A severe drought in many Western states set the stage for an early and intense fire season. By mid-June, several major fires were burning, including the Rodeo-Chediski Fire in Arizona and the Hayman Fire in Colorado. These fires siphoned both aerial and ground firefighting resources from the Pacific Northwest, including helicopters, air tankers, agency and contract fire engines, smoke jumpers, highly trained agency crews (called “hot shot” crews), and contract firefighting crews. By June 21, the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) in Boise, Idaho, was reporting a preparedness level of 5, the highest level, indicating that the nation had the potential to exhaust all agency firefighting resources. When lightning storms passed through California and Oregon on July 12 and 13, igniting hundreds of fires, including the Biscuit Fire, more than 30 large fires were already burning across the nation and firefighting resources available for initial attack were limited. The Biscuit Fire began as five separate fires in the Siskiyou National Forest in southwest Oregon. The Siskiyou Forest, encompassing more than 1 million acres, contains diverse topography, including the Siskiyou Mountains, the Klamath Mountains, the Coast Ranges, and the 180,000-acre Kalmiopsis Wilderness. Steep terrain, together with many roadless areas, presented accessibility and logistical challenges for managers directing fire suppression efforts at the Biscuit Fire. To complicate the situation, the fires were also located almost 30 miles apart. As the fires rapidly grew during late July and early August, the southern fire burned south and crossed the state border into the Six Rivers National Forest in Northern California. While the Biscuit Fire burned primarily federal forestland, by early August, it threatened a number of communities in Oregon and California. Figure 2 shows Biscuit 1 burning on a steep hill on July 14, 2002. To understand the response to the Biscuit Fire, it is important to understand the phases of fire suppression efforts and the nature of interagency wildland firefighting. On a large wildland fire, such as the Biscuit Fire, fire suppression efforts generally fall into two phases. The initial attack phase is defined as efforts to control a fire during the first operational period, usually within 24 hours. Local fire managers direct these initial firefighting efforts. In fiscal year 2002, firefighters were successful in suppressing about 99 percent of wildland fires in federal, state, and local jurisdictions during the initial attack phase. If a fire has not been contained or will not be contained during this period or additional firefighting resources are ordered, firefighting efforts move into the extended attack phase. In this phase, key fire management officials prepare a Wildland Fire Situation Analysis that describes the situation and objectives, and compares multiple strategic wildland fire management alternatives. Additional management and firefighting resources may be requested. Figure 3 shows an example of a firefighting organization involved in an extended attack, although the specific positions filled depend on the complexity of the fire. The Forest Service and its interagency firefighting partners employ an incident management system that is designed to provide the appropriate management and leadership team capabilities for firefighting efforts. The complexity of the fire determines the type of leadership team and firefighting resources assigned. There are five types of incidents—type 1 being the most complex (see table 1). For example, to manage a type 5 incident, the incident commander may be a local district employee with adequate experience to direct initial attack efforts on a small fire with two to six firefighters. In contrast, for a type 1 incident, such as the Biscuit Fire, the incident commander is just one member of a highly qualified management team. While both type 1 and type 2 incident management teams have a standard composition of 28 members, type 1 team members receive additional training and experience in handling the most complex incidents. Incident management teams manage a variety of firefighting resources. These include highly trained “hot shot” crews, agency and contracted crews, air tankers, helicopters, fire engines, and bulldozers. Federal agencies, such as the Forest Service, provide a large number of the personnel that work on fires. These federal agencies rely on a “militia” strategy to fight wildland fires whereby personnel within each agency are trained to serve in fire suppression or support roles, when needed and requested, in addition to performing their normal day-to-day work responsibilities. However, many factors, including past downsizing within the federal government, have reduced the pool of employees qualified to work on fires. Increasingly, private contractors provide crews and firefighting equipment, including engines and helicopters. National policies and procedures were in place and provided the framework to guide personnel in the local dispatch center in Grants Pass, Oregon, who were responsible for acquiring firefighting resources for the Biscuit Fire. Guided by these policies and procedures, dispatch centers use a three-tiered dispatching system—local, regional, and national—to locate and send resources to wildland fires. During the initial attack phase of a fire, these policies also permit dispatch centers to contact neighboring dispatch centers directly for resources, including resources in adjacent regions, before elevating resource requests to a higher level. For the Biscuit Fire, the Grants Pass dispatch center did not have sufficient resources available and took steps to locate needed resources to fight what began as five separate fires in the Siskiyou National Forest. Grants Pass dispatchers contacted their regional dispatch center in Portland about the availability of resources, including helicopters, on the first day of the Biscuit Fire. In making resource inquiries, Grants Pass personnel did not request resources from the Fortuna dispatch center, a neighboring center located in the adjoining dispatch region in Northern California. Grants Pass personnel believed that Fortuna had no available resources, based on daily fire situation reports, because Northern California was also fighting numerous fires. Concerns were later expressed by state and local officials in California that a helicopter, under the control of the Fortuna dispatch center, was fighting fires in Northern California, just across the border from the first of the five Biscuit fires, and could have been provided to fight it. Forest Service and state dispatchers working in the Fortuna dispatch center expressed differing viewpoints on whether they could have provided a helicopter for the Biscuit Fire, had Grants Pass requested it. The National Interagency Mobilization Guide includes policies and procedures to help ensure the timely and cost effective mobilization of firefighting resources. Federal, state, tribal, and local firefighting agencies share their firefighting personnel, equipment, and supplies, following a standardized process to coordinate responses to fires and mobilize resources. When local dispatch center personnel are notified of a fire, they send available firefighting resources based on a preplanned response. If fire managers need additional resources, they send a request to the local dispatch center identifying the type and amount of resources needed. If the dispatch center personnel cannot fill a request locally, they can forward the request to the responsible regional dispatch center. If the regional center cannot fill the request with resources from within the region, the request is sent to the National Interagency Coordination Center in Boise, Idaho, the primary support center for coordinating and mobilizing wildland firefighting resources nationally. When requests exceed available resources, the fires are prioritized, with those threatening lives and property receiving higher priority for resources. To facilitate the swift suppression of new fires—called the “initial attack” phase of a fire—local dispatch center personnel can first contact neighboring dispatch centers directly, including those in adjacent regions, before elevating resource requests to the regional or national level. For resource sharing between neighboring dispatch centers in adjoining regions, a formalized agreement, such as a mutual aid agreement and local operating plan, is needed. Existing policies and procedures encourage the sharing of resources between local dispatch centers. The national guidance states that local dispatch centers should use mutual aid agreements whenever possible to obtain resources directly from neighboring units. In the case of the Biscuit Fire, a regional mutual aid agreement between the state of California and federal agencies in California, Nevada, and Oregon establishes the protocols for interagency coordination and cooperation for wildland fire protection in California, which includes the areas along the Nevada and Oregon borders. Local, state, and federal agencies jointly develop local operating plans that identify the specific resources that can be shared under the mutual aid agreement and the provisions for cost sharing. One of these plans allows the Grants Pass dispatch center in Oregon and the Fortuna dispatch center, located in the neighboring region in Northern California, to request resources directly from each other. (See fig. 4.) The Grants Pass dispatch center operates under a contract between the Siskiyou National Forest and the Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF). ODF operates and staffs the center, and the Forest Service reimburses the department for a portion of the center’s operating costs, according to a Siskiyou official. The Fortuna dispatch center is operated by the Six Rivers National Forest and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) and is staffed by personnel from both agencies. When the first two fires were found on the afternoon of July 13, 2002, the Grants Pass dispatch center did not have the firefighting resources needed locally to fight the fires. Many resources, including the helicopter normally stationed at Grants Pass, had been sent to other higher priority fires that were threatening lives and property. The fires, located in the Siskiyou National Forest, were initially small—two trees and 1 acre. Biscuit 1 was a few miles north of the California-Oregon border, and the Carter Fire was about 12 miles north of Biscuit 1. Figure 5 provides information about the initial attack on the fires. Biscuit 1 was the first fire found.