(fire blazing)
(electric saw buzzing)
- [Instructor] Do you know how to assess
the fire environment and anticipate fire behavior?
These skills will help you work effectively
and stay safe on the fire line.
Whether you are on your local unit,
or on an incident in unfamiliar country,
you will confront this question each day.
As you begin your workday,
you face at least some uncertainty
about what you will be asked to do
and what you will encounter while doing it.
Once you are assigned a role,
you generally have some time to learn about the assignment
and gather information you think will be useful.
Enroute there are opportunities to learn even more
about the situation.
All of this, leads to your arrival, on-scene assessment,
and engagement with the fire.
This video will discuss how the factors highlighted,
on the NWCG Fire Environment Poster
can inform a step-by-step process of when and how
to gather the best information about your situation.
Cell phones and tablets are very important tools
for information gathering early on,
but their usefulness can decrease once you're on-scene
due to potentially poor cell reception.
There are many excellent apps out there that can be useful
for weather, mapping, and safety.
Be sure to ask your supervisor, which ones are preferred.
This process closely follows the lookup,
down and around principles found in the green pages
of the incident response pocket guide or IRPG.
This icon pops up when more information on the topic
can be found in the IRPG.
Throughout the video,
you will hear and see references to big change factors
which are clues that will help you determine
if your fire behavior is about to change,
which can be either an increase,
or a decrease in fire activity.
Clues include big changes in weather,
topography, fuels, and the smoke plume.
This video will show you how the Fire Environment Poster,
and the IRPG can assist you
in assessing these big change factors on each assignment.
(fire blazing)
Let's begin before you have an assignment.
Your day starts with a briefing
to gather today's information
including the fire environment outlook for your area
the factors of sun, heat, humidity, and wind,
today and cumulatively affect fuels and fire behavior.
In this early size-up phase,
it is important to know what these values are.
Not only for today, but how they have affected
recent days and weeks, plus how they are different
from past years.
The fire weather forecast is a good place to start.
In addition to expected weather details,
it will include the current weather watches, warnings,
and a discussion of general weather influences
that may describe critical weather.
Look for the extended forecast for the days ahead
toward the bottom of the document to consider the importance
of today's responses and potential in the future.
Has a fuel in fire behavior advisory
been issued for your area?
What does it say about the recent past?
Ask yourself these questions.
How will the past and forecasted weather
affect the fire behavior throughout the day?
Have the days been bright and sunny
with above average temperatures and low humidity,
and for how long?
What are the hours with the highest temperatures
and the lowest relative humidities?
What are the expected winds?
Are conditions going to be stable or unstable?
Is a storm moving in?
Is expected weather a big change from yesterday?
You will want to understand yesterday's fire activity
and any notable fire behavior.
If someone with you has been on a recent fire
get a briefing from them, get answers to these questions.
What information was reported from yesterday's incidents?
What has the fire activity been like so far this year
and over the last few days?
How effective or difficult was the suppression
on recent fires nearby and what tactics were used?
This can help you decide
whether today's fire behavior
will be similar or subject to big changes.
You want not only recent fire activity
but historic fire information from years past.
Pocket cards provide fire indices and thresholds
that highlight fire danger conditions
associated with past problem fires.
How do your current weather and fuel conditions align
with these past problem fires?
How is this year different than last year
or the year before?
The final piece of this phase is to anticipate
today's fire behavior problems.
Use your IRPG to help you make a plan for the day.
The white pages contain tables and scales
that can help determine fire potential,
the green look up, down and around pages
list critical fire environment indicators
to pay attention to.
And the fire environment poster adds detail about them.
Ask yourself this question.
"According to the weather forecast, current fire danger,
"the hazardous fuels in the area, and the past activity.
"What should I think about the expected fire behavior?"
In the second phase of the process,
once you have been assigned a role on an incident
and been given its location it's time to get organized.
Before you leave the station,
and as you travel to the fire
it is important that you prepare for the situation on-scene.
First, always walk out the door
with the local fire weather forecast in hand.
Check to see if a Spot Weather Forecast
from the National Weather Service has been requested.
If you find that one hasn't,
go ahead and request one now.
But only if you know critical details
like the exact location and that the fire
has the potential to be active or is active already.
At the very least, take a current
fire weather planning forecast for the local area with you.
It is important to understand the timing of weather events
to effectively anticipate big changes.
And graphical products from the National Weather Service
can help by providing hourly trends
of temperature, humidity, and winds for specific locations.
Getting a look at where the fire is,
and how you get there before you leave
can be done with a computer, phone, or tablet.
You will need to ensure you can see and reference routes
and locations once you leave.
So what maps and imagery makes sense?
Can they inform you about the fuels and terrain
surrounding your fire?
Download them if you can.
While on route, you can review images of the fire area
to learn about the fuels and terrain.
Map apps like Avenza are great tools
because they can track your progress
and don't require connectivity.
Begin to think about the general fire behavior to expect
in that type of vegetation
and how topography could affect it.
This is a good time to locate and read off the names
of the major mountains, roads and rivers,
because you will likely hear these names used
in future briefings.
Examine contour lines to determine steepness of terrain
and critical topographic features listed on the poster.
And begin to consider what the big change factors might be.
Look at the sky.
What kind of cloud formations do you see?
Look at the smoke column, what is the height?
Is it vertical or leaning?
Are the trees and shrubs moving with the wind?
What is the color of the smoke?
Is there an inversion or Marine layer present?
All of these observations can help you think
about instability, wind speed, and direction,
and the intensity of the fire.
This is another reminder to walk out
with some kind of weather forecast.
If you requested a spot before leaving,
it might be ready when you get on-scene.
If not, does the forecast you have seem adequate far?
(fire blazing)
You're here and it's time to hit the ground running.
At this point,
you should have the general weather information
or a spot weather forecast,
knowledge of the fuels and topography,
and critical warnings, advisories and thresholds.
Your phone becomes much less important
once you are on-scene.
If your apps require cell coverage,
then many functions may be limited.
This is when eyes and ears
become your best source of information.
You need to be alert, keep calm,
think clearly and act decisively.
When you get to the fire,
the first thing you want to do is get a sense
of the current fire situation.
On a large fire, you will get an operational briefing
or if you are first on scene,
you will do an initial size up and verify the location.
If you are first on-scene, you now know the fire's location.
With some scouting, you can determine its behavior,
and what is threatened.
It is time to confirm your situational awareness
by validating your forecast
and considering the need for an update.
This is the time to make sure
that those with you share your assessment
and also the time to make sure the assessment
helps support your decision making.
You will determine the big change factors
that you couldn't know before arriving.
Now that you know where your fire is and how it is burning,
think about the fuels and terrain in front of your fire.
How would you characterize the fuels where folks are working
and where the fire could move?
Do the fuels stay the same or change?
Are the fuels in the sun?
And is the fire burning up slope?
Is it early in the burn period or are these peak conditions?
Plan for changing conditions before they are upon you.
Make sure someone will make, record,
and report key observations for you.
Either you or someone with you should validate the forecast
to get predictions
of fuel moisture and probability of ignition.
By taking a weather observation
with a belt weather kit or an electronic instrument.
Does the spot weather forecast match your own observations?
Do the temperatures humidity, winds, and cloud cover
match what you had expected in the forecast?
You should always validate and verify a current forecast
to your current on-scene weather observations.
If it doesn't match, request another spot weather forecast
and be sure to vocalize or document what is different.
Wind speed and wind direction
change more than any other factor.
Do you expect critical winds or changes in local winds
to lead to big changes in fire behavior?
What weather is expected later today and tomorrow?
As mentioned earlier,
it is important to understand the timing
of expected weather events.
And if big changes are expected,
you will need to be ready for them.
You can request information on the radio
from an IMET, or by contacting dispatch.
They can contact the Local National Weather Service Office
which is open and available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
Based on the current and anticipated fire behavior,
what are your escape routes, and safety zone requirements?
Is your safety zone big enough for expected conditions?
And do you have a safe and effective way to get there?
Look for clues that the fire behavior
may become more extreme.
Observable signals such as increased torching and spotting
from wind changes, and greater flame lengths
from fuel type changes are all clues
that a big change is coming.
Is a pyrocumulus cloud forming overhead?
Signaling a thunderstorm
that could bring wind and lightning?
Is the fire getting ready to jump to a different aspect
where slope and wind alignment is favorable for rapid rates
of spread and increased fire behavior?
By continually assessing the fire environment
and the fire behavior, you will gain confidence
to anticipate what the next big changes will be
and decide how best to respond.
Ask yourself these questions.
"What will the next big change look like?
"Where and how fast will it come?
"Is it time to act or is it time to move to safety
"and wait it out?"
In this video, we have outlined an assessment process
that should help you make good and timely decisions.
It is important to understand that this will take practice
and with practice can be done quickly and efficiently.
Consider reevaluating each fire afterwards
to use as a learning tool.
Were any assessment steps missed?
And what steps were well executed?
What can you do better next time?
Talk to people, ask questions,
and remember that effective communication is essential.
Most importantly, we thank you for your hard work
and please stay safe out there.
(bright upbeat music)