**Wildland Fire Update 2002**

A Telecast Originating from the

BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona

May 2, 2002

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: The National Interagency Fire Center presents live from the
BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona\... Wildland Fire
Update 2002. An interactive telecast on the challenges and opportunities
of this year\'s fire season. And now, Larry Hamilton.

L. Hamilton: Good morning. Welcome to our overview of the fire season to
date and what we might expect over the next few months. In this program
we\'re going to look at the National Fire Plan and just where we are
this year as far as fuels, weather and moisture conditions. What we\'ll
also talk about is safety and wildland urban interface. And how the fire
program should be tied to our other natural resource management efforts.
We\'ll also take a look at some on the ground examples of fuel
treatments, fire rehabilitation, and near the end of the broadcast,
we\'ll hear important messages from the secretaries of the interior and
agriculture. We want this broadcast to provide you with information that
you can use for the remainder of this fire season and beyond. In
addition to our Federal agency audience watching today, we\'d also like
to welcome our state, tribal and rural partners who are also tuning in,
as well as anyone else who may be joining or watching us today. You\'ll
have the chance to participate during this broadcast. Your participation
will help make this broadcast a success, and we\'re looking forward to
you participating. If you have a question, please call us. This is a
toll‑free number.We\'ll also get to your questions as soon as we can.
For those of you with the push‑to‑talk equipment at your downlink site,
we\'re going to use that system so that you can interact directly with
us. When you do use push‑to‑talk, please tell us your name, agency and
where you\'re calling from. That will be real helpful. To help manage
this, we\'ll let you know when it\'s ok to push to talk by putting a
green light in the upper corner of your screen like this. So when you
see that green light, you\'ll be good to go with push to talk. If you
didn\'t get the phone number and pass code for your agency\'s phone
bridge, please call our operator. Much of what we\'ll be talking about
today is tied to the National Fire Plan. If you\'d like more information
about the plan, please visit WWW.fireplan.gov, and another good source
of information and site with multiple links is the NIFC homepage which
you can find at WWW.NIFC.gov. I think that about takes care of all the
housekeeping items so to kick things off and give us an overview of what
things are looking like so far and a little bit ahead, let\'s go to my
co‑host, Kent Connaughton. He is actually over in our briefing center.
Kent, are you there this morning?

K. Connaughton:, I am Larry. Good morning. It\'s a pleasure to be
working with you. It\'s also a pleasure to be representing the many
agency administrators who with their line officer responsibilities are
responsible for fire management leadership. So good to be with you,
Larry.

L. Hamilton: Kent, good to have you here. We\'re looking forward to your
first panel.

K. Connaughton: Larry, I can\'t think of a better time for this update
to occur. When I left the hotel this morning on both local and national
news, the fires that are burning in Arizona right now were major story
items and I know there are fires burning elsewhere in the west as well.
Now, with me this morning is Rick Ochoa, fire weather program manager
from the National Interagency Fire Center. Hi, Rick.

R. Ochoa: Good morning.

K. Connaughton: And next to Rick is Tom Wordell, wildland fire analyst
for the National Interagency Fire Center. Together Tom and Rick provide
predictive services. Hello, Tom.

T. Wordell: Good morning, Kent. I\'m glad to be here and I hope I can
provide some information that will help folks understand what kind of
fire season we\'re going to have this year.

K. Connaughton: And completing our panel is Clint Cross, wildland urban
interface specialist from the National Park Service. Clint is going to
talk about fire behavior. Good morning, Clint.

C. Cross: Good morning, Kent. It certainly is good to be here and we do
have a lot of good information.

K. Connaughton: Rick, why don\'t we start things off with you and look
at the upcoming fire weather.

R. Ochoa: Sure. First, let\'s look at this first map here and this shows
precipitation since last October. Basically what you can see here, this
is normalized rainfall since last October, and basically the red and
purple areas show the driest areas while the green areas are wet. You
can see in the east we\'ve had the driest fall and winter on record for
places like from Virginia up through Maine. Out west you can see the
dryness extends from Southern California across the southwest and the
southern great basin and then on up over the Rockies from Colorado to
eastern Montana. Next we\'re going to take a look at the snowpack map as
of April 1st, and you can see that generally most of the storms have
dumped quite a bit of precipitation over the northwest. Further south
you can see here across the central Sierra all the way up through
Montana here we\'ve had generally 70 to 90% of snowfall. Further south,
over Colorado, you can see here we\'ve had about ‑‑ only about half of
the normal snowfall. So it\'s their second driest winter ever. Then on
south into Arizona and New Mexico, some of those places have only had
about 25% of the normal snowfall. Next we\'re going to take a look at
the current drought conditions and, again, you can see in the red and
brown, those are the driest areas. So we have two big areas, out east
and in the west. Basically the reason for that is we\'ve had a storm
track that\'s been going up to the northwest and also one here through
the Mississippi river Valley area and those areas have picked up the
bulk of the rainfall, leaving the east coast and the interior west quite
dry. You\'ll also notice for Alaska we have some dryness showing up in
the interior portions. Right now we\'re going to take a look at the
weather outlook for May, and basically what we\'re looking at is above
normal temperatures for the west and southeast, and also continued
dryness down in New Mexico. Looks like the storm track is going to
continue to bring rainfall up in the northwest, and as it comes across,
we\'re only seeing the wind down in the southwest, and it looks like
that same pattern is going to continue for the next week or so. Then
looking forward towards the summertime, it looks like we\'re going to
see warmer than normal temperatures in the west, and also because of a
developing El Nino, we could also see some dry conditions developing in
the northwest and northern Rockies later on this summer and into the
fall. So that\'s a look at the weather conditions around the area for
the next couple of months here. So now I\'m going to turn it over to Tom
Wordell and Tom is going to tell us about what that means in terms of
the fire season.

T. Wordell: Thanks, Rick. I would like to spend a few minutes discussing
what kind of a fire season we\'re anticipating and also share some
information on fire danger. This next slide highlights the areas we
expect to have both above and below fire activity in 2002. As you can
see, some of the red areas are the primary areas of concern in the
spring and early summer are the southwest, Colorado, southern great
basin, Southern California, kind of this area down in here, we really ‑‑
we\'ve already seen some large fire activity. We expect that to
continue. Also we may, depending on how weather conditions persist, see
some activity in north Florida up through Southern Carolina up in here,
and also there\'s more recently some dryness in southeast portions of
Alaska in the panhandle. By mid‑summer we expect a long‑term drought
conditions to result in above‑normal fire activity in the northern
Rockies and Rocky Mountain areas, extending eastward into portions of
Minnesota. Kind of this area in here. And despite the heavy recent
rainfalls in the mid‑atlantaic and northeast coastal areas, they still
have a considerable potential for an active fall fire season due to
long‑term drought conditions they are experiencing. So kind of this area
from mid‑atlantic up to the northeast states in the fall we\'re
anticipating pretty active burning conditions. The areas we expect to
have below average fire activity this season are the Pacific northwest,
west of the cascade crest and a group of states from northeast Texas to
Ohio. Because of the recent fire activity in the southwest, I would like
to discuss their situation in more detail, and this next slide shows
departure from average images for the southwest area comparing the
second week in April 2002 to the same week in the year 2000. These
images serve as a good reference by revealing how the vegetation is
trending from a foliage moisture standpoint year to year. The image for
2002 corresponds well to the below normal fuel moistures currently being
reported across much of the southwest. This next slide shows energy
release component, and it\'s a mesher of expected fire line intensity,
and it depicts energy release component in the southwest area. Note how
it\'s been setting ‑‑ we\'ve kind of jumped ahead here one, but it\'s
been setting records early in the spring season, and the current ERC
values are exceeding the 97th percentile. This slide we\'re looking ‑‑
well, bouncing around. If we could come back to the slide I had up, it
would be nice. A worst case trend line was developed by the southwest
area predictive service group as part of their seasonal assessment, and
it was posted in mid‑march. And the trend line has done a really good
job of matching up the current conditions with what was forecast, and we
expect those conditions to remain at or above the maximum values that
have historically been looked at over the last 25 years from now until
the early part of July when the monsoon season starts. Early extreme
fire damage being observed not only in Arizona and New Mexico, but also
in Southern California and the southern portions of the great basin in
Colorado. The situation is expected to cause be a normally high demands
on resources early this season, and many of these areas have already
submitted severity requests for additional support. Clint, I understand
you have some information on fire behavior you would like to discuss.

C. Cross: Yeah, sure do, Tom. We\'ve got some specific information we
would like to give you on fire behavior, and one of the things we\'d
like to do here is, as you\'ve seen from Tom\'s presentation on the
wildfire potential map that he had up, there\'s a significant portion of
the country with areas with above‑average potential for this year. What
I\'m going to do is I\'m going to focus on those areas and highlight the
fire behavior that you can expect. Generally what you can expect this
year is much of the same fire behavior as you have seen in the year
2000. Active nighttime burning can be expected, fires burning under
multiple burning periods w a high difficulty of control, as well as
extreme fire behavior. Such as long‑range spawned of spawning fire
whirls. The fire season got off to an early start in the southwest and
southern Colorado, thus leading to a longer fire season. Expect slightly
longer burning periods due to weather and burning conditions. Fires
which are innocent in appearance will transition quickly from
surface‑to‑air annual fuels when low humidity and winds are present
because of low live and dead fuel moistures. Also thousand‑how fuels did
not recover over the winter and without snowfall, the fuel bed did not
compact. Fine fire fuels are still available from last year.
Firefighters should be aware that heavy fuels will contribute to fire
line intensity, so after the flaming front passes, intense residual heat
will still be present. Due to current weather predictions, mop‑up times
will be extended and more resources need for initial attack. Also longer
commitment time for containment and control. With the drought in the
Atlantic coast states likely to continue, you can expect a similar fire
season as in the fall of 2001. Weather patterns will likely keep the
summer slow as normal with Florida being the exception still having to
go through the may‑June portion of the fire season. Fires burning over
multiple burning periods, active nighttime burning and extreme fire
behavior will be likely unless conditions improve. Size up for initial
attack should start before arriving at the fire. Keep current on
conditions. Check fire indices daily and make sure you are looking at
her beige us and woody fuel moistures and looking at your 100 and
thousand‑hour time lag fuel moistures to determine long‑term drying
conditions. Also, you want to look and determine local thresholds. If
you\'re unaware of your local thresholds, ask. You can look at fire
weather conditions, including wind, temperature and humidity
combinations, Haynes index, time of the year, other local influences to
judge the likelihood of extreme fire behavior. Remember, when fuel
moistures are breaking all‑time lows, fires can transition quickly, and
you need to continue to look at and monitor your wind, temperature and
humidity. That\'s what we got for you. Thanks. Back to you, Kent.

K. Connaughton: Thanks very much, Rick, Tom and Clint. Now it\'s the
time for us to turn this program over to you folks and to take your
questions. Those of you with the push‑to‑talk technology, now is the
time to activate your units. For those of you who are going to phone in,
please do so now, or send us your faxes. We\'re going to be happy to
take your questions. These folks are well positioned to answer any
questions that you\'ve got. On the environmental conditions that face us
now and in the upcoming fire season. So who out there is first? Let me
take a question here that might start us off, and this one is actually
for Rick. It will provide a historical perspective. Rick, how would you
compare the upcoming fire season to the one that we had in the year
2000?

R. Ochoa: Well, the year 2000 was unique because of the length and
breadth of the fire season. It started very early in the southeast and
we had quite an active season in the west. This one is not exactly like
that in terms of its overall scope. There are some differences. One
difference being the southwest this year is much drier than it was last
time in 2000.

K. Connaughton: Thanks very much, Rick. Anyone out there with a
question? We would like to hear from you now.

Caller: Gary from Susanville.

K. Connaughton: Please go ahead.

Caller: My question, and this is regarding majority of just Northern
California, looking at the 30‑90‑day precip map, looks like that\'s
still pretty current. The question was, do you have any information on
the live fuel moistures that have been input into the system yet as far
as the trend?

K. Connaughton: Live fuel moistures.

T. Wordell: I can try to answer that. So far we have not heard much back
from Northern California in terms of live fuel moistures. Based on the
winter precipitation, we\'re feeling like things are at average or above
average for this time of year. Most of the precipitation from about
Susanville north was above average. From there south it started dropping
down slightly to the southern Sierra area.

K. Connaughton: Thanks for your question, Larry. Appreciate you joining
us this morning, too. Who else out there has got a question? We\'re
ready for them now. Anyone out there? Ok. Well ‑‑

Caller: Gary from Susanville again.

Mount raw near.

K. Connaughton: I didn\'t get your name. Councilperson repeat it?

Caller: This is Linda at mount rain RAINIER.

K. Connaughton: Welcome, Linda. We\'re approximately 20 minutes into the
program doing the first question and answer period. Now I would like to
move along and conclude this question and answer period. Larry, we\'re
going to move to you. Before we do that, however, I would like to thank
the panel members for this superb summary of environmental conditions
that we are facing this summer. Larry, over to you.

L. Hamilton: That was an excellent presentation, Kent. I think what\'s
kind of amazing about the presentation is that when we originally
planned this program, we were thinking this would be more of a preseason
program than a mid‑season program, and I think we\'re going to find
we\'re getting an early start in some areas. We\'re like seven, eight
weeks ahead of schedule with the fires that we\'re encountering. This is
going to be particularly timely for this next panel that we\'re going to
have. Yesterday the national fire leadership council met in Washington
D.C. This is a group that is comprised of the Bureau directors from the
department of interior, the chief of the Forest Service, the
undersecretary from Department of Agriculture and our chief of staff
from the department of interior. We\'re going to be receiving a memo
here probably either late they are week or first part of next week from
the Bureau directors and the chief of the Forest Service that is going
to be encouraging us to use our resources and share them in a way
that\'s probably a little unique in that it\'s going to be earlier than
what we\'ve done in the past and also trying to get our positions filled
a little sooner than in the past and we\'re seeing severity funding
requests this year a lot earlier than we have in the past. That makes it
particularly timely for the panel that we\'re going to have here today.
With me are the fire directors from the different Federal agencies as
well as one of our state partners and I would like to introduce those
folks at this point. First I would like to introduce Jim Stires from the
Bureau of Indian Affairs. Thanks for being here this morning.

J. Stires: Glad to be here, Larry.

L. Hamilton: Look forward to your remarks and comments. Also with us is
eed Edy Williams‑Rhodes, and Edy is going to talk to us about
management, leadership and the fuel situation. Good to see you here this
morning, Edy.

E. Williams‑Rhodes: Good morning, Larry.

L. Hamilton: Our next guest is Roger Spaulding. Rog sir representing the
U.S. Fish

&

Wildlife Service and Roger is going to visit with us this morning about
the progress that his agency is making so far this year and as a result
of the National Fire Plan. Welcome, Roger.

R. Spaulding: Thanks, Larry. I think we\'ve all got some interesting
things to talk about today.

L. Hamilton: Good. I\'m glad to see you here. Thanks for coming. Next is
Kirk Rowdabaugh, and he is the Arizona state forester and he is here
today to share with us some insights about how the National Fire Plan is
working for states, and he is probably going to be heading from here
down to some fire activity already occurring here in Arizona. So we
really appreciate you being able to take time out your schedule.

K. Rowdabaugh: Thanks, Larry. It is a pleasure. I do take particular vac
of this opportunity to talk briefly about what National Fire Plan means
to states and cooperating fire departments and communities.

L. Hamilton: Great that will we will look forward to your comments. And
completing our first panel this morning is Sue Vap from the National
Park Service and sue will tell us about what is happening with fire in
the National Park Service. Sue, welcome and good to see you this
morning?

S. Vap: Nice to see you, Larry and I have a great story to share this
morning about prescribed fires, smoke management and community
partnership.

L. Hamilton: Great. We will look forward to that. I guess what we would
like to do this morning, if you don\'t mind, Jim, is have you kick it
off for us.

J. Stires: That\'s great. I was watching CNN last night, and I kind of
took note of the large fire they have in southeast Arizona and I think
it\'s going to be very relevant to some of the things I talk about, some
of the difficulties and decision making and setting priorities in these
challenging situations.

L. Hamilton: Good.

J. Stires: I would like to really emphasize the importance of assuring
that firefighter and public safety is our number one priority in our
operations every time all the time. Over the past five or six years
we\'ve had an awful lot of policy documents generated because of the
National Fire Plan and because of the high tempo, high stress operations
we\'ve had in the fire program for quite a while, and each and every one
of those documents has reaffirmed that firefighterer and public safety
is absolutely the number one priority. What does this mean? It means
that we ‑‑ really it boiled down to the simplest terms, it means we have
to follow our agency policies, standard operating procedures, we have to
do a good job at managing risks on fires, we have to follow the ten
standard orders and LCES and all those basic day‑to‑day things we do in
the course of our operations. So risk management is absolutely key to
this thing, but there are many, many other things to make sure that
wildland, the firefighterer and public safety remains our number one
priority. That seems fairly simple, but there will be times and I think
all of you out there in the community know it, where it won\'t be. There
will be times when there will be challenges. There will be pressures put
upon you to save a home or some critical resource that\'s important to
the community or to individuals, there will be political pressures put
upon you to step away from that important first priority wildland and
firefighter safety and I got to tell you, that that\'s something that we
just can\'t do. My experience has been in going in after accidents or
incidents and reviewing these types of situations is that we tend to
lose sight of that priority in small steps. It\'s rarely a large step
that takes us to a place we don\'t want to go that gives us the
unintended results. So I really would like to emphasize that every
wildland firefighter out there in the community needs to recommit to
having an unwavering commitment to our agency policies and standard
operating procedures. That will hold you very well to keep you focused
on the priorities that we need to be focused on. I would like to also
mention that the only real measure of our success in the wildland fire
community will be the firefighting safety record. So, with that, I would
like to conclude my presentation by wishing all the firefighterers out
there a safe and successful firefighting season and keep that priority
in mind. Larry?

L. Hamilton: Jim, thanks for that pertinent and Jermaine message. I
think all of us are concerned about safety and it\'s something that we
continue to stress and really appreciate your comments here this
morning. Thank you. Edy, I think we\'ll go to you next.

E. Williams‑Rhodes: All right. Good morning. It\'s my privilege today to
speak to you on behalf of the U.S. Forest Service national and regional
fire directors. I am the director for the southwestern region. All
indications are that we\'re entering another severe fire season in
several parts of our country this year. This is certainly true for my
home area here in the southwest where a combination of factors makes
this fire season one of the most dangerous in memory. In light of this,
I want to take this opportunity to emphasize three areas all in relation
to firefighterer and public safety. They are leadership, risk management
and situational awareness as relates to hazardous fuels conditions.
First of all, leadership. Many of the hard lessons learned over the past
few years tell us that competent and confident leadership is the most
essential element of successful wildland firefighting. As participants
in wildland fire management, we all occupy a position of leadership and
have a circle of influence. As leaders, safety then becomes not just a
platitude but a responsibility to each of us. As leaders, we must take
charge, we must motivate others, demonstrate initiative, communicate
effectively, and provide appropriate supervision. As leaders, we\'re
responsible for doing the right thing in any and every situation. As a
crew or a squad or member of an incident management team, we owe to it
one another to focus on what is right instead of who is right. As
leaders, we take seriously the code of conduct for fire suppression. We
respect the ten standard firefighting orders as firm rules of engagement
and do not ignore the situations that shout \"watch out.\" In terms of
risk management, wildland firefighting is a high‑risk, who‑consequence
profession. It\'s in an environment surrounded by uncertainty and
danger. Unsafe conditions must be mitigated through our abilities to
recognize, evaluate and manage risk. We must understand and use the risk
management process, including situational awareness, hazard assessment,
hazard control, decision making and evaluation. When we are successful,
it is usually because we maintain a high state of situational awareness.
We must notice the obvious, recognize the unexpected in the making and
stop tragedy before it starts. One of the simplest approaches that I
know of to do all of the above is to faithfully practice LCES.
Evaluating and integrating LCES in everything you do will go a long way
toward addressing the 10 and 18. Let\'s talk about hazardous fuels
conditions. In terms of the situational awareness, we must recognize the
magnitude of the hazardous fuels situation in the United States and
it\'s effect on firefighter and public safety. The fuel complexes that
we work in today are more flammable and more extensive than ever before
and continue to accumulate at an alarming pace. The increasing intermix
of this situation with communities presents a phenomenal challenge to
all of us. It took many years to reach this point, and it will take
considerable time, money and workforce to mitigate it. The hazardous
fuels problem is so great that the solution must include the best
efforts of all the land management agencies working together as well as
private landowners, and we need the understanding and support of the
public. As agency partners, we must work together to identify and focus
the highest priority areas, such as the wild LAN urban interface. To
summarize, here is a simple formula for practicing leadership and risk
management if that you see it, say it and fix it. Let me wish each of
you a safe and productive summer. Think in terms of a successful fire
season measured not in terms of the fewest acres burned, but in terms of
everyone, both firefighterers and the public, going home safely to their
families. On behalf of all of the Forest Service Fire and Aviation
managers and directors, please accept my sincere thanks for all that you
do.

L. Hamilton: That\'s a great message, Edy, and I guess I want to check
to see if I\'m hearing this right. Sounds like to me what you\'re
challenging us all with is to be leaders regardless of where we work in
the organization. We have that responsibility as individuals, is that
right?

E. Williams‑Rhodes: Absolutely, Larry.

L. Hamilton: Next I would like to have Roger share some of his thoughts
and insights from the Fish

&

Wildlife Service. Roger?

R. Spaulding: Thanks, Larry. The five Federal wildland fire bureaus
along with our cooperators in the states, tribes and local communities,
have been working under the National Fire Plan since its conception
following the fires of 2000. The heart of the National Fire Plan is
fuels management. We all know fuels treatments in the wildland urban
interface are important, but equally important is the ecological role of
fire on the landscape. Ultimately the goal of the National Fire Plan is
to bring the nation\'s land back in balance with natural fire intervals
wherever possible. The Fish

&

Wildlife Service\'s history of using prescribed fire as one of our
primary habitat management tools has placed us at the forefront of this
effort. A regular application of prescribed fire on thousands of
management units at hundreds of refuges throughout the National Wildlife
Refuge System has maintained much our land in a condition with healthy
fire intervals and vigorous habitat. We need to keep it that way. Our
prescribed fire program has a long history we should be proud of. We
need to say so. Next to continuing to meet our fuels management targets,
the most important thing we can do is to tell our unique story, that
wise habitat management is wise fire management. Look for your suc says.
Make them known to your neighbors, your cooperators, your congressional
representatives. Work with your refuge and your hatchery public use
staffs. Talk to your regional public affairs people. Get the word out to
the press, TV and radio that the Fish

&

Wildlife Service is doing a great job managing our lands and protecting
people and resources. And make sure you include ours and the
department\'s management while you\'re getting the word out. They need
to know just how well you\'re all doing this important job. If we show
them our successes, they\'ll continue to support us. You\'ve already
heard about the importance of emphasizing safety from some of the other
panel members today and I\'m not going to belabor that point. I know
you\'re all dedicated professionals and I know you all give 110% in your
efforts towards the service\'s missions opinion I know you will carry
out our program goals while always remembering that your safety is first
every time, all the time. So thanks for being there this morning and
thanks for listening. Larry?

L. Hamilton: That\'s a great message, Roger, and it\'s something that
applies to all of us. So thanks for that input. Next I would like to go
to Kirk, who is the state forester for Arizona.

K. Rowdabaugh: Before we get into some of the benefits of the National
Fire Plan, I want to take a moment to reemphasize some of the safety
points that have been made and in particular as they relate to the
critical transition periods we have between initial attack and extended
attack and between less complex and more complex fire environments. We
have alluded to the fact that we have a big fire going on in Southeast
Arizona right now, in fact, sue and Edy and I just got off a southwest
area group call before this teleconference, and New Mexico actually has
an even greater problem than we do and both these fires emphasize the
point of how rapidly things can change in the fire environment and how
important it is that all firefighters maintain a constant alertness to
the current situation and continually reevaluate their position
constantly. The fire we\'re working on now started as a typical wildland
fire, went to a type II, mostly on a National Forest, had, oh, a couple
thousand acres involved and then in a matter of about six hours, blew up
to a 30,000‑acre fire that involved many rural fire departments,
threatened a couple of our communities, burned onto a national military
reservation, and the complexity went from high to extreme in just a very
short order. It\'s during those transition periods, I think all of us
know, that we need to be particularly ‑‑ pay attention to many of the
safety issues, and in particular communications issues and make sure
that you know who is out there and what they\'re doing and where they
are and that you have established good communications with everybody on
the fire. The participation of the rural fire departments, I think s a
good segue into the National Fire Plan and some of the benefits to
communities. The National Fire Plan recognized the importance of the
rural and volunteer fire departments in protecting our communities at
risk, and it also recognizes the communities themselves and their
abilities to help protect themselves. So the National Fire Plan has
tremendous benefits for the rural fire departments in terms of increased
ability to train and equip these fire departments. It has lots of
benefits to the communities in their opportunities to do prevention
programs such as fire wise training and to do hazardous fuel reduction
projects as well. The National Fire Plan realized all boats are lifted
on a rising tide and provides tremendous resources to all of us whether
we be Federal agencies or state agencies, rural fire departments or
rural communities to participate in protecting these communities from
the threat of wildfire.

L. Hamilton: Thank you, Kirk. Really appreciate that message, especially
the Federal partners that are here, because our bosses keep asking us
the question about, is this helping the states and the local and rural
fire departments? We really appreciate that input. I\'m looking forward
to your story, sue. So are you ready to share your story with us?

S. Vap: I am, Larry. You know, smoke management is an issue no matter
whether we\'re having a prescribed fire or a wildland fire and I had an
an opportunity to meet John Scott, the park superintendent for pea ridge
a national military park, it\'s about 4,300 acres and it\'s located in
northern Arkansas, and it\'s about a battlefield from the civil war era,
and the union victory at pea ridge was critically important because it
no longer allowed the confederacy to gain control of Missouri and it
also put the union in a great position to have control of the
Mississippi river. So the park has a unique opportunity, because they
have very few improvements within the battlefield and one of the ways to
continue to make it look like it did in 1862 is through prescribed fire.
But, of course, when you do a prescribed fire, you do put smoke in the
air and you do inconvenience people, and it truly can become a safety
issue as well. So the park superintendent worked very hard with the
local community and came up with a program that talks about, \"we are
not just a monument made up of marble and stone, but we are a living
landscape.\" So that when visitors come to the military park, they have
the opportunity to actually have the same feelings that the civil war
soldiers had when they went to battle 140 years ago in 1862. So it gives
us an opportunity to look at the hazardous fuels at pea ridge, but to
also take care of a cultural resource that we have and to truly provide
the public with an experience unlike anyplace else. So this is just a
wonderful success story that the superintendent and the community folks
and all the folks in the park ‑‑ it\'s a small staff, only 10 folks ‑‑
and they all sat down and worked this out together and had a great
understanding of how important it was that we have smoke, but it would
only last for a short period of time, but it would have such long‑term
benefits. And, Larry, I know there are lots of other success stories
like this out there, not just in the National Park Service, but
throughout all the wildland fire management agencies, where folks are
sitting at the table together and truly working on the ultimate reasons
for the work that we do, be it a prescribed fire, be it a wildland fire,
and now that we\'re getting right into the heart of wildland fire
season, having the community folks understand what\'s going on. We just
couldn\'t ask for a better opportunity to do this with the money that
we\'ve had to bring us together for ‑‑ beforehand for prescribed fire
projects, wildland urban interface projects and then also to include
them as we\'re moving into this wildland fire season. So I\'m real proud
of the successes that are out there and I\'d like to take the
opportunity to thank all of our folks who are working so hard in the
collaborative arena. It\'s not easy, but it sure is worth it.

L. Hamilton: That\'s an outstanding story, sue and thanks for sharing it
with us.

S. Vap: Glad to do it, Larry.

L. Hamilton: I didn\'t introduce myself as a panel member, but I\'d like
to take this opportunity to provide a season update for the agency I
work for, which is the Bureau of Land Management. We all accomplish much
in 2001, which was the first year of working under the National Fire
Plan. Think of it\... we conducted an unparalleled recruitment and
hiring effort. We formed hundreds of new partnerships and strengthened
existing ones. Despite difficult conditions, we had a relatively
moderate fire season last year. Our working relationships with the
states, communities and the rural fire departments improved
dramatically. And we began to reduce the accumulation of fuels
throughout the nation at an unprecedented rate. Too often when the word
accountability is spoken, people in the fire community cringe, mostly
because you\'ve been conditioned that way. Accountability generally
means that an error has been made and someone will be held, yeah,
accountable for it. But accountability, I think, works both ways. When
things go right, when things go well, people should be held accountable
for the good things that they\'ve accomplished. So allow me for a moment
to hold all of you accountable for everything that went right last
season and so far this season. Congratulations on your good work. We\'ll
need to prove ourselves every step of the way this season, too. We\'ll
have the eyes of Congress, our partners in the states and communities,
rural fire departments and others watching us all the way. We welcome
that. It will give us the chance to show that we are accountable for the
way we conduct ourselves, how we fight fire, how we spend each taxpayer
dollar. It will offer us the opportunity to prove that we know how to be
safe, watch out for the public, manage fire and protect valuable natural
and cultural resources. So a second congratulations is in order for all
of you because you do so very well. Be safe out there once again, and
let\'s look forward to being held accountable in demonstrating that all
of us, Federal and state agencies, our rural partners and others, are
the best in the world at what we do. A couple of years ago we heard a
lot of talk about it being the worst fire season in 50 years. Let\'s
turn that around in 2002 and let the accounts of this year say it was
perhaps the best ever. So good luck to each of you this season, and now
I think what we\'d like to do is take a few minutes and answer some
questions. My experience with the fire community is that we\'re not shy,
so we\'d like to use the push‑to‑talk technology, the green box is
occupy your screen and those of you would that like to call in or send a
fax, this is a great opportunity to interact with the fire directors
that we have with us here this morning. So do we have any push‑to‑talk
questions? We\'ll start with those first. If you don\'t ask the panel
members questions here, I\'ve got some questions I\'m going to ask them,
and that\'s going to make them real nervous. So you could let them off
the hook. If not, I\'m going to go right for one of my favorite
questions. Anybody? All right. This is a question for any of you that
would like to respond. How important is it, do you think, for the
communities to be involved?

I think it\'s pretty obvious that we can\'t ‑‑ the job is so big and so
complicated we can\'t do it ourselves. If you look at any situation
report on any fire, you\'ll see that it\'s a mix of local, state and
Federal agencies. Certainly National Fire Plan emphasis on all
collaborative planning at the local level would tell you we cannot do
any of these things ourselves.

L. Hamilton: Kirk, did you have ‑‑

K. Rowdabaugh: I would agree. The communities are involved regardless
wave we think the importance is. These communities think it\'s extremely
important. The point has been driven home over the last few years, the
community interest has elevated to just where you\'d hope it would be.
All they\'re asking for now is an opportunity to participate in their
own determination of these things, and the National Fire Plan gives us a
lot of resources to assist those commune keys in do ‑‑ communities in
doing the projects they are doing and initiated themselves.

L. Hamilton: Excellent. We have a fax here and this is a question that
we\'ve heard several times before, but I think it\'s a really relevant
question, and so let\'s see who would like to take a stab at this. The
question is: The BLM\'s seasonal hiring and other agency seasonal hiring
seems to be a disappointment because we\'re trying to institute quick
hire. The question really is: Why don\'t you allow field input into
these hiring systems? Anybody want to take a shot at that one?

S. Vap: I can. Well, I think we are trying to allow field input into
these systems. We\'ve recently looked at a comprehensive strategy for
hiring and retention and recruitment. So we are trying to give ourselves
the biggest breadth of opportunities we can. So quick hire is one of the
tools we will use and we are going to look at more systems that are
going to allow us to hire at the local level more easily and more
quickly.

L. Hamilton: Good. We\'ve got a phone call coming in, so while we\'re
getting that ready to come up on the screen here, I have another
question that we hear quite a bit from folks in the field, and that is:
What is the future of National Fire Plan funding? Anybody want to take a
shot at that one?

I think the funding situation is relatively secure. We see a stable
budget for at least the next couple of years. So I think we\'re in
pretty good shape to continue the efforts we started in 2001.

L. Hamilton: Ok. Good. Anyelse want to add something?

K. Rowdabaugh: Just to chime in quickly, funding for the National Fire
Plan has been one of the key priorities for the governors and there has
been a lot of dialogue with the administration, lot of dialogue with
Congress. The governors are very much interested in maintaining this
level of funding for the long‑haul, and that commitment is there for the
long‑haul from our governors as well.

L. Hamilton: Ok. Any push‑to‑talk questions at this point? Did I hear
somebody push the button?

Caller: Gary from Susanville.

L. Hamilton: Gary, go ahead.

Caller: Sounds like you\'re having re verb over there on your end.

L. Hamilton: It\'s reverberating in my ear, Gary, but I can handle it.
So let\'s hear the question.

Caller: This has to do with basically resources and severity. We\'re
talking about these geographical locations involving high indices and
the droughts that you\'ve already indicated. How have we been doing as
far as interagency mobilization of moving resources to these locations,
and in addition to that, with what\'s going on in the war syndrome, is
that having any direct effect of activating the National Guard, or is
that going to hamper any of that this year?

L. Hamilton: Ok. Edy? Go ahead Rick.

R. Spaulding: I think there are going to be some impacts as a result of
the 9/11 tragedy, as clearly our ability to mobilize will ‑‑ we\'ll
still be able to do that, but there will be some impacts on individuals
as a result of the increased security measures. Additionally, should we
reach the level that we have to mobilize military troops this summer,
it\'s not likely that we\'ll be able to have an open‑ended use of
military. It looks like we\'ll probably be restricted to only one or two
battalions and we\'ll have to make do after that.

L. Hamilton: Ok. Edy, did you have something you wanted to add?

E. Williams‑Rhodes: Sure. We have been very well supported this year in
the southwestern area as far as severity funding and being able to bring
on our own resources early. We\'ve been firefighting now for six weeks,
and we\'re in an extreme situation now almost every day. I would like to
say that nationally, because of such an early fire season, we\'ve had a
lot of trouble getting resources from out of the area as people are
ramping up more slowly in other parts of the country. I was very glad to
here that NIFC is now preparedness level II and we have also region ‑‑
the geographic areas in the southwest Pacific as well as the Rocky
Mountain geographic area now having activity. So I predict our
escalation will be fairly quick and I believe you will be hearing more
about that later in the program.

L. Hamilton: Thanks, Edy. We have time for one phone call here, and we
have Mike in Vancouver. Mike, can you hear me? Mike, are you there? I
think we lost Mike. No, he\'s not coming up. Ok. Well, let ‑‑ he\'s not
coming up on the board here. I can see him, but he\'s not there.

Caller: Can you hear me now?

L. Hamilton: Are you, there Mike?

Caller: I\'m here.

L. Hamilton: Welcome. It wasn\'t easy getting through, but what\'s your
question.

Caller: A question on accountability. You know, we talk about it a lot.
We\'ve had another investigation with what happened in Washington last
year at 30 mile. We put together an interagency review team. I know one
of the senators out here was pushing for independent investigations.
Will we ever go to independent investigations? It seems strange that the
fox is the one that looks in the hen house here.

L. Hamilton: Ok. Anybody want to take a shot at that? If not, I think
I\'ve got the answer. Ok. The panel is smiling. I\'m answer the
question. Actually, there was legislation introduced, and it was
attached to a bill that was not passed in Congress, to set up an
independent review kind of organization, and so that didn\'t happen with
this latest bill that was introduced. So ‑‑ and it will be up to the
Congress whether a separate agency or entity gets created. So that\'s
something that could still happen in the future. So we\'ll stay tuned
for that. Good question. Thank you. Well, I would like to thank our
panel members, Jim, Edy, Roger, Kirk, sue, thanks for being with us.
Great job. And look forward to working with you this fire season. Thanks
for joining us. At this point we\'d like to go back to our briefing
center where Kent is standing by with some specialists who can give us
an overview about our current situation regarding resources, which will
be very relevant to some of the questions that were asked here. So,
Kent?

K. Connaughton: Thanks, Larry. I really appreciate this opportunity to
introduce this panel. We\'re going to shift gears here to provide you
some insight into the systems that we have in place to help you with
your suppression responsibilities. With me is Neal Hitchcock, the
National Interagency Coordination Center in Boise, Idaho. Good morning,
Neal.

N. Hitchcock: Good morning, Kent. I am excited to be here and try out
this new technology which I think is a great way to communicate to a
large number of people.

K. Connaughton: And from the Forest Service, Mike Rotonda, southwestern
region aviation officer, to tell bus new developments in aviation and
aviation safety. Hello, Mike.

M. Rotonda: Good morning, Kent. Glad to be here.

K. Connaughton: Neal, let\'s start with you.

N. Hitchcock: I\'m going to talk about resources and mobilization in
terms of this, and a lot of my discussion will go back to the previous
caller from Northern California that talked about severity and also
talked about the use of department of defense assets and the National
Guard. Before I start with that, though, I think that people need to
think about preparedness and preparedness is certainly a key emphasis ‑‑
effort for all the agencies right now. With the National Fire Plan, the
Federal agencies were able to hire a lot of additional resources, and
that brings with it some benefits but also some work to be done, because
we\'re still actively trying to build those skill positions that we have
lost over a period of time. So a couple of key emphasis areas is
certainly getting people tuned into training opportunities when they get
it, but probably even more important is making use of each assignment
and driving home the points that are made in training. So the classroom
activity really relates and becomes real when you\'re out on an
assignment. So being a mentor is still a good way to help new employees
and to help each other stay aware and stay alert. Resource availability
is generally stable or increasing in the Federal agencies, but some of
our partners do experience changes from time to time. We do all our
coordination meetings with everyone and those have been ongoing and
still some to go in the interagency realm, but folks like the department
of defense, and including the National Guard, do have some different
missions that they\'re accomplishing at this point. The changes with the
world since 9/11 may reduce some of their capability, but I remember
back when desert shield was first initiated back in the early \'90s,
that very day that that order was given was the same day that we went to
them for help and they did respond. So although long‑term commitment may
change, I think they\'ll be with us there as a partner. Assistance from
Canada is becoming increasingly attractive, primarily because the
Canadians have adopted ICS as their management system. They\'re at about
year two in a five‑year transition process, and I think many of you are
aware in 2000 we had the Canadians down, incident management teams, and
that worked fairly successfully, but even in the future we expect that
to be more successful. We have additional contracted resources that will
be an important part of our workforce and also our state and local
partners that we\'ve talked to in previous discussions here today. So
resource capability continues to ‑‑ continues to improve overall as we
integrate and we share this workload. A couple of things by like to
mention in terms terms of mobilization. When we travel by commercial
air, we are going to be treated just like any other citizen, and that
means some additional security checks. Primarily this is because we
travel on short notice and we often purchase one‑way tickets. So those
are kinds of activities that raise the security interest in us. So it\'s
important to plan on arriving at the airports early, and that is two to
three hours or whatever is recommended at the particular airport you\'re
using. It\'s good to have photo I.D., and certainly don\'t carry all the
things that we have been carrying on your person or in your baggage that
you take on the aircraft. What I\'m talking about is anything that could
be construed as a weapon. Will he they areman tools, buck knives,
anything like that, and there are some good guide ounce websites I will
show you a little later. In your checked baggage make sure you don\'t
have strike‑anywhere matches, any fuels or lubricants, fuse ease,
obviously, that\'s been a rule for a long time and if you are travelling
with chainsaws, make sure they are purged and completely purged. We\'ve
had some episodes with problems with that here locally. This whole
security arena is under a lot of changes. The transportation security
administration is brand‑new, 50,000 employees and they\'re getting
organized. So you\'ll see some differences from place to place around
country. Just be aware that\'s part of our world right now, and as we
discover things, what we\'ll do is try to communicate that information
as best we can. In the short‑term, one key thing to do is coordinated
with your local airports f it\'s where you\'re travelling into or out
of, get with the security personnel, let them know we\'re coming
through, and try to make that process as simple as possible. Now what
we\'d like stood go live to the National Interagency Coordination Center
and speak this morning with Kim Christienson, who is running the shift
there today. Good morning, Kim.

Good morning, Neal. How you doing today?

N. Hitchcock: Very fine. A couple things, I was kind of curious, how is
the fire situation today?

Well, the fire situation today, over the past couple days we\'ve been
primarily focusing our energy on the two fires there in the southwest,
the PINASCO and Ryan fires. They\'ve had some very active fire behavior
the last couple days that has resulted in a significant commitment of
resources.

N. Hitchcock: Ok. I was also interested in terms of significant resource
shortages or what kind of resources are you really struggling hard to
find right now?

Some of the resources that we\'re really struggling with now are a lot
of our overhead types of resources, primarily dispatchers and a lot of
our operations positions, division group supervisors, positions in
security functions. I would like to take this opportunity, too, to
encourage anybody who has a wildland fire qualifications to call in and
report their availability. There are dispatch centers standing by.

N. Hitchcock: Ok. That\'s good to hear. I know we\'ve been completing
the training cycle there at the coordination center at NICC. How is the
staff doing with this activity?

Very well. As you know, we accelerated our hiring here at the national
center and we just completed our training last week. This was really the
first opportunity that our employees had to put their training into
practice, and they all performed remarkably.

N. Hitchcock: Kim, thanks a lot, and appreciate your time this morning.

You\'re welcome.

K. Connaughton: Thanks, Neal. I certainly appreciate that update and
thanks for cutting Kim in this morning to give us the latest information
about what\'s occurring with these fires. Next we would like to take a
look at some aviation issues. Mike?

M. Rotonda: Good morning. I would like to talk a little bit about the
aviation program and how it relates to the ground firefighter. We all
know that aviation has a rule which is we like to have a safe and
effective aviation operation. The second part of that is, we\'re here to
support the ground firefighter. We all know that airplanes don\'t put
out fires. Airplanes and helicopters. People do on the ground and we\'re
here to support you. Aviation safety is a big part of our program, and
one of the tools we use is an accident rate trend analysis. By like to
show you a chart here that will show a little bit about what Forest
Service accidents have been since 1987. This chart is based on 100,000
hours, and it\'s accidents per 100,000 flight hours. If you can see from
1987 to the present, the trend has been going down steadily all the way
through. We\'re proud of that and we\'ve worked hard to achieve that.
However, there\'s one problem area, from 1999 through 2001 the trend has
gone up. Already in the year 2002, with the Forest Service, we\'ve had
four aviation miss happens. If this trend continues on up, this will be
the third consecutive yearly increase and that will be the first time
that has happened since 1987. So as you can see, we have our work cut
out for us. Some of the focus areas that we\'re working on in aviation
safety this year are the mid‑air collision avoidance program. In that
area, we have three focus groups. One is we\'re attempting to install
TCAS, which is the traffic collision avoidance system in all the
Federally contracted air tankers. We have the TCAS system in our lead
planes and that is similar to what the commercial airliners use, and
it\'s been an effective tool in aircraft separation over fires. A second
program in mid‑air collision avoidance we\'re working on is the aircraft
control over large fires. The California division of forestry aviation
group and the Forest Service aviation people in California have been
working together to standardize and formalize how aircraft enter large
fire traffic areas and how they communicate. We applaud them for and
that we think it\'s a step in the right direction. The third area in
mid‑air airspace coordination is the airspace coordination effort led by
Julie Stewart, who is the Forest Service national airspace coordinator.
Julie works with the FAA, the department of defense, the military and
civilian Federal officials to deconflict airspace problems over large
fires. We think that\'s another step in the right direction. The last
two items I\'d like to talk about from aviation safety involve reducing
unnecessary exposure, both for the aviators and the ground firefighters
in two areas. One of them is the use of retardant with our large air
tanker program, and the second one is use of helicopter buckets for what
we call HELImoping operations. Both tools can be effective but we need
to do a good job of risk analysis and make certain it\'s necessary in
order to avoid unnecessary risk for the pilots and the ground personnel.
So in short, our job is here to support you and we want to continue to
run safe and effective aviation operations. Kent?

K. Connaughton: Thanks very much, Mike. I really appreciate that trend
line. I like the long run trend direction. The short run trend direction
is clearly disturbing to you and the rest of us. Here is where I would
like to be as an individual, be in a position where we never again have
to put purple ribbons on our uniforms because of a tragedy that occurred
during the fire season. Next we\'re going to go back to Neal, who is
going to give us an update on an overview of the ROSS System, which is
the new automated system to help us get resources out on the ground more
efficiently. Neal?

N. Hitchcock: Ok. Hello, again. Quickly I would just like to talk about
the resource order and status keeping system. It\'s being implemented
this year. I know people have heard about it for a long time, but we\'re
finally in the position where offices are entering resources, and we
hope to status the availability and location this coming summer.
Currently there\'s over 20,000 different resources that are entered into
the database over, over 15,000 overhead, hundreds of crews, hundreds of
aircraft. , contractors and up to 168 agencies currently. The various
screens provide some information and ways to. Organize. This happens to
talk about the contractors. Whoops, that\'s a little bit wild. But the
contractors here. This screen shows you different functionality as
information is entered in. We have additional releases coming over the
next couple of months, which will increase functionality each time. This
is an availability screen which allows you to display various engines,
for example, here. Over the next 12 months we hope to complete
implementation and bring the whole nation into. Compliance with
utilizing ROSS as a resource order system. This last screen here shows a
request for a division supervisor here, and then down here available
resources. So it\'s going to save time for the dispatchers and it\'s
going to save time for the managers who will be able to have greater
visibility on the resources. Final slide I have here is just some
websites which may be of help for people. There is security information
from the new transportation security agency and the FAA and also some
ROSS information. So with that, I\'ll turn it back to you, Kent.

K. Connaughton: Thanks, a lot, Neal. Certainly impressed with the ROSS
System. It certainly looks like it\'s going to increase both our
efficiency and our effectiveness. An excellent story there. At this
point I believe Neal is going to lead a question and answer segment on
what we\'ve just presented. So I\'ll turn thing over to you, Neal.

N. Hitchcock: Thanks, Kent. We did get a faxed question while we were
doing our presentations from, looks like, the tall timbers research
station. The question was: Have there been attempts to contact the
transportation security agency to get some relief for government
employees travelling on these assignments? The fact is it\'s been
difficult to get to the right person. The agency is so new, it\'s a
moving target. First letter I sent, they sent me back a letter thanking
me for interest in applying for a job with them. However, we continue to
try to build relationships. At this point we\'re not going to be treated
any different than any of the other civilians that we are part of here
in America. So, with that, if there\'s any other questions, any of the
push‑to‑talk questions for us\...

Caller: Neal, this is Sheldon in Utah. I have a question about
implementing ROSS during what looks to be a very difficult fire season.
Have you thought about implementing it in some of those areas where
it\'s not going to be a big impact?

N. Hitchcock: Good question, Sheldon. Yes, that is being planned with
the various geographic areas with all the coordination center people who
would actually carry out the work and also the managers. There\'s a
process in place to certify that data is ready and that management is
ready to go ahead and make that point. Obviously the southwest area, for
example, right now is not planning to be on the front end of
implementation but on the back end. Does that answer your question, sir?

Caller: Yeah. Thanks.

N. Hitchcock: Was there a question from the park service?

Caller: Yes, my name is Tom and I just wanted to\...

N. Hitchcock: Tom?

Caller: Hello? I\'m ‑‑ my name is Tom. I work for the national parks and
I just wanted to ask what\'s the likelihood of us east coast boys. \[
INAUDIBLE \] Going down west to fight fires this season.

N. Hitchcock: Certainly mobilization, any more, involves resources from
all across the country. In the short‑term, fire activity somebodying
handled with resources from the western states, here in the southwest
right now. 30 days from now as fire activity increases and is occurring
in other areas, we often reach nationwide quite soon. So it\'s one of
the times for you to work on preparedness, get the training, get the
tests done that get you certified, and be ready, because there will be
assignments. Ok? Well, very good ‑‑

Caller: We had one more question. Being at the northeast here as well as
in a red at times, are we going to be held back from being called out to
stay behind for northeastern fires?

N. Hitchcock: The local managers you have there certainly have a
responsibility to deal with their local situation. So it would be a
determination made by them in terms of your availability. Certainly
nationally in certain critical situations the national MAC group may
urgently request that all resources be made available. Still the
resource is managed by local agencies. So does that answer your
question? Ok. Very good. That\'s our last question that we have time for
now. And we\'ll go back to Kent.

K. Connaughton:, Neal. I appreciate those questions, too. We\'re going
to shift gears and take a look at fire management from a local and state
perspective. Joining us now is the Assistant Director of the Florida
division of forestry, Mike long. Hello, Mike?

M. Long: Glad to be here with you to share our attempt at looking at
risk reduction in the urban interface.

K. Connaughton: And from the Coconino County board of supervisor, Matt
Ryan is here to give us a local perspective on a neighborhood fuels.

M. Ryan: Glad to be here. Want to say hello to people in Williams and
Flagstaff and tell a little about a project we have up there.

K. Connaughton: Also joining us is fire chief Donovan Townsend from the
Arivaca rural fire department in Arizona. Donovan, thanks for being with
us.

Thanks, Ken. I\'m going to be talking about the department of
interior\'s rural fire assistance grant this morning and our success
story.

K. Connaughton: Thanks very much. Now let\'s get started with you, Mike.
I believe you have the urban interface story for us.

M. Long: Thank you, Kent. One of the things that we do in Florida is we
have 26 million acres of public and private‑owned land that we protect,
and our units respond to about 5,000 fires a year. We were challenged
with looking at how we could better protect the citizens and the
communities of Florida by the legislature after our \'98 fire season.
That meant that our managers would have to transition from a reactive to
more of a proactive managing fire risk type activity. The challenge that
we were faced were fuels were constantly changing, we have new
developments to accommodate the 999 new residents we gain daily, and
societal attitudes towards fire management has changed greatly. Our goal
was to develop a fire risk analysis that identified the potential of
fire occurrence, that prioritized the actions that we could take to
reduce the damage from fires that did occur, and to mitigate any effects
on our communities. Our analysis was based on three basic components.
One, a fire you a effects index which looks as critical facilities,
urban interface, organic soils, utility lines and the cost of
suppression. The next index was fire susceptibility. That was based on
fuels, zones of weather influence, the rate of spread of the fire, the
fire occurrence and fire behavior. The third phase was our fire response
accessibility index and this was, how long does it take us to get a fire
unit to the fire? Our managers would have to modify the inputs so that
they could model and it look at what was going on. Let\'s take a look at
our black water district, which is a typical three county area. Fuels
were based on a 30‑meter satellite imagery data and we ground crewed 300
points so we could have confidence in the system, plus also build
confidence in the future ability to update the information with
satellites. In an effort to keep current, our forest inventory analysis,
foresters, are taking 1400 plots annually to look at and make sure our
data is current and that we are going with what we need to have. Our
fire occurrence maps were based on statistical fire data and are kept
current annually. We also had to take a look at our urban interface.
This was done using the census data and satellite imagery and then
ground checks by our local supervisors in the area. Lastly, an
accessibility index. What we did was try to look at every fire ‑‑ every
fire response unit in a given area and the ability of that response unit
to respond to a fire. We take a look at combining those and we\'ll give
you a sample of our wildland susceptibility index and basically you look
at it and it says to the manager, look here ‑‑ you look at the
susceptibility, the effects of the ‑‑ fire effects index, and it says,
take a look, this is an area you need to look at. Couple that with the
accessibility index and you\'ve got an area of high potential with
delayed access and that sees manager, you need to go to work here. The
actions that we\'ve done to manage it provides basically factual
information. The manager can manipulate inputs into the model and look
at what the outcomes will be, plus they can look at what the outcomes
are going to cost. So we have a cost differential for them to take a
look at. We\'re doing a lot of short‑term activity such as prescribed
burning, mowing and chemical treatment in areas. The long‑term solution
for us, however, though, is going to be using the firewise program and
that\'s where we\'re at at this point, Kent.

K. Connaughton: Thanks very much, Mike. I appreciate that. Matt, let\'s
move to you in Coconino County.

M. Ryan: Well, Kent, I would like to explain to you a little bit of what
we\'ve run into associated ‑‑ associated with communities and trying to
make things work. As many of you know, the constant quandary is that we
have to deal with our jurisdictional boundaries and when you\'re dealing
with prescription or thinning around forests, you need to change
philosophies of people and it doesn\'t always fit right, and the real
piece that has helped us out and brought things together is that ‑‑ one
is to understand the social fabric. Number two is we had dynamic people
at the right place at the right time. Number three, we had the willing
to ahead and do it and timing that. So we worked really hard with each
other. I got involved a little bit with an idea that I kind of took from
another community where they had a burn pit, and we had a new ranger
come on board, and this is going to seem like the academy awards on who
the players are, but as I tell you about it, you\'ll understand how it
helped the dynamics. This ranger was just right. She could see that,
yes, we have the Federal boundaries tied to the communities, but if the
fire debts gets away from the communities, it\'s going to get onto the
forest. In the meantime, we struggle with the fire departments only have
certain areas that they handle, the state land department only has
certain areas, and the county knits there. So I suggested the idea of
these burn pit to this local ranger, Susan, and she took the idea and we
said, let\'s get it together. She got a group of everybody together, and
the next person that we really brought on board as we sat down and
discussed it was Kevin BONESS from the state land department. State
funding is really limited and Kevin is one man in the whole northern end
of the state, but he has been on the ground with the community members
putting ribbons up on the trees, helping them talk to each other and
showing them what good prescriptions are. We had the fire departments.
In some areas they covered. Some areas they didn\'t. They\'re the ones
out there that bring the threshold and understanding, and once you get a
fire person onboard, they\'re ready to come into the community and try
and help out and suggest the idea why thinning might take place. And
just for those of you that are from other parts of the country, Northern
Arizona is quite forested. We have thick Ponderosa pine that keeps
getting thicker and thicker and you\'ll see from some photos that we\'ve
brought long that the first photo will show there\'s a roof in the
background that you can barely see but you can see the Ponderosa gets in
there. Well, these fire department members, they have a pancake
breakfast, and it\'s a way of getting the whole community out. We
brought everybody together in a educational perspective. We had a local
uni ‑‑ university come on board, set up prescription plots so that
people could walk through, see what it would look like under different
prescriptions, if they would thin it down partially f they broaden their
thinning. We had an opportunity to use the educational capacity that was
‑‑ the Forest Service brought with them and the state land departments
brought with them, and then a key player, we as the county, we didn\'t
have full jurisdiction, nor did the fire department nor the state nor
the Federal Forest Service side. We got into a scenario where we had the
cooperative extension. Nedd a nonprofit status and they became our main
player. They came in and they took a look at things, and we all
discussed it and said, let\'s set up a scenario to have a coordinator
and that coordinator brought prison crews on, we matched our funding up,
and we went ahead and we got to scenarios where the houses were real
close, the prisons crews worked well with the community, and it was
difficult, but all in all, as we got it together, you can see by our
last photo, that we thinned it down to a nice Ponderosa Savanna park
like setting. Pretty complicated, but that\'s what we pulled together.

K. Connaughton: Thanks, Matt. Your story certainly reinforces both the
wisdom and of collaboration and cooperation locally. Now let\'s move to
chief Donovan Townsend.

D. Townsend: Before I get started I would like to thank all the agencies
here this morning for inviting us to this broadcast. It\'s an operating
to to be representing all the rural and volunteer fire departments. The
Arivaca volunteer fire department serves a community of approximately
2500. Many other rural residents also in our 452‑square‑mile first
responder area. We\'re located approximately 60 miles southwest of
Tucson adjacent to the 100,000 acre BUENES AIRES refuge. We\'re also
first responders to the refuge for wildfire suppression. We respond
approximately 12 times a year. In our lands we have fuel types of
grasslands and invaded by mesquites. Our department faces many
challenges when protecting our area from wild LAN urban interface fire.
Equipment is just one example. Though being a small fire department,
limited funding is one of our greatest challenges. With the limited
funding challenge, we looked into the department of the interior\'s
rural fire assistance program, which is a 90/10 grant program in that
program presented us with the opportunity to supplement the
department\'s funding and give us equipment that will allow the
department to be more effective and efficient in responding to our home
area and our resources surrounding. Last year we were recipient of this
grant program and received \$20,000. We used that \$20,000 to purchase
equipment to help us in building a type VI engine. This has given us the
equipment to safely protect our area and the surrounding natural
resources. These types of programs are so beneficial to us we couldn\'t
let it pass. We did apply again this year. In closing, by like to thank
all the agencies that helped make this program possible. I would like to
also wish everyone a happy fire season, safe fire season, look up, look
down, look around and always maintain LCES.

K. Connaughton: Thank you, Donovan. Appreciate your presentation.
You\'ve heard three of the success stories that are here in the west.
There are a lot more than that. So we appreciate you sharing your
experiences with us. Next we would like to show you what one community
did to reduce fuels. So now let\'s go to Tanacross, Alaska.

Interior Alaska, a vast country of rolling hills covered with a sea of
black and white spruce. Occasionally the landscape opens up allowing the
tributaries of the Yukon River to wind past. Native villages are
scattered throughout the interior of Alaska in an area nearly as large
as the state of Montana. Although separated by distance, the villages
and their people are linked by their culture, independentance and
ability to survive unforgiving weather. They are also connected by
something else\... The fuel that carpets the land.

It\'s very thick. It\'s full of dog hair spruce and really thick white
spruce and it\'s hard to walk a straight line through.

Narrator: In just four hours a human caused fire on the northwestern
edge of Toke, about four hours southeast of Fairbanks and 12 miles from
the native village of Tanacross raced through 140 acres of timber and
consumed two homes.

We were first on the scene and that fire really took off. It had the
right conditions.

Due to the proximity of the fire, as far as in the neighborhood, same
fuel type, it became a teachable moment for the people of Tanacross.
They realized that the potential for wildfire encroachment on their
village, they were at risk.

The village council approached us in terms of wanting to do something
beforehand with their small community to help protect their structures,
their houses.

We decided to pursue this a little further and try to seek Federal
funding to get a project to thin trees and to limb them up about six
feet and to thin them about six feet out.

The Tanacross project is just what the National Fire Plan is all about.
It\'s using the extra funding that Congress gave us to make a community
more survivable to wildfire. In this particular project, the funding is
going to train people in the community to have the skills to reduce the
fire risk to their own community.

I\'m hoping that we achieve several objectives here. One is to not only
protect the village, but to also send messages out to the public about
the need for community protection.

Forest fires are a reality. It\'s a fact you have to live with.

K. Connaughton: That was an excellent tape. I wonder how many of us
really appreciate how important fire and fuels management is for the
people of Alaska. That tape certainly demonstrates it. This has been a
fine morning. We have, however h some technical difficulties and Larry
is here to tell us about how to resolve those. Larry?

L. Hamilton: Thanks, Kent. We\'ve got a problem with ‑‑ I think some you
have been hearing some of the questions sound like they\'re coming from
outer space. Well, they are coming from outer space, but we need to
clean that up and what\'s happening is we have some systems that have
been hooked up that are not push‑to‑talk systems, park service, I think,
has a POLYCON system and it sounds like some people have hooked up some
speakerphones. So during the break we need to unhook those systems and
use the telephone bridge. So if you would do that for us during the
break, that would make the question‑and‑answer sessions easier to hear
in the second part of the presentation. So we\'d appreciate if that you
could take care of that during the break. And at this point we are going
to take a 10‑minute break.

K. Connaughton: And when we come back we\'re going to talk about safety,
fire rehab, planning and we\'ll have a couple of on the ground case
studies for you.

L. Hamilton: Let\'s take a stretch and then stay tuned because we have a
lot more to come.

K. Connaughton: We\'ll see you in a few minutes..

L. Hamilton: Welcome back to our update on the 2002 wildland fire
season. What we\'d like to do to kick things off for the second half is
take a look at an example of a fuels reduction project near Lakeview,
Oregon. It\'s a great example of how working as partners pays dividends
for the public. Let\'s take a look at this video.

Whether it be Washington, California, Florida, anywhere else, it\'s the
same old story. We\'ve got to change the battleground that we work in.
That\'s what fuels management prescribed fire and urban interface
treatments are all about. The situation is appear lot of people now have
‑‑ they can afford having a second home or living out of town. For
instance, the Klamath forest estates here. 3500 lots, about half
developed, and they run every kind of home that you can possibly
imagine, and they literally surround our land. We\'ve had numerous
fires, not only natural, say, lightning, but we\'ve also had man‑caused
fires out here. They\'ve come very close many times to, A., getting
homes or losing some structure. We\'re standing along the Bonanza Bley
Mountain cut‑off road which runs through Klamath Falls Estates
subdivision. We\'re actually doing a lot of hand piling and burning. We
had planned on doing it next year but when the basin had the water
problem, when the water was shut off to the farmers, there was
tremendous concern on what people would be doing. They need to work. We
had two contractors that we assigned work to and so we said what we want
you to do is see how many displaced farm workers that you can pick up
from the local area and put to work on your crews. And they\'re about
half done with it. From a success standpoint, we\'re doing well, but we
expect to have a really tremendous year this coming year, and we\'re
looking forward to it.

My wife\'s family are the ones that settled here in about 1890.

Nedd livingston in a situation where he is completely surrounded by
Federal lands whether it be Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management.

Our partnership with the Federal agencies came about because they are
fire managers.

We were looking at the boundaries, we said, here we go again. We\'re
going to be surveying property line, building a fire 39 burn against,
and it just doesn\'t make any sense. Here\'s Nedd, he\'s got all this
slash on his ground, or old debris laying there. We said, we can use
some of the roads that he has put in.

They come to us saying it would be a lot easier for us to manage our
fire problem if you would join up with us. Would you be interested? You
bet.

From the event at PATTICK butte with Nedd Livingston we have expand to
do larger assistance organization and we are thankful to Nedd because we
provided us an opportunity through the forest health partnership to show
people we can actually do this and do it across property lines. And
we\'re ever thankful to that gentleman for that.

L. Hamilton: Boy, that\'s great work in southern Oregon. We hope that
kind of story is being told in many places throughout the country, and
we think it is and it\'s a story that we like to see to be told
continually. One of the challenges many of us face in integrating the
fire program with our agency\'s natural resource management position,
tied into is that how we measure our performance and how we can
rehabilitate burned areas to prevent permanent damage. We have three
people well qualified to address those topics here with us today. First
is Kathy Davis of the National Park Service who will talk to us about
integrating fire and natural resources. Thanks for being here, Kathy.

K. Davis: Thank you, Larry. I\'m pleased to be here to talk about
integrating and fire resources.

L. Hamilton: We look forward to your comments. Next is miles, Miles
Brown is with the Bureau of Land Management. Hi, miles. Welcome to
Phoenix.

M. Brown: It\'s a pleasure to be here with so many experts from various
agencies and I think that\'s indicative of where the wildland fire
program is going.

L. Hamilton: Good. We look forward to your comments as well. Completing
this panel is Penny Luehring who is with the U.S. Forest Service.

P. Luehring: I\'m glad to be here and I\'m going to talk about what we
do after the fire, burn rehab.

L. Hamilton: We\'ll look forward to that. I think we\'ll probably start
with you, Kathy.

K. Davis: I two things to talk about, one the need for science, and
second, working together. To begin, the need for science in any wildland
fire activity is just critical. Most of the areas in the United States
have a history of fire occurrence. There is widespread evidence in
reading the landscape such as vegetation patterns, fire scars, burned
wood, rock discoloration, so it\'s important to understand the current
situation and the historic scene. What has changed and what has caused
the change? Our most serious problems that we are facing today deal with
the total suppression efforts that have resulted in dramatic vegetation
changes. The type of information we need is fire history and frequencies
to define raw jet streams. Reference conditions for vegetation
composition and structure with changes over time and understanding
habitat needs for plants and animals. Science provides the information
for more effective fire suppression, recognizing safety problems,
hazardous fuel reduction that miles will get into, prescription
development, desired conditions, species composition and some of the
area work that penny will talk about. The second one I want to talk
about is fire resources and interpretation staff working together for
common goals. Sometimes the relationship is good and sometimes it\'s
not. So when it\'s not good, working together can be a real adjustment.
Things are getting better overall, which is a nice sign. However, the
big buildup of fire funds and staff with the National Fire Plan, plus
the pressured ‑‑ momentum pressured of targeted goals cause concerns
with resources staff that targets will override sensitive species
protection, forest and range health, archaeological and historic
structure preservation. Planning and compliance with the common grounds,
it\'s the place to begin to start cooperating before the fire is
burning. Also I really want to advocate adopting an interpreter or
public Mead you why person to help you work with communities because
they tend to have more of the skills than fire resource staff do. If
there are staff relationship problems, we have to look to the managers
to bring the staff together to voice the concern, resolve issues and
focus on joint goals. If it\'s really disjointed, we might need conflict
resolution or arbitration to get a neutral party involved. The point is
to work together for the good of resources, fire safety and communities.
So now I\'ll turn it over to Miles to tell bus the national performance
measures.

M. Brown: Thank you, Kathy. Over the past six months the department of
interior and Forest Service in collaboration with the states, counties,
tribes and a variety of other public and private stakeholders have been
working to develop common and consistent performance measures for the
wildland fire program. What are performance measures? Performance
measures are outcome‑based and describe results toward meeting an
outcome. These outcomes are based on the goals contained in the 10‑year
comprehensive strategy. The outcome for the goal of improved improve
prevention suppression is severe wildland fire occurrences, including
human caused fire, losses of life and damage to communities and the
environment are reduced. During all suppression and other fire
management activities public and firefighter safety is always the first
priority. The outcome for the goal of reduce hazardous fuels is
hazardous fuels are treated to reduce the threat of severe wildland fire
to communities at risk and the environment. The goal for restore fire
adapted ecosystems is fire adapted ecosystems are restored and
maintained to improve resilience and sustainability that will promote
environmental, social and economic benefits to communities. The goal for
promote community assistance is, communities at risk have increased
capacity to prevent losses from severe wildland fire. Why are we using
these performance meshers? The government performance act ‑‑ results act
and the 10‑year comprehensive strategy require us to establish common
and consistent performance measures. The bottom line is that with the
significant concerns, interest and funding focused on the wildland fire
management we, need to better communicate to the American public, the
Congress, the governors what we are accomplishing towards reducing the
risk and threat to life, property, communities and the ecosystems. Who
will be using the performance measures? The performance measures will be
used by department of interior National Park Service, Bureau of Land
Management, Fish

&

Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Forest Service, as
well as the partners to the 10 year implementation plan. Will when will
we begin to use the new proposed performance measures? These measures
are currently under review at the departmental level and when approved
will be placed into the department of interior strategic plan and the
existing Forest Service strategic plan. Definitions of measures, data
sources, Baseline data and targets will be developed this year for
implementation during fiscal year 2003. Now we\'ll hear from penny, who
will tell us about emergency fire rehabilitation.

P. Luehring: Thanks, Miles. This morning I\'d like to talk about another
fire related program. We\'re all familiar with the emergency connected
with fire suppression, but in many cases that urgent situation continues
even after the fire is out. When wildfires burn with high severity a
chain of events is set in motion that may make the post fire damages
even worse than the fire damages. First, the intense heating causes soil
changes that reduce its ability to infiltrate water. This water repel 81
see results in drastic increases of surface runoff when it rains and
then the runoff erodes the bare soil and the water overtops the river
banks, washing away homes, roads and bridges. In addition to these
downstream effects, erosion also reduces the productivity of the site,
increases its vulnerability to invasion by aggressive and nonnative
plants and it may also jeopardize irreplaceable heritage resources.
Thankfully some of these damages are preventable if we take immediate
actions. In response to the urgent post fire need the Federal land
management agencies have established emergency rehabilitation programs
called BAER, burned area emergency rehabilitation, or emergency
stabilization. The objective is to take immediate action to minimize
significant threats to life and safety and prevent unacceptable
degradation to critical resources. The goal is to try to have
preventative treatments in place prior to any first big storms. So
assessments are usually done when the fire is still burning. And the
treatments are implemented in very, very short time frames. Areas that
have high concentrations of severe burned area and critical values at
risk are the highest priority for emergency treatment. Common treatments
include groundcover improvement, such as seeding by the use of airplanes
like you see here, and also mulching, which is breaking up the straw and
throwing it on the ground, crews may also do work to break up the water
repellent layer through very low‑tech means such as raking or more
highly technical means. And then also work to slow down the water there
and the use of log erosion barriers or wattles which are another type of
erosion barriers. In closing, many wildfires still result in much more
benefit than damage and not every burned area is a candidate for
emergency rehabilitation. Only those areas where there is a good
indication that a significant risk exists and reason to believe that the
outcome can be prevented should be considered. BAER, or emergency
stabilization, has proven beneficial, but since there isn\'t 100%
guarantee that critical losses can be prevented, the only certain way to
avoid catastrophic post fire effects is to avoid the cat ‑‑ catastrophic
fires.

L. Hamilton: Thanks, penny. Those of you that are starting to panic
because you think we\'re going to run out of time, that\'s not going to
happen. We\'re going to have an additional 30 minutes, and we will run
past our allotted time, but that will be ok. We still have time on the
satellite. So feel free to ask questions, and we have a question here on
the phone. So it looks like Mike in lakewood ‑‑ Mike, are you there?

Caller: Mike in lake wood. Hello.

L. Hamilton: How are you today?

Caller: Just great. How are you? First of all, I want to extend an
appreciation. It\'s a great effort and a great example of interagency
cooperation in how you\'re addressing the issues.

L. Hamilton: Thank you, Mike, for that comment. That\'s exactly what
we\'re trying to do here, appreciate that.

Caller: One of the concerns that I have is as we take a look at the mid
and long term is that we need to be able to talk to the success of the
National Fire Plan beyond just the fire issues. I\'m concerned about how
we deal with program integration, budget integrations, interdisciplinary
integrations.

L. Hamilton: Sounds like we lost Mike, but I think we got the gist of
that question. Who would like to take a shot at that? That looks like a
question for you, Miles.

M. Brown: I will try to take a shot at it. Many people have asked how do
the performance measures relate to budget, and I\'m not sure I have an
exact answer for that. Obviously they will have an effect on the
budgets. What we will see is with the fire program are, departmentwide
we will have the same performance measures. That will include the Forest
Service. And I think there will be a trickle‑down effect from
performance measures down through intermediate performance measures and
then down into outputs and, of course, when we\'re talking about program
integration of budgets, we need inputs, which is resources and funding
to create those outputs. So I think there definitely will be an impact.
I think it will be a much more integrated approach than before.

L. Hamilton: Ok. Good. We have another call, and that\'s from Casey in
Barstow, California. Good morning, Casey. Are you there?

Caller: Yes, I am here.

L. Hamilton: Ok. What\'s your question for the panel?

Caller: Well, my question is: Why don\'t all fuel management plans have
ecological components? They seem to be more geared towards protection of
urban interfaces.

L. Hamilton: Ok. Excellent question. Who would like to take a shot at
that one?

K. Davis: Are you familiar with the plans ‑‑

L. Hamilton: I think we\'ve stumped the panel here.

K. Davis: Casey, by ‑‑ I agree, I think it should have an ecological
component and maybe this is where the science comes in and the
understanding of what type of fire regime, history and frequency you are
dealing with and what changes have happened in the past. If you\'re not
getting in that your fuels plan, I think perhaps you ought to get with
your manager and your fire staff and whoever else and try to iron this
out.

L. Hamilton: Good answer.

M. Brown: If I could answer to that, my experience as a line manager is
our fuels management plans are totally integrated. Usually it is the
resource programs that are generating those plans. From my perspective I
think we need to look at line managers to make sure that integration you
a occurs. I think it\'s where we are going to be going. I expect to see
it happen.

L. Hamilton: All right. Casey, great question. Thanks for calling in. We
appreciate it.

Caller: Thanks.

L. Hamilton: At this point I\'d like to thank our panel members, penny,
Miles, Kathy, thanks for joining us. All right. Now I\'d like to turnout
next part of our broadcast over to Sue Vap of the National Park Service
and she should be joining us shortly. Sue, there you.

S. Vap: Hi, Larry. Thanks for this opportunity I\'m going to have a
little dialogue here with Kirk Rowdabaugh from the Arizona State
Division of Forestry and Kirk, thanks for joining us again.

K. Rowdabaugh: It\'s a pleasure.

S. Vap: I know it\'s tough fitting all this into the day and I know you
have a flight scheduled with the governor this afternoon. Let\'s get
right into what we want to talk about. Let\'s talk a little bit about
what are the differences between the western governors association and
the national association of state foresters?

K. Rowdabaugh: Two fine organizations. Western governors association, as
the name implies, is an organization of 21 western states and Pacific
islands, chartered primarily to enhance the economic and social vigor of
the region, composed of the governors and their staffs. There are other
regional governors in associations, south and east and a national
governors association as well. Similarly, the national association of
state foresters is comprised of the 50 state and eight Pacific island ‑‑
six Pacific island and two other island territories and it, too, is
broken down into regionals, west, south and east, made up of the senior
forestry staffs for those states. The primary difference, of course,
between the two, most of us state foresters work for these governors,
some directly, most of us through state land commissioners or other
governor cabinet members and some of the state foresters through the
university systems. But they do complement each other and in most cases
the state foresters are the senior professional technical staff for the
governors on these sorts of issues.

S. Vap: Ok. Great. So how were these organizations involved in the
development of with a we are shorthanding and calling the 10‑year
comprehensive strategy?

K. Rowdabaugh: Well, you know, the comprehensive strategy is a
continuum, and there was a lot of activity long before the 2000 fire
season. A lot of us were engaged in hazard mitigation and ecosystem
restoration and prevention and suppression activities long before the
2000 fire season. But the 2000 fire season was such an extraordinary
event that it brought together a wide cast of partners that had to
address the fire season. Prior to this, you know, many of the governors
were always in complete agreement with the Secretaries of interior and
agriculture and the prior administration on land management activities,
but they all knew that they could agree on National Fire Plan activities
and the imperative to move forward. So the western governors met with
the secretaries during the 2000 fire season and decided a new
partnership was needed to address the wildland fire issues. They brought
in with them other players as well, national association of state
foresters, intertribal council, national association of county
governments ‑‑ they met and tried very hard to make sure that they had
not just the Federal agencies represented in the development of this
strategic plan, but also the states, the tribes and local governments as
well. And they\'ve done a pretty good job at that.

S. Vap: That\'s great. I mean, because we need all the people at the
table that we can have there.

K. Rowdabaugh: We do. And it\'s proven to be a very powerful
partnership, with the administration and the western governors and the
other players all in concert, we\'ve had a great deal of success with
Congress on funding the National Fire Plan.

S. Vap: So what do you think is one of the best things that\'s come out
of this from your spur spective?

K. Rowdabaugh: The 10‑year strategy focuses on four areas broadly. That
would be to improve prevention and suppression activities and to restore
fire adapted ecosystems, to reduce hazardous fuels, and to assist
communities. And all of those have been very important and all of them
have been very productive, even in the short 18 months that we\'ve been
engaged in comprehensive strategy and National Fire Plan. But if I had
to pick one or two, I really would you a focus on the assistance to the
communities. We had programs in place for decades through our
cooperative forestry programs that provided training and equipment to
rural fire departments. Those programs have been greatly enhanced. In
our case, in Arizona, 20 fold in the available funding to our rural fire
departments for equipment and training. Also new programs that we
didn\'t have at all before. Some of the assistance to the communities,
the firewise prevention activities are well funded now and a lot of the
thinning activities are well funded now. So assistance to communities
has been a tremendous asset from this.

S. Vap: How wonderful. Such great opportunities throughout. And I
understand that the next step is the implementation plan?

K. Rowdabaugh: In the works. Check in the mail today. I expect actually
perhaps today to have the latest draft of implementation plan. We hope
to have the implementation plan for the 10‑year strategy approved and
ready for signature by the end of the month.

S. Vap: Great. You know, I, again, really appreciate that you\'re able
to come and join us today, and we\'ll look forward to seeing the
implementation plan come out, and, Kent, I think we\'re coming back to
you and we\'re going to talk a little about safety now.

K. Connaughton: Thanks, sue and Kirk. We pressure on state forestry
partners and the work of the western governors association as we work
together for the health of our public lands. Now we\'d like to shift our
folk us to what we all believe is the single‑most important aspect of
the work that we do, and that is safety. Joining me to talk about safety
is Jim Payne with the Forest Service. Jim is Assistant Director for
aviation in the northwest division and currently assigned to the 30‑mile
fire hazard abatement project. Welcome, Jim.

J. Payne: Thank you, Kent. It\'s nice to be here. I\'m looking forward
to sharing what\'s new and different that we\'re doing this year as
opposed to last year, following a 30‑mile tragedy.

K. Connaughton: Also joining us is John Gould, wildland Fire and
Aviation safety specialist for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at the
National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. Hello, John.

J. Gould: Hi, Kent. Thanks for having me here.

K. Connaughton: Jim, let\'s start with your project.

J. Payne: Ok, Kent. The Forest Service and our cooperating agencies have
an excellent firefighterer and safety training program. But the 30 mile
tragedy prompted an in‑depth review to change how we do things based on
the review focusing on risk management and our training and safety
programs. A hazard abatement program was developed and accepted by OSHA.
In addition, an accident prevention plan was developed and endorsed by
the National Wildfire Coordinating Group. It contains 31 action items,
26 of which are interagency in nature. To date the Forest Service has
completed 21 of these items. So for you folks fighting fire this year,
what\'s different since 30 mile? Here are some of the changes you\'ll
see. A new process for assessing and managing risk is being distributed
to each fire line supervisor in the new interagency incident response
pocket guide. It\'s a great resource for fire line supervisors. A
complexity analysis is required for every fire at the time of initial
attack as part of size‑up to ensure that each fire gets the right level
of incident management and leadership. All type III fires will now have
a full‑time dedicated incident commander with no collateral duties.
Incident commanders are required to be in full compliance with the 10
standard fire orders and to mitigate all watch‑out situations prior to
engaging or reengaging in suppression activities. Dispatchers are
required to make sure all personnel assigned to a fire know who the
incident commander is and to provide notification of any changes of
incident command. Incident commander are directed to manage fatigue and
make sure firefighters comply with work rest guidelines. Line officers
and fire managers will increase their inspections and document those for
fires, looking at safety and health hazards. Pocket cards are available
with information to assist firefighters in identifying thresholds for
critical fuels and weather conditions that lead to extreme fire
behavior. Training packages on entrapment avoidance with ‑‑ and 30 mile
lessons learned are now being used in initial and refresher fire
training. You can learn more about what\'s changed since the 30 mile
fire at this website. WWW.FS.FED.US/fire/fire new. I encourage you to
check it out and use the tools that are in place and those that are
still being developed. Another aid for firefighters is the standards for
Fire and Aviation operations 2002, which many of you know as the Red
Book. It was originally printed by the BLM in 1996 in response to the
south canyon tragedy, and it brought together standards for fire
operations into one really usable document. In 2002 the BLM, Forest
Service and Fish

&

Wildlife Service worked together to produce an interagency version. We
all know fire suppression is a high risk and high consequence business.
These changes can and will make a difference. All of us must be
committed to the relentless pursuit of firefighter safety. John, I think
you have some more information about firefighter safety.

J. Gould: That\'s right, Jim. I do. In addition to my regular job, I\'m
the chair of the Federal Fire and Aviation Safety Team at NIFC, and that
team\'s made up all of national safety managers for the five Federal
agencies. Today I would like to talk about the work we\'re doing on the
fast team to promote firefighter safety. When we were formed, we
recognized that every high risk industry depends on a functioning safety
program to kind of close the loop between problem recognition and
problem solving and providing that programmatic program is what the team
is dedicated to doing. The most elemental part of any safety program is
a reporting system and three years ago we initiated one called SafeNet.
When SafeNet was started, it was solely a Federal agency program,
however, this winter it was adopted by the NWCG and it\'s out in a tool
for all wildland fire organizations. The purpose of SafeNet is three
fold. It\'s a way to report safety issues and get them resolved. It\'s a
way to share safety information throughout the fire community. And it\'s
a tool for us to monitor trends over the long term. I really can\'t
stress how important it is for all firefighters to participate in the
program and file a SafeNet whenever you believe that safety has been
compromised on the fire line. I think it\'s the best way for
firefighters on the line to make sure their concerns are being heard and
it\'s the best way for them to affect change within the industry. You
can either file a SafeNet electronically via the web ‑‑ this year we
initiated an 800 phone number to file SafeNets. Or through the mail. The
sister program to the SafeNet is the aviation incident reporting system
SafeCom. Again, a vitally important program for continuing education
safety in the fire world. The Forest Service and the department of
interior use mirror systems and both can be accessed by agency websites.
Another initiative sponsored by the fast team is a program called six
minutes for safety. Six minutes focuses daily training on high risk
tasks that firefighters face on a recurring but infrequent basis. It\'s
an easy program for any unit to incorporate into their daily routine and
over a six‑month period, it gives firefighters more than 16 hours of
additional training on topics and situations that historically get into
us trouble. Topics and talking points for a lesson plan are on the NIFC
website and posted daily as part of the national report. Six minutes is
an easy and effective way to keep your head in the ball game and I
encourage everyone to participate. This year fast began a new initiative
that\'s a tool for every organization as they begin their year with
Refresher Training and through the work of firefighters from every
agency, we\'ve developed a website that provides centralized resources
for proceed ‑‑ provides a centralized resource for Refresher Training
instructors to refer to materials, policy, guidance and generally
anything that\'s needed for Refresher Training. In closing, I would just
like to say it\'s my sincere belief that as fire professionals it\'s our
responsibility to incorporate safety into everything we do. It is truly
fundamental to the way we do business. I encourage everyone to
participate and make these initiatives part of your daily safety program
and you can find these things and more on the safety section of the NIFC
website. So good luck, and have a safe and productive fire season.

K. Connaughton: Thank you, Jim and John, I appreciate that. What you\'ve
done is you remind us we continually learn as individuals, as crews as
teams that safety is all of our business and it\'s going to have a
tremendous payoff if, in fact, you invest time in these systems that
you\'ve just been introduced to. Again again, you heard from me earlier
this, should lead to no more purple ribbons on your uniforms. Now, as
most of you know, the Forest Service\'s Missoula Technology and
Development Center has been working on the development of a new fire
shelter since 1998. The folks at MTDC presented 11 new designs to the
fire directors for all the Federal wildland firefighting agencies in
February. And the director selected four shelter designs to go through
additional testing. Some of the factors taken into consideration were
the weight, bullk and size of the shelter, and its resistance to
thermal, radiant and convective heat conditions. Cost is also an
important factor given the limited budgets maintained by rural and
volunteer fire departments. The Federal Fire and Aviation leadership
council, that is the fire directors for the Federal firefighting
agencies, will be selecting a new shelter by the end of May. The
production and quality control will be under the direction of GSA and
our goal is to have the new shelters on the shelf by June of 2003. The
new fire shelter will offer significantly better protection than the
current shelter. But it will not protect you against bad decisions. The
shelter remains a tool of last resort. You must always fight fire wisely
and always avoid entrapment. Now, Larry, we want to do right now is make
the transition back to you, and in doing so I wish to thank these two
panelists for this excellent reminder of our measures taken to protect
our safety for our firefighters and the public. Larry?

L. Hamilton: Thanks, Kent. That was an excellent message and really
appreciate the panel members sharing with us. Speaking of safety, I
think now is a great time to share a special message that\'s been
prepared by the Secretaries of agriculture and interior and I think
you\'ll want to pay close attention to what they have to say to us here
this morning.

Hello. I\'m Gale Norton, Secretary of the Interior. I\'m please be to
part of today\'s broadcast. We\'ve already experienced major fires in
several states. As you\'ve heard today, we\'re expecting an active
season in much of the west and south. That means a few busy months ahead
for firefighters. When you\'re on the line, when you\'re travelling to a
fire, even when you\'re in camp, always make safety your first
consideration. Too often in the past we\'ve only taken that long hard
look at safety after an accident occurs. All the words and all the
changes we make seem too little too late when measured against serious
injury or loss of life. Let\'s not put ourselves in that situation.
Let\'s make sure we\'re making safety every step of the way through this
season. We measure the success of the fire season in many ways, the
number of fires, how successful we were in the initial attack, the acres
burned, the homes and buildings we saved. But let\'s also be sure to
measure success by saying we brought home everyone we sent out. If you
feel your assignment is too risky, that your safety and the safety of
your co‑workers might be in jeopardy, I remind you that the official
policy states you have the right to request an assignment elsewhere,
without fear of reprisal. Doing so does not make you less of a
firefighter. In fact, the opposite is true. It makes you the consummate
professional because you\'re watching out for yourself and others. If
you say it\'s too dangerous, that\'s good enough. Our goal is simply
that we have no serious injuries and no fatalities this season. Anything
else is not acceptable. I also want to thank you for the work you do.
Those who live in the vicinity of a fire are in terror. They envision
everything they own being consumed by the blaze. They fear for their
lively hood and their lives. Every blaze you contain, especially those
near communities, douses the terror as well. Several years ago I
traveled to a forest near my home that had been burned by fire. In the
midst of the devastation a few homes will be saved. There were dozens of
hand made signs saying simply \"thank you, firefighters.\" As those
signs indicated, you\'re often the answer to prayers and heroes to
families. You are no less heroes than the firefighters at the World
Trade Center who continued climbing the tower while everyone else was
fleaing for their lives. Firefighting is difficult, dangerous and
exhausting. It keeps you away from family and friends for weeks at a
time. Your sacrifice does not go unnoticed, nor does it go
unappreciated. In a few more months my hope for you is we can all look
back and say, it was an excellency sun, we proved again that we\'re good
at what we do, and our safety record is the best its ever been. Thank
you and, remember, think safety this fire season.

I\'m Secretary of agriculture Ann VENEMAN. You have heard today about
how talented people and technology are helping fight fire. We are
especially pleased about the successes with the National Fire Plan
programs and are appreciative of today\'s guests who have shared their
stories from the perspective of the rural fire department and community
leadership. I want to add emphasis to the last panel\'s topic. Always
make sure that your work is guided by the 10 standard fire orders and
the 18 situations that shout \"watch out.\" A fire professional once
told me, we follow the 10 fire orders because we care about each other,
and that\'s a great reason. So, please, follow the 10 fire orders
without hesitation. Secondly, be attentive to the situation around you.
Firefighting is hard, difficult and exhausting work while your job
requires you to focus on your assignments, also be diligent and monitor
your overall position in the firefighter. So whether you are on the
ground or in the air, keep the big picture in mind and take the time to
assess your situation. We want you to come home from each fire
assignment safely. Make a personal commitment to take care of yourselves
and watch out for your colleagues. Finally, on behalf of president bush,
I want to offer a sincere thank you. Thank you for all you do throughout
the fire season to protect and enhance our public lands and to ensure
the safety of neighboring communities.

K. Connaughton: Well, there you have it, right from the top, safety does
come first every time.

L. Hamilton: That about wraps it up for our 2002 fire season update. We
hope it\'s been worth your time.

K. Connaughton: We\'d like to thank our studio panelists for their
participation and especially like to thank all our interagency technical
specialists for those excellent briefings, and lastly, the staff here at
the BLM National Training Center for their professionalism in producing
this video conference.

L. Hamilton: Please remember to visit the National Fire Plan and NIFC
websites for more information.

K. Connaughton: We hope today\'s program has given you a better
understanding of the challenges and opportunities we continue to face
during this fire season.

L. Hamilton: But most importantly, be careful out there this season.
Thanks for watching, and so long from Phoenix. This broadcast has been a
production of the BLM National Training Center in cooperation with the
National Interagency Fire Center.