Technology a Blessing, Curse at Washington Blaze

From July 31 to Aug. 14, 2005, firefighters were mobilized to the Dirty Face Fire, which was burning on the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests and Washington Department of Natural Resources lands. The fire burned more than 1,150 acres.

The Central Washington Area Incident Management Team discusses notable successes, difficult challenges, and recommendations for its training curriculum and unresolved issues.

What were the most notable successes at the incident that others may learn from?

The new Internet access system the team purchased this past year provided outstanding service throughout our assignment at Dirty Face. Having everything in hand upon our arrival allowed us to set up quickly and process and transmit the 209 and incident priority worksheet promptly. This facilitated the incident rising to the top of the priority list and had a direct result on our timely receipt of critical resources such as Type-1 helicopters and crews.

The use of the ActiveFires.net Web site served us very well. The format was easy to use and did not require expert training to use. The Web site greatly diminished the phone calls into the information unit once it came online, and good feedback was received from the community on its use. The use of the “Simple 3” layout by other teams will ensure seamless transition for information flow between IMTs. Any use of non-standard formats will hinder the smooth transition between teams and defeat one of the intended purposes of ActiveFires.net.

Also, it was a pleasure to have the assistance of the Washington State Patrol mobilization personnel when it came to demobing, time keeping, assistance with the governor's visit and general availability to answer questions. It helped to facilitate our operation and should be a standard for all instances where the Washington State Mobilization Act is in effect.

The early decision to order a batch retardant plant along with its quick delivery and installation greatly helped in the effort to contain the spread of the fire. Once a batch plant is in place, it is a much more efficient way to deliver retardant than with fixed-wing air tankers.

Also, all facets of the S-420 class were extremely well done. The performance of the instructor cadre, as well as the support provided by the team, were both outstanding. Several of the trainees commented that this was the best training they had ever received in their entire careers.

The incident had numerous chainsaws from the cache system due to many Interagency Hot Shot crews flying to the incident and not having their own chainsaws. Maintenance needs of the saws were high, with many crews spending as much as two hours per day doing saw maintenance. A saw service company was ordered, and they performed most of the maintenance after hours, allowing the crews to focus on firefighting. This resulted in a substantial cost-savings as well as increasing the effectiveness of the crews.

The preferred alternative provided to the team by the Forest in the Wildland Fire Situation Analysis was an indirect option with a projected cost of approximately $25 million. Due in part to the availability of substantial air resources, and a moderation of the fire activity, the team was able to aggressively pursue direct strategies to contain the fire. Although the first two attempts at containing the fire spread through direct attack strategies failed, the third attempt was successful at a total cost of approximately $7 million.

From the team's perspective, the WFSA was well done and provided better guidance than the typical tight cost and acres-burned parameters usually specified that need almost daily updating as the incident progresses.

The team provided two products for use by the agency administrators after the fire was contained. These were both developed in concert with the Chelan County Sheriff Public Safety Deputy, who functioned in a Unified Command with the team. Both are one-page public information sheets, the first covering what to expect after the fire is contained and the second covering visitor safety in the fire area. Both documents will allow the agencies to provide an extra measure of public safety in the future.

What were the most difficult challenges faced and how were they overcome?

We experienced numerous frustrations in the ordering of miscellaneous items. Many orders placed by the team were either not filled or, worse yet, ignored. The list of items is both long and diverse, including things such as newspapers, epi-kits, power strips, printer cartridges, computer cables and the $70 part to repair our snap server that died after four years of faithful service. While not filling these orders certainly saved a few hundred dollars, it cost us substantially more in efficiency of operation and goodwill among our firefighters. It's a shameful situation when the IMT members have to expend personal funds to make our Internet access and computer system work, and take up a collection to buy newspapers for our firefighters.

There were multiple “S” numbers assigned to the same vendor for increased numbers of portable toilets, hand-washing stations, yurts, tents and the like. This made tracking them difficult and demobing individual items particularly hard to manage. This problem was overcome simply by doing extra work to account for individual items.

What changes, additions or deletions are recommended to various training curriculums?

The team facilitated another successful field S-420 session while on the Dirty Face incident. An idea on how to further improve this process is to add agency administrators to the student teams and allow them to attend the classroom sessions as well as interface with their real-life counterparts as they conduct regular business with the IMT as part of the course simulation. This would add another realistic element to the course and provide an opportunity for inexperienced agency administrators to gain valuable experience in incident management. It would provide a more realistic experience than the current “shadow assignments” provide — at no added cost.

What issues were not resolved to your satisfaction and need further review? Based on what was learned, what is your recommendation for resolution?

We found eight areas of concern that will be reviewed at a later date.

This past winter the National Interagency Coordinating Center issued new direction on ordering additional command repeater systems. The new process was put into effect because of the tight limitations on the number off additional frequencies available for additional systems and the desire for IMTs to not tie up these critical resources needlessly. While we understand and support this objective, experience shows that in today's environment of large incidents or complexes and distant ICPs, there's a frequent need for additional command frequencies beyond the ability of the current system to accommodate.

We recommend that the NICC should explore other options for meeting this need, as the current situation is not meeting large incident management requirements.

There were four IHCs from outside the geographic area that arrived at the incident with several members who didn't have Red Cards. The standard that the forest set was that all incident personnel must have valid proof of qualification. The CWA team spent considerable effort working with the crews' home units to get information that supported the crew qualification. This situation created tension between the forest, the Pacific Northwest and Southwest geographic regions, and the four crews, and put the team squarely in the middle to pick up the pieces. We feel that although the four crews performed acceptably, they never were able to perform up to their full potential due to the tension created by this situation.

We recommend a follow-up with the Southwest geographic area to make them aware of the problems created from dispatching crews without current valid proof of qualification. Home units need to be reminded that it's their responsibility to assure that all resources are qualified prior to dispatch.

We experienced a number of situations related to encouraging and compensating incident personnel to use their personal vehicles. Incident personnel hired under AD authority are allowed a use rate for their personal vehicles of 46 cents per mile for travel from home to the incident base and from the incident base to the fireline.

This rate is adequate to cover expenses for travel to the incident base but is not adequate to cover travel to the fireline and use while on the fireline. This creates a situation where the only other viable options are for incident personnel (operations section chief, safety officer) to park their POVs at the incident base because they are unwilling to use their own vehicles at the 46 cents per mile rate and hire vehicles with drivers for use on the fireline, or to obtain rental vehicles at a high cost. As outlined in the cost-containment summary, substantial savings could be realized and effectiveness of operations could be increased if there were a variable rate that recognized that additional costs incurred to employees when they use their POVs when traveling from the ICP to the fireline and working on the fireline.

We recommend the establishment of both a travel rate and use-on-fireline rate to encourage personnel to use their own vehicles.

There were a number of instances where the team attempted to send e-mails with attached documents such as the morning information update to various Forest Service employees who had an urgent need for the information. The team has no Forest Service employees in our information organization, and because of security issues with non-agency e-mails, our messages took from three hours to two days to arrive in the recipient's inboxes. This caused numerous frustrations, especially before we figured out what the problem was. Similar issues would undoubtedly be encountered with other federal agencies. Because it's doubtful that we will change agency computer security requirements, teams should be aware of this situation upfront and plan contingencies to deal with it.

We recommend posting attachments to the team Web site and link them to the individual message, bypassing the need for agency computer security systems to screen them.

We had five IHCs that flew from the Southwest to our incident. This required us to logistically support them with items such as buses, chase vehicles and chainsaws. One day after their arrival, their crummies arrived along with their saws. The added work to support them was not worth the extra day we gained by flying them to the incident.

We recommend allowing the IHCs to drive their crew vehicles to the incident, even when traveling long distances.

Several team members who are AD hires need peripheral equipment to perform their jobs. An example is our fire behavior analyst, with his computer and printer.

We recommend developing a process whereby ADs can be hired “with equipment” and compensated as such.

The forest should review the role of the buying team and how they are organized. We feel that many of the ordering frustrations discussed above would have been prevented had the buying team been organized differently. Having them report to the forest supervisor through the expanded dispatch coordinator, incident business adviser and the forest administrative officer dilutes the accountability in terms of responding to the overall incident objectives.

Too often, their focus appeared to be solely on costs without recognition of the overall mission as articulated in the incident objectives. This affected their critical role in procurement of necessary supplies and services. Having them work directly for the agency administrator or representative, or better yet the IMT, would help assure that everyone is pulling in the same direction in accomplishing the mission. Teams welcome and need some level of scrutiny on our orders for supplies and services and want to be held accountable for poor decisions, but everyone would be better served if all decisions were made in light of the overall mission instead of a single element (cost containment) of the incident objectives.

We recommend reviewing how buying teams are organized and as a minimum making sure the overall mission is clearly communicated to all support personnel.

The delegation of authority the team received from the agency administrators included an item requiring us to provide a final set of documents to both the Okanogan/Wenatchee National Forest and the Department of Natural Resources. Due to the difficulty of making copies under field conditions with very limited copying equipment, the team's documentation unit leader spent considerable effort complying with this requirement.

We recommend that agency administrators clearly define exactly what records are needed in duplicate, or contract the duplication of the incident record to a professional printer at a later date.

The Dirty Face Furlong after-action review was submitted to the Wildfire Lessons Learned Center, www.wildfirelessonslearned.net.