(dramatic music)
- As wildland fire fighters
we operate in a dynamic
and inherently hazardous environment.
We deal with constantly changing variables
that significantly impact our decisions and tactics.
Using the Incident Command System
we work with diverse partners
from locations across the country and around the world.
We encounter communication barriers,
political pressure, time constraints,
and dynamic high-risk situations
with the potential for negative outcomes.
So how do we deal with these challenges?
By using the Risk Management Process.
The five-step Risk Management Process
is found in the Incident Response Pocket Guide or IRPG.
Identify hazards, assess hazards,
develop controls and make risk decisions,
implement controls, supervise and evaluate.
Regardless of our level of experience,
or positions we hold,
the Risk Management Process is relevant to all of us.
Whether this is your first exposure
as a brand new firefighter,
or you are a supervisor with years of experience
we all manage risk.
There are others who face equally daunting
risk-management challenges.
One such group is the Columbia River Bar Pilots
The Columbia River Bar is considered
one of the most dangerous stretches of water in the world.
Bar Pilots are expert sailors
who are intimately familiar with the waters found
where rivers meet the ocean.
The pilots board ocean-going ships
and assume navigational control
when they transit across the bar.
Just getting onboard a thousand-ton vessel
in a winter storm can be a significant exercise
in managing risk.
Other challenges faced by the pilots include:
unpredictable weather; fatigue;
communications issues;
as well as political and economic pressures.
The consequences of failure
can be catastrophic.
Through it all the Columbia River Bar Pilots
have maintained an impressive safety record.
Let's take a closer look at what they have to say
about managing risk.
- We do recognize that there is risk
in everything we do.
And, you know, the Columbia River bar in particular,
has been designated as
the roughest harbor entrance in the world.
There are some others very close.
That being said, a big part of our job
is managing that risk.
And experience then tells us
when is it too risky to do it,
when isn't it too risky.
You really have to manage the risk
for what your abilities are.
- You have to be hyper-focused on what you're doing
when we're doing our job,
but at the same time see it
and be aware of everything around you.
Situational awareness has to be high all the time.
And it's easy to get distracted by a small thing
that you take your mind off the big picture
and that's something we have to be careful about a lot.
- I see my job to give pilots the best information
that they can get in order to mitigate any risk
for a particular ship they may be handling
or an evolution that they may be involved in.
So that takes all kinds of forms.
From a planning process which starts early in the morning
and knowing what kind of ships we have,
what kind of graphs we have,
what the weather we're looking at is.
It's my job to compile a lot of that information
and work with our operations pilot throughout the day
to enable him to make the right decisions.
- For situational awareness for us
the first step is, what's the weather?
So looking at all the weather tools out there,
NOAA buoys, wind gauges,
calling the National Weather Service talking with them.
We always have to have a visual in our mind,
situation awareness, of what the weather is
and what's coming.
That way we can plan our movements of ship
and how we're gonna board 'em
be it pilot boat or helicopter.
Situational awareness onboard a ship as a pilot
is different than as a ship captain
or as a navigation officer.
Each position has its own focus.
The captain's looking out for his crew
and the overall operation of the ship
where the pilot is just doing the navigation.
- Danger is generally a function of how high a wave
are you potentially going to encounter.
Because even the big ships that you see,
you know, in the rivers and harbors of the United States,
if they take a large wave broadside
they can be, as they say, turned turtle,
or capsize and sink.
So it's critically important
that you know what the conditions are
and not take a ship out in those conditions
where she would, you know, be potentially in danger
despite the capability of a bar pilot
who is on the bridge directing the navigation of that ship
through the crew.
Risk assessment starts early on in here
and we're looking at the age of the ship,
the nationality of the ship,
the weather conditions,
what the currents gonna be doing.
Taking all that into account so you've got
your kind of base expectation there.
There's always uncertainty built in with that
and you have to allow for uncertainty both ways.
It may be that the weather lays down
and it's a lot better, nicer, it goes great,
but the weather could go worse and the ship could be worse.
A lot of things can come in there.
We all have that can-do attitude you spoke about.
We didn't get to be ships captains
without having that,
kind of get 'er done, kind of mentality.
We have to tone that down in here.
There's times you can get it done,
but should you get it done.
If you're working right on the edge of that can-do line,
I can do this, provided everything goes perfect,
then you're too close.
You have to have room for the uncertainty in there.
- It's intuition and experience,
how many times have you seen it.
So I was at sea for 24 years before I became a pilot
and then another 13 years as a pilot
so, yeah, I've seen a lot.
Not only here but sailing in and out of ports in Asia,
Africa, fishing boats there.
You can always kinda fall back on your experiences
and use them where you are.
- When I look at firefighting
you're constantly having to make judgment calls
about what are the wind and other conditions
that are affecting the fires behavior
and how do you deploy manpower in the midst
of that kind of swirl of dynamic physical conditions
associated with the humidity, the wind, et cetera,
and what the fires doing, direction.
Very similar set of highly-dynamic factors
have to be evaluated by the pilots.
- There's a saying that the ships safest place
is sitting at the dock,
but that's not what it's meant to do
so it has to sail.
There's risk involved period.
And bad things can happen,
but you need to be as prepared as you can
for those to happen and they will happen
so you have to have at least a thought process in your head
of what, how you're gonna deal with it when it happens.
One of the decisions that bar pilots have to make,
especially during winter months,
is do they close the bar to commercial ship traffic
which is, may result in a buildup of ships
outside the mouth of the river for a day or two.
It's a safety call they've got to make
based upon the conditions that they are monitoring
on an hourly basis during rough conditions.
The economic consequences of closing the bar
are significant and that's a decision
that the bar pilots take very seriously.
They collaborate with the Coast Guard on it,
but the Coast Guard really defers significantly
to the bar pilots because they are the ones
with the expertise in how particular conditions
would affect an ocean-going vessel.
- We don't do formal check lists
while we're underway on a ship.
There is one that we do right when we start,
either inbound or outbound, it's called,
a master-pilot exchange.
And they'll have a pilot card
that lists the details of that ship
and through that master-pilot exchange,
the master being the ships captain,
he and I will talk, her or she I should say,
we'll talk about the ship, any characteristics,
anything that might be unusual,
maybe one radar isn't working,
we go through that process.
So there's our checklist before we start the transit.
Once we get going though there's no checklist there.
It could be a continual conversation,
let 'em know what I'm planning on doing
and if he has any concerns he can ask me.
You know when the ship's moving it's important
to be looking out the window
and seeing what's in front of you
so if you get lost in check lists
then you quit looking out the window.
- The risk of actually ending up in the water,
that's where our safety equipment comes in
and training with the boat crews, helicopter crews,
working with the Coast Guard
to recover a man overboard.
So we have a lot of personal safety equipment.
Our float coats, position-indicating beacons,
strobe lights, waterproof radios,
and then a lot of equipment on the boats as well
to help find us and recover us
if we end up in the water.
- The operational controls, hopefully the ships crew,
and myself, have been through very similar trainings.
There's different qualities of them,
but there's a standard in the industry
of how ships are supposed to be operated
and if it's not following that standard
they need to figure out why and try and correct it.
Every ship we go on it's different,
it's a different ship, different equipment,
different nationality, they do speak English,
but some better than others.
I can't complain because I don't speak their language
any better than they speak mine,
probably worse than they speak mine.
So there's challenges there.
- We have online dispatching and it's live.
Any changes of the ships
estimated time of arrival changes,
boom, just goes right in the system
so these guys can look on their phones,
their computers, their tablets
and know what's going on.
- Our organization we have 16 pilots right now.
We're all equal owners of the business,
we all do exactly the same job,
and we all rotate through
that operation pilot position.
So as I'm making decisions for other people,
whether the ship should sail or not,
tomorrow they might be making it for me.
And when it's really rough weather
that one operations pilot is making the decision,
he isn't sitting in this room by himself
there's two or three other pilots
in there discussing it.
And you really have to,
you have to err on the conservative side,
and when we're talking about a 700 foot ship
with whatever hazardous stuff they have onboard
there is no option of not making the right decision.
You can't lose a ship,
you can't hit bottom with it, run aground.
So quite often we'll make a more conservative decision
which then makes your partners more comfortable
that you're making the right decision for them.
- We're 17 peers, there's no hierarchy structure
and we share that leadership role.
We rotate through that all the time,
but we're always making it for,
making decisions for everybody.
We do have definitely a variance in risk tolerance
between individuals,
but we have to keep the group in mind all the time.
I think that in general our senior pilots
that have seen more incidents,
have more experience here on the job,
are going to have a lower risk tolerance
understanding the implications of pushing it too far
because they've been there.
Newer guys will come in,
a little more confident sometimes than they should be,
and push it so that's something
that the senior guys have to work with the junior guys.
When the operations pilot's in here making decisions,
if he's a newer guy, there'll be senior guys in here
guiding him, coaching him.
- When that storms coming in we watch the waves come
and we go out and try and bring ships in,
at some point it becomes too dangerous to move the ships
so we stop moving any ships.
It's an easy decision to make,
or relatively easy to make
because there's a fear factor involved too
of maybe I took the boat out
and I couldn't get on the ship
and it wasn't a safe thing.
So we just stop traffic then.
So stopping traffic is a safety decision.
Gettin' it going again that's all based on economics
and trying to get the commerce moving again.
You wanna do it safely,
but you don't wanna do it so quickly
that you're putting the ships in jeopardy still.
So there's that fine line of when is the storm
gonna be low enough where it's okay to sail a ship
and you never wanna get a ship moving before that line.
Another normalization that we have here
is in the beginning of winter storms start coming.
That first storm we might be a lot more cautious
on when we close the bar and open the bar
then the end of winter.
There is some normalization there
and I don't feel like at the end of winter
we're making riskier decisions,
well maybe their riskier, but not risky decisions.
It's just that we're making those decisions more frequently
so that we're getting more tuned in
to making the right decision
instead of the more conservative decision.
We always kind of joke about it
the first time we close the bar it's like well,
you know, come February this'll be normal.
- You need to realize, number one,
that you're never going to do away with risk completely.
All you can hope to do,
and there are certainly steps you can take
to lower that risk to,
I don't wanna say an acceptable level,
but it's still gonna be dangerous
even in the best of times,
in this industry and in firefighting
I would imagine as well.
- What can we learn
from the Columbia River Bar Pilots
that we can apply in wildland fire?
How does their risk management compare with ours?
Look at the risk management process
found in the IRPG to help you answer this question.
It is a reliable tool that can help us manage
complex situations in a dynamic environment.
Regardless of your experience, or position,
managing risk is everyone's job.
(fire crackling)