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UNREASONABLE
EXPECTATIONS
From TheySaid, 1/9/04
Dozer, great post. Mellie, you rock.
Fire Pup- You ask wise questions. Keep it up. Here’s a definition I
like; Situational Awareness is your awareness of the fire, and what you
and others are doing in relation to the fire and your goals. SA changes
as time passes, the fire changes, or your location changes.
SA is different for an IC. You not only have your personal SA to worry
about as you roam around the fire, you must also maintain a bigger
picture SA for everyone on and around the incident.
This is something I discovered a few years ago that I find useful. A
method was developed to identify the four different levels of SA that
can exist in a person’s consciousness. In this system, called the Harral
system, condition yellow was identified as the ideal SA state, where you
are actively focused on identifying hazards. Condition orange is when
you have identified a hazard that has not yet been mitigated. Condition
red is a mostly unconscious reflex response to save your life, like
jumping out of the way of a falling snag. Or running from a fire that is
about to overrun your present position.
The sneaky one is the fourth state, condition white, which is an absence
of situation awareness. The problem with SA is you can be in perfect
condition yellow SA, focused on identifying hazards, doing great, and in
the next second become distracted and instantly be in condition white
and have no SA at all. It is very easy to drift from condition yellow to
condition white without ever being aware of it. Sometimes these lapses
are very short, sometimes they are lengthy. And sometimes bad things
happen during these lapses.
Ab- Thanks to you and the folks who said kind things about my recent
posts. I have to warn you up front this is another long one. I guess you
could call this chapter three of my trilogy; Return of the Fire Dork.
I’ve been trying to make sense of all of the Cramer posts and other
wildland fire issues that have been discussed on this site over the past
few months. I can’t ever recall a time when there was so much
uncertainty and pessimism over the future of our business. Poor old
Smokey has really gotten pounded in recent years. Sometimes it seems
like we just keep lurching from one disaster to the next.
My heart goes out this new year to all of my USFS brothers and sisters
whose lives have been turned upside down by our latest reorganization
and the Albuquerque mess.
In the midst of all this uncertainty and deflated morale sits one of the
premier wildland firefighting organizations in the world. All of our
state and federal wildland fire programs have been under the gun in
recent years, but none have seen greater challenges than the United
States Forest Service fire management program.
And the Big Green Machine has been getting hammered lately. How did we
get to the point where many of our Type III ICs are declining to accept
future Type III assignments? How many collective years of invaluable
experience and training dollars are going down the drain right now
because our agency doesn’t seem to understand what is happening to our
best mid-level fire leaders? What kinds of impacts will this massive
loss of experience have on wildland fire safety and potential future
fire leaders?
The more I reflect on our present beleaguered state, the more I believe
it comes down to one underlying problem.
Unreasonable expectations.
The United States Forest Service is trying to operate a twenty-first
century program with a twentieth century mentality.
Let me explain why I think this is so. Consider this statement from the
R4 “Key Messages for Forest Service Fire Managers/ Lessons Learned About
OIG Investigations” release: “Fire managers and members of Incident
Management Teams who act with due caution can answer the following three
questions in the affirmative (YES)… Did you have a plan that followed
agency policy and guidelines? Was it a good plan? Did you follow the
plan? The Forest Service will support you and your actions if you can
answer YES to all three questions.”
Let’s examine those three questions for their inherent flaws. First,
“Did you have a plan that followed agency policy and guidelines”? Don’t
make me laugh. I feel quite safe offering two weeks of my take-home pay
to any USFS Type III IC who can even NAME all of the interagency
policies and guidelines that apply to every area of wildland
firefighting operations, let alone remember and correctly interpret
which ones apply while you are attempting to manage dozens of
interagency resources on a ripping wind-driven fire that is minutes away
from burning homes in a subdivision.
In fact, to make it a little more sporting, I’ll even spot you a few of
the sources of agency policy and guidelines that today’s Type III ICs
are apparently expected to memorize and recall at will:
Forest Service Manual
Interagency Fire Operations Guide (Red Book)
Fireline Handbook
Fire Business Management Handbook
Hazmat Emergency Response guidelines
NEPA
Regional and national engine contracts
Regional and national crew contracts
Regional and national helicopter contracts
Pay rules and regulations for Administratively Determined (AD) employees
Emergency Equipment Rental Agreements for fallers, dozers, etc
Interagency Pocket Response Guide
USFS Health and Safety Code Handbook
PMS 310-1 Interagency Training and Qualifications Guide
Interagency Helicopter Operations Guide
Ten Standard Fire Orders
Eighteen Watchout Situations
LCES
Thirtymile Abatement Checklists
Wildland Fire Situation Analysis
That’s enough for now; I don’t want to make this TOO easy. Remember, two
weeks of my take-home pay to the first person who can pass the Misery
Whip ICT3 Information Overload Challenge.
Seriously, Ab, how about if we ask They Said readers to help finish this
list of ALL of the applicable policy and guidelines that type III ICs
are supposed to know these days? Maybe we can show management why this
dog won’t hunt.
There are two other major flaws built into this question:
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It wrongly assumes that all Type III ICs have the
ability to learn, retain, understand, and readily recall at will any
and all of the hundreds of policies and guidelines that apply to
wildland fire suppression, and that they have been properly trained
to interpret and apply all of the policies and guidelines that apply
to wildland fire suppression.
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It fails to take into account current behavioral
science knowledge of human information processing limitations, and
fails to recognize that stress, fatigue, overtasking, distractions
and other factors can limit a person’s ability to recall or
recognize important information.
How about the second question; “Was it a good plan?”
Puh-leez! “Yes, it was a lovely plan, a jolly good plan, a really
tip-top, gee whiz, slam bang plan”! Unfortunately, this question doesn’t
pass the rather elementary test of the old military maxim that “even the
best laid plans rarely survive contact with the enemy”. I have never
been on a gobbler with multiple resources where something unexpected did
NOT occur. If the fire changes, if something unexpected happens, or if
something you expect to happen does not happen, then you must
re-evaluate and modify the plan. For many reasons, Type III incidents
are often one long string of modified plans.
And the third question is even worse; “Did you follow the plan”? See the
answer to the question in the preceding paragraph. Then consider what
Managing the Unexpected says about planning in Chapter 3: “A Closer Look
at Process and Why Planning Can Make Things Worse”.
From page 79 of Managing the Unexpected: “Plans, in short, can do just
the opposite of what is intended, creating mindlessness instead of
mindful anticipation of the unexpected”. And from page 81: “To manage
the unexpected is to be reliably mindful, not reliably mindless. Obvious
as that may sound, those who invest heavily in plans, standard operating
procedures, protocols, recipes, and routines tend to invest more heavily
in mindlessness than mindfulness”.
It probably goes without saying that mindlessness on a wildfire is not a
good thing. The people who believe that good plans equate to safety on
wildfires probably mean well but are missing a vital point. Plans are
important, but most real safety decisions on wildfires are made at the
individual and small-unit level rather than the command level.
So is there a way to turn things around in the Forest Service fire
management ranks? I believe there is, but it will take a high level of
commitment from senior Forest Service management and congress to make it
happen.
We need to start by recognizing that the wildland fire community, like
many entities these days, is in the throes of major cultural change.
Just think about the staggering changes in technology, and in society in
general, that have occurred in recent years.
This is my own more-or-less chronological list of some of the major
cultural influences that have impacted Forest Service firefighters in
the past twenty-something years.
1980s: The end of the glory days for the timber beasts, large
scale clear-cutting on national forests mostly ends. Decreased budgets
lead to force reduction, which includes many timber specialists who had
provided invaluable “militia” capability on wildfires. Nationwide,
dozens of initial attack and district/forest brush disposal crews are
left unfunded or disbanded. Many of the new Forest Service “ologists”
choose not to participate in fire suppression.
The Forest Service and other state and federal wildland firefighting
agencies adopt the Incident Command System to standardize wildfire
management positions, training standards, and terminology nationwide.
Managing natural ignition wilderness fires for resource benefits begins
to increase. Record fire seasons are becoming more and more frequent on
national forests in the western US.
The first use of personal computers begins to alter how our agency uses
and shares information. Fire managers begin to use GPS, GIS, RAWS, FLIR,
multiple frequency programmable radios, and many other technological
aids. Women and minorities begin to fill more positions in the wildland
firefighting workforce.
1990s: A continuing stalemate exists between environmental groups
and the Forest Service over timber cutting. Forests struggle with
downsizing and identity crisis; i.e., “if we don’t cut timber, what are
we”? Many forests, districts, fire management zones, dispatch centers,
etc consolidate or join with other agencies for “increased efficiency”.
At large, our society is becoming more anti-government and increasingly
litigious. Computers and many other forms of technology become everyday
work tools.
Throughout the nineties, there is a steady decrease in budgets and the
number of forest/district wildland firefighting resources, and a steady
increase in the use of contractor/emergency hire/AD firefighting
resources. The Dude and South Canyon fatality fires generate intense
focus on the USFS fire program. The South Canyon fatalities stimulate
OSHA to begin looking into the Forest Service and the world of wildland
firefighting.
In 1995, the Human Factors Workshop marks the first real effort within
the Forest Service to unite wildland firefighting with modern behavioral
science. Behavioral scientists such as Karl Weick, Gary Klein, Curt
Braun, and others help illuminate shortcomings in present wildland fire
training, organizations, and culture. The Tri-Data Wildland Firefighter
Safety Awareness Study is chartered to evaluate the wildland firefighter
culture.
The nineties also witnessed some of the most severe and destructive fire
seasons in the history of the western United States, and recorded some
of the highest average annual temperatures in human history. Most
credible scientists now conclude that global warming is real, and is
happening at a faster than expected rate. The term “megafire“ is coined
for the large, long-term, expensive wildland fires that are becoming
more frequent.
2000+: In the post 9-11 world, everything changes. Interagency
Incident Management Teams help manage the aftermath of the World Trade
Center and Pentagon disasters, and manage the enormous space shuttle
recovery operation. National IMTs are now considered part of the
Homeland Security apparatus for managing biological, chemical, or
nuclear incidents in addition to the normal wildland fires, floods,
hurricanes, etc.
The National Fire Plan, a much-anticipated move to modernize and improve
working conditions for federal wildland firefighters, has one year of
full funding before 911. Many of the projected National Fire Plan goals
remain unaccomplished today due to lack of funding.
Destructive escaped prescribed burns like Lowden Ranch and Cerro Grande
help bring attention to the massive wildland/urban interface fire
problem and the unnatural fuel buildup caused by decades of fire
suppression on public and private lands. Wildland fire supervisors and
prescribed fire managers are now advised to carry a minimum of
$1,000,000 liability insurance “just in case”.
The Thirtymile and Cramer fire investigations instigate more changes,
checklists, and increased scrutiny of the USFS fire management program.
Following the Thirtymile Fire, Washington congresspersons Hastings and
Cantwell help create legislation to authorize the Department of Justice
to investigate wildland fire entrapments and fatalities on federally
managed fires..
In 2003, the war in Iraq begins. Military aircraft, aircrews, and
soldiers that have been used to fight wildland fires in recent years
become less available. Based on present projections, the military’s
heavy commitment to Iraq, Afghanistan, and the war on terror will
continue for at least several more years. Military assets will likely
remain unable to supplement wildland firefighting efforts on a large
scale for the foreseeable future. In light of the record federal budget
deficit and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the operating budgets of all
federal agencies will probably be tight for the foreseeable future.
After a series of catastrophic mid-air breakups of air tankers, in 2004
air tankers nationwide are grounded for inspection and evaluation. A
Blue Ribbon panel of experts produces a report which is highly critical
of the Forest Service aviation program. The contracts for most of the
aircraft that have until recently served as airtankers are canceled.
Megafires and destructive fire seasons continue. Contract engines and
crews increasingly supplant Forest Service engines and crews on
wildfires and prescribed burns. The ironically named Cost Reduction
Action Plan (CRAP) investigates management of large incidents to find
ways to save money. The initial report excreted by the CRAP
investigation says that we spend too much on jerky. No more jerky for
firefighters.
Despite the fact that our IMTs now routinely manage national disasters
for FEMA, the general posture of the present administration and
congressional majority toward federal agencies and employees of the
Forest Service remains decidedly negative, unless there is a big column
in the sky and a possible photo op with heroic, charcoal smudged,
hardhat wearing, Nomex-clad firefighters. Roadless areas are no longer
off-limits, and the Forest Health Act now appears to be targeting the
last big trees left on public lands, instead of fireproofing at-risk
urban-wildland communities.
There are now pockets of progressive thinkers in the federal wildland
fire agencies, like the people with the Fireline Leadership program and
the Lessons Learned Center, but in general we are still saddled with an
antiquated system that fights real progress at every turn. In one of our
latest self-inflicted injuries, the Forest Service converted critical
fire management positions to the 401 series, which means that you now
need a biological degree to qualify for our most important fire
management jobs. Fire experience? Whatever.
In 2004, Alan Hackett becomes the first Type III Incident Commander in
the history of the Forest Service to be drummed out of the ranks and
branded as a criminal. Other than redacted investigation reports and the
ongoing barrage of Bad News Directives and e-mails, our leaders are
ominously silent.
And here we are in 2005. The general morale of USFS employees today is
the lowest I have ever observed in my career.
So how do we get a grip on issues as huge as those which presently
confront our wildland firefighters? When you think about our challenges
in the context of the many sociological and technological changes that
have occurred over the past few decades, we’re not really so different
from anyone else in the world.
I view what is presently happening to the Forest Service fire management
organization as an inevitable nexus of an older culture and organization
colliding with sociological changes, new technology and a better
understanding of human performance issues. We need to move beyond what I
call the stick stacker mentality, the notion that wildland firefighting
is a simple job for simple people.
In the twenty-first century, successful wildland firefighting requires
an extraordinary combination of physical and mental skills. We need more
PFTs and appointments, not less, to develop good leaders and the
cohesive and well-trained kind of workforce that can help make burnovers
rare instead of common.
Some really fundamental questions need to be addressed today, like how
much and what kind of training should firefighters have to have before
being exposed to the wildland fire environment? What is an adequate
frequency for recurrency training for critical stressful events, such as
entrapments? How much and what kind of training and experience should
our fireline supervisors have? How should we screen for leadership
qualities in our future leaders? Which type of Type 3 incident
management structure would work best in today’s wildland fire
environment? Is there anyone else out there who has dealt successfully
with problems similar to the ones we are facing?
I read an article a few years ago about Ray Brunacini, the Chief of the
Phoenix Fire Department, who helped institute major changes within his
own organization. They went from being a strict rule-bound and somewhat
struggling organization to a very successful organization that empowers
firefighters by requiring them to observe just three simple rules:
Prevent Harm, Survive, and Be Nice. The Phoenix Fire Department managed
to improve their morale, their standing with the public, and their
safety record by eliminating a restricting maze of distracting
regulations and encouraging employee initiative. They realized that
information overload and complexity were barriers to safety that needed
to be fixed.
A good place to look for a successful model of training people to react
correctly during unusual stressful events is the airline industry. The
airline industry has markedly improved their safety record in recent
years by acknowledging the importance of human factors in training
flight crews. Crew Resource Management (CRM) training is now mandatory
in the airline industry around the world. Flight crews spend many hours
in flight simulators learning how to react as a team to unusual
emergencies, in a sense “programming” them to react properly if a
similar circumstance is ever encountered in flight. Periodically, flight
crews return to the simulator to refresh on reacting to certain
emergencies, or to learn how to respond to newly identified types of
problems.
To JD- My compliments to you for your wisdom, and your compassion. You
understand one of the key points I have been trying to make over the
past month. This paragraph from your 12/17 post describes it very well:
“If you are not training regularly for what you
MIGHT encounter once in a life time you probably won't react in the
same way you would an everyday occurrence. One shelter drill a year
is not enough. One day refresher is not enough. 6 minutes is not
enough. Sand table exercises for TYPICAL fires are not enough. We
need to train more on real life A-Typical scenarios. How often do we
walk the woods with our crew and seek their input and challenge
their knowledge?”
That is an excellent description of why weaknesses
within the present wildland fire training and qualifications system need
to be reviewed and changed. Classroom exercises with paper, videos and
Powerpoints are fine for some things and important to the firefighter
education process, but we need to understand that Recognition Primed
Decisionmaking is what really powers the firefighter decisionmaking
machine. Is there anyone out there who really believes that watching a
twenty minute video and deploying a plastic training shelter on a wet
lawn in March actually prepares you to deal with a potential deployment
situation on hot August afternoon in the mountains?
As for qualifications, there are holes in our present qualifications
system big enough to fly a 747 airtanker through! Leadership abilities
and experience need to be put back on top where they belong, instead of
being treated as an afterthought.
The modern military understands the RPD concept very well, that is why
they emphasize “train as you fight, fight as you train”. I had the
privilege a few years ago to join a group of wildland fire people on a
two-day staff ride of Gettysburg with a group of outstanding young
Marine officers. We then went to Quantico and observed groups of junior
Marine officers conducting complex sand-table exercises of military
engagements. We also got to try out the Leadership Reaction Course,
which is a facility and process designed to test the abilities of people
to lead, follow, work as a group and make good decisions under duress.
I came away from our Gettysburg-Quantico trip feeling that there were
many things that the Marines were doing that WE should be doing. I was
very impressed at the competency of our modern Marine officers, their
attitudes about leadership, their studious and professional nature. I
would hate to be on the receiving end of their bad intentions.
And we should not overlook our own successes. Our Interagency Incident
Management Teams are recognized worldwide for their ability to respond
on short notice, travel, quickly set up complex organizations and
basecamps, and manage large incidents of many kinds. When our group was
at Quantico, a Marine lieutenant colonel told us that the Marines, who
are known for being a quick-reaction military force, very much admired
and are studying the ability of our IMTs to mobilize and be quickly
effective.
We have other bright spots, like our Hotshot crews. A good Hotshot crew
with seasoned leadership, motivated personnel and esprit de corps is the
best firefighting machine there is today. And smokejumpers, the masters
of the backcountry improv, have standardized to the degree that a
relatively small national force of smokejumpers is able to quickly
mobilize jumpers from different bases to areas of high initial attack
activity. The ability of the jumpers to rapidly form effective temporary
working unions on remote wildfires with other jumpers and firefighters
gives them a unique flexibility and makes them a valuable asset.
And there are many, many good Forest Service fire management people,
helitack crews, engine people, IA crews, and others out there who are
just begging for a fair playing field and a chance to succeed.
It still seems strange to me that during the same period we became more
aware about human factors and the importance of leadership, crew
cohesion and good communications to wildland firefighter safety, our
agency has become addicted to using a hodge-podge of contract or
Emergency Hire fallers, dozers, crews and engines. Many of these
people/crews have minimal or no fire experience, weak leadership, no
cohesion, and don’t communicate well. And while AD fire hires,
especially the ex-fed people, are generally well-trained and
experienced, many of them are our own retirees who will soon be too old
to play anymore.
We can do better. We have to do better if we are going to be a viable
firefighting force in the future.
The point to my rant on recent history is; how can we improve our
situation in spite of our many recent organizational and cultural
changes and the constraints under which we must presently operate?
I think any answer to our predicament must start with our national
leaders. Many fire people out here are yearning for someone in upper
management to step up and visibly support us. We want to be appreciated
for our dedication and our skill and our years of service to our
country!
We want someone who has the vision and guts to tell congress that we
need a Good Samaritan-type law to protect our wildland firefighters from
unreasonable criminal and civil liability. We want someone who can
convince congress that we need stable budgets year after year if we are
going to retain a skilled and cohesive wildland firefighter workforce
and keep our people safe. We want someone who has the ability to
recognize that any real improvements to wildland fire safety MUST be
based on a deep understanding of human factors and human limitations.
And we want someone who will stand behind us and support us when we lose
one of our troops.
A good way for our senior managers to demonstrate that they stand with
us would be to re-open the books on Alan Hackett. Acknowledge the many
systemic failures that helped set up the Cramer accident. Alan should be
reinstated to his job, and if he needs retraining or reassignment, then
do that. But if his punishment and treatment as a criminal is allowed to
stand, the message it sends to people like me is You May Be the Next
Scapegoat.
For the record, I have also joined the growing list of USFS Type 3
Incident Commanders who will no longer serve in that capacity. It is
kind of a shame, because it took me many years to get that
qualification, and I used to enjoy the challenge. My personal risk
assessment tells me my employer may not back me up if something bad
happens on one of my Type 3 incidents, and I just can’t afford to take
that chance anymore.
Thanks, Ab, great forum. It has been interesting.
Misery Whip
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