After the fire in the Minnewaska Park (for those not from this area, there was a 3,000 acre wildland fire on the top of one of the local mountains. Fortunately there were no serious injuries and no homes were lost….30+ departments took part in suppression and control over a 7-10 day period), and the newspaper article that followed, I am NOT going to get into the discussion of who did what to whom, finger pointing, etc. There will be a time and place for that. What I’d rather look at is what we, as a department, should have learned, or re-learned, from the call.
Purely from the perspective of our department’s response and experience at the call, the overriding lesson that strikes me is that first and foremost, we have to look out for ourselves and our team. Whether ICS or NIMS or whatever, was used or used correctly is irrelevant to this fact. There is no one who is more responsible for the team than the team leader, be it the chief, assistant chief, or the ranking person on that assignment. (And as an aside, as I have tried to stress over and over, there HAS TO be someone in charge. If there is no officer there, someone has to step up and fill the void. “No person in charge” equals a disaster waiting to happen.) No matter who is “at the top” and what orders come down from the command post, all those orders do not change the fact that the actions of the team must be judged from the point of view of safety of the team first and foremost. Of course if commands cannot be carried out, the command post has to be notified of this fact as quickly as possible, but there is NO piece of wildland worth dying for or risking a team member for.
As a corollary to this, the team leader should keep his team together. If volunteers are called for, either the team goes or no one goes. If there are sufficient members there to split up into 2 teams, then one team goes with its own team leader or no one goes. Splitting a team is leaving some member on his/her own, and that is not allowed.
There is a list of standard wildland fire orders…this is not original, but is passed on as a good set of rules:
FIRE BEHAVIOR
1) Keep informed on weather conditions and forecasts
2) Know what the fire is doing at all times
3) Base all actions on current and expected behavior of the fire
FIRELINE SAFETY
4) Identify escape routes and make them known
5) Post lookouts when there is possible danger
6) Be alert. Keep calm. Think clearly. Act decisively.
ORGANIZATIONAL CONTROL
7) Main communications with your forces (team), supervisor and adjoining forces.
8)Give clear instructions and insure they are understood.
9) Maintain control of your forces at all times.
IF 1 THROUGH 9 ARE CONSIDERED, THEN
10) Fight fire aggressively, having provided for safety first.
Next, some ideas about personal protection
Doc