You can buy belt buckles, T-shirts, and caps that proclaim you are “America’s Bravest” or that you are a “Dragon Slayer.” Are you?
Risk Management
LLC Staff Picks 2020
The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (LLC) staff reads lots of reports. In this post the LLC staff members share their favorite reports from 2020.
The Repeats
Please resist the urge to use Bad Math, which goes like this: “This one thing happened and then this other thing happened, so I will make a random correlation and spout some overused catchphrase (‘They lost SA’) as if it were an actual solution and expect people to listen because I have a belt buckle.”
Who Studies Fire Shelters? This Guy
This is an interview with Tony Petrilli, who has served on more than 35 fire entrapment safety review/investigation team assignments.
When Lightning Strikes
Two Helitack members are struck by lightning on a remote fire. What are the lessons?
Rethinking When, Where, and Why We Carry Fire Shelters
While I am not an advocate for eliminating the use of fire shelters, when we understand and train for their proper application and importance, we will be able to move beyond our reliance on shelters when their presence is either unnecessary or dangerous.
Saws, Rocks, & Trees
Here are a few more pieces of the 2020 Infographic. This portion simply lists a few numbers we added up based on reports we received. The numbers by themselves may be enough to generate discussion, but a bit of context is always helpful.
Writing Wrongs
People died fighting fire last year. Quite a few. Each one of them matter. Each one of them count. Whether those individual human lives are reflected in the final figure after the excruciating task of tallying up the "numbers" is done, the living are the one’s left to create meaning out of tragedy.
‘And Then What?’
I think the single-most dangerous thing for a Logistics Chief is indecision, the inability to make the uncomfortable decision with limited information.
Learning from the Bridger Foothills Entrapment and Shelter Deployment
Three members of a helitack crew are overrun by fire inside the meadow that serves as their helispot. Only two of the firefighters have fire shelters.