The purpose of this module is to
basically emphasize for each and every firefighter that they are fire behavior specialists out on the ground. We want to encourage people to be
to be to go back to those basic assessments that we have taught them through 190 and 290 and 390 and 490
It's the basic preface there that people have the skills to make fire behavior
predictions when they're out on the line.
Believe me, I'm certainly glad I went to that fire school with my neighbors last week
It's a mighty good training session prepared us to help one another in case we got a fire.
We learned that a few men can handle a lot of fire when they're trained.
You know I believe I'll never forget that fire school.
We learned that it took a combination of air, heat and fuel to make a fire burn
This is a combustion triangle
Remove any one of these elements and the fire goes out
Remove the fuel side the triangle is broken when the fire goes out.
Remove the heat side it is broken the fire goes out.
Remove the air side and the fire goes out.
The fire behavior basics are fire behavior triangle it's fuels, weather and topography.
So when you as a firefighter are going out there,
whether you're going out to on an initial attack fire, or you're going out to a large scale incident,
or you're going out to do a burn, you need to be paying attention to okay? Well. What's the weather? What's it been?
How how is it going to affect my operations today and potentially tomorrow?
And what are the fuels set up to be are you are you doing a prescribed burn?
Maybe against some of the snowpack, are you doing a burn when your fuel moistures are low but
expecting your weather to help compensate some of that?
Everybody should be going back reviewing the fundamentals. The higher up you go in the food chain,
most people it's very easy to lose the basics and I think a lot of times when we're in those higher echelon positions
it's like you forget what it's like to be on the ground and so I think that to bring people back and
say, No, this is how it's happening on the ground we need to review this information.
So it's the beginning of the fire season and there is a lot of information out there that we can collect that can give us
the baseline information to tie it to the fire behavior triangle.
And there is the old saying that only fools predict a fire season, but I think there's some elements there that can really help
preface the upcoming season. Whether it's what the fuels are sitting at based on what was the snowpack how much moisture
received in the spring?
Maybe how your fuels were burning when you were doing your spring burning program?
How's the weather setting up? Is there a certain geographical area that's starting to see
fire season starting earlier?
So I've created a baseline of information
preseason and now I'm out on the fireline and I'm walking the line
and I'm seeing that the fuels are stressed. The leaves are starting to curl, the colors are starting to change, it looks like it's fall.
But it's July. Those are some of the things I've put in my mind.
Or if I do a moisture probe and I look at some of the larger fuels and there are single digits already.
Or I'm kicking the dirt and kicking away rotted logs and there's no moisture left in them.
You're looking at your current fire behavior and you make an assessment.
Are your lookouts in the right place? Do they need to be moved?
What's your communication based on your current fire behavior and what you're seeing and what your expected based on what you
you've picked up from your data gathering or your assessment period.
Are your escape routes and safety zones, are they adequate?
So what is all this information mean now that we've gathered out on the line? What it means is you have validated your
LCES and now you are ready for your tactical operations for the day.
Don's crew was wasting a lot of energy trying to knock the fire out of a big bush. He had him use an indirect attack.
They backed up and made the line where the fuel was light. They threw extra fuel out of the way.
Then they burned out the fuel between their line and the fire.
This burning out is another way to remove the fuel leg of the triangle.
We all need to be responsible for our own actions out on the fireline.
We can't be dependent on somebody else to always take care of us. And so that comes to the basics
that we need to be paying attention to as far as the fire behavior triangle and how is that going to impact us.
We need to have a really good understanding of what's the fuels, weather and topography?
And until we have those elements,
we're not going to be able to implement our
successfully implement tactical operations until we have our situational awareness of the fire behavior.
And what's going to happen with the fire behavior? You got to constantly be keeping yourself
abreast of the situation that's the art.
You've got the hard science side of fire behavior that yeah, you can have all these models spew out numbers
and it's black and white. But until you're actually on the ground
walking it, looking at it, assessing and reevaluating,
does those those numbers mean anything. That's the art!
So you have the hard science, and you have the art side of fire behavior.
Feedback is really important in order to have adequate fire behavior predictions.
Whether you're on a initial attack fire and you're providing feedback to your local FMO
or you're providing feedback to a Fire Behavior Analyst or an Incident Meteorologist,
and the feedback is when you're out on the line and you're working in Division Alpha
for a week, you are the fire behavior specialist for that particular piece of line. You know what's been happening,
you know the local wind events, you know the little anomalies that have been happening every day.
I can guarantee your weather observations or your weather forecast will be a lot better if you can provide that Incident Meteorologist
some information from the ground to help them get up to speed. Same with a Fire Behavior Analyst if you provide them feedback,
it will only make their forecast that much better.
So one of the things that I want to make sure that we include is making sure that people take the time out to
take the weather throughout the event. Whether it's on the hour or every half hour
it really gives people that time to raise their head, gather their situational awareness, take a breather, look around what's changing?
Is there something that needs to be readjusted based on the information
they're gathering when they take the weather?
So many times we get so focused on getting from point A to point B
just putting in line and putting our heads down and digging.
We forget to raise our heads and really look around and look at the changing conditions, and I think that's really important.
That's something that we really need to encourage people to do.