Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the 32nd episode of Wildfire Matters, the podcast that covers all aspects of wildland fire management for the Bureau of Land Management, or blm. We talk with the people who help manage and protect our public lands, many who dedicate their lives to the profession. Today we are stepping out a little bit to go beyond wildland fire and talk about all hazard incident response. We have a couple guests, not blm, which is the first time. So you guys are first.
First for other agency, I guess, to join us to talk about what it all the incident response and what it does, how it runs. It's a little different process, a little different coordination involved in emergency response, other than.
So we're happy to have our guests with us today. We have Mike Matfelt from the Forest Service. He is the international fire response and support personnel person, the main person for Forest Service, USDA Forest Service, and Jim Schultz, fire management specialist for the National Park Service. And they have a little different response as well for like search and rescue and other things, emergency response within the park. And joining us virtually to talk a little bit more about that and some personal experiences recently on Helene is Scott Beacham. Did I say that right?
[00:01:39] Speaker B: Correct?
[00:01:40] Speaker A: All right. Scott is a fuels management specialist for the National Park Service, and he's joining us from Omaha.
[00:01:48] Speaker B: Welcome.
[00:01:49] Speaker A: Welcome all.
[00:01:50] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:01:50] Speaker A: Thanks for coming today.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: Glad to be here.
[00:01:53] Speaker C: Yeah, glad to be here.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Well, to get started and to get to know you guys a little bit better, tell us a little bit about yourselves and how you got into this job.
[00:02:02] Speaker C: Should I go first?
[00:02:03] Speaker A: Sure, Mike, you go.
[00:02:04] Speaker C: Okay. I. I started in firefighting in 96, mainly spent the first half of my career in operations, hotshot crews and that kind of thing. And then I got recruited into a job in D.C. working in international disaster response. Through that work, I got exposure to more of the other hazards and spent a lot of time working with search and rescue teams around the world in the Middle East, Africa, South Asia, the Pacific Rim, and lots of parts of Europe.
And after that, I took a job with Forest Service Fire and aviation in the Washington office. And the component of the Washington office that I work in today is the one that coordinates directly with FEMA and also manages the bilateral agreements with countries where we do firefighting assistance to Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Mexico and Portugal.
[00:03:02] Speaker A: And is that like USAID or is that different?
[00:03:05] Speaker C: The thing I was doing where I was going around the world, that is a USAID type of a position. However, I was still a Forest Service employee. While I was doing that, I was just embedded permanently with USAID right now.
[00:03:19] Speaker A: And now at Nipsey.
[00:03:20] Speaker C: And now I'm at Nipsey.
[00:03:22] Speaker A: Hey, Jim, what about you?
[00:03:24] Speaker B: All right, well, my name is Jim Schultz. I started my wildland fire career in 1990 for the state of Washington Department of Natural Resources. Worked for all the federal agencies except the Bureau of Indian affairs, and most recently was the NPS's operations program lead and moved over into a fire management specialist position about a month ago. Really focused on all hazard and helping the National Park Service's all Hazard Incident Management program. So in a nutshell, that's me. Far more vanilla than Mike over here.
[00:03:57] Speaker C: I would not call that vanilla. I think maybe I'm Neapolitan. And you lose tracks.
[00:04:04] Speaker A: Okay. So is Scott the strawberry?
He said he's more vanilla. How about you, Scott? How'd you get started?
[00:04:14] Speaker D: Yeah, so I started. Started in Colorado, my fire career with a county crew, Larimer County. Then I bounced around the Ozark Riverways. Park Service in Missouri, Buffalo River Park Service in Arkansas, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain national park in Colorado, and then here in Omaha, the regional office is a fuel specialist. So mainly a Park service person.
[00:04:38] Speaker A: Great. Well, again, thank you all. And yeah, Jim and Mike also work at Nipsey with us. And like I said, we wanted to cover all hazard incident response as it's pretty interesting that we're seeing ourselves kind of going more into this direction as well as wildland fire at the fire center. So it's important for us to know how we respond to these incidents.
[00:05:01] Speaker E: Yeah. So, Mike, can you get us started? So tell us, what are the differences between responding to incidents like hurricanes? How are they different from responding to wild fires? Like, how do the processes differ?
[00:05:15] Speaker C: Yeah, so overarching. I would say that the major leaping off point, if you will, is to say that under the national response Framework, if we're engaged with that, there's more focus on a specific task rather than taking on the entire incident. When we work in wildland fire and within our. Especially our land management agencies, we're responsible for the whole incident often, but under a national response framework circumstance, it's something large, very large, usually, and the capacity of wherever it's happened to respond to it has been outstripped. And therefore they've asked for assistance, and our capabilities are being applied to the task that they need assistance with. So that's sort of a very kind of esoteric and kind of vague way to think of it. But it is a good departure point for someone listening to this who may have spent more time in wildland fire Any state, local, territorial, tribal entity can request assistance on their National Response Framework. And they do that through basically requesting assistance from fema. And then there's some other things that happen. But I don't want to go too far. If there's another question that comes right after this.
[00:06:31] Speaker B: Gotcha.
[00:06:31] Speaker A: Yeah, of course there's another question.
[00:06:34] Speaker E: Totally.
[00:06:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:06:35] Speaker A: So there's different response types in wildland fire. Always see this. ESF 4.
[00:06:42] Speaker C: Correct.
[00:06:43] Speaker A: So what does that ESF stand for and what does the force stand for?
[00:06:47] Speaker C: So the National Response Framework is a conception of how the federal system can assist states with accidents or incidents. It's also designed to step in when you have incidents of national significance. So there's a lot of things that will go into play. For example, with the inauguration, presidential inauguration, there's activities where the NRF is invoked. It's essentially always on. It's never shut off, but they do specific declarations for different incidents. And then within the National Response Framework, there are emergency support functions, and there are 15 of them.
And federal agencies are what we call the primary agency for it, where their organic authorities and capabilities align with what is required of that type of hazard or activity. Emergency Support function four is firefighting, and the Forest Service is the primary agency on that with supporting agencies, other supporting agencies, mainly Department of Interior. But any federal agency can assist, typically with a mission assignment to an esf. So within that framework, there are mission assignments. And the mission assignment is meant to describe what the task is or what the problem they need assistance with is, and not get prescriptive about what pieces or what each is or what is what they will solve the problem with. So the Department of Interior is a supporting agency to all ESFs, and they're heavily involved in several of them. Similarly, another ESF could mission assign another ESF. So we could be mission assigned by, say, ESF 3, which is Public Works. They could mention assign ESF 4 for route clearance, which is really common. They would say, can you bring resources that can cut through trees that are all over these roads? And then they will come in behind us and move the trees out of the way. But they need our capability of chainsaw crews and management of them in the circumstances that this needs to happen.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: That seems pretty common for those type of response to have, like our hotshot crews, especially going out.
[00:09:18] Speaker C: And it's probably our most common mission assignment that is a close second would be coordination assistance, where our incident management teams can take on coordination, not really coordination duties, but assisting, like emergency operations centers, assisting them with their operations or distribution Centers and different sorts of boosting to logistics efforts. Our incident management teams are pretty, pretty good for that.
[00:09:45] Speaker A: And that kind of falls into the do different federal agencies have different requirements? But then you already said that really, the Forest Service kind of takes the lead on the ES4 response, coordinating that, and then like the Department of Interior agencies would then kind of support that.
[00:10:04] Speaker C: Is that. Well, I mean, support it, Yes. I mean, the thing is that in the letter of the National Response Framework, they. It's kind of like our Incident Command System concept of how there's going to be an incident commander, there's somebody who's in charge. And the NRF grabs that concept and says for all of these ESFs, there's an agency that's on the line that says, you guys are supposed to do this. DOI isn't on the line for that, but that doesn't mean they have a lot to do and that we couldn't accomplish. Managing ESF4 without DOI is definitely one I want to leave the podcast impression with here, the ways that it comes into play specifically for ESF4. I'll touch on real quick before we get down into some of these other things. There's also something called Fire Management Assistance Grants fmags.
The Forest Service does not approve or deny those requests for grants, but FEMA relies on the Forest Service to validate whatever is in the request. So we validate that there was a fire and it was here and it started on this date. And then, you know, there's all these things that we can corroborate as a federal agency because the state is requesting this assistance grant. The way that part of the ESF is written, it can be DOI or Forest Service that takes on that role because it's really circumstantial for whoever has the capacity and whoever is able to provide the validation in a timely way. For example, in Alaska, Fire Management Assistance Grant. The BLM would be approving that, not the Forest Service, because they have more personnel in Alaska than we do. But I'll pause right there because I think I'm probably going to go down a rabbit hole and get lost.
[00:11:53] Speaker A: Well, that brings up something interesting because it's the. Like, the states will ask for those, right?
[00:11:58] Speaker C: Yeah. So I guess another component of the VNRF is that in general, the state needs to request the assistance and that the nature of that request is predicated on whatever the state has prepared for before the disaster. So if they don't have a very robust emergency management system in place, then their requests can be very expansive and very Much like, hey, we need everything, or, you know, circumstances where you have an extreme event like a big hurricane Maria, where, you know, the entire island of Puerto Rico was basically knocked over. So then, yeah, there's a lot of. The request is huge. There's lots of things. Whereas in other circumstances, it's much more specific.
[00:12:40] Speaker B: Mike, just a question.
Is an ESF request from a state dependent upon presidential disaster declaration?
[00:12:51] Speaker C: It can be, yeah. It typically will require presidential disaster declaration or an emergency declaration. And then a disaster or emergency assessment has to follow that to document the damages and the things that follow on to support the why behind the request.
[00:13:11] Speaker E: Jim, do you want to talk about how the Park Service comes into play with esf?
[00:13:15] Speaker B: Yeah, I can talk a little bit about that. We'll talk about ESF 9, but probably maybe best to back up in terms of the Park Service, because we're talking all hazardous in general and maybe a good example of a recent scenario where many in wildland fire will probably recall. When Helene did come through, we were from the wildland fire perspective, sitting at PL5. And so there was a lot going on in terms of wildland fire activity. We had ESF 4 requests that came in that were a draw on our wildland fire resources in terms of our CIMTs and then also our hotshot crews. Additionally, you had agencies such as the Park Service, such as the Forest Service, that were placing orders into the system for resources to support their response needs for the damage that was caused by Hurricane Helene. So I think it's important to understand that when we talk about all hazard response there, particularly in the case of scenarios where hurricane season overlaps with wildfire season, that there's potentially a whole host of potential responses going on. And it's fairly easy to get somewhat confused as a wildland fire position that you get an order for something and understanding what you're really responding to. So pay attention to your resource order is one thing with that. But going back to the Park Service and ESF 9, I think it's important to back up and look at the Park Service historically in terms of some of the differences perhaps between the Park Service and other land management agencies. Things like exclusive jurisdiction where we have ultimate responsibility for search and rescue on our lands, responding to motor vehicle accidents, structural fires, that sort of thing that on Park Service land, that really drives us for Park Service has long been using ICS for the last 20 to 30 years to, at the local level, to respond to those incidents at the larger level. When you think about planned events such as the inauguration, such as perhaps like Jimmy Carter's funeral, that those events also have driven the Park Service really to use IC to help manage those large and complex events. It lends itself very well to that. So as a result of that, the Park Service does have an all hazard incident management program where we have all hazard incident management teams. And much like Wildland fire, we look to have responders and collateral duty personnel who attain those qualifications that support that. So that kind of sets the stage, if you will, when you think about the search and rescue aspect of that response, where Park Service was seen to have subject matter expertise in ground search and rescue. So backing up a little bit to ESF 9 and what is ESF 9? ESF 9, broadly speaking, is the Search and Rescue Annex. And I'm looking at Mike here, so he can feel free to chime in at any time. But within that Search and Rescue Annex, there's maritime search and rescue, urban search and rescue, and then ground search and rescue. So the primary agencies for each of those elements. So there's a number of primary agencies for ESF 9. The US Coast Guard has the maritime responsibilities there. FEMA is actually responsible for the urban search and rescue piece. And then the Park Service as well as Department of Defense have primary responsibilities. I should back up and say DOI Park Service has primary responsibilities for that ground search and rescue piece. So in the case of most recently here in Helene, there was a tasking, essentially, doi/Park Service was tasked to support ground and search and rescue operations. And ultimately bia, blm, US Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service all provided responders to assist with that tasking. So, Mike, I don't know if I.
[00:17:12] Speaker C: Think the only thing I would add is that the principles of the NRF focus in on agencies that have specific capabilities in organic authorities to accomplish whatever missions are associated with that specific hazard. So the reason you see Coast Guard on maritime search and rescue is because they have that capability, they have that authority. And then similarly for doi Slash Park Service, within the Park Service, the search and rescue mission is part of what they do in order to run their parks. There's several units within the Park Service that have a very robust search and rescue program and capability. But you get into these sort of questions around capacity, and I think that's possibly why on 9, it's a slash DOD because it you may be looking at like the Challenger incident where they're looking for that was a search and rescue, mainly a search mission assignment, but it was a land search circumstance and the number of resources you would need to, you know, what was it, three or four states that we're looking across. So, I mean, it's kind of the scale and scope of things is really part of the picture on anything related to ESF or nrf, all hazard work.
[00:18:36] Speaker A: And I know the BLM doesn't have a lot to do except for providing resources. Like we will have firefighters that are going out. And I know there's. I had friends that went down on the shuttle and the system.
[00:18:48] Speaker C: So the systems that we use to mobilize resources for firefighting, for the wildland fire responsibilities we have, those are a big part of why agencies are the lead on an esf, because we have those systems and our partnerships with DOI are part how we keep those systems functioning.
[00:19:11] Speaker A: So if you had an incident management team, it could be anybody from any agency, right?
[00:19:15] Speaker C: Anything. So for ESF 4, anything we mobilize on a fire normally, we can mobilize under ESF 4.
[00:19:23] Speaker B: One thing I think that Mike hit on that's really important actually is those systems piece, right. And when you talk about whether it be IQCs for the federal agencies or IQs for states, the tie to IROC, the ability to actually have a catalog of items available, as well as even down to the use of EI suite on incidents to manage cost, which becomes important in these billing back to FEMA for some of this. So when Mike talks about systems, at least that's where my mind goes that BLM Forest Service largely have administrative responsibilities and in the oversight of those systems. So that's really critical. When you talk about all of this. How do we mobilize resources in such an efficient and rapid way is the use of those systems. It really helps facilitate that.
One piece I did want to follow up on. When you talk about within the Park Service in particular, in all hazard response, how are our firefighters involved? Right. What does that look like in the Park Service and our interagency partners, largely for the Park Service folks such as Scott, for example, will participate in CNG positions on our standing all hazard incident management teams. That's very common. At the local level, you'll often see involvement in search and rescue from our wildland firefighters, whether that be through aviation assets and whether that just be through, I'll call it horsepower or people power, for example, to help carry someone out. That's a fairly regular occurrence for Park Service personnel. Interagency involvement at the local level, largely probably through agreements in particular with the Forest Service for use of their aviation assets to support sar. But not to say that BLM or other DOI Bureaus personnel might not be utilized to assist in those activities for the Park Service.
[00:21:11] Speaker A: Yeah. So Scott, that's a good segue to Scott, who had a recent response to Helene. And I know you have a lot of experience with working with fema but also with Park Service response. But can you talk about how you prepared to respond? Like just give our listeners an idea of what you need to do to prepare to go to a different incident other than wildland fire?
[00:21:37] Speaker D: Yeah, sure. So I'm a operations section chief on both the Park Service all hazard team and our CIM team, the regular fire team that I'm on. So preparing for Helene, which would be actually my first official ESF4 hurricane. I've done six or nine hurricanes, but all Park Service related. So preparing. There wasn't a lot of time to prepare. I got the call, I assumed I was going to a fire in Wyoming or Oregon and we were going to North Carolina. So I had no time to prepare. You know, once I got the order and made a bunch of phone calls and seeing what kind of divisions and what the team was bringing, the word went out, you know, we're going to stage in Atlanta or, excuse me, Alabama and then get positioned once they figure out what's going on and where they want to put us. So the word was, you know, stock up on food and water, make sure you bring a sleeping bag, we may hotel it, we may stay in a barrack, we may stay in an aviation hangar. Just be prepared to do whatever and limited power, limited food. So of course I, I didn't prepare that way at all. I've been on a couple of them. I, I always bring my sleeping bag and stuff like that. So I brought my regular fire gear. I didn't stock up on water or food. I've always found that I've never had an issue with water or food. I, I think my bottle of tea and my half bag of Cheetos was all I prepared for going into it, which was adequate in the end. I, you know, there was plenty of food and water. So the prep for physically wasn't that much. Mentally you're going into, we're used to going into bad situations, houses burnt but, but this is more body recovery and stuff like that that we're really not into as far as fire folks. So a little bit of prep there in my mind. But I was, I was too busy worried about getting my resources, what's going on, where we're staying, where we're meeting. So my mind was just like a fire really more figuring out what we're going to do, where we're going to go, who's doing what. So it. In that case, it wasn't a lot of difference in my standpoint to go into a fire. It was just a different location, different circumstances. I. I still had to figure out a lot of stuff that I always figure out. And you know, as I travel, I'm on the phone most of the time texting or calling to figure out what the updates are, where we're going. So. So really not. Not a lot of change for me. But I do have to say on my Park Service side of all hazard, I've done a number of hurricanes. We always kind of try to prepare for the same thing. Food and water, hotels, hot and muggy working conditions for the folks who are out there cutting or pulling or going into structures and cutting out drywall. So the mosquitoes hatch about six or eight days after hurricane comes through. So it's hot, muggy, and then it's buggy. And so that's what a lot of the workers need to prepare for. They're used to the dry heat in the West. They're not used to Florida wet heat and bugs and mosquitoes and snakes and all that kind of stuff. So there's that aspect of it that they need to prepare for. It's hard working conditions if they're out there cutting brush, cutting trees, opening roads, stuff like that. So it's the same but different.
[00:25:09] Speaker A: So when you get ordered for a response, like, what are there specific things you look for on your order that will kind of help you, guide you to prepare?
[00:25:19] Speaker D: Yeah. So for my, again, two different veins here. For my Park Service response, there's a couple of go to names that I always like to call and see if they're available to help. They've proven themselves in the past. So on the east coast, hurricanes were deal only on Park Service land only Park Service infrastructure. Only park service people I deal with. I need electricians. I may need a plumber or two. I need some folks who have the ability to get on a roof and patch roof patches or blue tarpon. So I need some folks who are. Have PPE for that kind of work, confined space work occasionally if they have to go into some water system.
I need experts who are into historical landscapes, you know, who. Who can make decisions on cutting trees or cutting the drywall out of a historic lighthouse or keeper's house. So I need those experts close at hand. So that's what I'm thinking of when I go to the Park Service side of an unplanned event like a hurricane on the fireside. I just make sure I have people to work with. If I don't have crews or falling mods, I can't do anything. So what was the pre order?
What did FEMA already order for us? What kind of supervision do we have or do I need?
So it's. Those are the same things on the fire. I can't do anything without resources and equipment, so. And I don't exactly know what I need going into it. So the orders are kind of held up a little bit. But if we're no, we're doing roads, then we need people and following mods and equipment to follow up through that. We do. I also do a lot of planned events. Inauguration. I've done a bunch of 4th of July's on the mall, 4th of July at Rushmore. Those things are planned events that are super difficult to work. I'm working on one for Minuteman in Boston now for next year. And it just a lot of rangers, a lot of interpreters, parking assistant people, the direct parking and stuff like that. So it's almost like a planned wedding. So I am on the Jimmy Carter thing. I did Roslyn last year this week last year I think I was in Plains, Georgia for her funeral. I spent Thanksgiving down there. But we're still planning for his. And so yeah, each planned event, hurricane and ESF 4 all kind of different beasts.
[00:27:55] Speaker A: Yeah, sounds like it.
[00:27:57] Speaker C: So Scott mentioned something that Jim and I alluded to but didn't point out in detail is that in intermixed with mission assignments under the NRF there'll be what we call agency mission things going on where the Park Service will have agency mission things to carry out and they'll be sending resources in and they'll be doing this and they're coordinated, but they're not under the nrf. They're doing agency mission work. The Forest Service gets encumbered with the same things in storm affected areas especially.
And for ESF 4, we have specially trained coordination staff that work very hard to validate the missions we're sent into. Because a lot of what is wanted is not what we have capabilities for within our wildland fire workforce. The blue tarps getting up on roofs, for example, that's not something our firefighters are trained to do. They're not trained to rip drywall out. They're not trained to go into confined space and do the things that are required to get, you know, something back up on its feet. But our coordination staff that are out there working under the esf, they validate these missions and ensure that our resources are being employed commensurate with their capabilities so that we don't get them into trouble.
[00:29:17] Speaker A: Basically, that's what I was. I was wondering about the validation process, because you get this call and this is what's happening. You have a kind of a short team or something that goes out to do that, to say, hey, oh, this is exactly what is kind of needed for these functional areas.
[00:29:34] Speaker C: We do. We have permanent staff throughout the system that are regionally, I guess fixated is a way to put it. But they coordinate as a part of their regular job with the FEMA region. FEMA's also divided the country into regions, and those staff are the first line, so to speak, when we have a deployment. And they will be at a coordination center, a FEMA coordination center, and then we'll have other ESF leader. ESFL is the mnemonic out of iqcs. And they will be at field locations, often all the way out to mission assignment locations, validating and ensuring that our road clearance mission, for example, is actually what's happening and that they're not. There's not some FEMA guy telling our fire crews to go knock on doors and see if there's anybody in there or anything like that. It's just clear the road curb to curb. That's what we're here for.
[00:30:33] Speaker D: Yeah. If I can add one more thing. So, Helene, we had two hotshot crews and a bunch of falling mods. We were doing road clearing and, you know, all normal, easy kind of work. Then there was a river corridor that they were actively doing body searches for, and they came to a long stretch of narrow, inaccessible river.
So our hotshot crews were cutting P lines down from the closest road or access down to the river a couple locations. So they get folks down in there. And then, of course, mission creep happens. They were asked if they could do some walking along the riverbank since, you know, they're cutting the peelines. We have a lot of, you know, 40 people right there doing that. Could they walk some of that river corridor, working outside their scope of what we have them doing, you know, looking for remains or stuff like that. So. So we instructed our hotshot crews they could. They could cut all they want, you know, peelines down to the. To the creeks and rivers that we were doing, but that's where we stopped. We weren't. We weren't in the recovery mode. That. That's ESF 9. Folks who do that, they just needed to coordinate and get a team of Those folks coming down to do that.
So it mission creep was a possible thing there. We didn't want our folks doing stuff. They didn't sign up. You know, we signed up to cut and we're not prepared to be finding stuff. We also told our folks we were not to be cutting debris piles. That was another thing along the river. Debris piles pile up, things get stuck in there. And we were not to be even those remote ones where they couldn't get equipment or anything to break those debris piles apart to get the dogs in. We were not to be cutting debris piles. So that was a firm no on our team. The ask was there but the response was no. So we didn't do that. But that creep happens if we're not on top of it, things happen that we don't want to have happen. I'm sure the folks on the field would, some of them would say sure, we'll give you a hand. But that's not what we're, we don't want to do that. I mean, yeah, so I'll leave it there.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Well, I can imagine too because yeah, you start doing that and then it falls into other things. And yeah, maybe you're just not, you're not physically, well maybe physically prepared but maybe you don't have the proper equipment or the mental preparedness for what you're going to be experiencing there. So I can see that that would be you come in with this one mission or focus and then they have you pulling other directions and.
[00:33:09] Speaker C: Right.
[00:33:10] Speaker A: You kind of lose your side of your, your mission I guess.
[00:33:13] Speaker C: Yeah, the mission creep is so consistent that I, I try to front load resources that are out there just to say like provide a better version of what you were there to do. Like if you're there to put in P line well then let's do a P line with some GPS coordinates and some more data about it and tell them you're going to give them a write up in a photo and a file and we're not going to take on the task of recovering bodies just because we cut a P line to the river.
[00:33:40] Speaker A: And what, what is a peeline?
[00:33:41] Speaker C: A personnel line.
[00:33:42] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:33:44] Speaker C: So it's basically cutting a pathway through brush or standing vegetation so that people can get in and out.
[00:33:53] Speaker A: Kind of like you're making a fuel breaker.
[00:33:55] Speaker C: It's access and it could be as narrow as one person or like a, you know, something as wide as a sidewalk where you're going to carry things up and down it.
[00:34:03] Speaker E: So any of you might be able to answer this but for Someone who's interested in getting involved or going out on an all hazard incident. Are there required trainings for working with FEMA or any kind of all hazard response? Are there recommended trainings that you should take?
[00:34:20] Speaker B: Yeah, I think it given your broad audience, it probably depends. Right. And as a federal employee and in particular I'll say a DOI employee, honestly the best place to start is probably to look at the DOI Incident Position Qualifications guide. Within that guide is a DOI employee that essentially for our wildland firefighters out there, that's the equivalent of the NWCG310 1. So that is the guide that governs all of our incident qualifications. And generally speaking our wildland fire responders with ICS qualifications.
It'll be a one to one kind of basically equivalency, if you will, in that guide there's a whole bunch of technical positions as well and there are some specific positions that have taskbook requirements. More broadly, I might look to Mike, but generally FEMA has a whole host of trainings that are both offered whether they're self paced or otherwise that depending again on who you work for, that would be your avenue to really explore how you might get involved.
[00:35:25] Speaker C: Yeah, for stuff that falls under admission assignment. Under ESF 4 and other ESFs, whatever qualifications you have for your regular work is adequate.
For our ESF 4 coordination staff we have a couple of different avenues and qualifications and there's ways for anybody in the wildland fire business to get involved in that. We do trainings usually once or twice a year. There's an apprentice position ESF A that assists an ESF L ESF leader at these mobilizations. And the ESF leader ESFL can be out anywhere from the national coordination center in D.C. to you know, out at a point of distribution in North Carolina during Helene. It could be any, any one of those things in between. And we do. We also have another position that is for structure fire mobilizations where we needed that expertise added to the mission assignment. But I think. Scott, did you have a question or comment?
[00:36:36] Speaker D: No, I just had a couple things. I know our all hazard team really likes folks to have the IS 100, 200, 700, 800 intro to ICS basic ICS for initial response Introduction to the National Incident Management System and National response framework. So is 100, 200, 700, 800.
[00:36:58] Speaker C: There's a. Also the Forest Service in particular gets involved with ESF 13 which is law enforcement. We have a separate MOU with them. Our law enforcement staff can go on their mission assignments for and I believe DOI has The same. Same thing.
[00:37:15] Speaker A: I know our rangers have gone out.
[00:37:18] Speaker C: So it, it's not. I don't know a whole lot of detail about that, but I know it. They go and do law enforcement missions, basically.
[00:37:26] Speaker B: Yeah. I think the SEC1 qualification is largely utilized for those mobilizations. But mobilizations do occur outside of our system, though, for some of these support functions.
[00:37:37] Speaker C: Yeah.
[00:37:38] Speaker A: So, Jim, I know when we were kind of talking and prepping for this podcast, just for an example, to give our listeners an example, you were on an interesting incident where you had a search and rescue assignment, but you were on a hot shot crew. Can you talk about that? Because I thought that was just kind of something. What to expect.
[00:38:02] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:03] Speaker A: Or be prepared for.
[00:38:04] Speaker B: Yeah. So. And this, this may be unique to the Park Service. It was, it happened to be Alpine Hotshots. And in the context of that crew, I was. Was helping out and filling in, in a leadership role on that crew. And we got a request, essentially there was an injured hiker on Longs Peak at Rocky Mountain national park, and they needed, essentially, they couldn't access it by helicopter because there was thunderstorms in the area. And so they needed help essentially with litter carry. So the hot check crew, we essentially hiked in with a bunch of search and rescue rangers.
And we were. The intent there was that obviously carrying individuals who are injured out is a fairly physically demanding requirement. And so, yeah, we ended up hiking up Longs Peak in the middle of thunderstorms and having to, you know, shelter at times because of the hail and obviously lightning and all that. So ultimately we didn't end up being used. The weather cleared and they were able to extract with aviation asset. So. But regardless, that's, that's kind of the type of thing. But, but there were some good learning points that came out of that for us from the wildland fire perspective. For example, our. Our cotton undershirts that we often wear in Nomex aren't necessarily the best way to outfit when you're potentially going to be in an environment where you could be cold and become hypothermic. All of the rain that we received and that sort of thing, we had some folks who were pretty close to hypothermia. Even though it was the middle of summer, we were up at 10, 11,000ft. And so anyway, there's a host of things from the wildland fire perspective. I think when we become involved in these, it's important to think about. And one of the things that an AAR action after action review kind of thing that we learned on that too, and I think is applicable for any of these all hazard things is that we're pretty good risk managers in wildland fire. And that process can be applied to the all hazard environment. It should be applied to the all hazard environment as well. So, you know, when you go out and participate on these things, Scott mentioned, you know, some of the things from the Park Service, for example, pulling out drywall, what kind of exposure to mold, that sort of thing. But I guess the point there is that if you do become involved in these, utilize that risk management process, but also ask questions, make sure you get a good briefing, you know, what are the hassles, hazards, what are the mitigations in place? And I think that's pretty important to mention for our wildland fire responders out there that you'll be exposed to different hazards. Yeah, we have good experience with ICS and functioning in that environment, but it is a different hazard that we're dealing with. And so recognizing that and, you know, being sure that we apply that risk management process, I think is pretty important and helpful.
[00:40:56] Speaker A: So personal protective equipment is going to be a little bit different perhaps.
[00:41:01] Speaker B: Yes, yes. Yeah.
[00:41:03] Speaker A: So, and so if you're getting a resource order to go to Helene, like Scott, how did you, when you got your resource order and you found out you were going to Helene, what, how did you pack differently personally?
[00:41:16] Speaker D: Well, I was able to drive, so that was cool. So I was able to pack kind of heavy. I packed a different suite of clothes. I didn't pack my puffy jacket, my winter cold gear for that kind of stuff. I did pack some shorts, swimsuit, some things like that. I knew we're going to get bug spray and stuff like that down there, so I didn't pack any of that. I didn't know exactly where we're going, so I left a lot of it open.
You know, we're going to be pre positioned, staged in Alabama. So I knew if I needed something special, I'd go to the store and pick it up and you know, in an unaffected area. Actually on the flip side of that, I've. I've worked hurricanes up the east coast or in Florida where everyone's impacted. Not just a tornado, that, that's a small area. You can go to Walmart, you know, two towns over and get what you need. When those larger areas are impacted by a hurricane, the thought of going to Walmart and buying a flat of water, that probably won't happen. Everyone in the area has already bought all the water. Everyone in the area has bought anything. You May need. You know, you forget your raincoat. Well, they're gone. You forgot something else. That's popular demand. They're gone. You know, the generators are gone, all the wood and Lowe's is gone. So if we need equipment for the stuff, we need to set up a. Our logistics, folks really have to go far. Even Miami is out of generators. You know, gas cans, you know, all those things that we need, some blue tarps, you know, they're all out of that. If you need some of those N91 masks because you're working in mold, they're all gone. You know, so if you need a dehumidifier, they're gone. I mean, Miami is huge and the entire town is out of all those things that you need extra blades for your skill saw, they're gone. You know, so anything that you might need, just expect that to be gone in those large affected areas. So. So, yeah, I know they say bring food and water. On the first couple hurricanes, I brought a lot of food and water and I ended up not using it, so I got kind of lazy and didn't do that. But depending on where you're going, the further down Florida you go, you know, the less access to, you know, Florida is only so wide. So you can't just go somewhere else because. And pick up those things you need because they're going to be gone. Walmart, Target, they're gone on all those important stuff. So just pack what you think you need. Pack maybe a little bit more. If you're flying, just do your best. Carry an extra bag. When I request folks to travel and fly, I put on the resource order. Or if it's just a phone call, I'll tell them, is that, you know, bring all the. If you're an electrician, bring all that stuff that you need with you. We'll pay for the extra bag fee. Put it in a tote, tape it up, you know, ship it with you. We'll pay that extra bag fee. But we don't want you to arrive and buy. Try to, you know, have to buy all your equipment to. To just test electrical sockets to see if they're alive or dead. You know, you bring that meter with you, bring your saw with you, bring your extra batteries, rechargeable batteries with you, bring your charger with you, all that kind of stuff. So. So, yeah, because, yeah, just plan ahead for. For where you're going and how big the event or the thing is.
[00:44:30] Speaker A: Anything to add to that?
[00:44:32] Speaker C: I've worn out a lot of boots walking on pavement during Those things. I guess it's kind of hard on your shoes. I wish I'd had different shoes to wear.
[00:44:40] Speaker A: I got your whites.
[00:44:42] Speaker C: Not my whites.
[00:44:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:44:44] Speaker C: I ended up putting together what I call my cold and wet weather kit so that I can just grab that. And it's got, you know, puffy and socks and gloves and hats. There's always some little detail that you wish you had. So I kept trying to shove them all in one bag. Just add that bag.
[00:45:00] Speaker E: In closing, does anyone else have anything to add? Anything we missed? Advice for people who want to get involved in all hazard response. That's a very broad topic. It could be going anywhere.
[00:45:14] Speaker A: And we didn't even touch on the international and how that might be different. That might be another podcast, but could be.
[00:45:21] Speaker B: Yeah, maybe that's your next one.
[00:45:23] Speaker E: Yeah, there you go.
[00:45:27] Speaker B: Maybe just a couple of things or you know, briefly here is, you know, one of the things that I think is interesting and particularly I'll think about like Park Service events, but this may apply under ESF 4 too, is that as middle management and leadership and you know, command and general staff positions, I think cost management. Not to say that we don't manage costs in Wildland fire, but there's much more focus on managing cost, at least in my experience with all hazard incidents. And that often drives different operational decisions. So I think one of the things that I would would say is to be thinking about that in the context of wildland fire that your cost containment efforts may really start to impact your operational decisions and what you do and whether that's extended timeframes, whether that's we can't do that, that's something just from a mindset perspective going into all hazard, don't necessarily expect that the types of resources and or questioning of your orders is going to be as easy as it might be in Wildland fire. So I think that's, you know, one thing that I would share another thing, and I'll just say this for CNG positions, probably more so, but particularly if Park Service, oftentimes, you know, you'll. In Wildland Fire, we work with an agency administrator that's usually at that local unit. Right. Oftentimes for the Park Service as an incident commander or even a member of command and general staff, you may end up in meetings and or briefing regional directors. Even up to Washington office higher level management in the Park Service and that's something that people aren't necessarily used to doing is, you know, briefing SES regional directors and you know, SES employees. Perhaps at the Washington Office level. So that's, that's something that is very often, I think different within in particular the all hazard response. But I think it would probably apply to even potentially ESF activation. So. And then I guess I'd just close out kind of my thoughts with, you know, wildland firefighters in particular really bring a skill set that is needed in all hazard response. We exercise our skills, skills often every year we have great opportunities to exercise all of our incident command system skills. And all hazard doesn't necessarily always have that right.
Hurricanes may have a bad season, we may not. So I guess I would just say for those wildland firefighters out there that we need your capabilities and expertise in the all hazard world and you have a lot to bring to that. So in the interest of service to others, certainly there's also a lot of benefits to be gained from going out and actually helping people that are really in time of need. We do that in wildland fire and we see that. But there's also a lot of satisfaction that can come from that response effort. So just wanted to kind of maybe leave with that, that we need your participation.
[00:48:21] Speaker A: Yeah. When fire season's over, it might not be over.
[00:48:25] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:48:26] Speaker D: Hey, I have a couple, I have a couple things as well. So on a personal note, I wanted to see, I wanted to see different places. You know, I've been on fires all over the west, been there, done that. I like doing it. It's great stuff. I wanted to go somewhere else and do some other stuff. So, you know, I've been to a ton of places that I would never have been on a wildfire. So on a personal note, I really enjoy going to different places.
You know, getting paid to do some really neat stuff. You know, the eclipses, seeing two eclipses and work those. So another thing to be aware of for government employees, ESF 4 were capped. Biweekly pay cap that may be lifted. It was lifted. But then your hourly pay cap, if you're at a GS level where you're going to get capped, just be aware that you may have a pay cap in effect. So you may not work as many hours as you do on a fire. 16s aren't the average. 14s, you know, 12s maybe. So just be aware of that. Don't go into it thinking financially you're going to be the same coming out. You won't be. Some of the other things is you, like Jim said, you really get to do some really good help, good work, you really see what's going on and you feel like you're Helping people. You do see the best in people when you go to these places. And sometimes you see the worst in people as well. So just be prepared. You see people pulling together, just donations and all that kind of stuff. People real nice and real, you know, at the gas station, they're super nice, you know, and, but you see, you see some of the worst and people, you know, things getting stolen. So, so just, just be aware that you'll be on a bit of a roller coaster with emotion sometimes the challenges. Lots of times it seems like we're making it up as we go. Just like on a fire, you know, you come in, you make a plan, you execute it and you hope it works. The same with this, except your plan is different. Everything that's usually easy on a wildfire is difficult or more difficult on all hazard. Getting stuff, your time, getting resources. You know, what you're doing is some kind of a fuzzy, vague, squishy direction that you're given on what your limitations are. What really are you doing. Now road clearing is easy. That's road clearing. But then how, how wide and, but then there's other stuff. You're helping the emergency management officials in counties and you're acting as their deputy, you're advising them. So there's a lot of, you're learning new stuff real quick and you just have to be aware that if you like to do that, this is perfect for you. But if you're not into new stuff and learning if you want, it's easy. There's not a lot of easy buttons. The easy buttons are all on fire. They're all hard buttons to push. So, so just be aware of difficulties and working out problems and challenges. And challenges. So yeah, and budget constraints are huge. With least the park service stuff. There's, there's. When a hurricane comes through, they think, you know, order the world. And then after a few days of what our burn rate is per day, they're raining yen and we can't do everything. So just be aware that sometimes the best plan, you know, there's not the money for the best plan or whatever. So flexibility is super key. And then the enjoyment side, I can't hit home enough on the enjoyment side. It's just as enjoyable as fire is. For the fire folks who do fire, it's enjoyable on the other side, doing things, going to new places, helping out. So that's all I have.
[00:52:01] Speaker B: Yeah, very quickly, just follow up and encourage. If you're going to go out on a non fire, all hazard incident, look at the incident business management handbook. Chapter 90 and chapter 10. That'll answer many of the questions that you might have related to that pay.
[00:52:17] Speaker C: Yeah. I think the only thing I would add in is I encourage everyone interested to try and get involved. It is worthwhile and definitely needed. It's part of a broader system that can really serve the American people. Regarding financials, the. The mission assignments come with a specific dollar amount, so we're managing that very concisely on a ESF 4 mission assignment. And then keep an eye out on your local unit for when there are circumstances of assistance where as a good neighbor, we're going to assist the county or the city or something with something, and you can kind of dip your toe into that. Those sorts of situations are always predicated on your agency administrator or unit manager saying it's okay, but it's a good way to start getting involved. And we're always able to be a good neighbor, but it's predicated on permission from your administrator.
[00:53:13] Speaker A: All right, well, thank you three. I was gonna say thank you both. Well, thank you both for being here in person in the studio, Mike and Jim. And thank you, Scott, for joining us virtually to tell us about your experience in all hazard response for our 32nd episode. And. Yeah. And all the work you do to help coordinate because it's a. It's kind of a little different. It's a big different than just managing wildfires. A lot of things to think about when you're going into that.
[00:53:45] Speaker E: Yeah. And for our listeners, if you have questions, comments, or even suggestions on different topics for our podcast, please email them to blm_fanfcommentslm.gov and use wildfire Matters podcast and the subject line. To learn more about NFC or the BLM, please visit our website nipsey.gov and follow us at BLM FIRE on Facebook X and Instagram.
[00:54:12] Speaker A: Yeah. And thank you all for listening and following. These past few years as I've hosted this podcast, I have been truly honored and truly enjoy the conversations and learning about the different things coming into this podcast today. All this was kind of confusing. It's still kind of confusing, but you have cleared up a lot of stuff and I've learned a little bit more about how the hazard all hazard response does operate at that level. So thank you. Just, I know it's way more involved, but just touching on this briefly has really helped and hopefully I'll help listeners and maybe get some more people involved in all hazard response and wanting to go out to these missions because it is important. I'm happy to be handing. Well, happy and kind of sad to be handing off this podcast to my now co host, now host, Piper Brandt. So I'm sure she'll take it and do good things in the future. And I don't know, maybe I can come back and. Oh, yeah, do a surprise. I bet you'll be co hosting Wish.
[00:55:19] Speaker E: They're gonna miss you.
[00:55:20] Speaker A: I know. I'm gonna miss you guys too.
[00:55:22] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:23] Speaker E: Well, please join us next time when we might spark a conversation on international assistance for Wildfire.
[00:55:31] Speaker A: Oh, you might be on the hook for the next one, too.
[00:55:34] Speaker E: A mic deck.
[00:55:37] Speaker A: Until then, stay safe and be Wildfire Warehouse.
