application Twitter, which limits a message to 140 characters, the draft manual is 85 pages long. The document also covers other social media tools, search engines, Facebook, photo storage and distribution, and applications that make it easier to work with Twitter. This could be a very useful manual for someone who knows nothing about these applications.
The Washington office of the US Forest Service sent a memo to the field announcing a pilot program in which the National Incident Management Organization teams will accept up to four trainee or “journeymen” individuals in order to “streamline and build capacity”. Here is an excerpt from the memo, which was signed by James Hubbard, Deputy Chief, State and Private Forestry, and dated March 4, 2010.
As cited in the Fire and Aviation Management (FAM) 5-Year Strategy for Large Fire Management (Jacobs Report), there is a need to streamline training and build capacity. As a result, FAM is initiating an accelerated incident management training and qualification pilot program. This pilot program will assign and cover the expense for up to four trainees/journeymen to each National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) team for up to 120 days. The trainees/journeymen will be given a development plan that focuses on accelerated training and experience necessary to enhance incident qualifications.
Each trainee/journeyman must be available for up to 120 days to complete the training and experience requirements. There are no prerequisite expectations in terms of current qualifications. This opportunity will require a commitment over team assignments/single resource assignments to ensure a focused experience.
This may be related to the January announcement that the National Wildfire Coordinating Group was going to re-think the “number, type, and configuration of the national Incident Management Teams (Type 1, Type 2, and Area Command).” And both announcements may be a result of difficulties in filling positions on IMTeams and consistently having team members available for multiple two to three week assignments throughout a fire season.
A couple of the terms and statements in the memo are interesting. The term “journeyman” is not commonly used in incident management organizations. Usually it means someone has served as an apprentice and is qualified for the position, such as a plumber’s apprentice advancing to become a fully qualified, but minimally experienced, plumber. Maybe in this case they mean an applicant for one of these positions could be fully qualified for the position for which they are applying. But why do this? To obtain more experience? A little more clarity would have been helpful.
The other surprise is this:
There are no prerequisite expectations in terms of current qualifications.
Does this mean that a trainee Resource Unit Leader would be considered for a temporary position on a NIMO team that is comprised only of Command and General Staff positions two levels higher than a Resources Unit Leader?
As we said on January 22, we support substantially increasing the size of NIMO teams, but adding four trainees will not accomplish that goal. But it may help a few people to gain some experience and perhaps get some task books signed off.
According to a memo sent out by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group on January 15, 2010, they are going to:
..review and analyze alternatives addressing the appropriate number, type, and configuration of the national IMTs (Type 1, Type 2, and Area Command)
The reasons given in a brief memo include the following:
Our current workforce management and succession planning for wildfire response is not sustainable for the future. We recognize that the increasing fire season length is negatively impacting all of our agencies abilities to meet their missions due to personnel serving on teams and having less time to accomplish their normal job duties. We must update our militia based model to better address future incident management demands. NWCG also needs to ensure line officer expectations are adequately addressed for incident management.
A person might wonder why, other than the vague reasons stated above, they are going to consider “updating the incident management business model”, as the memo says. Perhaps the recent disbanding of California Incident Incident Management Team 3 for the stated reason of the lack of a qualified Incident Commander, and difficulties filling positions on teams in general, could be some of the reasons.
The 2009 Type 1 IMTeam assignment list and rotation has already been replaced with a 2010 version, but I believe there were only a handful of Type 1 team assignments in 2009. In a normal year, a team might get two or three 2-week assignments, making it an inconvenience for a team member who does not normally work in fire management. The home unit can get a severe case of heartburn when a person’s absence for a total of four to six weeks causes targets to be missed.
One way to mitigate this would be to create more National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) teams, but with the teams having more than just the seven positions as they are currently structured. When I first heard five years ago that year-round IMTeams were going to be created, I thought it was a great idea until I found out the teams would only consist of seven people each.
A group in itself does not necessarily constitute a team. Teams normally have members with complementary skills and generate synergy through a coordinated effort which allows each member to maximize his or her strengths and minimize his or her weaknesses.
A lot of time in Advanced Incident Management (I-520) is spent on the concept of teams, teamwork, building an effective team, and behavior in a team. One of the primary reasons IMTeams exist is that the personnel on a team train together and deploy on multiple incidents over a period of years, converting a GROUP into a well-functioning TEAM. But if a team of five is assigned to a major incident, they will have to order, usually blindly, an additional 40-70 additional people and hope for the best. And if they are lucky, near the end of their 2-week assignment some of them may have adapted to become part a team. Then they go home, never to assemble that team again.
Maybe I’m a little slow, but I fail to see what having five seven-person teams does to improve the management of large, complex incidents. Having them show up to look over the shoulders of teams managing Type 1, 2, and 3 fires as they did in 2009 generated complaints.
Am I the only one saying the NIMO emperor is not wearing any clothes? Maybe not. Here are some excerpts from the notes from the California Operations Committee and Incident Commander Meeting, October 27, 2009:
NIMO was mobilized for support to the agency administrator and then the role changed to help the team. NIMO’s role in-between line officer and IC really impacted the relationship/communication between agency administrator and IC and unified command with CalFire added a complication. Would like CWCG direction regarding how NIMO is to be used in CA.
[…]
…team lost effectiveness working under NIMO and communications were an issue. Need to communicate NIMO protocols upon mobilization.
[…]
Often times the intent of mobilizing a NIMO team is to help the situation and in fact, they often times created confusion, blocked communication, and hindered efficiency.
In a perfect world, we would have five, 45-person year-round NIMO teams, but it is unlikely we’ll ever see that happen. Increasing the size of the NIMO teams to at least 25 people could result in them having key positions down to the Unit Leader and Division Supervisor level reliably filled, and would maintain a decent-sized core Team that could, after ordering the additional 15-45 people needed for a large, complex incident, function as a Team. Then they could serve as an Incident Management Team, rather than second-guessing other teams and getting in the way.
I am sure that the NIMO teams do some good work. According to the only *accomplishment report (no longer available) on the NIMO site which covers portions of 2006-2007, the teams get involved in activities other than fire, including “training, quality assurance, fuels management, fuels implementation, fire and resource management support, NWCG projects, cost containment, and leadership development”. They must be too busy to post any recent accomplishment reports.
*UPDATE March 11, 2010:
A new Accomplishment Report covering 2008 (no longer available) has been added to the NIMO web site since we wrote this article on January 22, 2010.
The seven-person National Incident Management Teams were created primarily to manage complex wildland fires, but Steve Gage’s NIMO team out of Boise has been activated to assist in the management of the pine beetle problem in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming.
According to the U. S. Forest Service, the team….
…will coordinate activities among the three heaviest impacted bark beetle Forests (Medicine Bow–Routt, Arapahoe and Roosevelt, and White River National Forests). This team will provide support and personnel to the effort, and in many cases engage Forest Service employees from across the Rocky Mountain Region to assist in mitigation activities.
The NIMO team will immediately begin assessing the current situation, reviewing existing plans, and collecting data to prepare a strategic action plan for work priorities.
Steve Gage
Some of the objectives of the NIMO Team will be to manage the removal of hazard trees along roads, power lines and in campgrounds; develop safety protocols for those working in beetle infested area; and develop fire preparedness and management plans to address the increased wildfire threat posed by dead and falling trees.
While the management of complex wildland fires was the main reason for creating the NIMO program, the year-round teams are also available for All Hazard incidents, fuel management projects, and training. Presently there are four NIMO teams, operating out of Atlanta, Portland, Boise, and Phoenix.
The Backbone fire on the Klamath National Forest in northern California issued this news release about 45 minutes ago:
Fatal Accident During Routine Training At the Backbone Helibase
WILLOW CREEK, Calif.– During a routine training exercise an individual was involved in an accident Tuesday morning. A Helicopter and its crew, who are assigned to the Backbone Fire, was conducting weekly skill proficiency acceptance training and was involved in an accident that took an individuals life.
At 10:10 this morning while performing a proficiency skill acceptance training, at the Backbone Helibase in Willow Creek, an individual fell and incurred fatal injuries. The training is required to be conducted weekly to insure the crew’s safety and proficiency.
Information is limited at this time and all names of individuals involved are being with held until notifications to families have been made. We will be happy to provide information as soon as it is available.
The individual was provided medical attention immediately at the scene. The Base medical staff, the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office, and the Humboldt County Sherriff’s Office were dispatched and involved in the initial response.
Our sincere condolences to the family and co-workers.
More information about the Backbone fire, which is being managed by a National Incident Management Team (NIMO), can be found at Inciweb.
UPDATE @ 6:43 p.m. PT, July 21
The Backbone fire issued a second news release at about 5:45 p.m. PT today:
WILLOW CREEK, Calif.– Thomas Marovich, 20, of Hayward California incurred fatal injuries when falling while performing routine rappel proficiency skill training, at the Backbone Helibase in Willow Creek.
Marovich was a second year apprentice with the Forest Service at the Modoc National Forest, and was working with the Chester Helitack Crew from the Lassen National Forest which was assigned to the Backbone Fire at the time of the accident.
At 10:10 this morning Marovich fell and incurred fatal injuries while performing the required training which is conducted at a minimum every 14 days to insure the crew’s safety and skill proficiency.
The individual was provided advance life support treatment immediately at the scene. The Base medical staff, the Humboldt County Coroner’s Office, and the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office were involved in the response.
The Forest Service has mobilized an accident investigation team and is working with the National Transportation Safety Board.
Last year in northern California the smoke from the hundreds of fires started by lightning had a major impact on communities for many weeks. This year the National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) team assigned to the Backbone fire says they have made some changes in the way they are managing this fire.
Here are examples of the changes in an excerpt from an long article in the Record Searchlight.
Stepped-up air-monitoring efforts, including working closer with local air-quality management districts to put monitors in many communities that have never had them before as well as communicating with residents about any potential dangers caused by smoke.
Aggressively fighting the fire. “We’re working at minimizing the duration of fires, keeping the size and the cost and the negative impacts down to local communities,” said Robin Cole, the Backbone Fire’s spokeswoman. Thanks to those efforts (and relatively mild weather), the Backbone Fire may be contained within the week. In years past, such a fire would be allowed to burn for months.
Appointing community liaisons – including residents, retired longtime firefighters and community leaders – to meet daily with fire commanders to hear updates and give input and advice on firefighting strategies.
A National Incident Management Organization, or NIMO, has been in the area since before the fire started, learning the terrain and meeting with residents. The team will be on site for the duration of the fire, a noticeable shift from last summer when fire-leadership teams, some from as far away as Alaska, were swapped every few weeks.
In this video, NIMO Incident Commander George Custer elaborates on what the team is doing this year, compared to last year.
The blog Random Ramblings has been writing a lot recently about fire aviation. Today they have a link to a video about the helitack crew at Zion National Park. Check it out HERE.
NIMO IMTeam on northern California fire
The Atlanta National Incident Management Organization team out of Atlanta, under Incident Commander George Custer, will assume command of the Backbone Fire, formerly called the LT-17 fire (thanks for changing the name) on Wednesday. The Times-Standard of Eureka, California, has a surprisingly detailed explanation of what a NIMO team is.
Two fires have merged to form this fire, one from the Six Rivers National Forest and another one from the Shasta Trinity NF, for a combined total of 3,300 acres.
From InciWeb:
The Backbone fire was started by lightning on Monday, July 1st. Formerly called the LT-17, the Backbone has now grown to encompass the Trinity Fire, a separate incident that was ignited on the Shasta Trinity National Forest. Firefighters from the Lower Trinity Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest and other nearby forces were able to extinguish 13 of the 14 lightning fires that were ignited that evening. Due to the remote location of this fire, in the Trinity Alps Wilderness, and the amount of heavy dead and down fuels and standing dead snags from the Megram Fire the suppression of this particular fire was more difficult.
Thanks Dick
Television reports fire to be 15 times larger than it was
On Sunday afternoon a television station in Los Angeles, CBS2, reported on their web site that the Tujunga fire in the Angeles National Forest was 2,000 acres. They were wrong by a factor of 15. When the spread of the fire was stopped, fire officials said it was 130 acres. HERE is a link to the InciWeb report showing the fire was 85% contained at midnight.
German Lessons Learned site
Felix Krieg from Germany wrote to let us know that they have launched their @fire wildland fire lessons learned site. He said it is based on the U.S. Wildfire Lessons Learned Center and another site. The @fire site is in German, so unless they implement my suggestion to install a translation widget on the site it will be of use only to those who can read German. When I worked for the International Association of Wildland Fire I installed a translation widget on their site. It is still there and works fairly well. You can try it out HERE; look near the bottom of the left-hand column.
I put their lead paragraph through Google Translate and it came up with this:
On this page @ published reports on fire incidents and (near-) accidents, which were identified during the forest fires have occurred. We report primarily on accidents that have occurred in Europe, but also what is happening in other countries in the world. With this listing we would like the teams and managers of fire departments provide a focal point to benefit from the experience of others to learn. As a central point, it is not in our sense, a defense affected negatively depict or errors to criticize – we want more clues as to the safety of all firefighters who can increase.This compilation of lives of their employees.
But, we congratulate Felix and the others who put the lessons learned site together. This is an excellent way to learn from the experiences of others.
Denali National Park testing helicopter pilots
Mount McKinley (or Denali)
The staff at Denali National Park frequently has to rescue climbers on Mount McKinley (or Denali), the highest mountain peak in North America at 20,320 feet above sea level. Sometimes rescues involve the park helicopter, specifically selected for high altitude operations.
According to a story at KTUU.COM, the park is testing people who hope to pilot the park helicopter. The test involves hovering the helicopter with a 100-foot long line that has a simulated person at the end, represented by a log. A successful pilot would have to hold the log just above the ground within a ten-foot circle for two out of three minutes.
The park does not own a helicopter, they contract for one each year. The test is to evaluate helicopter companies who are interested in bidding on the contract.
And speaking of Denali National Park:
The Bear Creek fire has burned 23,000 acres, 16,000 of them inside the park. From the NPS Morning Report:
Fire activity on the Bear Creek Fire increased due to the recent warm, dry weather. Monitored on July 3, and it was moving moderately to the south due to the north winds. Alaska Fire Service smokejumpers were flown in on Saturday to provide structural protection to the Roosevelt Cabin, a historic cabin located approximately three miles from the southern end of the fire. Three NPS fire management staff are being flown to the cabin site today to continue structural protection, along with two smokejumpers. There is no immediate threat to any other park structures, or to park developed areas.
One way to mitigate this would be to create more 
