Some assembly required for fire crews

Lark McDonald

But by the second day, the incident management team privately predicted that an explosion was imminent.

They strung out along an exposed ridge, milling about in advance of the lunch break, all wondering how it was going to go down — what was going to happen to them and their planned 14-day rotation. The three days since arriving at the fire had been stressful. The leadership team was a mix of ADs and government employees, and they weren't talking with each other very well. They were a shattered reflection of a crew, with an invisible leader at the helm.

The IMT, now aware of the potential problem, kept the crew on a short leash. A safety officer was sent to shadow the crew for the day, and the team was sent to the quietest part of the fire. The division supervisor stayed close by as well. Despite the fact that the fire was quiet and the ad hoc crew was assigned to mop up, the crew leaders managed to find a way to still make the day exciting.

By 14:00 a fight broke out between the two squad leaders about an instruction handed down by the crew boss. Rather than have the order clarified, the two decided instead to convince each other using the fire tools immediately at hand. Now the first leader was whining to the crew boss, the other to the division supervisor. On the hill within their groups, the crew members quietly discussed what was going on and what might happen, speculating they might be sent home. Most were trying to work hard, despite the problems with the leadership team, and wanted to stay and work.

The division supervisor felt sorry for the crew members, but he kept from getting too involved in the drama. “We can only do so much out here,” he commented after talking briefly with the crew leads. “We haven't the luxury to counsel these folks if they show up here all broken. Part of it is the lack of time, but there is also a danger; even if I were to try and resolve it, I could never be sure that I really got to the bottom of the problem. We've a job to do here, and we can't take the risk.”

Although some IMTs are notorious for canning crews who were just operationally “inconvenient,” I couldn't argue with his assertion that a crew with serious internal dysfunction has no place on the fire line. When working at the point of friction, a dysfunctional crew poses unknown risks to the safety of the operation.

Looking at it from a leadership perspective, I thought the situation was pretty cut and dry: A weak crew boss couldn't exercise the leadership required to unify his subordinate leaders and to clearly state his operational intent or direction. He also was unskilled in handling conflict, so he just tried to avoid it. He was another officially qualified crew boss who was otherwise totally unqualified for the task of leading a crew.

Incapable as he was, this man and his story are just the end of a chain of errors and events that were predetermined long before he and his crew blew up and were sent home. The errors that were passed to him and then passed on to the fire were started at home, long before they were even assembled.

Near the root of the error chain is the organizationally held fallacy that real team-building can occur just by throwing people together on a long bus ride. There's a big difference between laughing with a group of people and working with them in a way where you can move quickly and adapt dynamically as a group. Working in a high-risk environment requires true cohesion, and that first requires peer and leader trust.

Trust occurs when the environment and the people become predictable. The ability to predict the actions and reactions of others enables team members to counterbalance each other, to understand each other's shortfalls and to compensate for them. Dynamic role movement within the team becomes a reality. Predictability lessens stress and enables planning: thinking and decision-making to extend into the future. It also allows crew members to hold each other accountable for a team result and keeps behavior in check.

Trust and predictability can't form over a roadside lunch break at McDonald's. It's an internal human process that requires both time and exposure. During this process, the consciously understood words and subconsciously observed actions are validated against each other. Given enough communication, checks and balances, trust will form. Until it does, the little existing predictability and trust comes from faith in the system and processes that bring them all together. As a human psychological process, trust-building can be accelerated only to a limited degree. It takes a really organized, strong, dynamic and thoughtful leader to bring a crew through this process quickly without undermining it.

At its core, the process of focused team-building is a journey of promises, events, proofs and standards orchestrated by a leader with deft skill. Through the process, crew members prove to themselves, to the leader and to each other their commitment and reliability. The leader additionally proves him- or herself worthy and predictable to the crew.

Designed years ago as an on-demand, cheap staffing firefighting mechanism, Type 2 crews are different now then they were years ago. In many regions a quality work force is harder to find and harder to attract. Meanwhile, the standards for safety and crew functioning have been raised in the last 10 years following a series of Type 2 crew — related accidents. The old concept that a fire crew was one good head and 19 strong backs is no longer generally accepted. It has been replaced by a broader expectation of performance and safety given the realities of this high-risk work. This change in thinking also has brought about changes in attitudes about safety. In 1994, ground safety was considered an issue of individual safety awareness. It's now expanded to a discussion of operational and systemic risks, including an acknowledgment of the importance of upstream systems and influences, termed error management.

At the policy level, the question remains about whether ad hoc Type 2 crews are an effective resource given today's level of expectations in both performance and safety. Can the industry truly afford to have large numbers of marginal crews? If economically they make sense, how can they be brought up to speed to meet functionality and safety requirements?

In the end, the ad hoc crew is the lowest-common-denominator crew. Because the organizational cards have been stacked against it from the start, it has the lowest chance of success and is at the highest risk in whatever operation they are deployed. At the unit level, some fire managers should be asking themselves questions about what they are doing with their Type 2 program, and whether or not the program operates in a way that supports the values and principles of today's fire operations. Because they are home-grown, Type 2 crew programs vary widely in their purpose and implementation, running the gamut from local social welfare efforts to dedicated standing teams. Additionally, the use of contract crews has only muddled the landscape, bringing more of the problem out of the control of the agencies.

The dismissal of the crew mentioned was the third of three Type 2 crew dismissals in as many days. A contract crew and a forest crew, both caught returning to camp drunk, had been canned earlier. There are numerous examples of both very good and very bad Type 2 crews. Some of the best Type 2 crews can easily be ranked among the Type 1 crews in terms of internal cohesion, effectiveness and overall performance, but the best are generally “standing” seasonal crews that have the same opportunity as the Type 1 crews for exposure and trust-building. Ad hoc crews, with their random assemblage of firefighters matched with an equally random set of crew bosses fare far worse.

Given the challenges with the ad hoc crew and the leadership skills needed to guide them, ideally only the very best crew leaders should be given the responsibility. The weaker the crew infrastructure is, the greater the need for artful and strong leadership. No matter how you look at it, the Type 2 crew leader position is one of the most demanding leadership positions on the fireground if done right.

Crew assembly in the field is an uncertain proposition. Anything can happen. The amount of assembly required will vary based upon your unit, your people, your resources, and your mission. Finding the formula and assembly plan that works best for your program will take time and effort, but it will help ensure that you're assembling a good crew and not just a bomb waiting to go off.

Lark McDonald is the CEO of Mission-Centered Solutions Inc., a Parker, Colo.-based training and consulting firm that provides basic and advanced leadership training programs to the wildland fire industry.

While there are many ways to strengthen your program, the exact formula will be based on the individual nature of your organization.

• Do you know who your crew bosses really are?
• Do you know their strengths, weaknesses?
• Do you train them?
• Do you assess technical and leadership skills annually and critically?
• Do you remove those who are not strong enough leaders?
• Do you cross-train?
• Do you teach them how to assess crew condition and capability?

• What is the nature of your work force? Would you describe it as transient, stable, too small?
• What are motivators that bring people to the program? How can you attract good performers?
• Do they share common values?
• Do you evaluate individual crew members?
• In what positions are you willing to use ADs?

• Do you evaluate or seek performance information from fire teams?
• Do you have a good set of operational SOPs?
• Do you have static and reliable leadership?
• Do you have high membership standards?
• Do you indoctrinate crew members early in the season, even before they may go out?