**Managing Wildland Fire:**

**From Policy to Implementation**

**A BLM National Training Center Telecast**

**April 8, 1998**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast. It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: Wildfire the National Wildfire Coordinating Group Presents
Live from the BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, Managing
Wildland Fire, from Policy to Implementation. An Interagency Forum on
the Federal Wild Land Fire Management Policy. And Now, the Host of Your
Program, Tina Gromo.

Gromo: Good Morning. Welcome to Our Interagency Program on Wild Land
Fire Management Policy. Wildfire Wild Land Fire Management Policy. Wild
Land.

Gromo: Wildland Wildfire. Wildland Fire. Almrs Almrs Almrs.

Announcer: the National Wildfire Coordinating Group Presents Live from
the Bureau of Land Management National Training Center In Phoenix,
Arizona, Managing Wildland Fire, from Policy to Implementation. An
Interagency Forum on the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy.

Announcer: and Now, the Host of Your Program, Tina Gromo.

Gromo: Good Morning. Welcome to Our Interagency Program on Wildland Fire
Management Policy. Today\'s Forum Is Sponsored by the National Wildfire
Coordinating Groups Wildland Fire Education Working Team. First, We\'re
Going to Hear from Secretary of the Interior, Bruce Babbitt Who along
with the Secretary of Agriculture Has Charged Us with Implementing the
Action Items in the December 1995 Federal Wildland Report.

Babbitt: Good Morning. I Escaped from Washington During My Summers
Around Here to Join Crews out West. Working on the Bottom Rung, I\'ve
Gotten to Know Many of You and Many Dedicated Crew Members as Equals.
They Call Me Bruce. We Follow Orders to Contain Wildfires and for the
Most Part, We Succeed. It\'s Only Deep in My Sense of Loss When in the
Summer of 1994, We Lost 14 Colleagues in the Blowup at South Canyon in
Colorado. More Died from Fire That Summer than Any Year since 1910 When
The National Fire Program First Began. It Really Brought Things to a
Head So Secretary Glickman and I Cleared the Table. We Questioned
Everything. We Set out under the Federal Wildland Fire Policy and
Program Review to Find Ways to Work Safer, Work Smarter, Work Closer
Together with States, Counties and Each Other. We Forged Study
Partnerships and Began to Chart a Clear Scientific Course in Fire
Management. Now, in the Process, We Confirmed What Many People, Many of
You On the Ground Had Suspected for Decades. And That Is That in Recent
Years, Wildland Fires and Forests and On Ranges Have Burned Hotter,
Bigger and Faster, Growing Ever More Lethal, Destructive and Expensive
to Fight. In One Rocky Mountain National Forest, Fires Before 1986
Burned An Average of about 33,000 Acres Each Year. Since Then, They Burn
an Average of 63,000 Acres, a 21 Fold Increase. There\'s Evidence That
These Modern Infernos Also Burn a Lot Hotter, Several Hundred Degrees
Hotter than Before. They Kill Previously Fire Resistant Old Growth. They
Wipe out Entire Populations of Native Trout. They Vaporize Soil
Nutrients Critical to Forest Recovery. Then When the Rain Comes, Floods
and Mudslides Pour down Slopes Threatening Lives and Property, a Second
Time. That Doubles the Cost to Taxpayers. Two Decades Ago, We Spent an
Average of \$100 Million Each ‑‑ a Year to Put out Wildfires. Today, We
Average \$1 Billion. Now, to Be Sure Nature Plays a Role, We Can\'t
Simply Blame El Nino for this Recurring Nightmare. Over the Century, Our
Presence on the Land, Grazing, Development, and Certainly Fire
Suppression Have Triggered a Sequence of Changes That Worsens Each
Crisis. In My Home State of Arizona, Crowded Stands of Blackjack Pines,
Anemic, Undernourished, Struggle for Water and Nutrients. Higher up the
Once Vigorous Ponderosa Stands Give Way to Thick Ets of Fir and Grand
Fir. The Yellowing Aspen of Autumn Is Disappearing in Many Areas, a
Victim of Fire Suppression. To Restore Health, Diversity and Structure
to Our Forests, the Obvious First Step Is to Bring Back the Flame but
It\'s No Longer Quite So Simple. With Forests Choked with Fuel, a Drip
Torch Could Set off an Uncontrollable Inferno Where Wildlands Have Been
Invaded by Exotics like Cheek Grass, Fires Occur Too Frequently 20 Let
the Land Regenerate. Landscapes Crowded with Homes, We Are Have to
Continue to Keep Fire out. We Don\'t Have a Fire Problem in the West.
More Accurately, We Have a Fuels Problem. And by Using All the Tools We
Have, Carefully Thinning Excess Young Trees, Igniting Prescribed Fires,
Managing Land for Fire, Controlling Invasive and Exotic Weed Species, We
must Take Steps To Reduce Those Fuels. If Agency Administrators Are
Looking for a Smoke Signal from Headquarters, Well, If You\'re Waiting
for the Final Word from Washington, this Is It! We Have the Policy. We
Have the Money. Well, at Least Enough to Make a Good Start. We Have the
Authority to Hire the Work Force We Need for Hazard Fuels Reduction
Including Prescribed Fires. We Have the Skills and the Expertise to Do
this Safely and Effectively. It\'s Time to Get Started. And I Look
Forward to Working with All of You. Thank You.

Gromo: I Know We Sure Appreciate Secretary Babbitt Taking the Time to
Prepare Those Remarks for Us Today. Our Agenda Today Includes Four Panel
Discussions That Address The Policy Itself, Safety, Planning and Tools
and Resources. Following Each Panel Segment, We\'ve Set Aside a Few
Minutes for Questions. Then, If We Have Time, We\'ll Take More Questions
at the End of The Program. Because We Have a Lot of Information to Cover
Today, Please Help Us out by Being Concise and by Asking Questions That
Are of Broad Interest. Also, If Your Question Relates to One of the Four
Panel Discussions, Please Call During or near the End of That Particular
Segment. Faxes Are Welcome at Any Time. If We Aren\'t Able to Answer
Every Question Today, Let Me Assure You We Will Provide an Answer Later.
And a Summary of Questions and Answers Will Be Available Around May 1st
Through Your Own Agency Channels. One Other Housekeeping Item, at Some
Point During the Program or Immediately Afterward, Please Send Us a Fax
That Gives Your Location and the Number of People, by Agency, Who
Attended the Teleconference. This Is Very Important So Please Don\'t
Forget. Now, Late Find out What the Federal Wildland Fire Policy Is All
About. \[ \_\_\_ \]

Announcer: 1994 Was a Year of Large, Intense Wildfires and a Record
Number of Fatalities. 34 in All. As You Know, Fire Has Been Aggressively
Excluded from Our Forests, Savane Nas, Shrublands and Grasslands.
Although the Destructive Side of Fire Is Obvious to Everyone, The
Changes and Risks That Resulted from Our Exclusion of Fire Were Not as
Readily Recognized. These Changes Have Occurred Slowly and
Inconspicuously over Many Years. Now Fuel Conditions on Millions of
Acres of Wildlands Are Increasing the Possibility of Large, Intense
Fires Beyond Any Scale We\'ve Yet Witnessed. We\'re in Danger of
Increasing Costs, Adversely Affecting Air Quality and the Environment
and Jeopardizing the Safety of Fire Fighters and the Public. The Events
of 1994 Created a Renewed Awareness and Concern among Land Managers and
the Public about the Impacts of Wildland Fire. As the Season Drew to a
Close, a Lot of Attention Was Focused on The Increasing Complexity and
Challenges of Managing Wildland Fire and Our Limited Capability to
Respond to this Threat. It Had Become Clear That Uniform Federal
Policies along with Strong, Cooperative Relationships Are Essential to
Managing Wildland Fire on a Broad Landscape Basis Across Our Agency
Boundaries. As a Result, the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy and
Program Review Was Chartered in December 1994 to Offer Us Assistance.
The Report Generated Is Designed to Ensure That Uniform Policies And
Fire Management Programs Exist. The Report Was Signed by the Secretaries
of the Interior and Agriculture in December of 1995. The Report
Emphasizes Fire Fighter and Public Safety. Reduction of Hazardous Fuel
Build‑ups, Communication and Collaboration among All Agency Partners.
Interagency Planning and Public Participation. And the Federal Role in
the Wildland Urban Interface to Include Wildland Fire Fighting,
Cooperative Prevention, Technical Assistance and Hazard Fuels Reduction.
The Fire Policy Emphasizes Better Communication Both Internally And
Externally. And Education Aimed at Greater Understanding and Acceptance
of The Important Role That Wildland Fire Plays in the Management of
Public Lands. It Stressed That Fire and Resource Management Are No
Longer Separate Programs. And That We must Recognize Fire as an
Inseparable Ingredient in Managing Our Natural Resources. At the Same
Time, Reorganizations, Downsizing and Retirements Have Changed the
Demographics and Experience Levels in Our Fire Programs. A Great Number
of Our Employees Are Not Motivated to Become Trained and Certified to
Participate in Fire Suppression and Fire Use Programs. Our Fire Fighting
Resources Can Easily Be Overextended. We as Agency Administrators and
Our Staff Officers Are Often Focused on Other Resource Issues or in Some
Cases, Don\'t Have The Training and Experience to Oversee Our Fire
Programs. We Need to Observe These Warnings. This Lack of Oversight and
Attention to Preparedness Can Result In Crisis Decision Making. Our
Diminishing Federal Work Force and Tighter Budgets Demand Cooperative
Interagency Solutions and Strategies for Accomplishing Wildland Fire
Management. We must Be Aggressive in Establishing Partnerships with Our
Local Agencies, Rural Fire Departments and Communities. This Is
Especially Important in Wildland Urban Interface Areas When
Coordination, Cooperation and Communication Between Wildland and
Structural Fire Fighters Are Critical. We must Make the Best Possible
Use of Qualified Federal and Nonfederal Personnel to Support Fire
Suppression and Fire Use Programs Around the Country. The Fire Policy
Emphasizes Better Communication Both Internally And Externally. It\'s a
Comprehensive Document but a Large Percentage of the Goals and Action
Items Cannot Be Implemented Solely by Our Fire Communities. They Require
the Involvement of External Groups and the Commitment and Leadership of
Each of Us. The Agency Administrators. Without Our Committee and
Leadership, the Policy Is Just a Binder of Wishful Thoughts. We must
Ensure That the Goals Are Met and the Action Items Are Completed.

Gromo: Joining Us for Our First Panel Discussion about Fire Policy Is
Keith Beartusk, the Area Director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in
Billings, Montana. Welcome, Keith.

Beartusk: Good Morning, Tina. I Appreciate the Opportunity to
Participate in this Panel Today. I\'m Going to Be Talking Later about
Safety, a Function That Is Ever So Important to the Fire Program.

Gromo: Thanks, Keith. Also with Us Today Is Lynn Sprague. He Is the
Regional Forester for the Forest Service in California. Thanks for
Joining Us Today, Lynn.

Sprague: Thanks, Tina. Good Morning. I\'ve Been Engaged in this Fire
Business in One Way or Another For a Number of Years since mid \'50s. It
Is Really My Great Pleasure to Be Here Today Helping in the Dialogue to
Usher in this New Fire Policy.

Gromo: We\'re Lucky to Have You Here with Us Today. From Denver,
Colorado, Skip Ladd, Assistant Regional Director For the U.s. Fish and
Wildlife Service Will Join Our Discussion. Welcome, Skip.

Ladd: Thanks, Tina. I\'m Also Really Glad to Be Here and to Talk a
Little Bit about The New Policy in Terms of its New Tools, New
Flexibility, New Funding Source and of Course More Emphasis on Up‑front
Planning That\'s Going to Be Expected Through Implementation of the New
Policy.

Gromo: Thanks, Skip. Rounding out Our Panel Is Kirk Rowdabaugh, the
Director of Fire Management for the Arizona State Land Department.
Thanks for Joining Us this Morning, Kirk.

Rowdabaugh: Hi, Tina. Interagency Coordination and Cooperation Has Been
an Interest of Mine for Many, Many Years. It Really Is Exciting to to Be
Here Today to Talk about it in The Context of the New Fire Policy.

Gromo: I Know We\'re All Looking Forward to Hearing about That. Lynn,
Why Don\'t You Begin by Telling Us What All the Mystery Is About with
the New Fire Policy.

Sprague: Tina, There Isn\'t a Whole Lot of Mystery Unless of Course You
Haven\'t Read this Report, the Wildland Fire Policy That\'s Described in
the Report. Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy. And Program Review.
The Report Does Three Things. First, it Addresses Five Major Topic Areas
with Background Information and Gives It\'s a Historical Perspective on
Wildland Fire Management Policy. Secondly it Provides Direction
Summarized by Nine Guiding Principles That Are Fundamental to Wildland
Fire Management. And That Will Move Federal Agencies and Our Partners
Forward in A Unified Way. Finally, this Report Recommends 13 Federal
Wildland Policies That Essentially Reaffirm the Basic Strengths of
Interagency Wildland Fire Programs. And So Taken in the Aggregate, this
Is Our New Federal Wildland Policy. This New Policy Provides a Cohesive
and Common Approach to Wildland Fire and Management. It Will Help Us
Adapt to the Future and Make Necessary Changes In Efficient Ways. In
Some Areas of the Country, it Will Result in a Change of Emphasis in the
Wildland Fire Program While in Other Areas, the Change Will Be less
Perceptible and More Gradual. But in All Cases, it Will Be Based on
Rational, Common Planning Process. Protection of Life Is and Always Has
Been Our Number One Priority. But the Policy Clearly Strengthens Our
Emphasis on Public and Fire Fighter Safety. It Is Not a less Safe Way of
Doing Business in Any Way Shape or Form. But Beyond Safety First, the
Policy Does Not Automatically Place One Priority over Another When
Providing Fire Protection. Natural and Cultural Resources Are Given the
Same Protection Priority as Property, Base the on Values. The Policy
Provides a Common Planning Framework and Encourages The Federal Agencies
to Work Together Toward Uniform Budget and Financial Management
Processes. The Policy Clarifies Roles on the National Interagency Basis.
It Reflects Current Scientific Thinking on the Role of Fire and Resource
Management. And Finally, it Will Require the Knowledge and Full
Participation of All Federal Managers, Not Just the Fire Managers, but
All Managers to Be Successful. We Have Been Directed to Implement the
Policy and We Are. But Let Me Say Directed or Not, I Firmly Believe That
Will Be Absolutely Strengthen Our Programs. But We All Have to Be
Engaged. It Is the Responsibility of All Agency Administrators to Make
Sure That this Happens on Their Units, on Their Watch. Fire Fighter and
Public Safety, as I Mentioned Earlier, Has Always Been Our Top Priority
and Is Strengthened by this Policy. By the Way, Protecting Public Safety
Does Include Doing Our Best To Avoid Adverse Air Quality Impacts. Keith
Beartusk Was Involved in the Development of this Policy. Can You Share a
Little of Your Philosophy and Safety with Us, Keith?

Beartusk: Sure, Lynn. Safety Is One of the More Important Things We\'ll
Be Talking About Today. We\'ll Re‑emphasize That Safety Is Our Top
Priority. As Fire Managers, We\'ve Learned Some Lessons the Hard Way.
I\'m Sure That None of Us Has Ever Intentionally Compromised Human
Safety. But Some of the Decisions That We\'ve Made in Retrospect Have
Had That Result. The Need Exists to Periodically Re‑emphasize Safety. To
Refocus on Our Long‑standing Commitment to Never Compromise Safety. When
We Were Putting the Fire Policy Report Together, We Captured Nine
Guiding Principles That We Felt Were Fundamental To the Success of the
Federal Wildland Fire Management Program. The Very First One Reads\...
That Was the Only Guiding Principle Printed in Bold Type. There Was a
Reason for That. Nothing must Compromise Human Safety. Not Budget
Savings, Not Resource Management Objectives, Not the Protection of
Private Property, Not the Protection of Tribal Property, Not the
Protection of Public Property. Nothing. Period. Every Action, Every
Plan, Every Strategy and Every Tactic must Reflect this Principle. We
Know How to Reduce Risk and Improve the Work and Environment ‑‑ the
Working Environment of Our Employees and the Public. We Just Have to
Commit to Using That Knowledge Every Time. The Second Panel this Morning
Is Going to Focus on Safety. Remember That When the Secretaries of
Interior and Agriculture Signed the Fire Policy Report, Their Top
Priority Which Was Both The Number One Guiding Principle and the Number
One Policy, Was Fire Fighter and Public Safety. Another Key Element in
the Report Was Interagency Cooperation. Together, as a Whole, We Are
Much Better than We Can Possibly Be As Individual Agencies. The Fact
That the States Are Represented Here Both on the Panel And in the
Audience Is Testament to the Importance of Working Together. Wouldn\'t
You Say So, Kirk?

Rowdabaugh: Keith, That\'s Right. Interagency Cooperation Relates to
Every Aspect of Our Job Whether It\'s Strategic Planning or Building a
Fire Line. And One Sure Way to Compromise Safety Is to Work Alone. Our
Shared Wildland Fire Management Challenges Cannot Be Resolved by Any
Single Agency, Federal or State, Working Alone. Wildland Fire Doesn\'t
Stop an Administrative or Political Boundaries and Neither Do Our Fire
Management Responsibilities. I Think We All Know of or at Least We\'ve
Heard of Situations Where Neighboring Agencies Have Not Coordinated
Their Fire Management Activities Resulting in Lost Opportunities or
Gross Inefficiencies. However, We Can Make Progress and Be More
Effective When We Work Together. And I\'m Sure We All Know of Situations
Where this Is True. I Personally Have Had the Good Fortune to Be
Involved with Many Progressive and Successful Interagency Fire
Management Activities in Several States and I Know of Many More. These
Joint Activities Have Brought Private Landowners, State And Federal Land
Management and Regulatory Agencies Together in A Shared Commitment to
Getting the Job Done. Just to Illustrate, the Malpai Borderland Group in
Arizona Is an Excellent Example of a Broad Coalition of Scientists,
Urban Environmentalists, Ranchers, the Nature Conservancy and Other
Private Landowners, Agencies of Two States and Several Federal
Cooperators. All Working Together to Reintroduce and to Manage Fire on a
Million Acres. Through Cooperative Planning and Cost Sharing, this Group
Has Successfully Met Their Mutual Objectives of Comprehensive Eco‑system
Management While Sustaining Rural and Ranching Livelihoods. Also in
Arizona, the Federal Wildland Fire Management Agencies And the Arizona
State Land Department Have Established a Long And Successful
Relationship with Our State\'s Department of Environmental Quality to
Jointly Operate Our Smoke Management Activities. I\'m Aware of Several
Successful Interagency Efforts and Frankly I Can\'t Recall of a Single
Outright Failure. And I\'m Sure That\'s True for You, Too. Coordinated
Program Management Was One of the Key Elements of The Federal Wildland
Management Program and Review. There Are Many Successful Interagency
Projects Currently Being Plan and Implemented. And this New Fire Policy
Will Serve Us Well in Continuing to Develop New Coordinated Activities.
And with Our Approving Abilities to Communicate with Each Other, To Use
and to Share the Same Fuels and Fire Data, this Should Be Getting
Easier, Don\'t You Think So, Skip?

Ladd: it Sure Sounds like it Should Be Easy, Kirk but We All Know That
Coordination Across Agencies Is One of Those Things That We Have to
Consistently and Consciously Work at All the Time or it Simply Doesn\'t
Happen. It\'s So Much Easier to Just Go about Our Own Business and Do
Our Own Thing to Meet Our Own Objectives. But this Is Often Not by
Design but Simply the Result of the Crush of Every Day Business That
Keeps Us from Communicating and Coordinating with Everyone That We
Should. And Coordination Also Sometimes Complicates Things Because We
Have to Take into Consideration Someone Else\'s Goals and Objectives
That May Not Necessarily Fit with Our Own. So Implementation of this New
Fire Policy Won\'t Be Easy Nor Will It Be Cheap. But the Good News Is
That it Gives Us Some New Tools and Our Fire Management Toolbox and a
New Source of Funds That Will Definitely Help Implement a More
Comprehensive Landscape Scale Approach to Multiagency Wildfire Planning.
To Achieve Both Protection of Lives and Property and Natural Resource
Management Objectives. First and Perhaps Most Importantly, the Fire
Policy Give Us the Flexibility to Be Creative and Innovative. There\'s
No One Textbook Solution to the Challenges That Face Us. The Policy Does
Place a Much Greater Emphasis on Up‑front Planning. In Fact, Without
Good Planning, Your Flexibility Will Be Extremely Limited. But with Good
Planning, You\'ll Have Nearly All the Flexibility You Need Because
You\'ve Told Everyone Up‑front What You Intend To Accomplish. And the
Up‑front Planning must Be Done Together with Your Local, State and Other
Federal Partners. Second, as I\'ve Mentioned, There Is More Funding
Available for Those Who Are Willing to Plan Ahead and to Be Accountable.
If You\'re like Most of Us Skeptics in the Natural Resource World,
You\'re Saying Show Me the Money. And Be Patient. You\'ll Hear More
about the Funding Aspect a Little Bit Later. But Just Take Comfort in
Knowing That There Is More Money Available. Hopefully Your Respective
Agency Staffs Have Already Given You Information about the Fiscal Year
1998 Budget Changes. Including Specifically, New Hazardous Fuels
Reduction and Prescribed Fire Funding Authority. An Up‑front Investment
to Reduce Fuels and to Manage Natural Resources. And Funding for the New
Joint Fire Science Program, Some \$8 Million this Year to Be Allocated
Through a Competitive Process. But New Funding Brings with it the
Requirement for Greater Accountability for How the Funds Are Used So the
New Dollars Don\'t Come Without a Few Strings Attached to Ensure That
They Are Effectively Used and That We Can Tell Congress and the Public
What We Did with Their Money. But Again, You\'ll Hear More Details on
These a Little Bit Later In the Program. And Third, There Is an
Increased Commitment to Ensuring That We Have Top Quality,
Highly‑qualified People in the Federal and State Fire Management
Programs. Without Top‑notch Employees, We Compromise Safety and
Efficiency And We Are Not Going to Compromise Safety.

Gromo: Thanks, Skip. I Need to Jump in Here Quickly to Mention That in
about Five Minutes We Will Be Having Our First Question and Answer
Segment. So If You Have a Question or Comment for Our First Panel, You
Should Go Ahead and Give Us a Call or Send Us a Fax. Lynn?

Sprague: I Agree with Skip. We\'re Not Going to Compromise Safety.
Safety Is Job One, to Paraphrase Ford. Maybe We Could Have a Discussion
about What It\'s Going to Take To Get the Job Done and What Our Agency
Administrators\' Role Is In this.

Beartusk: it Comes Right Back to Planning. It Will Take Land Use Plans
to Recognize the Value of Wildland Fire and Fire Management Plans That
Recognize That the Public Needs Sustainable Protection and Our Fire
Fighters Deserve a Safe Working Environment. We Can Do Both by Restoring
Fuels to Their Historic and or Manageable Levels.

Rowdabaugh: Planing Is the Key. Interagency Plans and Agreements Will
Spell out How We\'ll Serve The Resources and the People by Working
Together.

Ladd: Everything We Do in Fire Management Is Tied to What Our Plans Say
from Our Land Use Plans to Our Fire Management Plans, Our Operational
and Project Plans, Even Including Our Budget Plans. We Have to Have Good
Plans in Order to More Effectively Allocate And Organize Our Resources
and Also to Avoid Crisis Decision Making.

Sprague: Sounds like Consensus. Planning Does Provide the Road Map to
the Future to Achieving Our Objectives. Without Good Plans, It\'s Easy
to Take Wrong Turns or Lose Track Of Our Destination. As Agency
Administrators, It\'s up to Us to Make Sure We Make the Best Possible
Use of Evolving Scientific Knowledge and Work with Our Neighbors Through
Our Agency Planning Processes to Create a Road Map That Will Lead Us to
a Safe, Effective and Sustainable Future.

Gromo: Thank You, All Very Much. You\'ve Given Us a Good Introduction to
the Fire Policy and Have Really Set the Stage for the next Three Panels.
At this Time, We\'ve Set Aside a Few Minutes to Hear from You. First, I
Would like to Begin with a Question for You, Lynn. With All the Emphasis
on Interface Issues, Is it Consistent with The Federal Fire Policy?

Sprague: it Is, Tina. In Fact the Policy Describes What Our Role and How
We Do Play in Decisions and Issues Around the Wildland Urban Interface.

Gromo: Thanks, Lynn. And for Any of You Gentlemen Here Who Would like to
Answer This, Who Has the Ultimate Responsibility for Ensuring That the
Fire Policy Is Implemented?

Ladd: I\'ll Take a Shot at That, Tina. Everybody in the Line Management
of Fire Has the Responsibility. Everywhere from the Line Officer to the
Fire Fighter, to the Administrator. So Everybody in That Line Has That
Responsibility.

Gromo: Thanks, Skip.

Sprague: Let Me Jump in Here Real Quick. It Is Absolutely Essential as I
Said Earlier That Agency Administrators, Line Officers, Get Totally
Engaged in this Fire, Fire Policy and How We Incooperate That into Our
Total Management Responsibilities.

Gromo: We\'ve Got a Couple of Faxes Here. First One Is from Ramona in
Cheyenne, Wyoming Ask You Who Has The Ultimate Responsibility ‑‑
Actually, Lynn, You\'ve Answered This Question. Ramona, I Hope That We
Satisfied Your Question. We\'ve Got Another Fax Here. And this Is from
Bruce and He\'s in Washington. He Wants to Know How Are We Really Going
to Deal with Structure Fire in the Wildland Urban Interface? Are We
Going to Be Trained to Fight Them or Are We Just Going to Walk Away?
Kirk, Can You Answer That?

Rowdabaugh: First, Nobody\'s Going to Abandon the People in The Urban
Interface. Our First Line of Defense Will Be to Try to Keep Fires from
Getting into the Structures. But Once Fires Are on the Structures
Themselves, We\'re Going to Have to Leave That up to the People Who Are,
in Fact, Trained to Do That, the Local and Municipal Fire Departments.

Gromo: Well, We\'re Starting to Get Some Phone Calls as Well. Gary Is
Here Today this Morning. How Are You? Gary, Are You Still with Us?

Caller: Yes, I Am.

Gromo: You Have a Question for Us this Morning?

Caller: I Have Two Questions. One in the Urban Interface, We Have Some
Needs to Do Some Commercial Timber Thinning. To Get Rid of Some the
Small Diameter Timber. And Because Some of These Places Aren\'t Quite
Ready to Introduce Fire. Right Now, the ‑‑ Our Policy Precludes the Use
of Fire Dollars For Commercial Timber Sales. And What I\'m Asking Is
There Any Way We Can Increase Timber Dollars So We Can Do Some of These
Projects or Change the Policy?

Gromo: Gary, That\'s a Good Question. Keith, Can You Respond to That?

Beartusk: Boy, That\'s Beyond My Experience. Maybe One of the Other
Fellas to Pick up on It.

Sprague: Let Me Take a Shot at That. The Basis ‑‑ We Just Got Through
Talking about this Planning Effort and Looking at Our Landscapes,
Whether They\'re in the Wildland Interface or Wherever, but Looking at
the Landscape Approach and What Our Treatment Needs Are, What Our
Objectives Are for the Landscape Is the Essential First Step. And How
We, over Time, Adjust Our Funding Requests and to Meet Those Objectives
Is a Little More Problematic but We Have to Understand What Our Task Is
First Before We Can Ask for the Money in Different Line Items to Achieve
Our Objectives.

Gromo: Thanks, Lynn. Gary, Did You Have a Second Part to Your Question?

Caller: Yes, I Did. Secretary Babbitt Mentioned That We Have the Hiring
Authority And We Do. One of the Problems We\'re Facing in Region Three
Is We\'re Slowly Going Through a Downsizing. And It\'s Getting Harder to
Increase Our Work Force to Meet the Needs for the Increased Fuels
Reduction.

Gromo: Yeah, Gary, I Think Downsizing Is Always on Everyone\'s Mind.
Skip, Can You Address Gary\'s Concerns?

Ladd: I\'ll Try To, Tina. One of the Things That the New Policy Has Done
for Us Is to Increase the Amount of Funding Available. As I Understand
It, There\'s about \$50 Million in the Forest Service Budget and about
\$33 Million in the Interior Department Budget for Implementation of
this Policy, Particularly the Hazardous Fuels Reduction Component of It.
As I Understand It, Gary, These Funds Can Be Made Available Within Your
Agency for Hiring and Training Additional People. So, While We May Be
Downsizing on an Agencywide Basis, Hopefully These New Funds Will
Breathe New Life into Our Ability to Put Highly Qualified Capable,
Trained People onto this Effort. Does That Answer Your Question?

Caller: Well, it Really Doesn\'t. We Received Additional Funding in
Fuels but Still the Fts Are The Main Issue. There\'s No Doubt That We
Could Probably Put on More Folks, Work Them Longer but We Still Have
Constraints and That\'s Going to Be A Big Challenge in the Future as the
Fuels Dollars Increase and The Workload Increases, If Our Work Force
Remains the Same, It\'s Going to Get Increasingly Difficult to Meet the
Targets.

Gromo: Gary, I See Everybody Sitting up Here Shaking Their Head in Full
Agreement with You. You\'re Bringing up Some Very Good Points this
Morning That I Know Really Are on Everybody\'s Mind. Thank You Very Much
for Your Phone Call. Listen, We\'re Going to Go next to Greg in
Cottonwood, Idaho. Good Morning, Greg. How Are You?

Caller: Just Fine.

Gromo: You Also Have a Question Regarding the Budget?

Caller: I Was Curious about If We Don\'t Have ‑‑ If We Do Have New
Funding to Do Planning for Plans That Are Not Current with Policy and
New Regulation.

Gromo: Great Question. Skip, Can You Respond to That?

Ladd: Tina, I\'ll Give it Another Shot. Again, as I Understand It, the
New Dollars Available Are Also Available for Planning. I Know in the
Fish and Wildlife Service That My Agency, We Are Using These Dollars to
Go out and Help Our Land Managers Develop And Update Their Fire
Management Plans.

Sprague: Just Let Me See If I Can Add a Little Bit. Part of the Dilemma
Is in How Well Our Forest Plans and at Least In the Forest Service Are
Concerned, How Well They Deal with Fuels and Fuel Treatment Needs and in
Order to Get Our Fire Management Plans up to Speed, We May Have to Wait
until We Make The Necessary Amendments and Revisions in Our Forest Plans
but It All Comes ‑‑ it All Has to Be Linked with Our Forest Planning
Goals and Objectives.

Gromo: Greg, Thanks Very Much for Your Call. I See We Have a Call Here
from Timothy in Eugene, Oregon. Good Morning, Them I ‑‑ Timothy. How Are
You? Do You Have a Question for Us?

Caller: Yes, I Do. What Is the Role of Public Involvement as Partners in
Up‑front Fire Management Planning and How Would this Comply with Nepa?

Gromo: Excellent Question. Kirk, Can You Take That?

Rowdabaugh: I Would Love To. In Arizona, We Have Some Real Exciting
Activities Going on in Prescott and Flagstaff and in Southern Arizona.
We Have Our Homeowners Associations and Associations of Ranchers And
Other Interested Parties Actually Sitting down with Us in The Conceptual
Stage and Doing the Early Planning in the Urban Interface. They\'ve Been
Really Proactive and They\'ve Brought a Lot of Good Opinions to the
Table and in Some Cases, They\'ve Actually Brought Money to the Table,
Too. These Joint Activities for Us Are Working out Well. There\'s No
Conflict at All with Nepa.

Gromo: Thanks, Timothy. Does That Answer Your Question?

Caller: Thank You.

Gromo: Great. We Have a Fax Here and I Think It\'s Kind of along the
Same Lines As the Point Our Caller Was Just Making. It\'s from Oregon
and it Says with Interagency Cooperation Happening, How Do We Get State
and Federal Agencies on the Same Page Involving Policy Concerning
Safety? Kirk, Can You Respond to That?

Rowdabaugh: Well, No. Keith? It\'s Your Bailiwick Here.

Beartusk: I Don\'t Feel Comfortable with That One Either.

Sprague: Let Me Try, Tina, Here. The Issue Really Is Relationships and
How Well We Work as Agency Administrators to Create, Build and Maintain
Relationships with Our State Partners, with Counties, Local Communities,
Local Fire Departments. It\'s All ‑‑ It\'s All Wrapped up in How We
Think about a Relationships ‑‑ Our Relationships with Other Entities and
Once We Have That, You Know, There\'s No End to What We Can Do in a
Cooperative Sort of Way.

Gromo: Thanks, Lynn. Thanks to the Folks Who Sent in That Fax from
Oregon. We\'ve Got Another Fax Here from Mike Lynn with the Sis Cue
National Forest. He\'s He Says I\'m Concerned We May Be Simply
Allocating Dollars Based on the Ability to Make Acres Black. What
Measures Will Be Used to Allocate Dollars in a Manner That Will Truly
Reduce Cost, Hazardous Large Fires Versus Simply Blackening Acres?

Sprague: Well, I\'ll Jump In. Mike, the Policy Is Pretty Clear on this.
We\'re Dealing with How Do We Integrate Fire and Fuels Treatment Into
Our Total Landscape Planning and Management. And We ‑‑ as We Evolve
Objectives for Landscape, Watershed, Whatever Piece of Land We\'re
Talking About, We Ought to Be Dealing with the Funding Issue Around What
Is the Treatment. What Are the Tools We Need to Achieve the Objective.
We and Our Publics Have Decided We Need for That Piece of Land. And Not
Just Solely Talking about Blacking ‑‑ Blackening Acres But What Are the
Treatments That Are Needed to Get That Stand Back in a Healthy State.

Ladd: to Support That, Lynn, I Think the Idea Here That Prescribed
Burning, Natural Resource Management Takes a Co‑equal Role with Fire
Suppression. Is an Important Concept. And to the Extent as Lynn
Indicated, That Up‑front Planning Can Identify the Very Specific
Objectives That Are Doesn\'t Desired To Maintain a Healthy Eco‑system,
Maintain High Quality Fish and Wildlife Habitats. Maintain Just a
Healthy Water Quality or Good Water Quality. Those Kinds of Things Are
Important and If Those Can Be Laid out Up‑front in a Good Planning
Document, Then That\'s Where Dollars Are Going to Be Targeted and If
That Means More Black Acres, Then That\'s What it Means but It\'s with
Forethought and Planning.

Gromo: Thanks, Gentlemen. Well, That\'s All the Time We Have Right Now
for Questions. However, We\'ll Take More Questions in about 20 Minutes
after Our Next Panel Discussion. At this Point, We Would like to Shift
Our Focus to the Subject Of Fire Fighter and Public Safety. First, this
Background Piece.

Human Safety Is a Major Component of the Federal Wildland Fire Policy.
It\'s Our First Consideration in Everything We Do. We All Know it and We
All Say it but We\'re Still Putting Our People at Risk. Because We
Continue to Make Poor Decisions. We\'ve Had Too Many Sheltered
Deployments, Too Many Engine Burnovers and Too Many Other Close Calls.
And We Continue to Have Fatalities. For the 10‑year Period Beginning in
1910, There Were 83 Fire Fighter Fatalities. For Many Years, That Was
the Largest Number of Fire Fighters Lost in a Decade. Until the 1980s
When 130 Fire Fighters Died. So Far this Decade, We\'ve Lost 120 Fire
Fighters. We Have to Turn this Trend Around! As Administrators, We\'re
Accountable for Conducting a Safe Fire Program in Accordance with
Established Policies, Procedures and Standards. In Order to Do That, We,
as Agency Administrators, must Have the Necessary Training. And Adhere
to Established Job Performance Standards That Clearly Reflect Our Fire
Management Responsibilities. We must Understand the Issues and Act on
Them. Our Words must Be Backed up by Our Actions. We must Get Personally
Involved, Always Insisting on a Margin of Safety for Our Employees.
It\'s a Mere Step from Can Do to Make Do but That Step Is a Critical
One. Don\'t Ever Ask Your Employees to Make Do When Human Safety Could
Be a Factor. Pay Attention to Your Employee\'s Needs and Encourage Open
Discussion and Then Listen. Fire Fighting Is a Dangerous Business and
There Are Always Going To Be Risks. We\'ll Continue to Make Improvements
in Equipment, Procedures and Training but These Changes Are Not the Only
Answer. One of the Best Things We Can Do to Protect Our Employees So to
Eliminate Unsafe Behavior. Deliberately Unsafe Behavior must Be Dealt
with. Even If There Was No Injury or Fatality. Treat Close Calls as
Serious Warnings. And Study the Contributing Factors. As Agency
Administrators, We\'re Ultimately Responsible for Developing and
Managing a Safe, Effective Fire Management Program. We Have a Long Way
to Go. But We\'re Responsible to Make Safety Happen.

Gromo: Well, We All Know How Important Safety Is. We Have Three New
Panelists Who Have Joined Lynn and Me to Talk About Safety as it Relates
to the Fire Policy. From Right Here in Phoenix, We Have Barry Welch, the
Assistant Area Director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Welch: I\'m Pleased to Be Here to Talk about Safety and the Role of
Agency Administrator During Critical Incidents. We Train and Equipped
Almost 2,000 Fire Fighters from Various Indian Reservations Here in the
Southwest and They\'re Dispatched Across the Country. And Their Safe
Return Is of Major Concern to Us.

Gromo: I Think Everybody\'s Looking Forward to What You Have To Say.
Also with Us Is Becki Heath, the District Ranger on the Leavenworth
Ranger District in the Wenatchee Natural for Nest Washington State.

Heath: I, Too, Am Pleased to Be Here and I\'m Excited about Our
Interagency Direction and the New Fire Policy.

Gromo: Thanks. Completing Our Panel Is Mike Mottice, the BLM Manager
from Colorado. Thanks for Coming out Here, Today.

Mottice: it Is Wonderful to Be Here. It Is Important We Do More than
Talk about Safety but Getting Together Occasionally like this Is Really
Important to Ultimately Establishing a Very Safe Work Environment and
That\'s What Our Job Is.

Gromo: You Know, Barry, We Hear a Lot about Safety. In Fact It\'s
Drilled into Us Nearly Every Day. We Hear about it and Read about It.
Isn\'t it Something That Should Happen Automatically?

Welch: Much Has Been Said about Safety over the Years and Already in
this Conference. But Safety Is More than Words and It\'s More than
Actions. As Displayed in the Chart from the Previous Video, Fatalities
on Wildland Fires Happen All Too Often. However, it Is Important to Note
That Historically, Only about 58% of Fatalities Have Been Directly
Related to Fire Line Activities Such as Entrapments and Burnovers. 42%
Are from Other Causes Such as Vehicle and Aircraft Accidents, Heart
Attacks and Other Health‑related Cases. These Figures Include Federal
and Cooperator Fatalities and All Are Preventable to Some Degree. Not
All Fatalities and near Misses Can Be Avoided but by Applying Safe
Practices, Their Chances of Occurring Can Be Lowered. Safe Practices Are
Easy to Talk about. But Sometimes They Are Hardest to Implement. Safety
Is the Application of a Safety‑minded Consciousness to Appropriate
Behaviors. What We Want to Focus on Today Is How to Make Safety a
Reality. Not Just on Wildfires but in All of Our Wildland Fire Programs
From Planning to Prevention to Prescription, Protection and Suppression.
The Key to Building a Foundation for Safety Begins with Preparedness.
Responsiveness and Accountability. These Three Keys Are the Building
Blocks for a Vital Safety Program and it Begins with You. Primarily, it
Is the Agency Administrator Who must Lead the Charge for Safety. Who
must Ensure These Building Blocks Are in Place. And Who must Remain in
the Forefront of Staff Employees and the Public. Ask Yourself. What
Would Happen If a Major Incident Hit Your Unit and You Were Not
Prepared? How Would You Function? Would Your Staff Be Prepared? How
Would Your Public Neighbors and Community React? And How Would You
Respond to Them? Addressing These Points Before a Crisis or Wildfire
Hits Is a Must. You Can Never Be Overprepared or Prepared Too Early. But
You Can Get Caught Unprepared and in a Situation Where it Is Too Late to
Be Effective. The Point I Want to Make Is That You must Be Prepared
Before a Crisis Hits. And When it Comes to Wildland Fire, Preparedness
Means Planning. Ultimately, You, the Agency Administrators, Are
Responsible for Consequences and Although Not All Consequences Are
Avoidable, Many Can Be Minimized. Let Me Share Some Ways You Can
Minimize Risk and Promote Safety. First, Prepare Your Staff and
Employees. Look at Their Qualifications and Skills. Do They Have the
Experience Needed for the Tasks at Hand? If You See Deficiencies, Now Is
the Time to Correct Them. It\'s Also a Good Time for a Reality Check and
Plan for the Future. Second, How Prepared Is Your Wildland Fire
Organization? If You Don\'t Know, You Better Find out. Do You Have the
Tools You Need? Is Your Equipment Operable? Can Your Unit Pass a
Practice Drill? Don\'t Wait to Find out. Third, Are Your Mutual Aid
Agreements and Wildfire Plan Ready For Implementation? Policy
Implementation Is Dependent on Getting Your Planning Done. Other Things
You must Consider\... Physical Fitness and Training. We All Know
Wildland Fire Fighting Is Hard Work. Are Your Fire Fighters in Shape?
Are They Prepared for Work Capacity Testing? Are You Capable of Getting
Around a Fire Line? If Not, It\'s Time to Get Your Organization in
Shape. Leading by Example Is the Best Way. Team Work. No Incident or
Wildland Fire Can Be Managed Alone. This Is Why We Have Instant
Management Teams, Prescribed Fire Modules, Initial Attack and Engine
Crews, No One Is a Loner When It Comes to Fighting Fire. And One of the
Best Tools for Being Prepared Is this Little Desk Guide. The Agency
Administrator\'s Guide to Critical Incident Management. The Value of
Training and Practicing with this Document Is Immeasurable. Please Open
the Cover. Review it and Practice with It. Ensure That Safe Practices
Become a Ritual of Daily Life. That Were Practicing Safety Drills and
Especially Being Prepared Is One of Your Top Priorities. Agency
Administrators must Always Influence, Encourage Safe Practices During
Wildland Fire Indenses and Any Other All Risk Situation That Affects
Them. Their Unit and Most Importantly, Their Employees and Customers.
Agency Administrators must Be in the Forefront and Lead with Their
Presence. In All Matters Pertaining to Safety. Leadership Is a Cause and
Effect Relationship. You Can Lead Because Your People Support You. They
Support You Because You Have Communicated Your Expectations To Them.
Listen to Their Concerns and Acted. Leadership Means Being Responsive.
Becki, Why Don\'t You Elaborate on That for Us?

Heath: Thanks, Barry. Are You So Right. About Our Need to Listen to
Employee\'s Concerns. Be Responsive and Be Engaged with Them and Our
Fire Programs. Building Relationships with Our Employees by Talking and
Listening Allows Us to Make Preparations and Adjustments That Meet Their
Needs and Those of the Agency. The Nationwide Wildland Fire Fighter
Safety Awareness Study Done By Tri‑data Is a Recent Example of Listening
to Our Employees. 1,000 Fire Fighters Have Expressed Safety Issues and
Concerns in The Study. We\'re Building a Safer Wildland Fire Fighting
Organization by Implementing Solutions to Those Concerns. Findings from
the Tri‑data Studies Show Us That a Critical Part Of Implementing
Cultural Change for Safety Is Proactive and Involved Leadership. Without
Leaders Committed to Safety, a Change in Our Safety Culture Cannot Be
Achieved. As Agency Administrators, We Are Faced with an Increasingly
Complex Wildland Fire Situation. There Has Been Dramatic Growth of the
Wildland Urban Interface. We Have Higher than Normal Accumulations of
Flammable Vegetation. And We Have Fewer Fire Fighting Resources
Available to Respond To Incidents. We\'re Also Committed to Addressing
Community Concerns about Fire Effects Such as Smoke. All of These Forces
Seem to Pull Agency Administrators and Their Programs in Every Direction
at Once. We Will Be Faced with These Challenges During Wildland Fires.
How We Listen and How We Respond Before and During These Situations Will
Determine Our Success as Agency Administrators. During the 1994 Fires,
in Chelan County, Washington, My Town of Leavenworth Was Threatened by
Advancing Fire Fronts on Three Sides of Town. This Kind of Situation
Required Responsiveness to the Community, To Our Cooperators and to Our
Employees to Ensure Employee and Public Safety. We must Build Community
and Partnership Relationships and a Strong Culture for Safety Prior to
an Incident That Requires an Emergency Response. Now Is the Time for
Strong Leadership. Make it Personal. Set a Tone for Safety. Model
Positive Behaviors. Get to Know Your Employees. Demonstrate That You Are
Concerned about Their Personal Safety. Learn More about Your
Responsibilities for Your Fire Programs. Our Success Will Be Measured by
the Degree to Which We Account For Our Responsibilities. Tina?

Gromo: Thanks, Becki. Let Me Just Remind Everyone That in a Few Minutes
We Will Be Taking More Questions. Please End Send Us Your Fax or If You
Have a Question for this Panel on Safety, Give Us a Call. Mike, Can You
Tell Us Who Really Is Accountable for the Safety Of Our Employees?

Mottice: Thank You, Tina. The Answer Is We Are All Accountable. And
Becki Mentioned the Tri‑data Study. I Think It\'s Interesting to Note
That Five of the Six Top Safety Issues Identified by Our Fire Fighters
Related to Personal Fire Fighter Actions. That\'s Accountability. Now
Let\'s Talk a Little Lit about ‑‑ Little Bit about Accountability. Often
We Describe the Accountable Person as the One Who Is Responsible for
Reporting, Explaining or Justifying an Action, a Product or a Process.
It Often Has a Very Negative Connotation, What Went Wrong and Why? We
Usually Discuss Accountability in a Very Corporate Sense, That Is We
Describe a Manager or an Agency Administrator as the One Who Is
Accountable. Here, Today, We Call on Each Agency Administrator to Get
Involved and Become Personally Responsible for the Safety of Our Fire
Fighters. Our Fire Fighters Themselves Have Called on Us All to Be More
Accountable as Well. Our Response to Unsafe Practices Will Be the
Primary Measure of How Serious We Are about Safety. Managers must Ensure
That Their Fire Programs Are Carried out in Accordance with Current
Standards, Procedures and Policies. We must Seek Feedback from Employees
to Identify and Correct Unsafe Practices and Provide Them the Right
Tools, Including Adequate Training, to Help Fire Fighters Do Their Job
Safely. This Corporate Level of Accountability Is Very Important and
Emphasized in the New National Wildland Fire Management Policy. However,
We must Develop in Ourselves and Our Fire Fighters a Stronger Sense of
Personal Accountability as Well. We Simply Cannot Find Comfort in the
Notion That Someone Else Is Accountable for Keeping Us Safe. Since No
One Can Ensure Our Own Personal Safety Better than Ourselves. Along with
Many Others in Colorado in 1994, I Learned about Personal
Accountability. 14 Fire Fighters Died That Summer on Storm King Mountain
near Glenwood Springs. Here, I Am Referring to the Ultimate
Accountability to Grieving Parents, Spouses, Children and Loved Ones.
Answering Those Very Tough Questions What Went Wrong? And Why? I
Specifically Recall the Anger of One Parent Who Asked a Survivor Why She
Had Been So Lucky to Survive. Now, That\'s Accountability, Recognizing
Your Role and Stepping Up When You\'re Asked the Tough Questions. Such
Accountability Starts with a Personal Commitment to Get Involved. Such
as by Attending Fire Training or Visiting Fire Sites. You Need to Vote
with Your Presence. You Need to Be There to Show You Are Accountable. In
That Climate, a New Fire Fighting Culture Will Emerge. One Where Taking
Unacceptable Risk Is No Longer Admired. Where Fire Fighter Safety Is
Never Compromised. Where Speaking up about Unsafe Practices Is Rewarded.
Now, Fire Fighting Takes Place in an Environment That Is Not Friendly.
We must Embrace a New Passion for Safety. One That Cherishes Life over
Accomplishment. We Owe it to Ourselves and Each Other. We Certainly Owe
it to Our Spouses and Our Children. I Cannot Think of a Better Reason,
Can You? Finally, What it All Comes down to Is the Importance of Each
One Of Us and Each Agency to Fulfill Our Roles in Ensuring Total Safety
on Every Mission and on Every Incident. Lynn?

Sprague: Everything You\'re Hearing about Safety Today Is Real. Fire
Fighter and Public Safety Is Our Highest Priority, as I Mentioned on Our
Last Panel. One Thing the Federal Wildland Fire Policy Does Is it
Empowers All of Us to Achieve the Safest and Most Effective Work Force
Possible. Solutions to All Safety Concerns Won\'t Come Easy. But with
Communication, Commitment, Personal Accountability, and Fitness, We Will
Move Forward. One Thing We All Agree on Is Safety must Be the Forefront
of All Of Our Planning Preparation and Especially Accountability.
Accountability for Safety must Occur at All Levels. From the Secretary
of Agriculture and Interior to the Agency Administrator to the
Individual Fire Fighter. Accountability Is the Key for Building a Safe
and Effective Work Force. But Most Importantly, Accounting for Safety Is
Crucial Not Just For Fire Fighters but for Many Obtain ‑‑ Maintaining
Public Well Being on Public Lands. Safety Means Building Strong
Partnerships with Our Communities, Treating Hazardous Fuels, and
Ensuring Safety First on Every Fire, Every Time.

Gromo: Thank You All Very Much. I Think It\'s Pretty Clear That Safety
Really Is Job One, No Matter Who We Are. At this Point We Would like to
Once Again Hear from You. If You Have a Question or Comment for Our
Panel, Please Give Us A Call or Send Us a Fax. We\'ll Take as Many of
Your Questions as We Can in the Time Remaining Before Our Mid‑point
Break. A Couple of You Have Mentioned the Tri‑data Report and I\'ve
Received a Report That Asks Specifically What Is the Status of The
Tri‑data Report. Becki, Can You Respond to That?

Heath: Sure, Tina. Tri‑data Has Come to Us in Several Phases and Phase
One and Phase Two of That Report Have Been Published. \'96 and \'97.
Phase Three Is Currently Being Reviewed by Nwcg and They\'ll Be Making a
Determination about Which of the Recommendations Will Be Implemented
Sometime Later this Spring Or, Early this Summer. And Then There Will Be
a Phase Four Called for If It\'s Felt like That\'s Necessary Later On.

Gromo: Thanks, Becki. We\'ve Got a Fax Here from Bill in Redding,
California. Good Morning, Bill. Thanks for Faxing a Question. He Would
like to Know What Is the Status of the Pack Test. Who Here Would like to
Respond to That?

Mottice: I Was Hoping Somebody Would Ask That Question. I Did a Little
Homework Last Night. Any Time We Make Drastic Changes in the Way We Do
Business, There\'s Often this Period of Confusion and Uncertainty and
Perhaps Even a Bit of Frustration and That Certainly Is the Case With
the Fitness Test. I Think to Answer the Question, It\'s Important to
Note Though That the Pack Test Is Really Only One Component of the
Fitness Test. The Fitness Tests Are Designed to Acknowledge That There
Are Varying Levels of Fitness That Are Required for Fire Fighters to Do
Their Job. And the Pack Test Is Only One Category of Fitness. The
National Wildfire Coordinating Group Has Recommended and Adopted the
Fitness Testing, All the Federal Agencies Have Adopted the Policy as
Policy for the Federal Agencies. And My Understanding Is That All the
Federal Agencies Have Taking ‑‑ Are Taking Steps to Implement the Policy
Now. I Expect There Will Be Tests and in Fact Some Tests Have Occurred
Within the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Bureau of Land Management Is
Preparing to Take the Tests Now. I Do Understand There Will Be a Lot
More Information Coming out About the Fitness Test Within the next Month
in Terms of How to Adequately Prepare for Taking the Test and Then
Ultimately it Will Be up to Individual Agencies to Develop Guidance on
Their Own and That Should Be Coming Shortly.

Gromo: Gees, Mike, I Guess When You Said You Did Your Homework, You
Really Did. Bill, Thanks for the Fax from Redding. We Have Another
Question from the Eugene District. Can Safety Be, for Instance,
Refraining from Fire Fighting, a High Intensity Large Scale Fire and
Instead Fire Managing by Recognizing That it Will Be Weather That
Eventually Reduces its Intensity. Barry, Can You Take That Question?

Welch: I Can Make a Try at It. We All Realize That Fighting Fire Is a
Hazardous ‑‑ it Is Hazardous Work at the Time It\'s Taking Place but We
Want to Do It in a Safe Manner. We Actually Have the Responsibility to
Get in There and Manage Any Large Fire That Happens to Occur. It Is up
to That Commander to Set down and Do His Plans on How We\'re Going to
Attack the Fire. When We Start from the Back and Anchor it in and Go
Around to The Sides to Just Try to Head it off and Save as Much
Resources As We Can in a Responsible Manner. So, to Me, When We Do Have
a Fire Activity Event Occur, it Is The Responsibility of That Agency
Administrator to Get His Staff, Have Them All Prepared to Get on That
Fire and Attack it In What Is the Best Plans Possible.

Gromo: Thanks. I Think You Took More than a Stab at That. We\'ve Got a
Couple of Callers Holding. First, Al with the Forest Service. Good
Morning, Al. How Are You?

Caller: Fine, Thank You.

Gromo: You Have a Question for Our Panel?

Caller: Yes, I Do. We Talked about Safety and the Agency
Administrator\'s Responsibility. I Would like the Panel to Address
Changes That We\'ve Made since 1994. In Educating Agency Administrators
about the Responsibilities Other than Talking about It.

Gromo: Well, Thanks Very Much. Who Here Would like to Jump in and
Respond to Al? Go Ahead, Barry.

Welch: I\'ll Make a Response Because Within the Bureau of Indian
Affairs, a Lot of Our Agency Administrators Are Not Foresters or Natural
Resource Types. They May Be Education or Came up Through Administration.
What We\'ve Done Is Ensured That All of Them, at Least in Our Area and a
Lot from Other Areas Go to Marana, Arizona and Take The Course of ‑‑
I\'m Trying to Remember the Title. Something like Fire Management for
Agency Administrators. It\'s a Week‑long Course and Every One of Our
Agency Superintendents That Has Attended That Course Says It\'s One of
The Best Courses They Have Ever Been To. So I Would Recommend to All
Agency Administrators Take a Look. The Training Is There to Do.

Gromo: I Would ‑‑

Heath: I Would like to Tier off of That If I Could. I\'m Part of a Group
as Is Mike That\'s Developing a Standardized Curriculum for Local Fire
Management Leadership Which Is Designed to Address That mid Level
Management That Uses All of The Good Things from the National Course and
Then Designs it to Work Well for Local Geographic Areas and That Course
Is Currently Being Taught in Some Areas and Will Be Developed in Others.

Sprague: One Other Thing from the Forest Service Standpoint Is Our
National Fire and Aviation Director Has Chartered a Team Called the Fire
Line Officer Team That Includes Line Officers From the Top to the Bottom
in the Organization to Deal with Some Of These Issues. One of Our
Primary Concerns in this Line Officer Team Is the Issue of Safety and
How We Get it ‑‑ How We Spread the Importance of it and the Tools Spread
out to All of Our Line Officers in the Agency. And There Should Be a
Letter Coming to All Line Officers in the Agency Signed by All of Us on
That Leadership Team, Line Officer Team. If You Haven\'t Got It, You\'ll
Be Getting it Within a Few Days.

Gromo: Al, Thanks for Your Question. We\'ve Got Dan in Philadelphia.
Dan, You\'re with the National Parks Service?

Caller: Yes.

Gromo: Good Morning. You Have a Question Regarding the Red Card System
for Us?

Caller: Yes. I\'m Curious When it Comes to Accountability with the Red
Card Service, We Have Very Elaborate Detailed Instructions on How People
Advance and Achieved a Vance. On the Red Card System from One Level to
the next in a Matter of Progression. What I Don\'t See in the ‑‑ in the
Agency Program Is What Do We Do with People That Are Continually
Problems and How Does That Deal with Potentially Downgrading Ratings?

Gromo: Dan, That\'s a Great Question. Mike, Do You Want to Respond to
That?

Mottice: I Would like to Answer the Question Because it Gets To the
Heart of the Accountability Question. I Think One of the Messages That
We Heard from Our Fire Fighters In the Tri‑data Study Is That They
Expect Accountability. Now What Does That Mean? I Think That it Means
When We See Problems, We Take Some Actions And it Is No Longer
Acceptable, If it Ever Was, to Simply Ignore Performance Problems, All
Managers and All Fire Fighters Are Expected to Deal with Those Issues.
And I Think That What We Will See Is More Attention to Performance
Evaluations. I Know That There Is a Lot of Work Being Done to Develop
Competency Standards for Different Positions Including Management
Positions and I Think That Now Is the Time to Take Some Real Action and
Consider the Alternatives If Someone Isn\'t Appropriately Performing
Their Duties. Now, That Doesn\'t Necessarily Mean That We Quickly Demote
Them Or Take Away Their Red Card. I Think There Are a Lot of Options
That Need to Be Explored Based on the Specifics of That Situation. But
Certainly One of the Options Is to Provide Additional Training. I Think
Another Option Is to Put the Person Back on out ‑‑ Back Out on the
Firing Line with a Mentor or Coach. You Can Spend Time with Them.
Certainly Taking Them off the Fire Line after a Critical Incident Is
Something That Needs to Be Done So That We Can Find Out What Went Wrong
and Then React Appropriately.

Gromo: Thanks, Mike and Dan Thank You Very Much for Your Question this
Morning. We Appreciate You Calling In. We\'ve Got Rob on the Phone from
Albuquerque. Good Morning, Rob. How Are You Today?

Caller: Good Morning.

Gromo: We Would like to Hear from You.

Caller: Can You Hear Me?

Gromo: Yes, I Can, Just Fine.

Caller: Good Morning, Panel. My Name Is Rob Barker, the Area Director
for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I\'m One of
Those There Ares That Didn\'t Come up Through the Forester Ranks. My
Question Is Basically Has to Do with Involvement of Local Administrators
in Providing Emphasis on Safety and Direction and So On. Short of
Sending All of My Agency Superintendents to the One‑week Course in
Marana, Fire Management, I Get from One of The Discussion That the
Inference Is That Local Administrators Aren\'t Doing All They Could Be
Doing. What Else Could I Do?

Gromo: Rob, I\'m Going to Let Barry Take That.

Welch: Good Morning, Rob. The Best Thing That You Can Do, I Think, and I
Realize it Does Cost Something to Send a Lot of People off to Marana but
First Of All, I Would Recommend That Very Highly as Being One of the
First Things You Do. But Other than That, as Far as Emphasizing to Your
Superintendents on Safety Management, on Big Fires That You Set Up a
Committee Locally Either on the ‑‑ Around the Lincoln National Forest,
Santa Fe National Forest, Work with Those Local People That Have Been
Through Some of the Courses and You Could Almost Design One That Would
Be Very Particular to Your Location. And I Think That\'s Sort of What
Becki Was Referring to When She Talk the about Designing a Local Program
That Takes Some of the Best Stuff out of the National Training Session
and Design What\'s Best for Your Local Area.

Mottice: Barry, I Think There\'s More to this Issue than Just Training.
In Fact, Training Doesn\'t Solve All of Our Problems. Think That the Way
to Approach this Question Is the Same Way We Would Approach a Much
Larger Question and That Is How Do Agency Administrators or Managers
Become Accountable? Become Knowledgeable of All the Many Things We\'re
Responsible For. The Answer to Me Is It\'s No Different. Certainly There
Are Training Opportunities but Oftentimes it Simply Means Learning about
That Area by Going out on the Ground, by Asking Questions, by Getting to
Know Your Employees, By Visiting the Worksites. Of Course, There Is
Always the Need to Watch What Happened, Get Involved in Critiques of
Different Incidents. There Are Really Many, Many Ways So While I Think
Training Is Important, Let\'s Not Forget There Really Are Other Avenues
to Become More Accountable and More Knowledgeable Relative to Your Roles
in Fire Management.

Gromo: Great Question, Rob. We Want to Thank Everybody for All of Your
Calls and Faxes this Morning. We Really Appreciate You Calling in and
Using All the Folks That Are on the Panels to Provide You with Good
Information. Our next Panel Will Discuss Integrating Fire into Your
Planning Process. We Will Visit with an Interagency Group about Some of
the Tools And Resources That Are Available to You as You Implement Fire
Policy in Your Home Unit. Also, National Parks Service Director Robert
Stanton and Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Kevin Gover Will Be
Joining Us Live from Washington D.c. First, We\'re Going to Take a 10
Minute Break. We Have Some Interesting Discussions Still Ahead. We Want
to Continue to Take Your Questions. Please Stay with Us for the Second
Half of Our Program. We\'ll See You Back in a Few Minutes.

Gromo: Thanks for Joining Us for the Second Half of Our Program. Before
We Get Started I Would like to Mention Upcoming Broadcast On the BLM
Satellite Network. An Irm and Almrs Forum on April 22nd Will Focus on
the Deplacement of Almrs Release One. The Program Will Include
Information about the New Mexico Pilot, Deployment Schedules, the
Communications Plan and the Delivery Of Upgraded Hardware. This Telecast
Will Include a Live Almrs Demonstration from the Albuquerque District
Office. On May 14th, BLM Director Pat Shea Will Host the First Telecast
In a Series Called Public Lands, Public Trust. This Roundtable
Discussion Which Will Focus on BLM\'s History and Traditions Will
Feature Former Secretary of the Interior and Idaho Governor Cecil
Andrus. On May 21st, the Road to Successful Weed Management Will Be the
Subject of a Telecast for BLM Managers and Their Counterparts in Other
Agencies. Our next Topic Is Wildland Fire and Resource Management
Planning. Before We Introduce Our Panel, Let\'s Find out What Kind of
Role Planning Plays in the Fire Policy Implementation.

Planing Is the Key to Implementing Fire Policy on the Ground. Good
Planning Is the Cornerstone of All Nine Guiding Principles At All 13
Policies Contained in this Report. Land and Resource Management Plans
must Give Direction for Wildland Fire Management. Plans must Identify
Opportunities to Use Fire to Achieve Resource Management Objectives and
Analyze the Potential Impacts, Both Positive and Negative of Fire Use or
Exclusion. All Land Resource and Fire Management Planning must Be Done
Across Agency Boundaries and Include Early Involvement of Adjacent Land
Managers. Regulatory Agencies must Be Brought into the Process Early to
Ensure That the Use of Fire Also Considers Other Components of The
Environment and Provides for Health and Safety. And of Course the Public
must Be a Key Player from the Earliest Stages of Planning. If We\'re to
Have the Benefit of Their Input and Support, Which Is Critical to the
Success of Our Land Management Programs. We must Ensure That a Fire
Management Plan Is Developed and Continuously Updated for All Areas
Subject to Wildland Fire. This Plan Defines Programs for Managing
Wildland Prescribed Fire And Specifically Documents the Fire Management
Objectives. Fire Management Plans and Broad Land Management Plans Are
Two Very Closely‑linked Documents. When We Determine That Prescribed
Fire Is an Appropriate Management Tool to Meet Objectives in a Specific
Area, a Prescribed Fire Plan must Be Prepared and Approved. The Plan and
Project must Also Meet Nepa Requirements Before the Project Begins. When
the Outcome of Our Fire Management Action Is Unsuccessful, A Wildland
Fire Situation Analysis Is Done. This Process Evaluating Alternatives
Against Safety, Environmental, Social, Economic, Political and Resource
Management Objectives and Results in a Selected Alternative. What Does
the Fire Policy Say Our Options Are for Managing Wildland Fire? The
Answer Is What Do Our Plans Say? If We Don\'t Have a Plan, Our Only
Option Is Aggressive, Initial Attack. The Fire Policy Gives Us a Full
Range of Options from Aggressive Initial Attack to Monitoring.
Limitations That Are Dictated by Laws, Regulations, Other Policies,
Local Conditions and Social Concerns Are Documented During the Planning
Process. The Plan, its Parameters and Existing Conditions Determine the
Range of Options Available When a Management Response must Be Selected.
An Appropriate Management Response Considers Both Protection and Fire
Use Objectives and must Be Based on Values to Be Protected. Appropriate
Management Response Could Be Aggressive Suppression On One Portion of a
Wildland Fire and Monitoring on Another Portion of the Same Fire. So,
What Does the Fire Policy Say Our Options Are for Managing Wildland
Fire? The Answer Is What Does Our Plan Say?

Gromo: as You Can See, Good Planing Is Critical to Your Wildland Fire
Management Program. Here to Help Us Sort All of this Through Is Arch
Wells, He\'s the Chief Forester or the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Wells: I Appreciate the Opportunity to Discuss One of the Most Important
Elements in Indian Country and Overall and That Is Resource Management
Planning That Includes Fire.

Gromo: We Also Have Sheryl Maddux with Us. She\'s with the U.s. Forest
Service. And She\'s the District Ranger on the District in Tennessee.
Welcome to Phoenix, Sheryl.

Maddux: I\'m Happy to Be Here Today to Talk about the Importance of
Communication in the Land Management Planning Process.

Gromo: We\'re Glad to Have You Here. Also Here from Washington D.c. Is
Rick Coleman with the U.s. Fish and Wildlife Service. Welcome, Rick.

Coleman: Thanks, Tina. Great to Be Part of the Interagency Support for
Good Planning.

Gromo: and Rounding out Our Panel for this Segment Is Jim Hubbard, the
State Forester for Colorado. Jim, Do You Feel You\'re Surrounded by
Feds?

Hubbard: I Am Surrounded, Tina but I Appreciate Being Here. I\'m
Surrounded by the Right Interagency People. I Hope I Can Bring a
Different Perspective.

Gromo: Arch, Why Is it So Important to Consider Fire When You\'re ‑‑
We\'re Managing Natural Resources?

Wells: Well, Implementation of this Policy must Be Driven by Land and
Resource Management Planning. When We Think about Planning, We must
Focus on Managing the Landscape Where Fire Has Been Both a Force and Can
Be Used as a Management Tool. And I Wan to Emphasize Management Tool.
Interagency in a Disciplinary Approach by Programs Is Necessary For the
Success of Fire Policy Implementation. Effective Planning Requires the
Availability and Involvement of Administrators, Specialists, Air Quality
Regulators and Adjacent Landowners and Stakeholders. The Affected Public
must Be Involved in Development of the Land Use Plans and Associated
Fire Management Plans for Maximum Ownership, Cooperation, Coordination
Through Understanding and Participation. I Think an Example of this
Would Be the San Carlos Apache Reservation Where I Previously Worked as
a Natural Resource Officer. Until the San Carlos Apache Tribe Developed
and Implemented an Overall Plan, We Were Literally Stepping on Each
Other\'s Toes. The Integration of the Resource Management Including Fire
in One Consolidated Plan Helped Smooth out Our Conflicting Management
Agendas and Forced Owl Resource Operations to Recognize Fire as A Tool
to Benefit Our Land Management Objectives. This Planning Effort as
Time‑consuming and Tough as it Was Improved Our Efficiencies by
Eliminating Overlap and Misunderstanding at the Outset. The Role of
Wildland Fire Is an Essential Ecological Process and Necessary
Inevitable Agent of Change That Is ‑‑ That it Be Incorporated into Our
Planning Process Is Absolutely Necessary. So, There Are Three Primary
Levels of Planning That Involve the Role of Fire. One, the Overall Land
Use Plan or Natural Resource Plan. Underneath That and Integrated into
That Is the Fire Management Plan and That\'s the Role of Wildland Fire
in the Natural Resource Effort. That Includes the Preparedness Analysis.
That\'s the Nuts and Bolts of the Budget Based on the Fire Management
Goals, Objectives and Strategies Then the Action Plan. That Can Be
Called the Annual or Project Plan Also. That\'s to Implement Fire
Management on the Ground. That Includes Mobilization Plan, the
Prevention Plan, Prescribed Fire and Fuels Plan, Suppression Plan,
Burned Area Rehab Plan as Well as the Smoke Management Plan. Once Again,
Get the Appropriate Disciplines Agencies and Communities Involved and
Looking at the Options. Follow the Nepa Process. Create Good Protection
Plans and Follow Them. When Your Plan Is Carried Out, Good Things Will
Happen. We\'ll Be Able to Fulfill Our Role of Protecting and Enhancing
Important Resource Values, Risk Will Be Minimized Through Sound
Decision‑making from Concept to on the Ground Action. Communities Will
Be Protected and We Will Keep Our Fire Fighters And Public Safe. Good
Plans Result in Sound, Efficient Decisions. The Bottom Line Is this\...
Without Approved Quality Fire Management Plans, the Only Option
Available Is Total Suppression with Associated Risks, Costs and
Unplanned Resource Loss. Sheryl? I Would like to Turn it over to You. I
Know You\'re Working on a Resource Plan in the Cherokee National Forest
and If You Could Enlighten Us on the Communication Efforts Involved in
That. I Would Appreciate It.

Maddux: Thank You, Art. We\'re Currently Revising the Cherokee National
Forest Land Management Plan and in Doing So, We\'re Increasing the
Amount of Information That Will Be in the Plan on the Use of Fire. Plan
Occurs at All Levels in Our Organization. And It\'s Important ‑‑
Important That We Understand the Relationship among Eco‑system Health,
Fire Management and Planning. Many Units Do Not Have Adequate Fire Input
into Their Land Management Planning Process. Reasonable Direction for
the Use of Fire Is Missing. Correcting These Omissions Should Be One of
Our Highest Priorities. Until Each Plan Is Revised or Amended, a Manager
Will Be Limited In His or Her Options on the Use of Fire to Gain
Resource Benefits. Resource Managers must Establish Solid, Quantifiable
Objectives Based upon the Best Available Science. These Objectives
Should Be Spelled out as Completely as Possible In the Land Management
Plan. This Will Provide Direction for the Prescribed Fire and Fire Use
Programs. Agency Administrators must Ensure That Necessary Dialogue
Occurs Between Fire and Resource Management to Accomplish the Objective.
Programs Are Often Held up When Two Sides Don\'t Communicate Effectively
or Don\'t Articulate the Resource Needs. The Following Fire‑relate the
Considerations Are Important Themes That Need to Be Integrated into the
Planning Process. One, Fire Suppression Has a Place in Wildland
Management. Fire Exclusion Has Environmental and Economic Consequences.
Eco‑systems Are Always Changing. And Fire Is a Major Agent of Change.
And Using Prescribed Fire to Meet Eco‑system Objectives Results In
Social Tradeoffs. These Considerations to Set the Foundation for the
Integration Of Fire as Around Eco‑system Process into Development,
Implementation and the Monitoring Evaluation Phases of the Land
Management Planning Process. The Recently Published Desk Guide Will
Provide a Nationally Consistent Baseline for Incorporating Wildland Fire
Management Into the Process. We Need to Understand and Communicate the
Relationship Between Unit Plans, Wildland Fire Management Strategies and
Guides for Tactical Implementation. We Need to Understand the Land
Management Planning Cycle and Be Able to Communicate it to Our
Employees. The Four Phases Are\... The Information Assessment Phase.
This Provides for an Assessment of Fire\'s Role in the Eco‑system. The
Plan Development Phase. This Creates the Standards and Guidelines,
Alternatives, the Prescribed Fire Planning, the Appropriate Response,
Preparedness And Fire Prevention Planning. Plan Implementation Phase.
This Creates the Avenue for Implementation. Our Fire Plan, the Project
Plans, the Prescribed Burning and the Wildfire Situation Analysis Can Be
Found. The Last Phase, Monitoring and Evaluation Phase Evaluating the
Overall Program Effectiveness. We Need to Understand and Communicate the
Relationship Between The Strategic, the Laws, the Policy and Assessments
and the Tactical, the Implementation Plan Aspects of Unit Planning. The
Fire Management Plan Is the Tool for Translating the Unit\'s Plan
Programmatic Direction into on the Ground Action. Criteria for Making
Initial Action Decisions must Be a Component Of the Fire Management
Plan. These Criteria Allow for Preparing a Wildland Fire Situation
Analysis or a Prescribed Burn Plan. And as Arch Noted Earlier, Without
an Approved Fire Management Plan That Complies with Nepa, Smoke
Management and Public Involvement, We Only Have One Management Option
for Wildfire and That Is Total Suppression. Agency Administrators Need
to Take an Active Role in Developing A Common Understanding of Fire
Management Plans Both to Agency Employees and to the Affected Public.
The Public must Be Brought along Throughout the Planning Process And
Their Input Both Positive and Negative, must Be Addressed. This Is a
Prime Opportunity for Agency Administrators to Explain And Provide
Positive Support for the New Fire Policy and the Fire Management Plan or
Program on Their Unit. Field Trips, Open Houses, and Contractor Programs
Can Be a Useful Tool for Helping to Create an Informed Public. The
Policy Gives the Manager the Increased Latitude to Manage All Wildland
Prescribed Fires in a Manner That Will Increase the Health of
Eco‑systems, Reduce the Cost and Damage to Wildfires And Increase the
Level of Safety Both the Fire Fighters and the Public. Our Fire Policy
Will Be Successful If We Work Together. And Rick, How Important Is Team
Work?

Coleman: Team Work Is Vital to Successful Planning. By Including Land
Managers and Neighbors and Stakeholders and Resource Specialists and
Fire Specialists and the Public, We Gather All Those Important
Perspectives Necessary to Write the Best Fire Management Plan. An
Additional Benefit Is One That Was Raised Today and Several Questions in
the ‑‑ from the Field. They Asked about How Do We Get Our Upper
Management Folks in Each of Our Programs More Supportive of the Fire
Program Overall? By Including These People in the Writing and the Review
of Our Fire Management Plans, We\'re Gaining Their Understanding First
And Their Subsequent Support of the Fire Management Program. So, Why Do
Each of Us Have ‑‑ Have to Write Our Own Plans? Well, Because We\'re
Different Agencies and Different Tribes and We Have Different Missions.
We Have Different Resource Objectives. We Have Different Stakeholder
Interests. We Have Different Resource Support and Different Financial
Support. What Do We Consider When We Write These Plans? Arch and Sheryl
Both Gave Good Summaries of What Goes into a Plan. Just as the Fire
Staff Needs to Work with the Resource Management Specialist to Develop
Good Land Management Plans, the Resource Management Specialist and the
Public Need to Help the Fire Staff Develop the Fire Management Plan.
Input from Affected Resource Specialist Is Critical in Order to
Determine the Role That Fire Plays and How the Implementation of A Land
Management Can Support the Resource Whether It\'s Habitat Related to
Benefit an Eco‑system or Species Specific in the Case Of an Endangered
Species or Plant. How Do We Establish this Basic Understanding of All?
By Achieving Their Support for the Federal Wildfire Policy. It\'s
Simple. We Just Follow Five Good Planning Concepts. Number One, Planning
Is a Dynamic and Ongoing Process with Constant Evaluation and Review to
Ensure That Objectives Are Being Reached in an Economic as Well as a
Biological Beneficial Manner. Planning Should Be Viewed as an
Opportunity to Define Our Future And the Best Way to Achieve That Future
Is Not Something We Just Have to Do to Meet a Requirement. Number Two,
Monitoring. Monitoring must Be Accomplished Through All Management
Actions In Order to Determine Whether the Acres That Were Blackened Are
Acres That Were Good Acres Contributing to the Plans Overall Objectives
or Whether These Were Just Burned Acres. Bureaus Are the ‑‑ Have the
Ability to Monitor the Fire Effects To Determine If the Burn Objectives
Were Met. Monitoring Second Order Fire Effects must Be Done by Other
Funding Sources but It\'s Still Important. In this Case, Using Multiple
Team Funding Sources to Determine The Validity of Fire Management Plans,
Prescribed Fire Plans, Is Based on Good Land Management Plans. Resource
Specialists and Fire Management Specialists must Work Together to
Provide a Report Card on How Fire Management Plan Implementation Is
Working or Not Working. They must Be Able to Adapt to Our Management
Strategies to Adjust to Legal Regulatory or Even Social Changes. Number
Three, Budget. Planning Process Should Lead to Budgeting Process in
Order to Support the Outcome of Any Plan. Planning Enables Us to
Maximize Budgets from All Sources in Order to Get the Greatest Benefit
from Each and Every Fire Dollar. Number Four, Partners. Partners May Be
Interested in Funding the Implementation of a Fire Plan. Agency
Administrators and Staff Specialists Should Not Be Shy About Working
with Any Group. Partnering Can Buy Land Management Agency Good Will as
Well as Be in a Good Partner to Each ‑‑ to Reach the Mutual Benefits of
The Partners. Private Groups Are Willing to Invest in Resource
Management Efforts That Support Their Goals, Not Necessarily Ours, but
Their Goals and Their Objectives. For Example, the National Fish and
Wildlife Foundation, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and the Nature
Conservancy Are All Very Interested in Fire Management. Fire Management
Partnerships Are Not New. Although We Need to Make Sure the Benefits
Gained from These Partnerships Are Worth the Effort and Always Remember,
Nothing Is More Important than Safety! Appropriate Agreements Need to Be
in Place in Order to Utilize Funding and Civilian Personnel in Certain
Situations. Fig ‑‑ for Example, Training or the Use of Personal
Protective Equipment Providing That to Them, May Be Needed to Provide
All The Critical Safety Needs Through Any Fire. But this Is Also Very
Possible with a Little Extra Work. And Lastly, Number Five,
Priority‑setting. Planning Provides the Best Allocation of Resources
Whether It\'s Funding or Our Scarcest Resource, People. Planning Assures
That the Highest Priority Prescribed Burning or Protection Is Provided
During Each and Every Fire Season. This Addresses the Issues like What
Is the Highest Priority? Your Land or Your Neighbor\'s Land. It Answers
These Types of Questions and it Comes from Good Planning and from the
Public and the Staff Specialists Involved In the Planning Process. In
Summary, the Team Approach Involving Stakeholders, Resource Specialists,
Fire Staff Specialists but the Only Effective Way To Implement, Monitor
and Evaluate Whether or Not Fire Is Achieving Our Stated Objectives.

Gromo: Thanks Rick Very Much. Before We Move onto Jim, I Want to Remind
You We\'ll Be Taking More Questions in about Five Minutes. So Call Us If
You Have a Question for this Panel or Send in Your Faxes. Jim, What Does
the Future Hold as We Continue to Integrate Fire Into the Planning
Process?

Hubbard: My Forecast, Tina Is in the West, That the Future Holds More
Intense Fire. It Holds More Emphasis on Interface and on Smoke
Management. This Just Means More Up‑front Planning Is Going to Be
Necessary. My Assignment Today Is to Talk about Information Management,
Planning and Addition‑making, Public Involvement and the Cost of Change.
In Regard to Information Management, in Is a Lot Available. Integrating
That Information Has Been an Issue, Will Continue to Be an Issue. It Is
Something That Can Be Done, Should Be Done and We Should Use That
Information for Interdisciplinary Assessments Across Boundaries. Look at
Resource Condition, Risk, Fire Occurrence, Priorities. There\'s a
Research Role. The Fire Science Plan Has Identified Four Elements of
Research Role, Inventory and Analysis and Finding Accommodated
Structures We Can Share with One Other. Treatment Practices, Scheduling
of the Treatment Practices, Looking at the Alternatives in Relation to
Treatments, Biomass Utilization. The Use and the Frequency of Fire and
of Course Evaluation Which Means Monitoring Techniques That We Need to
Put in Place. But We Need to Bring All of this Information Together to
Make it Useful. An Example of That Is a Map of the Colorado Red Zone
That Was Produced and this Map Illustrates an Interagency Approach to ‑‑
From Available Information Across Boundaries. It Looks at Forest
Condition. It Looks to Social Values. It Helps Explain an Interface
Situation to the Public and Helps Managers Set Priorities Together. For
Dealing with That Situation. The Second Part of What I Have to Discuss
Is Planning and Decision‑making. And Here We\'re Tying Things to a Land
Management Plan. And That Land Management Plan and Those Objectives
Should Drive What We Do. Not a Separate Fire Management Plan. That\'s
Critical but We Start with the Land Management Plan. We ‑‑ We\'re
Looking at Alternatives to Fire. I Think What I\'ve Encountered Is the
Public Expects Us to Do That First. They Want to Make Sure We Have
Considered Not Just the Alternatives for Use of Fire but the
Alternatives That Don\'t Include Fire. And Then I Would Urge Agency
Administrators to Look at Interface First. It\'s a Public Safety Issue.
States Are Extremely Concerned with it and Have to Deal with It. And We
Need Our Federal and Tribal Partners to Do the Same Thing. We Have to
Have a Fire Management Plan as You\'ve Heard. It Is Essential. We Have
to Define Appropriate Response F We Don\'t, We Don\'t Have Any Options.
That\'s a Critical Element. But So Is ‑‑ I Would Contend Smoke
Management Plans. Epa Has Set the Policy for this and States Administer
It. We Have to Use the Decision Making at the Local Level to Deal With
Human Health Issues, Especially Particulate Matter. Delegated Authority
Is Something Else You Should Pay Attention To. Agency Administrators
Need to Know That They Have It. They Need to Know That They Can Give it
and Without That Kind of Support, You Shouldn\'t Proceed. Most Agency
Administrators out There Probably Want to Know What The Public
Involvement Has Been Before You Do Proceed. My Third Topic. We\'re
Changing a Long‑standing Message. We\'ve Moved from Stop All Fire to
Helping People Understand How To Use Fire and How to ‑‑ What its Role Is
in a Natural System. I Think We Need to Look at Shared Decision Space
Here, Too. It\'s Interagency but That Goes Beyond as We Cross
Boundaries. We\'re Talking about State, Tribal, Even Private and Local
Decision Makers Have a Lot of Influence over What We Can Do and They
Want to Know What We\'re Planning to Do. This Comes down to a
Communications Plan Which I Also Would Urge Everybody to Integrate That
We Need to Collaborate on Our Message and the Delivery of Our Message.
And Make Sure We\'re Complementing ‑‑ Complimenting One Another On What
We Do There. Finally, the Cost of Change. There Are New Technologies
That Need to Be Put in Place. Real‑time Smoke Monitoring Is One of Those
Technologies That We Have That We Need to Implement. We Need to Look at
Overhead, the Skills. The Training of the People That We May Have
Available, That We Want to Make Available and Then Once We Have Them
Trained and Those People That Are Experienced, Agency Administrators
Have to Make Tough Decisions on Their Availability. And I Would Urge You
to Put That into Your Plan and Commit to it And Deal with the Situation
Flew Availability. Risk Has to Be Dealt with. Many Agency Administrators
Are Risk Averse. I\'ve Been Scared a Few Times Myself about How Far to
Proceed. But If You Have That Aversion, I Wouldn\'t Press It. I Would
Deal with That First Before I Moved On. We Have to Deal with Risk in
Terms of Culture. The Agency Culture and the Public Culture in Accepting
and Understanding What We\'re Trying to Do with Fire. I Would Also Say
There\'s Risk and Consequences of Not Doing Anything. That Our Forest
Condition Is Going to Demand That We Address This in Some Way. And Will
Force Us to One Way or Another. A Planned Approach Seems to Make More
Sense. And in Summary, There Are Some Essential Tools. Assessments to
Set Priorities, Plans, Land Management Plans in Tying the Fire
Management Plans to Them. And Dealing with Smoke Management Is a
Critical Issue as Well. Making the Skills ‑‑ Making Sure We Have the
Skills and Making Them Available Is Important. And the Communication
That Generates the Support We Need to Proceed Is Also Something That We
Have to Have in Place. And Then Once You Deal with All of This, You\'ve
Got to Ask Yourself the Question Are You Prepared? And Only You as an
Agency Administrator Can Answer That Question For Your Unit.

Gromo: Thanks, Jim. I Guess If You Haven\'t Figured it out by Now,
Planing Is the Key To Managing Resources by Managing Fire. Now We Would
like to Begin Our next Question and Answer Segment. If You Have a
Planning‑related Question for Our Panel, Please Give Us a Call. Let\'s
Get Right to Our Questions. We Have a Number of Faxes Here. We\'re Going
to Try to Keep Our Responses as Concise as Possible To Get to as Many of
These as We Can. Our First Fax Comes from the Oregon Department of
Environmental Quality. It Says it Is Clear That Fire Needs to Be
Returned to the Forest. My Question Is this\... What Limits Are Going to
Be Placed on the Amount of Fire Used? Is this Intended to Be a Blank
Check? Jim, I\'ll Ask You to Respond to That.

Hubbard: Ok. I\'ve Talked a Lot about Smoke Management. And If You Have
a State Department of Environmental Quality Asking That Question, Then I
Think You Need to Respond to That State Department Because They\'re
Going to Set the Standards. Epa Is Going to Set National Standards and
How to Implement Especially Particulate Matter Which Relates to Human
Health. We Have to Address It. States Are Then Given the Responsibility
of Coming up with How That\'s Addressed and Right Now, the Best Way That
I Can Recommend Is Through a Smoke Management Plan. A Smoke Management
Plan Will Be Separate from a State Implementation Plan or a Tribal
Implementation Plan. It Is an Intermediate Step Which If We All Get
Together and Address It, I Think We Can Keep Fire in the Picture and We
Can Satisfy Human Health Requirements, Too.

Gromo: I\'ll Be Glad to Take a Blank Check Any Time You Want To Give One
to Me. The next Fax Is from the Washington Department of Ecology.
They\'re Asking How Well Prepared Are You to Consider Air Quality
Impacts from Prescribed Fire in Your Early Planning Efforts. Arch, Can
You Address That?

Wells: I Think it Varies by Location. I Think That in Some of Our
Locations, We\'re Very Well Prepared In That We\'ve Been Doing this for
Quite Some Time with or Without a Plan Just Because of the Community
Involvement and Our Efforts in Prescribed Burning. I Would Think That We
Need to Integrate Smoke Management Plans Right along with Developing Our
Fire Operations and Building Our Prescribed Burning Capabilities. So the
Answer Is it Varies by Location.

Gromo: Good Answer. We\'ve Got a Caller on the Line from the Forest
Service. Good Morning, Ed, How Are You?

Caller: Just Fine.

Gromo: You\'ve Got a Question for Our Folks Here Today?

Caller: Yes, I Do. I\'m a Unit Manager Where the Fire Organization from
Two Different Forests with Different Union Locals and the BLM Has Been
Fully Integrated. And the Differences in Agency Policies, Particularly
as it Relates to Finances, Job Classification, and Union Negotiations
Collaboration Is Very Noticeable and It\'s Difficult to Justify And
Frequently a Source of Irritation. An Example Would Be in Our Pack Test,
There Are Differences ‑‑ It Is My Understanding That\'s Due to Unions at
the National Level. What Are We Doing to Overcome Some of These
Differences in Policy and Agency Regulations?

Gromo: Well, Ed, That\'s a Great Question. Rick, Can You Respond to Ed?

Coleman: We\'ve Within Working on this Interagency Coordination
Considerably and We Continue to Improve That Interagency Coordination.
Issues That You Brought up Are Very Important. I\'m Not Aware of
Differences in How We Would Apply the Pack Test. That\'s an Interesting
Question. But Remember, We Just Have Introduced this and There Is Still
Some Interagency Confusion. But I Would ‑‑ I\'m Here to Assure You That
Each Agency Is Committed to Communicating with Each Other to Resolve
These Apparent Differences at the Local Level.

Gromo: Thanks. We\'re Going to Take a Couple More Faxes Here. This One
Comes from Sandra Silva with the U.s. Fish and Wildlife Service with the
Air Quality Branch. She Says There\'s Been a Big Emphasis Placed on
Human Safety. Yet There Is Very Little If Nothing Mention in the the
Policy of How Air Quality Will Be Protected. Will Any of the Panelists
Be Discussing the Epa Air Quality? I Know None of You Have Addressed
this Directly but Jim, Would You like to Respond to Silva Here?

Hubbard: I Hope We See Guidance from Epa on Air Quality and Implementing
Air Quality in Relation to Wildland Fire, Implementing New Standards,
Particulate Matter and Regional Haze, Both. Then it Becomes the State\'s
Responsibility to Deal with That and Come up with Their Own Plans and
How to Address Those Standards. Epa Will Set the National Standards. The
States Will Determine How to Implement Those and I Think We, As
Agencies, Need to Get Involved in and How We Can Help Meet That
Implementation Even Help Develop That Implementation Through Smoke
Management.

Gromo: Thanks, Jim. Thanks Sandra for Your Fax. We\'ve Got a Fax Also
from Dave with the Sierra National Forest. He Says Smoke Management Is a
Serious Issue in California. Many Air Basins Are in Nonattainment of the
Clean Air Act Standards. Air Regulators Understand the Need to Use Fire
but Can\'t Allow Our Use of Fire If it Results in Air Position ‑‑ Air
Pollution. How Can We Implement this New Policy? Arch, Can You Respond
to That?

Wells: That\'s a Tough One. A Couple of Us Here Have Been Working with
Secretary Babbitt\'s Direction on Trying to Prevent, in His Parlance, a
Train Wreck Between the Air Quality Effects of Increased Prescribed Fire
and We Are Going to Wrap up Our Prescribed Fire Effort. I Think What
We\'ve Done Most Recently Is to Strike a Compromise Between Those Two
Entities That Will Allow Us to Continue Our Prescribed Fire. But Will
Also Enforce Our Effort to Prevent Smoke Degradation And Particulate
Matter Degradation. We\'re Right Now Coupling Those Two Together in an
Effort to Get That on the Ground.

Gromo: Sheryl, You Know, You\'ve Talked about Handling Local
Perspective. Can You Give Any Thoughts on this Either?

Maddux: Think You Have to Work with the Public at the Local Level but
the Other Thing We Have to Realize There\'s Going to Be Places Where We
Won\'t Be Using Prescribed Fire as Our Only Fuel Reduction Process.
We\'ll Have to Go into Mechanical Treatment. That\'s Something We Need
to Work with. The Public at the Local Level, We Need to Look at What
That Desired Condition Is We\'re Trying to Get out There on the
Landscape and Then We Have to Make the Hard Decisions. And We\'re Going
to Have to Look at the Tradeoffs Between Wildland Fire, Smoke and
Prescribed Fire Smoke. And Then We\'re Going to Have to Decide and Also
Be Willing to Look at Other Processes to Take Care of That.

Gromo: I See Everybody\'s Agreeing. Rick, You\'re Nodding Your Head.

Coleman: I\'ve Been in Several Situations Where Smoke Was the Major
Issue in the Prescription. And We in Many Cases in Considering the Smoke
Issue, Our Prescriptions Are Altered Significantly. Just Specifically to
Deal with the Smoke Management.

Gromo: Thanks. Well, We\'re Getting Back to the Funding and Checkbook
Questions Here. This Fax Comes from Doug in the Philadelphia Support
Office for The National Parks Service. He Says Doi Has Funding
Flexibility for Assisting the U.s. Forest Service on Prescribed Fires.
Similar to Establishing Emergency Suppression Accounts. The Forest
Service Still Only Allocates Funding as Projects. This Tends to Create
Barriers to Share Resources for Prescribed Fires and Mechanical
Reduction of Fuels. How Can this Barrier Be Resolved? Arch or Sheryl,
You Want to Take That One?

Wells: Sheryl, I\'m Deferring to You.

Maddux: We Have to State That We\'re Aware of That Problem. And Our
Washington Office Folks Are Aware of Na. We Know it Cautions Frustration
for the Folks on the Ground Just Trying to Get the Job Done but I Think
There Will Be Some Answers Coming up in the Future. And I Wouldn\'t Give
up Hope and the Fact That We Are Trying to Remedy That.

Gromo: Well, Thanks Again for All the Great Questions and for All of the
Faxes and Let Me Remind You That in the next Two to Three Weeks, We\'ll
Expand on Some of the These Answers and We\'ll Also Respond to Any
Questions We Don\'t Get to Today. That Information Will Be Available
Through Your Own Agency\'s Regular Distribution Process. Our Fourth and
Last Topic Today Is Tools and Resources. What Kind of Information on
Tools Is out There to Help You Manage Wildland Fire Wisely? Here Are
Some Ideas.

Our Fire and Resource Managers Have More Tools Available than Ever
Before. To Help Them Develop Good Management Strategies and Make
Informed Decisions. The Internet Alone Has Given Us Access to a Whole
New World of Information That Most of Us Could Never Have Imagined.
There Are Literally Hundreds of Sites That Give Long‑term and up To the
Minute Information. Some Tried and True, Some Experimental. But All
Adding a Valuable Dimension to Fire and Resource Management. Using the
Net, We Can Find Maps and Charts Giving Fire Potential, Fuel Moisture,
Drought Information, Temperature, Humidity, the Potential for Lightning
Activity, the Possibilities Are Endless! And Often One Site Will Link Us
to as Many as 100 Other Sites With Information Being Added and Updated
Continually. The Fire Effects Information System Is a Good Example of a
Database That\'s Available on the Internet. And Provides Current
Information to Help Managers Make Informed Fire Suppression and Fire Use
Decisions. In Addition, There Are Nearly 200 Wildland Fire Related
Software Programs Available to Help Managers Compile, Analyze and
Display Resource and Fire Information. These Programs Can Help Us Make
Scientifically Sound Predictions And Decisions. The Joint Fire Science
Plan Prepared by the Forest Service and Department of the Interior this
past January, Describes for Congress the Agency\'s Proposal to Develop a
Joint Fire Science Program. Our Agencies Have Acknowledged That We
Don\'t Have Good, Consistent Information about the Fuels Management
Situation. And That We Need a Solid Scientific Basis and Rationale to
Guide Our Fuels Activities. This New Joint Science Program Will Address
Fuels Mapping and Inventories. Fuels Treatment Practices, Techniques,
and Schedules. Processes and Procedures for Monitoring, Evaluating and
Reporting Fuels Treatments. It Will Ultimately Provide Us with the
Scientific Information And Tools Necessary to Integrate Fire into Our
Land and Resource Management Plans. This Is the Information Age. Be
Creative! There\'s No Limit to the Tools in Your Resource and Fire
Management Tool Kit. If You Think Something\'s Missing, Check Again.
It\'s Probably There. You Just Have to Know How to Open the Kit.

Gromo: How Many People out There Aren\'t Using the Internet to Stay
Informed? Hey, I See a Few Hands but Not Too Many. That\'s Good Because
It\'s Really a Great Source of Information. But There Are Lots of Other
Tools out There, Too. And We Have Four People Here with Us to Talk about
That Very Subject. First, We Have Earl Peterson, He\'s the Florida State
Forester. Welcome, Earl.

Peterson: Thank You, Tina. I\'m Pleased to Be Here to Discuss the Things
Florida Is Doing With Prescribed Fire as a Fire Management Tool.

Gromo: with Us from Washington State Is Bill Paleck from the North
Cascades National Park. Thanks for Being with Us Here Today.

Paleck: I Look Forward to Discussing the Nature of the Workload We
Collectively Face and Some of the Tools Available to Us to Deal with the
Workload.

Gromo: Joining Us from Sacramento, California Is Elaine Marquis‑Brong
Who I Worked with for Many Years at BLM.

Marquis‑Brong: Nice to See You Again. I, Too, Am Glad to Be Here. After
Working in Fire Suppression and Prescribed Fire for a Number of Years,
Both Here and in Arizona, Arizona and California, I Am Excited to Be
Here on this Panel to Talk about The Tools Information We Have.

Gromo: Thanks, Elaine. Our Fourth Panel Member Is Paul Johnson with the
Forest Service Who Has Recently Moved to Albuquerque as the New Deputy
Regional Forester for the State. I Know You\'re Probably Still Living
out of a Suitcase So It\'s Great You Could Join Us Today.

Johnson: Thanks, Tina. I Look Forward to Talking about the Many Tools We
Have for Our Employees to Use in Doing a Quality Job on the Ground.

Gromo: Bill, Managing Hazardous Actual ‑‑ Fuels Is One of the Big
Topics. What Kind of Help Is Available for Managers Trying to Deal with
This Issue?

Paleck: You\'re Absolutely Right. We\'ve Heard a Lot about Hazardous
Fuels Today and Probably Will Hear More in the Remaining Minutes.
Hazardous Fuels Has Been a Driving Force Behind the Wildland Fire Policy
and Program Review. These Fuel Accumulations Contribute to the Severity
of Wildland Fires, the Extent of Those Fires and They Also Negatively
Affect The Overall Eco‑system Health. Now, Together, We\'ve Been
Steadily Increasing the Acres of Fuels Treated Each Year. Last Year,
Federal and Tribal Lands Had More than a Million Acres Treated. But
We\'re Looking at a Total Need of 95 Million Acres of Federal And Tribal
Lands That must Be Treated in the Future and the Number of Acres
Continues to Grow. At a Million Acres a Year, We Can\'t Possibly Keep
Up. Well, How Much Do We Need to Do? In 1999, We\'re Planning on Burning
‑‑ Treating Two Million Acres And Eventually Hope To, on a Regular
Basis, Treat Five Million Acres of Federal and Tribal Lands Annually.
We\'ll Need a Lot of Help in a Lot of Different Ways to Deal with The
Workload. Most Importantly, Money. And Fiscal Year, 1998, a New
Subactivity Was Created, the Hazardous Fuel Operations Account Within
the Wildland Fire Management Appropriation. Now, That Account Doesn\'t
Compete with Preparedness Funding or Any Other Program Funding. But it
Only Can Be Used for Implementing Projects on Federal and Tribal Lands
to Reduce Fuel Loads and to Restore Fire to the Eco‑system. It Can Be
Used for the Salaries of Seasonal and Career Seasonal Personnel. It Can
Pay Overtime and Travel Costs for Regular Employees. And for Interior
Agencies, Only, it Can Be Used to Hire Emergency Ad Employees. This Fund
must Be Used for Planning or Implementing a Specific Project. It Cannot
Be Used in Coax Connection with Commodity Production Activities. It Is
an Unprecedented Opportunity. This Year, the Forest Service Plans to
Spend about \$50 Million From this Fund and the Four Interior Agencies
Will Spend about \$33.5 Million in this Fund. There Is Clear Interagency
Guidance That\'s Been Developed and Is Available to You That Clarifies
How this Money Can Be Secured And for What it Can Be Spent. If You
Haven\'t Seen this Guidance, Check with Your State Fuels Management
Specialist or Your Regional Fire Management Officer For More Details.
Now, Earl, I Know the State of Florida Has a Very, Very Active Fire
Program. I Wonder If You Could Tell Us a Bit More about It.

Peterson: Florida Does Have an Aggressive Program, Bill. We Lead the
Nation in Prescribed Fire Both for Eco‑system Management and for Hazard
Reduction. Anyone in Florida Who Wishes to Prescribe Burn must Have
Authorization from the State That Applies to Federal Agencies, State
Agencies, Municipalities and the Private Sector. That Provides Us with a
Good Tracking Record. 1996, We Know That We Issued over 118,000 Permits
to Burn over Two Million Acres of Land. Also, Florida\'s Prescribed Fire
Act Which Was Passed in 1990 Is A Big Assistance. It Provides Some Level
of Civil Immunity for Those Who Use Prescribed Fire and Follow the Law
and its Regulations as They Carry out Their Prescribed Fire Objectives.
Other States Have Emulated the Law in the Last Few Years. Florida\'s
Climate and Topography Is Conducive to the Use of Fire. On the Other
Hand, this Does Cause an Accumulation of Vegetation In Our Wildlands but
it Still Is with That ‑‑ Still Is Worth That Effort. Also Our Topography
Has a Great Deal to Do with Our Ability to Disperse Smoke. The Epa\'s
Plans to Come ‑‑ to Use Standards as We\'re Aware and Key to this Is the
New and Effective Basic Smoke Management Plan. If a State or a Tribal
Has a Basic Smoke Management Plan. Then They\'ll Be Able to ‑‑ They\'ll
Be Given Some Consideration By Epa as Region ‑‑ as Reaching
Nonattainment If it Can Be Shown That That Smoke Comes from a Wildland
Fire. So it Behooves Us to See We Have a Good Basic Fire Management
Plan. This Is Key: Also, Our Practitioners must Know That They Had Best
Be Responsible as They Carry out Their Prescribed Fire Activities. They
must Know That the Public Is Aware of the Concerns They Have for Air
Quality. So That this Is ‑‑ They Face it Clearly in Florida and They
Take It Very Seriously. Florida Has Used Fire to Manage its Forest
Through the Years. It\'s a Natural Occurrence. It Has Been Used for
Thousands of Years. Many Areas of the Country Have Been less Fortunate.
In Those Cases, Great Accumulations of Fuel Are There for the Burning.
This Is Where the Challenge Is and this Is Where We Have to Work
Together to Assure That Our Use of Prescribed Fire Is a ‑‑ as a Fire
Management Tool Is Well‑planned, Well‑used and Responsible In Our
Execution.

Paleck: One Thing We Need to Keep in Mind Is Prescribed Fire Is Only One
Option for Dealing with Our Fuels Problems. We Need to Compare the Short
And‑long‑term Costs and Benefits of The Use of Fire Versus Mechanical
Means or a Combination of Those. In a Variety of Different Fuel Times.
Can Mechanical Treatments Meet Eco‑system Goals. What Are the Economic
Feasibility of Biomass Utilization. Can Detailed Cost Benefits
Comparisons Be Provided? Those Are Just Some of the Questions We Need
More Information on If We\'re Going to Be Able to Answer Those. We
Can\'t Afford to Wait for Perfect Knowledge. Luckily We\'re Getting More
and Better Information All the Time. This Might Be a Really Good Time to
Talk about the Joint Fire Science Plan, Elaine. Can You Tell Us More
about It, Please?

Marquis‑Brong: Thank You, Bill. That\'s a Perfect Lead‑in into What I
Would like to Talk about. It Is Something That Is Not Very Exciting on
the Surface but Will Be Very Exciting Once We Begin to See the Results.
The Joint Fire Science Plan Is an Ambitious Approach to a Challenge
That\'s Been Around for a Long Time, Addressing Fuels On a Broad
Landscape Basis. This Reinforces One of the Original Premises of the
Fire Policy Review. Fire Management Issues on a Comprehensive
Cooperative Basis. There Is No Doubt and this Has Been Mentioned by
Other Panelists, That We\'re Stronger, Better, More Effective When We
Work Together, Sharing Ideas, Sharing Resources and Setting Priorities
Together. It Just Makes Good Sense That We Work Together and Work with
Our Neighbors. Last Fall, the House of Appropriations Committee
Expressed Concern That Neither the Forest Service Nor the Department of
Interior Had Consistent and Credible Information about the Fuels
Management Situation and the Workload That We Had. And They Were Right.
It Is One of Our Own Major Frustrations. We Have All this Data but We
Don\'t Know How to Put it Together As Interagency and ‑‑ in an
Interagency Method. The Concern Is Not Only for the Amounts of Fuel That
We Have out There and the Appropriate Treatment for That Fuel but the
Ultimate Effect the Fuel Build‑up Has and Our Treatment Practices May
Have on Other Resource Values. End Result, the 1998 Committee Report
Directed the Agencies to Develop a Plan for Addressing a Fuels Issues
Facing this Nation. The Plan Was to Include Four Basic Themes. One,
Fuels Inventory and Mapping. Evaluation of Fuels Treatments. And
Scheduling of Fuels Treatments and Monitoring and Evaluation. This
Interagency Plan, the Joint Fire Science Plan, Was Developed by Multiple
of Agencies and Submitted to Congress Earlier this Year. We Are Now
Moving Very Quickly to Get Started on the Program, Research Program
Outlined in this Plan. That\'s What I Would like to Spend Some Time
Talking about. Dr. Bob Clark Who Is with the BLM at Nifsy Was Appointed
as the Interim Manager. A Permanent Manager Will Be Selected and in
Place by this Summer. There Was Also a Ten‑member Governing Board Set up
Made up of Representatives from the Forest Service and the Department of
Interior and Will Oversee this Whole Program. In Addition, a Stakeholder
Advisory Group Has Also Been Formed. This Group Will Make
Recommendations about the Types of Research Projects That Should Be
Done. This Group Will Eventually Include Representatives from 11 Federal
Agencies plus the National Association of State Foresters, the Western
Governors Association, Conservation Groups and Private Industry. This
Will Be a Total of 30 People. This Is Just a Quick Overview about the
Joint Fire Science Plan And its Development and What it Will Do but What
I Would Really Like to Talk about Is Why Is it Important to Us? This Is
an Extremely Important Road Map to Guide Wildland Fuels Research and
Ultimately Fuels Management into the Future. The Objectives of the
Research Will Include Determining the Location and Extent of Wildland
Fuels Problems, Investigating The Roles of Prescribed Fire and
Alternative Treatments. Recommending and Monitoring and Evaluation
Procedures That We\'ll Use and Get the Tools into the Hands of the
Managers to Effectively Address Issues. That Is the Bottom Line\... Get
Some Good, Usable Tools into Our Hands, Something That Makes Sense and
We Know That Will Work! I Would like to Look at These Objectives Just a
Little Built Closer. The Fuels Inventory and Mapping Research Will Not
Only Help the Managers Identify the Location or the Extent of Their
Hazardous Fuels. Most Managers Can Tell You That Right Now Without Going
out to Look or Spending a Penny on Research. But it Will Also Provide
Other Important Pieces of Information That Are Not So Easily Come by
like Fuels, How Fuels Are Affecting Our Fire Regimes. How the Eco‑system
Process Is in the Health of These Eco‑systems Are Being Effective. How
Can We Determine Where Fire Damage and Costs Are Increasing? Also,
Selecting the Appropriate Type and Frequency of Treatment Which Has
Already Been Discussed by Some of the Questions We\'ve Had and Setting
the Appropriate Priorities for All of Our Agencies Together. The Lack of
Good Scientific, Tested and Recorded Data Has Left Us Looking at a Trial
and Error Approach to this Situation. The Evaluation and Comparison of
Fuels Treatment Techniques Will Also Address the Cost Effectiveness of
the Treatment, the Social Impacts, We Already Talked about Air Quality,
Watershed Impacts, Ecological Consequences. The Potential Effects on
Wildland Fire Size, the Severity and The Cost of Those Fires. This Is
the Information We Need to Inform Ourselves, the Public And Especially
Congress. Congress Has Been Asking for Questions We Have Been Asking
this For Ourselves. In Addition, We Would like ‑‑ We Need to Understand
How the Timing of Varus Treatments Can Affect Air and Water Quality. Lot
of Questions Have Been Asked in this Department. Wildlife Habitat, T&e
Species, Cultural Values and Nonnative Species. These Are Questions
We\'re Ask Frequently. Finally, We must Monitor and Evaluate What We Do
and in the next ‑‑ and in an Accept and Scientifically Based Method That
Provides a Credible Feedback Loops to Everyone. We Have a Lot of
Research Ongoing Right Now, Forest Service, Parks Service, BLM, but We
Cannot Coordinate. We Don\'t Have the Same Information. It Doesn\'t Say
the Same Thing. But Initially, this Research Will Focus on Federally
Managed Lands. But Without Regards to Agency Boundaries or Fuel Types,
However, I Do See the States and Other Stakeholders at the Table as
Partners with Us. And Earl, I Would like to Ask You Right Now, as a
State Forester For the State of Florida and Having Worked with Other
States and Federal Agencies, You Know, How Do You See this Playing in
with What You\'re Doing and Trying to Do? I Think While Most of the
Research Will Go Forward on Federal Lands, There Are Chances to Match it
with Things We\'re Doing in Florida in the Area of Fuel Management. It
Is a Great Opportunity to Research with Projects That Are Ongoing Here
Now. Whatever the Match May Be, We\'ll All Benefit from Research and I
Think this Spring There Will Be Some Offers for Proposals. I Look
Forward to Participating in That. I Think There Is an Opportunity for
State Institutions and Organizations to Submit Proposals Contract for
Research with the Federal Government. In Any Event, I Think There Is
Much Need for Improvements Here. Of Course, Jim Brown, Our State
Forester in Oregon Will Will Represent the State Association on this
Stakeholders Group as We Develop the Strategy for Cooperative Research
Projects. Thank You.

Marquis‑Brong: Earl, What You Say Is Extremely True. The Fuels
Management Is a Big Issue for All of Us State Federal Agencies. Everyone
Especially in California Where We Have Recently Formed An Interagency
Committee Called the Fire Alliance Comprised of State, County, Federal
Agency Directors That Have Come Together To Promote Joint Fuels, Hazard
Reduction on a Landscape Basis at The Local Level in the State of
California with Everybody Working Together. The Joint Fire Science Plan
Is in Direct Support of All of These Efforts. I Don\'t See Any Conflict
Whatsoever. If You Have Not Seen this Plan, it Is Available on the
National Interagency Fire Center\'s Home Page At\... This Is Definitely
an Ambitious Project. Everyone Involved Is Committed to Make Sure it
Results in Quality Products. This Is Not a Quick Fix. This Is a
Long‑term Project. Tina?

Gromo: Thanks, Elaine. Once Again, I Want to Mention to Everyone That
We\'ll Be Having Another Question and Answer Segment in a Few Minutes So
Please Send in You Are Faxes or Better Yet Give Us a Call If You Have
Questions for in this Panel. Bill, I\'ll Turn it Back over to You.

Paleck: Thanks, Tina. This Program, the Joint Fire Science Plan Sounds
Promising to Me, Elaine. All Too Often We Study Something, We Write a
Report, Put it on The Shelf and It\'s Back it Continued Business as
Usual. I Think this Time We\'re Finally Going to Get Some Tools That We
Need in the Way of Information to Expand Implement a Quality Program on
Federal and Tribal Lands. Fuel Management Is Simply Too Important an
Issue to Not Have Those Tools. But Let\'s Get Back to Planning for a
Minute. I Can\'t Overemphasize the Importance of Having Prescribed Plans
Prepared. Approved and Implemented. Which Means the Land Management
Plan, the Fire Management Plan And the Operational and Project Plans
must Get Done. To Get the Job Done. There Are Lots of Tools to Help Us
with this Planning. And Paul, I Wonder If You Could Help Us Learn What a
Few of the Tools Might Be.

Johnson: I Agree with the Last Statement You Just Made That There Are a
Lot of Tools out There and We Need to Become Acquainted with Those
Tools. Without a Plan, You Are Very Limited to the Ability to Make
Balanced Decisions. And to Develop a Good Plan, You Need to Take
Advantage of All of Your Resources. We Have Computers, We Have the
Software, We Have the Internet. And I Encourage Our Employees to Tap
into the Information Highway and See What\'s out There and You\'ll Be
Surprised. For Our Wildland Fire Situation Analysis as Well as for Our
Prescribed Fire Plan for Our Prescribed Fire, We Want to Encourage Our
Managers to Understand and to Know What\'s in There Before Just Signing
off on the Plan and Telling Your Employees To Move Forward. You Have All
the Information in the World at Your Disposal. But Without Good
Employees to Use Those Tools, We\'re Kind of in A Fix Here. Good Example
Would Be When We\'re Putting Together a Plan, a Fire Plan, a Prescribed
Fire or a Project Level Plan, Each of These Require a Lot of Scientific
Information, Use of Computer Technology, Where You\'re Assessing Various
Databases and Also in This Process, Involves an Interdisciplinary Team
That must Take All of this Information and Analyze it as Well as
Considering The Social, the Political, the Management Issues as Well as
Discussing with Our Employees and with Our External Constituents Then
They Take All of this Information and They They Synthesize It and Come
out with Informations ‑‑ with Decisions on How They\'re Going to
Implement the Strategy on the Ground. Communication to this Process Is
Very Critical. It Enhances Our Ability to Communicate and the Nwcg Has
Approved Fire Management Terminologies That All Agencies must Use So We
Can Communicate Better, More Effectively and We Need as Managers,
Encourage Our Employees to Embrace this New Terminology So That We Can
Communicate as One. We Have this ‑‑ this Enables Us to Communicate as
One Agency. Last Year, the Nwcg Developed a National Interagency
Wildland Fire Role and Use Messages for Outreach Purposes. Managing
Wildfire, Balancing America\'s Natural Heritage and the Public Interest.
There Are Five Key Points to this Message That I Want to Bring To Your
Attention. The Point Number One Is That Wildland Fire Management Which
Includes the Prevention, Control and Use of Wildland Fire Is a Process
Affecting Us All. Point Two, Wildlands Are Always Changing. Sometimes
Dramatically, Sometimes Subtly. Fire Is One of the Most Important
Natural Agents of Change. Point Three, We Have Learned That the Lack of
Periodic Fire in Many Wildlands Increases Risks to Society and the
Environment. As Partners in Wildland Fire Management, We Can Still ‑‑ We
All Can Take Steps to Reduce Risks. Many Risks Can Be Reduced Through
the Increased Use of Fire in Wildlands. And Point Number Five, Effective
Use of Wildland Fire Will Provide Substantial Benefits to Society and
the Environment. If We Don\'t Do a Good Job of Explaining the Basis for
Our Actions, We Can\'t Expect to Have Support. For the Implementation of
Our Plans on the Ground. I Have Touched Briefly on the Training. And as
Bill Has Mentioned Earlier, We Have the Money to Begin to Manage Our
Fuels but the Important Thing Is That Not Only Do We Have the Money but
We Can Use this Money to Help Train Our Work Force to Do a Good Job on
the Ground. There Are Several Good Prescribed Fire Courses That Are
Approved By the Nwcg and with the Increased Emphasis on the Use of Fire,
You Need to Get Your Folks Trained. Earl, Can You Tell Us about the
Prescribed Fire Program in Florida There?

Peterson: Yes, Paul, I Would like. To. It Is a Cooperative Effort
Between the U.s. Forest Service and The U.s. Fish and Wildlife Service
and the Florida Division of Forestry. Florida Was Chosen Because of the
Active Burning Programs There By the Federal and State Agencies Because
of Broad Prescription Window and Because of the High Level of
Interagency Cooperation There. The Session Lasted for 30 Days. Burning
on Lands Owned by a Variety of Ownerships, Federal, State, Nature
Conservancy, All Provide the Venues Where They Carry out Their Practical
Applications. Most of the Time it Has Been in the Field. On Rainy Days,
They Spend the Downtime in the Classrooms Reviewing Material Presented
by Experts from Throughout the Country on the Subject of Prescribed
Fire.

Johnson: That\'s Great, Earl. The Forest Service Will Be Getting
Involved in That over the Next Couple of Years. Our Goal Was to Let You
Know That There Is a Lot of Tools and Resources out There. Don\'t Forget
to Check out the Internet and Use the New Software That Has Been
Developed Recently. We Can Do More and Make Better Decisions Today
Largely Because Of the Valuable Information, the Tools and Resources and
the Technology That Is There. The Technology Is Changing Daily So I
Encourage You to Stay on Top of It!

Gromo: Thanks, Paul, Very Much. Think We\'ve Really Only Touched the Tip
of the Iceberg but I Know I\'ve Learned a Lot in the past Few Minutes. I
Hope All of You out There Have Learned a Lot, Too. At this Point We\'re
Going to Begin Our next Call‑in Segment. It Is Time to Hear from You. If
You Have a Question for this Panel, Please Give Us a Call. Because We Do
Want to Hear from You. And I\'ve Got a Number of Faxes Here. The First
One Is from Eldridge. He\'s in Tallahassee, Florida. He\'s Asking ‑‑ He
Says We\'ve Heard That the Federal Agencies Condition Reimburse for
Assisting in Prescribed Fire. What Is this Policy? Elaine, Can You
Respond to That?

Marquis‑Brong: Yes, Tina, I Would Be Glad To. It Is a Policy That We\'ve
Had That We\'re Trying to Do Away with And Working on Right Now to
Resolve. Eldridge, I Would Say That Probably the First Thing That
Occurred Here Very Recently Is the Department of Interior Has Worked out
a Mechanism Where the Interior Agencies Can Work Together Without
Worrying about Recost Reimbursement or Cross Billing. That\'s Fairly
New. We\'re Going to Get Information out on it in a Few Weeks. Guidance
Is Also Going out to Interior and the Forest Service to Look at the Same
Issues Between the Forest Service and the Interior Agencies. Outside of
That, We Haven\'t Gone out Quite That Far Yet. This Is Our First Year. I
Think We\'ve Gone Very, Very Far. We\'re Moving in That Direction Trying
to Move Internal Barriers That Are Preventing Us from Working Together
and Maximizing Our Capability and I Think this Is One Good Strike That
We\'ve Done And Hopefully We\'ll See That Rippling out to More and More
Agencies, State and Other Cooperators That We Have.

Gromo: Thanks Eldridge for the Fax. We Have Jim on the Line in Medford
this Morning. Good Morning, Jim. How Are You?

Caller: Good Morning. How Are You?

Gromo: I\'m Great. What\'s Your Question?

Caller: the State\'s Governor\'s Council Has Been Supportive of The
Prescribed Fire Program. But They\'ve Come Back and Said this Is the ‑‑
it Is the Priority Of How We Allocate Our Funds Meaning We Need to Treat
Within the Interface. Right Now That\'s Far More Expensive than Anywhere
Else to Treat Fuels. Yet Nationally, We\'re Maximizing Acres at Least
Cost. Are We Sending Congress the Wrong Message?

Gromo: Jim, That\'s a Great Question. Bill, Can You Respond to Jim?

Paleck: I Think Different Areas and Different Agencies Are Going to Have
Different Priorities. Some Cases it Will Be to Maximize Acreage. In
Others, it Will Be to Treat in the Interface. Hopefully a Good Planning
Program Will Establish the Rationale Behind Those Priorities. Think
Blanket Statements like Treat a or Treat Y Are Really Dangerous. We Need
the Quality Planning to Guide Us in Our Efforts Wherever We Are.

Gromo: Earl, Do You Have Anything You Want to Add to What Bill Just
Said?

Peterson: We\'re a Bit Different in Florida in That We\'ve Used Fire
Both Naturally and Our Own Application for a Number of Years. We Don\'t
Have the Accumulation of Fuels That You Have in Many Areas. I Would Say
That We Don\'t Need to Get Too Set on Maximizing the Number of Acres.
Let\'s Talk More of Optimizing How Much We Can Burn under the Given Set
of Circumstances in View of the Safety Constraints and Resource
Production.

Gromo: Thanks, Gentlemen. Jim, Thanks for Your Question. Thanks for
Calling In.

Caller: Thank You.

Gromo: We Have Willy on the Line. You\'re with the Bureau of Indian
Affairs. Oh, Ok, I Guess He\'s Not Quite Ready. We\'ll Take a Fax
Instead. This Is a Question about Monitoring. It Says Although
Monitoring of Fire Projects Was Briefly Touched On During the Planning
Panel, Often the Weak Link in Effective Wildland Fire Management to Meet
Resource Objectives Is Monitoring. How Will the New Funding Structure Be
Used to Address Adequate Monitoring? Paul, Do You Want to Take That
Question?

Johnson: Yes, Tina. When We Developed Comprehensive Plans, Monitoring Is
a Part of That Strategy and as We Move Forward, We Hope Na We\'ll Be
Doing A Wetter ‑‑ a Better Job at Monitoring to Assess What the Damages
Are and How Well We\'re Using Fire as a Tool That\'s Integrated with Our
Other Resources and Improving the Eco‑system. So It\'s Something That We
Will Continue to Work on until We Get It to the Level That We, as an
Agency, Is Proud from the Standpoint That We Have Achieved Monitoring as
an Integrated Part of Our Overall Objectives.

Gromo: Thanks, Paul.

Paleck: I Don\'t Think There Is a Federal Agency or a Federal Agency
That Does a Proper Comprehensive Job of Monitoring. It\'s an Expensive
Proposition. It Takes a Lot of Dedication of Resources. And it Takes a
Lot of Dedication of Individuals. We Simply must Do a Better Job When We
Have New Comprehensive Programs like These. Of Monitoring Both the
Immediate Effects and the Long Term Effects of Our Actions.

Gromo: Elaine, You Wanted to Add Something as Well?

Marquis‑Brong: I Would like to Add to What Was Already Said In That the
Joint Fire Science Plan Addresses Monitoring and Evaluation of Our Work
as One of the Key Components to the Future of this Program. And the
Research That Will Be Embarked on this Deals with Monitoring in Terms of
Having a Monitoring Process That Is Accepted, Is Valid and Will Provide
the Feedback Loop I Mentioned about to All Agencies and Not Bickered
about What Is Currently Happening Whether the Park Service Monitoring
Program Is Better than the Park Service or BLM but in Agreement on the
Eco‑system or the Habitat That this Is the Appropriate Monitoring and
Funding Will Be Provided for That Long Term Monitoring on the Landscape.

Gromo: I See We\'re All Nodding Our Heads Here. Nobody Agrees No Matter
What Agency You\'re from. Willie, I Apologize for Not Getting to You
Sooner. Good Morning. How Are You?

Caller: Good Morning.

Gromo: You Have a Question?

Caller: Yes. We Have a Vast Amount of Human Resources That Have Been ‑‑
That Have Fought Fire. They\'re from the Tribes. How May the Other
Agencies or I Should Say How May the Tribes Promote the Use of Their
Human Resources for Use from the Other Government Agencies Besides the
Bureau of Indian Affairs?

Gromo: Very Good Question, Willie. Bill, Can You Take a Shot at
Responding to That?

Paleck: I Think a Lot of it Is Communication. As a Park Service Manager,
I Search for Available Resources. No One Searches ‑‑ No One Search Is
Totally Complete. I Need to Know What Other Organizations, Bia, the
Tribes Have Available and If They\'re Available to Me and I Have a Need
for Them, I\'ll Take Advantage of That. I Think the New Tools of this
New Funding Source Which Makes Available to Us Funds for Seasonals and
Career Seasonals and If You\'re an Interior for Ad Hires Is Going to
Expand the Opportunities for Line Officers like Myself to Tap into Those
Available Tribal Resources, Utilize Them and Provide Better, More
Meaningful Employment for People on a Longer Basis. That\'s One of My
Goals as a Federal Employee.

Gromo: Willie, Did That Answer Your Question?

Caller: Yes, it Did.

Gromo: Thanks for Calling In. We\'ll Take Another Fax Here from Rich but
it Doesn\'t Say Where He\'s from. To What Extent Should We Be Using
Prescribed Fire and Plant Associations Which Are Not Fire Dependent?
Earl, Can You Take That Question?

Peterson: of Course. It\'s Best for Those Communities Where They Are
Fire Dependent N Florida, We Have a Number of Areas That Inn That
Category. We Look to Whether They\'re Fire Tolerance. If They\'re Fire
Dependent, it Is must. If They\'re Fire Tolerant, it Is a Do‑able Thing.

Marquis‑Brong: I Would like to Add to That There Are the Treatment
Methods That We\'re Trying to Expand upon Whether They\'re Chemical,
Mechanical, That ‑‑ That the Species Can Tolerate the Disruption
Especially with Nonnative or Weed Species That We\'re Trying to
Eradicate and Fire May Enhance and Not Deter. We\'re Looking at
Alternative Methods. Part of the Research Will Be Focused on That,
Appropriate Methods Outside of Fire for Hazardous Fuels Reduction.

Gromo: We\'re Going to Take a Fax Here from Duane. He\'s a Local Fire
Chief from Lake Tahoe, California, I Guess. Local Government\'s Ability
to Provide Cooperative Mutual Aid on Wildland Fire Incidents Is Largely
Based on Federal and or State Government\'s Willingness to Provide
Reimbursement. In a Large Incident, That Includes Structure Protection.
Will the Local Municipal Jurisdiction Be Responsible for the Costs
Regardless of Where the Fire Starts? Bill, You Want to Take a Shot at
That One?

Paleck: I Can Say That in the National Parks Service, and I Believe in
the Bia, We Have Some Limited Structure Fire Capability That\'s
Dedicated to Protection of Federally‑owned Structures. Most of Us Don\'t
Train Our People up Very Much on Structure Fire Protection. It\'s ‑‑ it
Has its Own Hazards, its Own Techniques, its Own Tactics. We Have, to
this Point, Felt That That Was a State and Local Venue of Activity. Now,
I Do Know in the State of Washington Where I Live and Work, That There
Seems to Be Emerging a Relationship to the Local Fire Districts That the
Federal Government Has Through a Very Proactive State Department of
Natural Resources and I\'m Hoping That That Relationship Will Mature to
a Point Where it Can Serve As a Model for Other Areas.

Gromo: Duane, Thanks for the Question from Lake Tahoe. This next
Question Comes to Us from Ivan Erskine Concerning Fire Fighter
Qualifications in the 3‑10‑1 ‑‑ I Don\'t Know What That Is ‑‑ Some
Federal Agencies Require Courses to Be Qualified in Some Positions While
Other Agencies Only Suggest. He Wants to Know Why Is There No
Consistency Between Agencies And Paul, Can You Respond to That?

Johnson: Yes. First Let Me Say That the Nwcg Is the Group That Assessed
the Standards. And in the 3‑10‑1, it Is the Standards by Which All
Federal Agencies and the State must Meet and Within That Context,
Federal Agencies and the State Have Some Latitude but Overall, The ‑‑
That 3‑10‑1 Is the Standards for Everyone.

Gromo: Thanks, Paul. This Question Comes to Us from John at the All
Valley Fire Council. Has There Been Any Thought Given to the Military in
Basic Training? Elaine? Do You Have a Response to That?

Marquis‑Brong: We\'ve ‑‑ I Think You Probably Are Well Aware We Have
Trained the Military in Basic Fire Fighting Especially In the Large
Campaigns in Summer Season Where We\'ve Had Tremendous Fires Going All
over. However, the Mill Fairy Has Never Requested That I\'m Aware of For
Us to Incorporate or Help Them Incorporate in Their Basic Training, the
Basic Fire Fighting Training. They Have on a Local Basis Where You Have
Military Installations That Are Surrounded by Environments That Are More
Prone to Fire. Where They Have Asked Us to Give Them Training at That
One Particular Installation, National Guard Has Asked Us to Do That In
Some States and in Some Military Bases, They\'ve Requested it So
They\'re Ready to Respond If Needed but on a Militarywide, I\'m Not
Aware of It. I Don\'t Think They\'ve Requested it and I Don\'t Think
They Intend To Do That.

Gromo: Is Anybody Else Here Aware of It? Ok. Thanks, Elaine. The next
Fax Comes from the Beirut National Forest. The 58th Fastest Growing
County in the Nation in Montana. All of Our Fire Protection Is Through
Rural Volunteer Fire Departments in the Private Sector. Is There Any
Funding from the Federal Level to Allow Private Landowners in a Role
Volunteer Fire Departments to Be Able to Manipulate the Fuels Properly
and Be Good Neighbors with Our Federal Land Managers? We Have Several of
You Folks from Federal Agencies. Bill, Would You like to Take That?

Paleck: I Don\'t Have a Comprehensive Answer. I Know There May Be
Funding Sources Available. A Lot of the Problem I\'ve Heard Has to Do
with Liability Issues. Those Have to Be Addressed and Corrected Through
State Legislation. And Then When Those Are Corrected, So That Landowners
Don\'t Face Personal Liability for Fires That Start on Private Land
Going on To Other Private Land, Then I Think There\'s Opportunities to
Make Federal Funds Available. But Elaine, Maybe You Know More?

Marquis‑Brong: I Was Just Going to Add to That That a Number Of
Communities Have Asked That Question Especially in California. What
We\'ve Been Trying to Do Is Work Cooperatively, Federal, State Agencies,
with the Local Agencies to Try to Burn More in a Landscape Approach So
If There\'s Interface in There, We Include The State Fire Marshal, the
Local Fire Departments So They Can Hopefully Plan Their Portion. There
Are Public Grants Available. Some of Our Local Communities Have Been
Very Successful in Getting Public Grans, Especially If it in Cooperation
with Federal Agencies or State Agencies in the Business of Doing
Prescribed Fire or Hazard Reduction So That\'s a Suggestion. I\'m Not
Aware of Federal Funds Directly Targeted for Local Communities in this
Effort.

Gromo: Earl, Maybe You Can Give Us Perspective on That.

Peterson: I\'m Not Aware of Federal Funding Either. Best We Were Able to
Do Was Establish a Cooperative Working Relationship with the Local
Communities and Local Fire Departments and We Do That with Joint
Activities but Direct Funding, I\'m Not Aware of It.

Gromo: I\'m Going to Change Direction a Little Bit. Let\'s Talk a Little
Bit about the Aging Work Force. As Our Work Force Continues to Age and
We Seem to Have less People Each Year Who Want to Fight Fire, How Are
Going to Accomplish the Increased Workload. I Know None of Us Here Are
Aging at All but Bill, Do You Have a Response to That?

Paleck: Pick on the Guy with the White Hair. I Think ‑‑ as I Mentioned
in My Presentation, We Have Now Funding Available to Higher ‑‑
Additional Funding Available to Hire Career and Career Seasonal
Positions. Think That\'s a Place Where Many of Us Started in the Federal
Government in Our Jobs and It\'s Going to Continue to Be That Way. I\'m
Delighted We Have this Opportunity to Create a Pulse of New Hires. I
Think We\'re Also Getting the Message, If We Never Had It, That The Only
Way to Accomplish These Projects Is in an Interagency,
Interjurisdictional Basis. So While Our Individual Agencies Resources
May Be Smaller, I Think Our Ability to Tap Collective Resources Is a
Much Greater Than it Was a Few Years Ago.

Johnson: I Also Might Add to That, Bill, Is Also That as the Flexibility
Within Our Fiscal Begins to Broaden Where We Can Contract and Do More of
the ‑‑ Versus Depending on Our Own Employees, I Think That Will Give Us
a Wider Latitude for Accomplishing the Job on the Ground as Well as
Having More Federal Agencies Cooperating Together to Expand That Talent
Pool To Do a Larger Landscape Accomplishments on the Ground as Well.

Paleck: I Tend to Think That You Can Look at this Whole Thing As a Half
‑‑ Is the Glass Half Empty or Half Full? And We\'re Just Starting this
Program. We\'ve Got ‑‑ We\'ve Got Five Federal Agencies. We\'ve Got
Tribal Groups Involved. We\'re Headed down the Same Path. There Are Lots
of Uncertainties at this Point in Time. And There Are Lots of Questions
and Some Problems. Think If We\'re People of Good Faith and We Try this
and We Act Professionally, We Have Good People Who Will Help Us Get
Those Answers and this Program Will Improve over Time.

Marquis‑Brong: Bill, I Would like to Add One Item to That. I Think it Is
Time to Bring in a Resource Specialist into the Prescribed Fire Again.
We Used to Be There. Over Time, We Developed a Very Effective Fire
Community Within Our Organizations. Our Resource Specialists Need to Get
Directly Involved. They\'re Stakeholders for Their Program\'s Sake plus
They Need to Understand the Dynamics of Fire. Some Are Willing and Able
to Get out There. I Would like to See That Happen in Conjunction with
What You\'ve Said.

Gromo: Great Discussion on That. We\'ve Got Another Fax That Came from
Miss Ula. We Don\'t Feel We Have Enough Research to Fully Understand the
Role of Fire. What Do We Do? What Do We Do, Elaine?

Marquis‑Brong: Can You Repeat the Question?

Gromo: We Don\'t Feel We Have Enough Research to Fully Understand the
Role of Fire. What Do We Do?

Marquis‑Brong: That\'s True. That\'s Why We Have the Joint Fire Science
Plan to Identify Research to Do More Research and Follow up on the
Research. We\'ve Had Little Bursts of Research by Different Agencies
That Have Been Focused on One Particular Thing, Either Funding
Evaporates and That\'s the End of the Research or Just Focused One One
Item and That\'s Where it Ends. It Is Not Expanded Beyond Those Specific
Situations. So with This, I Think, Aggressive and Planned Research Plan
We\'ll Have Long‑term Research. We\'ll Focus it on What Has the Biggest
Bang for the Buck. What Will Help the Agencies the Most. And Hopefully
Get the Research Published and out There for Everybody to See.

Gromo: Paul, Do You Have a Response to That as Well?

Johnson: Yes. We Have a Lot of Research Already on Fire but as the
Situations Change, We Need More Current Update Information So That as We
Move Forward and Aggressively, We Need to Have the Best Research
Available and as Well as in Harmony with the Conditions in Which We\'re
Working In. So, I Agree with Elaine That We Need to Get More Research
and Get it Situated as Well as Focus on the Type of Vegetation We\'re
Managing in Today\'s Climate.

Gromo: Thanks, Paul. We\'ve Had a Lot of Good Questions. We Have a Lot
More We Would like to Take. We May Have a Little Bit More Time Left at
the End of Our Program. If We Do, We\'ll Take That Time to Take Some
More Questions. But First, We\'re Going to Go Live to Washington D.c. to
Join Kevin Gover, the Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Indian
Fairs and Robert Stanton, the Director of the National Parks Service.
Welcome, Secretary Gover. Thanks for Being with Us Today.

Gover: Thank You. Glad to Do It.

Gromo: Mr. Stanton, We Appreciate You Being with Us Today.

Stanton: Thank You.

Gromo: Mr. Stanton, We\'ve Covered Land about Wildland Fire Policy. Can
You Give Us Thoughts about Where They\'ve ‑‑ We\'ve Come and Where
We\'re Headed?

Gover: You\'ve Heard about the Wildland Policy and Program Review. What
it Means to Our Management and Where We May Go with It. As Land
Management Resource Managers, We must Accept and Face The More Complex
Challenges That Wildfire Management Program Presents. We must Embrace
the Evolution of Fire Management So We\'re Better Able to Respond to the
Challenges. We must Utilize All the Latest Knowledge and Technology to
Facilitate and Support the Best Issue Resolving Decisions We Can Make. I
Would like to Reinforce That Fire Policy ‑‑ It\'s Not the Last Word in
the Wildland Fire but the Latest Word. It Is Another Step in the
Continuing Evolution of the Wildland And Prescribed Fire Program. As We
Look Back in the 20th Century, We See That Initially Our Knowledge
Indicated That an Aggressive, Total Suppression Was The Only Way to
Present Widespread Damaging Fires like Those Experienced in Lake ‑‑ in
the Late 1800s and in the Northern Rocky Ins the Early 1900s. As a
Result, We Embark on a One‑dimensional Program of Fire Exclusion Called
Fire Control and We Were Successful. But Later We Began to Understand
That Fire Exclusion Was Not Always the Answer and That in Fact, in Many
Situations, it Was Detrimental to Long‑term Because of Health. In
Response, We Involved into What Could Be Described as a Two‑dimensional
Program of Fire Suppression and Prescribed Fire. The Purpose of this
Fire Management Was to Achieve Resource Objectives Through the Use of
Fire in Some Cases and Suppression Of Fires in Others. Now, More
Experience and Improved Knowledge Has Shown Us That This Two‑dimensional
Program Is Inconsistent in Accomplishing Commitment and Balance of the
Wildland Fire Policy and Review. It Is the next Step for Fire Manage. A
One‑dimensional Step to Fire Management That Give Us the Ability to
Achieve Objectives Such as Protection and Fire Use Concurrently. This
Fire Policy Is Founded on Nine Guiding Principles, the Value of the
Principles Cannot Be Overstated. First, Fire Fighter and Public Safety
Is the First Policy and The First Priority in Every Fire Management
Activity. We must Never Lose Sight of this Principle. Every Fire
Fighter, Fire Line Supervisor, Fire Manager and Agency Administrator
Will Take Positive Action to Ensure Compliance with Established Safety
‑‑ Safe Fire Fighting Practices by Establishing Qualification Based on
Staffing Leadership Position with Qualified and Committed Individuals.
Developing Tools Necessary to Carry out a Safe and Effective Program and
Enhance the Experience and Qualifications. A System of Accountability
and Ensuring Fire Fighters Are Properly Trained and Equipped. Second,
the Role of Wildland Fire as an Essential Ecological Process and Natural
Change Agent must Be Incorporated into the Planning Process. Third, Fire
Management Plans, Programs and Activities Support Land and Resource
Management. The Plans and Their Implementations. All Agencies Will
Development Fire Management Plans to Build and Maintain a Close Link
Between Fire and Land Resource Management. Number Four, Sound Risk
Management Is a Foundation for All Fire Management Activities. The Risk
and Uncertainties Related to Fire Management Activities Must Be
Analyzed, Understood and Managed. New Tools Are Being Developed to Help
You Do Just That. Number 5, Fire Management Programs and Activities Are
Economically Viable, Based upon Values to Be Protected, Costs And Land
and Resource Management Objectives. As You Adjust Your Program to Reduce
Costs and Increase Efficiency, You must Evaluate Investments in Fire
Management Activities Against Your Own Programs in Order to Effectively
Accomplish Your Mission. Set Priorities and Clarify Management
Accountability. Number 6, Fire Management Plans and Activities must Be
Based on The Best Available Science. Knowledge and Experience must
Continue to Grow and Develop. The Joint Fire Science Program Will Make
Research Results Available to All Agencies. Number 7\... Fire Management
Plans and Activities Incorporate Public Health And Environmental Quality
Considerations. This Means That Fire Management Plans Will Balance
Desired Objectives with Other Societal Needs Including Public Health and
Safety, Air Quality and Other Site Specific Concerns. Number 8, Federal,
State, Tribal and Local Interagency Coordination and Cooperation Are
Essential. And 9, Standardization of Policies and Procedures among
Federal Agencies Is an Ongoing Objective. Full Collaboration among
Federal Agencies and with States, Local And Private Entities Are
Essential to Program Implementation as Costs Increase and Work Forces
Decrease. When Plans and Procedures Are Inconsistent, Cooperation
Accomplishment Is Hampered. This Proves More Tunes to Consolidate
Planning, Their Efforts For Developing of Uniform Procedures and Become
More Effective. As We Move Forward and Towards Full Implementation of
this Policy, More and More Policy and Procedural Barriers Are Being
Removed. We\'re Sharing Work Forces and Eliminating Administrative
Constraints. For Example, the National Park Services Led in the
Development Of Prescribed Fire Fire Modules and Interagency Fire Use
Teams. It Consists of 6 to 8 Individuals Who Are Dedicated to Carrying
Out Duties Associated with Wildland Fire Use and Prescribed Fire, No
Matter How Busy Suppression Activity May Be. These Modules Are Primarily
Used by the Park Service but Are Certainly Are Available and Have Been
Used by Other Agencies. Interagency Fire Management Teams Are Actually
Incident Management Short Teams, Usually 7 to 8 Employees, Who Bring
Specific Skills to Do Necessary Planning, Conduct Long‑term Risk
Assessment, and Manage Wildland Fires That Are Within a Prescription. In
Other Words, When the Appropriate Management Response on a Wildland Fire
Is to Use the Fire to Achieve Beneficial Resource Objectives and the
General Prescriptive Factors Are Documented In an Approved Fire Plan, a
Local Unit May Choose to Bring in a Fire Use Team to Manage the Fire.
The Key Here Is Achieving Efficiency by Sharing Resources among Agencies
and Geographic Locations. Whether It\'s an Organized Interagency Team or
an Agency‑specific Team. As Stewards of Public Lands and Natural and
Cultural Resources, We\'re Charged with Competent, Professional
Management. We must Seize the Moment, Realize Our Potential and
Capitalize On Opportunities to Improve Efficiency, Achievement ‑‑
Achieve The Procedures, the Fed Policy There and the Program Review
Would Identify a Continuing Shift in Policy and Procedures at a Time
When Growing Demands Call for Evolution and Growth. We must Embrace this
Shift Support Program Growth and Direct Our Passion, Professionalism and
Inspiration to Further Land and Resource Management. We must Share a
Common Goal and We must Make the Most of this Opportunity to Advance the
Fire Management Program to its Most Efficient Level, to Accomplish
Desired and Necessary Resource Management Objectives. Thank You for this
Opportunity to Comment on this Program and Other Agencies Within the
Department of Interior.

Gromo: Thank You Very Much Mr. Stanton. Even Though We\'ve Talked a Lot
about Fire Policy Here Today, That\'s Really the First Time We\'ve
Talked about the Guiding Principles That Are Included in the December
1995 Report. I Want to Remind Everyone of Those Nine Guiding Principles
as Well as the 13 Policies That Can Be Found in the Report. Please Take
a Few Minutes to Review the Pages While It\'s Still Fresh in Your Mind.
If You Need a Copy of the Report, Contact the External Affairs Office at
the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. Secretary Gover Thanks
for Being Here Today. We\'re Hoping That Today\'s Program Will Really
Give Some Valuable Information to Agency Administrators. Would You
Please Share Your Thoughts with Us.

Gover: I\'m Happy to Be Here with You Today and to Add Some Final
Thoughts as to What Has Already Been Said. A Lot of Good Information Has
Been Presented During the past Three Hours. If Everyone in the Audience
Has Picked up One New Idea or Been Motivated to Take One Action, Then
We\'ve Accomplished Our Goal. I Wan to Direct My Comments to Those of
You Who Are in Positions Where the Buck Stops. State Directors, Area
Directors, Regional Foresters, Refuge Managers, Park Superintendents,
Forest Supervisors, District Managers and Other Agency Administrators
Who Are Responsible for Making Things Happen or Not Making Them Happen.
Today, You Are Facing More and More Leadership Challenges. Retirements
and Other Changes in Our Work Force Structure along With Changing
Lifestyles and Personal Priorities, Have Had a Dramatic Effect on the
Demographics of Our Organizations. Our Employees Are Wearing More and
Different Hats. In the Fire Program, Especially, Experience Is
Concentrated in Fewer People. Many Line Managers Lack the Experience,
Interest Commitment to Fire That Their Predecessors Had. They Are
Focusing on Other Programs, Often Ignoring Fire\'s Valuable Role in
Those Programs. And Often They Don\'t Encourage Their Employees to
Become Trained, Qualified and Available to Support Fire. Think about
What Would Happen If Had You a Fire and Nobody Came. Let Me Say Right
Up‑front That If Wildland Fire Management Is Not Fully Integrated into
Your Resource Management Program, it Should Be! Wildland Fire Is an
Inseparable Ingredient in Sound Resource Management. The Policies
Embraced in the Federal Wildland Fire Policy and Program Review Require
Stronger Ties to Land and Resource Management Plans and Provide You with
a Greater Opportunity to Manage for Long‑term Health of the Land. These
Policies Are Yet Another Growth Step in Our Evolving Approach to
Managing Wildland Fire. What We Did 10, 20, Even 50 Years Ago Was Right
Based on the Knowledge That We Had Then. But as We Continue to Increase
Our Knowledge, Today\'s Policy Will Also Evolve. The Research That Grows
out of the Joint Fire Science Plan, for Example Will Increase Our
Scientific Knowledge about Fuels and Will Allow Us to Do a Better Job of
Managing Our Resources. Wildland Fire Management Is One of Our Most
Visible Programs. It\'s Not Just Something We Think about for Two or
Three Months a Year. Congress, the News Media Are Interested and Inform
and Continually Watching What We Do. There Are a Lot of Reasons for All
of this Attention. One, Nothing We Do in Resource Management Affects the
Visual Character of the Land More Quickly or More Drastically than Fire.
Two, More People Are Living in or Adjacent to Areas That Can Be
Threatened by Wildland Fire. When Wild Liar Strikes, it Is More Likely
to Personally Affect Them or Someone They Know. Three, More Fire
Fighters Are Dying in the Line of Duty. More Have Died in the past 20
Years than in the Previous 30. This Is Unacceptable. We must Turned it
Around. Four, Everyone Has Access to up to the Minute News. When There
Is a Fire, There Will Be Reporters and Photographers, Often Coming from
Around the World. But the Media Coverage Doesn\'t End When the Fire Is
out. Today\'s News Programs Go Beyond Covering the What\'s, the When\'s
And the Where\'s. Investigative Reporters Do In‑depth Reports on the
Who\'s and the Why\'s. So in Addition to the Fire Story Itself, There\'s
Often a Human Interest or Big Government Story That Follows Days, Weeks
or Even Months Later. And Last but Not Least, More and More People Are
Interested in The Health of Our Land. They Recognize the Increasing
Value of Our Natural Resources and They Want to Have a Say in How We
Manage Them. They Are Demanding a Place at the Table. And the Time and
Place to Bring Them to the Table Is Right Up‑front, During Your Planning
Process. You\'ve Heard a Lot Today about Getting Your Planning Done,
Your Land Management Plans, Your Fire Management Plans, and Your
Operational and Project Plans. Without Them, Your Hands Are Tied. Your
Only Option When a Fire Starts Is to Put it Out, Even Though That May
Not Be the Best Option for the Long Term Health Of the Resources. Some
Would I Say the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy and Program
Review Was Conducted Solely Because of the Events That Occurred in 1994,
Most Notably the Record Number of Fatalities But the Need to Take a
Good, Hard Interagency Look at the Fire Management Program Was Timely
for a Lot of Reasons. While Fire Management Is an Area Where We Have
Traditionally Done an Outstanding Job of Coordinating and Cooperating
with Our Partners, There Was No Solid Written Guidance That Clearly Said
Here\'s the Direction You All Should Be Going, Here\'s How You Should Do
it and Yes, You must Work Together to Get it Done. The Federal and State
Agencies Were Already Individually Changing the Way They Looked at and
Responded to Wildland Fire. We All Recognize That the Landscape Was
Changing and That Fuel Build‑ups Were Creating Risks That Many of Us
Couldn\'t Even Comprehend. But Many Times We Were Each Inventing Our Own
Approach, Moving At Our Own Speed and Focusing on Our Own Priorities. We
Were Headed in the Same General Direction but Sometimes We Were Driving
Separate Vehicles and Were Traveling on Slow, Bumpy Roads Taking
Unnecessary Detours. Now, I like to Think We\'re All in a Vehicle
Together and the Federal Wildland Fire Policy Is the Map That Keeps Us
Heading in The Right Direction. We\'re All Working Together to Make Sure
We Have the Tools We\'re Going to Need as We Continue along the Road to
Safe, Efficient And Scientifically Sound Fire Management. Change Is
Always Difficult and Risky. Even When Others Are Changing with Us. But
We Simply must Take the Risks That Are Involved in Moving Away from a
Business as Usual Approach in Fire Manage. ‑‑ Management. Because
Everything We Do Involves Risks Whether It\'s in the Actions We Take or
Don\'t Take. I Challenge You to Take More Risks and to Reward Others Who
Do. Not Ill‑advised Risks, Unsubstantiated by Good Science, but Bold,
Well Thoughtout Scientifically Sound Risks That Will Move Us Forward
over the Long Haul. Let Me Emphasize That Buck Stops Here. If You Don\'t
Know What the December 1995 Fire Policy Report Says, Now Is the Time to
Find out. This Document Is Policy! Your Agency Accepts it and Supports
It. You Have Been Given the Mandate, the Tools and the Funding
Structure. The Rest Is up to You. If You\'re Waiting for Someone to Tell
You to Move Forward, this Telecast Is Your Wakeup Call. Nothing Happens
Simply Because a Report Is Written. Nothing Will Happen on the Ground
Without Your Energy and Your Commitment. Your Personal Involvement and
Your Leadership. How Will Your Organization Use and Manage Fire? It\'s
up to You.

Gromo: Thank You Very Much Gentlemen and Mr. Secretary. There Were Some
Great Words of Advice There. A Good Reminder it Takes Everyone\'s
Commitment in Order for Us To Move Away from the Relative Comfort of
Business as Usual. Thanks to Both of You Gentlemen for Taking the Time
to Visit With Us. We Are Actually Going to Go over Our Time Limit a
Little Bit Because We\'ve Got So Many Faxes That Have Come In. So If You
Can, Stick with Us, We\'ve Got Some Folks Who Have Joined Us for Our
Final Panel Who Will Be Glad to Take More Faxes. We Want to Try to Get
to as Many of Your Questions as We Can. Back with Us from Earlier in Our
Program Now Is Lynn Sprague and Again, He Is the Forest Service Regional
Forester in California. We Also Have with Us Jim Hubbard, the State
Forester in Colorado. Bill Paleck, the Superintendent of the North
Cascades National Park. In Washington. Elaine Marquis‑Brong, BLM\'s
Deputy State Director for State Services in California. Arch Wells, the
Acting Chief Forester for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Washington
D.c. and Skip Ladd, Assist Act Regional Director for the U.s. Fish and
Wildlife Service in Denver. We\'ve Got Quite a Stack of Faxes Here
Folks. First One Here Comes from Oregon. And it Says Please Summarize
How the New Wildland Fire Policy Differs from the Old Policy. And I\'m
Going to Open it up to Any of You Who Would like to Take The Question.

Sprague: I\'ll Take a Crack at it and Start out by Saying What I Think
the One or Two or Three Principle Changes in this Policy From the Old
Are. One Is That Is the Focus and Integration of the Role of Fire Into
Our Total Resource Management Job. Second Is the Reaffirmation of Safety
First. We Won\'t Do Anything Without First Fully Considering the Safety
Of Our People and Perhaps the Third Is the Idea of Bringing Planning
Together and Interagency Contact. We\'re Engaging All of the Parties and
the Players in the Business of Fire Management Across the Board.

Gromo: Did Any of the Rest of You Want to Respond to That?

Ladd: I Would Add the Funding Source. A New Effort to Provide Funding
for Fuels Reduction and Prescribed Fire to Help in Natural Resource
Management. I Think That\'s a Co‑equal Role and with Suppression and
That\'s Clearly Going to Be an Emphasis under this New Policy.

Paleck: to Some Federal Land Managers, it Has Meant a Withdrawal from
the Interface. If You Read it Carefully, it Reads Just the Opposite.
Let\'s Look at the Interface and Let\'s Make it a Priority ‑‑

Hubbard: Let\'s Not Put Fire Fighters at Risk. We Need to Examine the
Interface and the Complexities it Presents to Us.

Gromo: Jim, I See Everybody Agreeing with You on That. Our next Fax
Comes to Us from Montana from a Gentleman at the U.s. Forest Service.
How Are We Going to Implement this If the Public Doesn\'t Buy off The on
the Wildland Fire Policy or If the Congressional Delegations Don\'t
Support It?

Marquis‑Brong: I Would like to Give That a Stab. This Is Where It\'s
Extremely Critical People Are Working at the Local Level with All of
Their Cooperators and the Members of the Public to Help Educate and
Inform Them and One of the Major Points of the Science Plan Is to Gather
That Information That Makes Us Credible and Believable and More
Consistent. The Conservation Groups, the Interagency Groups, Industry
Will Buy into What We Have If Our Information Is Valid and We Can Prove
It. I Think Good Communication and Working, Working and Working with
Those People to Bring Them on Board, We May Not Be Able to Bring Them on
Board but I\'ve Seen Some of Our Partners Do a Very Good Job Bringing
People on Board. We\'ll Use Everyone We Can.

Gromo: Our next Fax Comes from the Siscue National Forest. At a Recent
Mull Fy Regional Human Resource Meeting in Spokane, It Was Conceded That
Downsizing Planing in the Administrative Area Did Not Recognize
Workloads and Support of Fire Suppression Efforts Such as Incident Team
Support. A Commitment Was Made by the Washington Office of the Forest
Service to Take the Subject up as a Modification of Organizational
Planning Efforts. With Increasing Workloads and Downsizing and Human
Resources, Contracting and Fiscal Areas, this Is Becoming an Increasing
Concern. Can You Give Us an Update on What\'s Happened in That Effort?

Sprague: I Can Start with That. To Be Sure That\'s a Critical Problem.
And the Washington Office Has Committed to Having a Look at This. I
Don\'t Have an Answer for You Today on Where We Are with That
Evaluation. But it Raises the Question and I\'ll See That We Have a Chat
with The Washington Office and Get Some Information out as to Where
We\'re at with That.

Gromo: Thanks, Lynn. A Lot of You Have Been Talking about the
Interagency Cooperation Going on Here. This Question Directs More
Specifically to Departments Within Different Agencies. What Kind of
Communications Coordination Occurred Within the Agencies Between the
Fire, Personnel and the Budget People? Elaine, Can You Respond to That?

Marquis‑Brong: I Can Respond for Bureau of Land Management. I Know
They\'ve Worked Closely over the Last Two Years, Specifically this Last
Year in Terms of Budgeting Appropriately And Defining the Tracking
Mechanisms for Prescribed Fire or Fuels Management and Treatment. I\'m
Sure There\'s More That We Could Do. But I Think We\'re Moving in That
Direction. Not Only Communicates ‑‑ Communications with Our Budget
People But Our Resources Side of the House, Also. That Communication Has
Been Expanding. I Don\'t Know If Anybody Else Has Something to Offer on
That.

Wells: We Were Working Constantly with the Budget People. Fire and
Budget Is Tied Together to Make this Whole Effort Happen. I Also Agree
with Elaine That We\'re Beginning to Tie in the Rest Of the Resource
Operation Through Integration and I Spoke about That Earlier on this
Broadcast. And I Hope That We Continue That Effort and Intensify It.

Gromo: Thanks, Guys.

Sprague: I\'ve Got a Real Time Response to That. I Happen to Know Right
Upstairs about this ‑‑ above this Studio, The Regional Forest in Region
Three Has Her Full Leadership Team In a Room Observing this Telecast
Today and I Think That\'s a Good Example of Bringing All of the Parts of
the Organization Around this Issue of Fire.

Gromo: I Think You\'re Right. This Question Is from Rock Springs. Who
Role Does Insurance Companies Have in ‑‑ to the Reaction of Fuels and
Rural Interface Areas. Lynn, Can You Answer That? What Role Do Insurance
Companies Have in Contributing to the Reduction of Fuels in Rural
Interface Areas?

Sprague: I Can Tell You What\'s Happening in California Are With That
Issue. And Frankly in the Interface, I Think the Insurance Companies
Have a Major Role in How We Address the Issue. In California, I Think
Elaine Mentioned on One of the Earlier Panels, the Fire Alliance in
California and the Leadership Group Of That Fire Alliance Includes a
Representative of the Insurance Industry in the State of California. At
the Top Level Dealing with What Their Role, Their Rightful Role Is in
the Whole Issue.

Gromo: Jim, Do You Have Thoughts on That, Too?

Hubbard: Yes, I Do. Don\'t Forget That Insurance Companies Are
Competitive. And There\'s Antitrust Regulations That Prevent Them from
Collaborating Too Much. So, They\'re Limited in What They Can Do
Officially but They Do Participate in a Lot of the Discussions. They\'re
of Course Interested in What Happens to Interface Because of the Risk
and Premiums. And They\'re Paying More Attention to That So Even Though
They May Not Have Been Too Assertive So Far in Premium Differentials To
Help Us Get Our Objectives Accomplished, They\'re Paying Attention and I
Certainly Would Include Them.

Gromo: Yes, Elaine?

Marquis‑Brong: I Would like to Add One Other Item. Until Recently, the
Insurance Industry Felt Their Loss Is Due to Wildlife Fire Were ‑‑
Wildland Fire Were Minimal. Most of Their Fire Losses Were Because of
Internal Combustions Of One Reason or Another but since the Early \'90s
That\'s Changed Tremendously. The Millions If Not Billions of Dollars
They\'ve Lost in California Has Given Them a New Look at Their Industry.
I Know They\'re Working Extremely Closely with the Planning Boards, the
Industry Standards for Building and Construction and Are Making Changes
There Because the Homes That Were Safe Because of Building Standards
That Were Different Has Come Close To Them.

Gromo: Well, Bob, Thanks Very Much for Faxing That Question Into All of
Us. Our next Question Is from the BLM. In Order to Get People Qualified,
They Need Training. Will this Prescribed Fire Money Be Used to Help with
Training Costs? Ok, Art?

Wells: Yes, Definitely. We\'re Providing Training to Our Staff. We\'re
Going to Gear up in Prescribed Burning. We\'re Dedicated to That. Tribes
Are Dedicated to That. They Have Been Doing it for Years. We\'re Not
Going to Back off. The Simple Short Answer Is Yes. That Money Will Be
Available for Training Efforts.

Gromo: I See Skip You\'re Nodding Your Head Here.

Ladd: Same Answer, Tina. Training Is as Well as Hiring Qualified
Seasonal and Career Seasonal Training as a Part of That and Can Be
Utilized with Those Dollars.

Gromo: Thanks to the Area for Sending Us That Fax In. This Comes from
Dan at the Oregon Department of Forestry. It Seems like Fighting Fire at
Night Offers Fewer Risks. Yet There Is a Reluctance to Staff Fires at
Night. It Seems We\'re Missing an Opportunity to Provide less Risk to
Fire Fighters. Skip or Bill, You Want to Take That?

Paleck: I Think It\'s ‑‑ There Are a Bunch of Factors That Have to Be
Balanced and Whether or Not You Mount a Night Shift On a Fire, the
Terrain, the Topography, the Fuel Type, the Projected Behavior Are Some
of Those. I Know That the Incident Command Teams I\'ve Been on or Worked
With Are Well Aware of the Balance That Takes Place and I Think Where We
Don\'t Fight Fires at Night, it Is for Valid Reasons That Can Be Readily
Articulated and If You\'re Not Getting the Answers, You Should Ask Them.
There Are Criteria this Can Be Explained to You.

Gromo: Our next Fax from Bill, a Fire Management Officer. With the
National Parks Service. This Is about Hiring Authority. We Need to Work
Our Temporary Employees More than the Current Limit of 1,039 Hours. Are
There Any Plans to Increase the Annual Limitation or to Eliminate It?

Paleck: 1,039 Hours Is a Cutoff Point for the Park Service Seasonal
Hiring Authority. If You Work over That Amount of Time, You\'re Required
to Provide Benefits or in Other Words, Create Career Seasonal Positions.
And the Funding Authority That\'s Now Available Gives You the
Opportunity to Hire Either Pure Seasonals or Career Seasonals If You
Compete for and Secure the Dollars.

Sprague: I Think We\'ve Not Done a Terribly Good Job of Communicating
with Our Seasonals and Temporary Work Force about What Their Role Is and
Why We Have That Category of Employment. And to Kind of Help That Along,
We and the Region That I\'m Responsible for Have a Task Force on
Seasonal and Temporary Employment Going on Right Now Trying to Figure
out How We Can Do A Better Job of Communicating and Dealing with this
Issue. Is There Going to Be Some Relief to this and Should We Be Asking
For it and That Sort of Thing. That\'s Another Twist to It.

Wells: When We\'ve Had Very Severe Fire Years, Just as Bill Said, this
Is Sort of an Administrative Ceiling. We\'ve Asked for a Reprieve and
We\'ve Received a Reprieve Every Time We\'ve Had Critical Fire Seasons.
So We\'ve Gone above this Limitation. Several Times in the past. I\'m
Sure We\'ll Do it Again.

Gromo: Bill, We Appreciate Your Fax. We Hope the Comments Are Helpful to
You. Our next Fax Comes from Scott in the BLM Farmington District. It
Says in Southwest Colorado, the Federal Wildland Fire Agencies Are
Anxious to Use State Personnel on Prescribed Fire. Do You See Any
Headway in Forging Agreements to Permit Cross Billing and Shared
Liability? Jim, Can You Answer That One?

Hubbard: I Can Answer That for the State Forest Service in Colorado and
for Southwest Colorado. Give Me the Agreement, I\'ll Sign It. That Is
Well Within the Scope of Duties for State Employees. And How the Federal
Policy Would Apply, I Would Have to Ask One Of the Other Panelists to
Respond to but Think We Can Work Those Kinds of Things out If We Decide
We Want To.

Gromo: Thank You. Ok, Here\'s a Nepa Question for You All. What Does the
Wildland Fire Policy Say about the Environmental Impact of Increasing
Prescribed Fire?

Marquis‑Brong: I Would Have to Say I\'m Not Sure. How it Addresses Nepa.
Way We\'re Proceeding Is That Fire Planing Is a must Tied to the Fire
Policy. That Includes Nepa. And So I\'m ‑‑ the Nepa Process Is an
Extremely Important Process Not Only for the Effects of Fire but the
Effects of Accumulated Fuels on the Eco‑system and What Impacts and
Tradeoffs Are. I\'m Going to Say it Is an Integral Part of the Fire Land
Policy.

Gromo: Skip, You Have Something to Add to That?

Ladd: Teen Ma, I Might Add a Point from Fish and Wildlife Services
Standpoint on the National Wildlife Refuges. We View That as a Broader
Land Use Planning. We Call Them Comprehensive Conservation Plans Now.
And the Burning Aspect and Prescribed Burning Is a Part of That And
Those Go Through a Full‑blown Nepa Process.

Marquis‑Brong: That\'s Right. Tied to Land Use Plans. That\'s Absolutely
Correct.

Gromo: this Is the Last Fax We\'re Going to Take this Morning. It Says
What Specific Steps Will Regional Foresters and Other Agency Top
Administrators Take to Make Sure That Unit Managers At the Ground Level
Get this Message, Understand It, Support it And Implement It? And You
Know What? Maybe Each of You Could Stay a ‑‑ Could Say a Couple of Words
to This Question.

Sprague: I\'ll Start. I Think I Mentioned Earlier on One of the Other
Panels. In the Forest Service, We Have the Fire Line Officer Team and
The Team Just Met Last Week. We Put Together a Letter That\'s Going to
All of Our Line Officers in the Forest Service. You All Will Be Getting
it Maybe Some of You Have Already Received it but We\'re Insisting That
That Go to All Line Officers as a Wakeup to the Beginning of this Fire
Season and Thinking about the New Fire Policy as We Move Forward with
It.

Gromo: Go Ahead, Jim.

Hubbard: Ok. At the Risk of Belaboring the Interface Subject, I ‑‑ for
Some Agencies, State Forestry Agencies, There Isn\'t Anything That\'s Of
a Higher Priority Because You\'re Talking about Life and Property. And
of Course You Don\'t Want to Subject Fire Fighters to Any Hazards but
You\'ve Got Public to Protect as Well. So, It\'s Not Too Difficult to
Explain to an Organization, a State Forestry Organization That this Is a
Priority and That We\'ve Got to Do Something about It. We\'ve Got to Get
Ahead of this Issue Which Means Using Fire Back In the System. Not Just
Suppression, Techniques and the Interface. But Making Sure You\'ve Got
the Understanding and the Organization and the Collaboration with the
Other Agencies Is Important to Do ‑‑ to Make Sure Everybody\'s Together
to Go Forward in Implementation.

Paleck: I Think Director Stanton\'s Message Was Fairly Clear And
Onpoint. It Is a Priority with Him. Will Be a Priority with the Regional
Directors. It Will Be a Priority with Park Superintendents.

Ladd: Within the Fish and Wildlife Service, Our Regional Coordinators
Are a Critical Component to Making this Happen. I Know in Our Region,
He\'s Very Active and Dealing with the Rest Of the Direct Rate in the
Region. And We Have Asked for this Whole Topic of Fire Planning and Our
Fire Management Program to Be Included in a National Director Ate
Meeting Discussion Topic this Summer. So Hopefully That Will Crank up
All Regions and Top Management Of All Regions.

Wells: We\'re Headed down the Same Road in the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Briefly, it Is Communication, Education and Training. And We\'re Headed
in That Direction. We\'re Going to Do That. We\'re Committed to It.

Marquis‑Brong: and for the Bureau of Land Management, a Lot Of
Discussion at the Upper Levels All the Way down Through the Field Level.
And this Telecast Today Is Intended to Do Just That. Bring it down All
the Way Through the Organization to Managers Down at the Lowest Level So
That If There Are ‑‑ If They\'re Not On Board, Hopefully They\'re
Getting the Message Loud and Clear Today They Need to Get on Board.
It\'s Here. The Time Is Now.

Gromo: I Want to Thank Our Panelists. Our Time Really Is up Now. Thanks
for Joining Us Today. We Hope We Gave You Some New Insight and Some
Ideas or Inspired You to Think Seriously about What You Can Do to
Integrate Wildland Fire into Your Management Philosophy and to Implement
Other Actions Outlined in the Federal Wildland Fire Policy Report. If
You Weren\'t Able to Tape this Program, and You Would like a Copy of it
to Share with Others Who Weren\'t Able to Tune in Today, Call BLM\'s
National Training Center. And Don\'t Forget to Send Us a Fax Showing
Your Location and the Number of People, by Agency, Who Attended the
Teleconference. We Hope You Have a Very Successful and Safe Fire Season.

Announcer: NTC\'s Internet Address Is ww.ntc.blm.gov. Transcripts of
this Program and Other NTC Broadcasts Are Available on the Home Page.
For More Information on Upcoming Distance Learning Events, as Well as
Traditional Courses, Call the Training Center at 602‑906‑5500. Or Visit
the Home Page. This Broadcast Has Been a Production of the BLM National
Training Center.