Episode Transcript
[00:00:11] Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the 30th episode of Wildfire Matters, the podcast that covers all aspects of wildland fire Management for the Bureau of Land Management, or BLM. We work and talk with people who help manage and protect our public lands, many who dedicate their lives to the profession. Today we are talking about a very important topic, dispatch. The sometimes unforgotten, behind the scenes people who do a lot of work to help our firefighters out and support them. We have Tommy Hayes, Upper Colorado River District fire management officer out of Grand Junction, Amy Lancaster, Miles City Interagency Dispatch center manager for the BLM Eastern Montana Dakotas district, and Katie Williamson, who used to be a center manager and who is now the Bhiddeen BLM Colorado dispatch efficiency coordinator. All joining us virtually Piper and I are in the studio, and Amy's got a fire burning out her outer door, it sounds like, and good people, though, to handle it. So welcome. Thank you for joining us and being able to step in to talk about the very important work you all do in dispatch.
[00:01:21] Speaker B: We appreciate the invitation.
[00:01:23] Speaker C: Thank you.
[00:01:23] Speaker A: Yes. So, first off, I want to learn a little bit more about yourselves and what led to your current positions. So, Amy, let's start with you. How did you get started and what led to your career in dispatch?
[00:01:37] Speaker D: Well, thanks for this opportunity, number one. And yeah, we do have a fire going, but that's okay. We've got great people that are on the opposite side of my door, so I'm happy to be here with all of you. Well, I started back in 1999. I started working for the Montana Department of Natural Resources. It started out as a college summer job. I think that's how a lot of us started is when we were younger. I was 19 at the time, and I had grown up with my dad being a county fire warden here in Montana for ever since I've known smoke in the air and red suns. I started with my dad, and that grew into a love for a job that I didn't know I was ever going to have. I went to college for a business marketing degree. I thought I was going to travel the world and do all the fun things in life, and that didn't exactly pan out because I found fire and I realized that every day is a different day and it's a great opportunity. I did start with the BLM. I actually just hit my 22nd year of employment here on August 25. So, I mean, we all know our service dates, and that's pretty exceptional and something to be proud of for all of us when we get to hit those milestones. But that's kind of where I led. I was homegrown. I never had to move. It's a very unique opportunity for being with the Bureau of Land Management and a federal opportunity with Wildland Fire is a lot of people have to move on to move up kind of a thing. We hear that a lot. But my career just worked with people's retirements. And so after all of those years of starting here in Little Omile City, Montana, in 2000, back in 1999. Sorry. Then here we are. So thank you for the opportunity to be here.
[00:03:27] Speaker A: Yeah, that sounds very familiar with my situation, too, Amy. I've been blm the whole time, going on almost 30 years. Well, some of that seasonal, so, you know, it doesn't technically count. But I did get my 25 year pin too, long ago. But yep, same thing. Kind of led that path, too, as people left and kind of moved up. And here I am. Good to hear there's actually somebody else out there like that, like me and.
[00:03:54] Speaker D: Pins to show for it. Yes.
[00:03:57] Speaker A: So how about you, Katie, your work in dispatch and then dispatch efficiency coordinator, which sounds like a new type of position.
[00:04:07] Speaker C: It is. So I started my career back in 1999 very similar to Amy. And it sounds like you kind of was doing it just as a. Kind of a summer job, you know, just to get through college. And what really got me into fire was I had a high school teacher who was with alpine hotshots. His name's Andy Rothleutner. He's been around in fire for quite some time, but he had been with alpine hotshots and then he was a school teacher at the high school where I went. And he had told me my senior year, like, you should apply for fire. Like, you've got the right mentality, you've got the work ethic. Like, you should try it. And so my first four years I worked as a seasonal while I was going to college. I guess it was really like a student type of thing, you know, the June through August type of schedule. And I graduated from college and then I realized that I spent all this money on a college degree that now I'm not going to use and I want to stay in fire. So I had applied for some permanent positions and I applied for a forest service position because I had them BLM prior. And I applied for a forest service position down in Arizona on the Apache Cyprus National Forest. And they hired me to be a permanent on their hell attack crew. So I spent about six to seven years down there working on their hell attack crew. And I was in one of those appointments as an 18 and eight elite with the hell attack, and in the off season, they didn't. They gave me the opportunity. We can lay you off, or you can go and work in dispatch and help out our local dispatch center to learn some skill sets. And so I chose the option to, hey, you know, the three or four months, I'll go work with the dispatchers and learn it. And I will say that time that I was exposed to it, I learned so much more about the whole system in general. I learned about incident prioritization, resource allocation. I learned about, you know, what is required for intelligence gathering. You know, why do agency administrators want to know about these values at risk and what helps the duty officer be successful when you're the dispatcher and you're the one actually talking to the IC in the field? So I learned quite a bit over those years just being exposed to that opportunity. And then, you know, during the rest of the seven, eight months out of the year, when I was back with my crew, it made me a much better incident commander. And then in 2008, I went up to Wyoming, where I'm at now. But I went to Wyoming, and I was managing a helicopter for a typhoon incident. And a gentleman by the name of Cliff Hutton, he's a BLM, a former Colorado deputy BLM state FML. And he had talked to me about, you know, just like, hey, you grew up in this area. My wife just became the center manager at Cody Dispatch nearby, and her name's Kathy Hutton. And Cliff had told me, you're in that peak code savings thing with the forest service, right? You think your forest wants you to hang out here a little bit longer? Because Kathy was a brand new center manager at coding dispatch. And all the staff prior had kind of hit that retirement, so she was building a whole new center from scratch. And so I got to work with Calgary for about three or four months because my forest in Arizona was like Pete Code Sadiens. Heck, yeah, you stayed, you know, and. Which worked out great. And so I got to learn a lot more of the coordination and the dispatch system from up here. And then randomly, in 2010, I was down at Nafri for training because I gone back to Arizona, back with my hell attack crew, was at a training at Nafri, and Kathy Hutton saw my name on some class syllabus and calls me up randomly and says, hey, you want to go to a baseball game tonight in Tucson? And I was like, yeah, I guess we can go. And we talked about careers. And next thing I knew that following September, I was working for at Cody Dispatch as the assistant center manager, and it worked out well. So I moved from prime, from operations in, gosh, it was the fall of 2010, I became an assistant center manager at Cody Dispatch, and then I eventually became the center manager in 2020 when Kathy retired. And then I started my dispatch efficiency career here in 2022. So it was a, a long term, deep detail that we're working on with the dispatchers within the Rocky Mountain area. It's kind of expanded beyond that as well. Now it's quite a few geographic areas, but that's how I've kind of gotten to where I'm at right now.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: My career, no, it's very interesting sometimes, you know, conversations held after hours are you get a lot of stuff done and then you end up with a new job.
[00:08:33] Speaker C: You do. And it was great. And I will say, I used to tease her, you know, like, gosh, what were you thinking, you know, putting your effort and emphasis into me. And she's like, I know you're going to go places. You're who I want. And it's worked out great. And still super close to her. She's one of the best mentors I've ever had and just great all around.
[00:08:51] Speaker A: Well, that's fantastic. And actually, I thought of you initially when we were starting to look at people for this podcast. You know, I reached out to you, Katie, because you, you actually were on our we are BLM fire video, too, about dispatch and did such an awesome job explaining how everything works. So I'm really glad you got to join us today.
[00:09:09] Speaker C: Well, now you just told the other two I was the one that threw.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Them under the bus. Yes, totally threw you guys under the bus.
So, Tommy, how about you? As an FMO, I understand you have been a huge advocate for dispatchers and had to step in for the past year and a half to provide support and leadership for your dispatch center with ongoing center vacancies.
[00:09:28] Speaker B: Yeah. Quick background for me and I, this is an hour podcast, right? So I'll try to just take the quick high points of my career. But I started, I too am have been paid by the BLM my entire career. I started here in Grand Junction in 1994. Then in 2009 I moved into a position working at Nipsey and Boise, working under the umbrella of fire ops. And I did that for about six years. And then from there I bumped over to Twin Falls, Idaho, as the district FMO there. And I was there for about five years and then eventually came full circle back home here in Grand Junction as the service first FMO so how I got into the dispatching side of things was obviously like a lot of us do. We started having vacancies and programs, and, you know, these places need leadership, so you fill the gaps where they need to be filled. And so that was kind of my intro to dispatching, and I hear you've.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Done a wonderful job.
[00:10:23] Speaker B: Well, I have wonderful people and they do a wonderful job. I could just pick them.
[00:10:30] Speaker E: Dispatchers often get forgotten when talking about suppression operations because they're behind the scenes and maybe not the most glamorous, action packed or outwardly glamorous position out there, but they do play such a vital support role for ordering resources and supplies, working with multiple entities. Just how important is dispatch to Wildland fire management?
[00:10:54] Speaker B: I think that I'm a believer that you need to keep your fingers on the pulse of your program. Then you need to sit with dispatchers throughout their day to day grind to really understand the mechanics of how a dispatch center operates. And I think as an FMO, you need to be an advocate of something. But if you haven't been there with them to see the challenges they face, then how can you really understand their perspectives on things? So one thing I do believe, after managing two different dispatch centers, is that dispatching the support systems of our program are the foundation for what could be many other successes. And in turn, it could be the starting point to many of the failures that we see in dispatch. So I think it just kind of shows that we're all part of the same chunk of swiss cheese.
[00:11:52] Speaker E: So what would you say are the most important foundations of a good dispatch program?
[00:11:58] Speaker B: The most important foundations, I think, are going to be morale. And I think there's a lot of connections to dispatch morale. And one bad apple can easily have long term implications, kind of infecting the program well after people are gone. If people dread coming to work every day because their environment's toxic, then dispatch centers are really doomed to fail. We need to stop settling on hiring just to make our own jobs easier.
And that means that if I have to sit in a dispatch center until I retire, helping build the kind of people who are right for the future, I will. We need to keep focusing on hiring people who understand the people part and the human side and demonstrate integrity throughout their day to day actions. I think that, again, a part of the foundation building, a phrase that we've been speaking to an awful lot this year in dispatch, that relates definitely to that life work balances wean versus meand. Does that make sense to everybody? So wean's being when we're focused on the team as a whole, wean is when we're spreading the burden among everybody versus just a couple of people, versus mean where we're focused on ourselves or we're focused on my qualifications or we're focused on my weekends off. So for me to have a solid foundation, you have to have a place where people really want to be. And you have to start with the improving morale and hiring the right people for the positions. And we just can't keep settling like what we have. A lot of the problems we've seen in dispatch centers are directly related to the things that we're willing to, we've been settling for. So sorry if I went around a lot of different ways to get to that point, but that's, that's kind of how I've been feeling this lately.
[00:14:04] Speaker E: That was great to hear. Yeah. What makes a good dispatcher, in your opinion? Like, what qualities do you look for?
[00:14:10] Speaker B: Without question? Integrity. I think integrity.
Somebody who, again, gets the people part, somebody who understands the team element of things, somebody who wants to add value to the program as a whole. And if we could continue to focus on just some of those simple traits, I never believe it's been the technical aspect of the positions. And we can teach the technical side fairly easily, but we can't teach people the human side of being a good human being side. So if we always hire based on someone who we know we could train, but we know we don't have to, I mean, how can you teach people how to be some good human? It's really difficult, but we can teach the technical elements of a program fairly easily. So a good dispatcher is somebody who understands that the value of helping the.
[00:15:07] Speaker E: Greater good, having good people around you, is important no matter where you are.
[00:15:10] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:15:11] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. So, Katie, is this kind of, as your current job efficiency coordinator, how does this all play into that?
[00:15:19] Speaker C: Oh, it's huge. I mean, everything Tommy was saying, we look at dispatch centers oftentimes, I feel that we put a lot of emphasis in our programs right now, in our primary operations folks and that primary fire where sometimes our dispatch community isn't maybe getting the opportunities or maybe not understanding they have the opportunities for leadership training or even having the understanding that teamwork makes the dream work. Right.
That is so important right now in our dispatch centers, because, as Tommy said, when you don't have those relationships, you don't have that morale, you're not going to have a highly functioning center. And so having our dispatchers from, and I'd say, from the entry level all the way up through the center manager. Providing people with these opportunities to grow, not just for their careers, but personally as well, is super important. I don't know how many times I've heard, you know, people say, well, I'd really like to go take a leadership class. However, I'm not prioritized because, you know, it's, it's going to maybe some of the primary operations people or it's going to somebody else, and they're like, you know, I'd really like to go take L 380 or L 381 and learn how we interact better just studying within the dispatch center, but to then see how do those team functions, you know, the logistics and plans and division and how all those guys collaborate together to build that team. Because really, relationships matter no matter what in fire in general. But in dispatch, it is so critical, because in my mind, dispatch is the backbone for a wildland fire. I mean, we are that single point of contact for every function comes through us at some point. And you're the ones that we need to make sure that we have good relationships within our teams, that we're passing information with each other, we're passing it to our external partners. We're making sure that if we see something, you say something, and when you don't have those relationships, that's where you tend to see that swiss cheese hole model starting to line up and things like that.
[00:17:20] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. Amy, any thoughts on that?
[00:17:24] Speaker D: So with dispatch being the hub of communication, I mean, we are the center point for everything that happens within our dispatch areas, within our districts, within our response areas, it's tough to have patience. Sometimes patience is key as a dispatcher, to be able to listen to those different types of personalities and people that aren't very clear and concise with their communication. So with us being that hub, we also have to be good at being clear and concise with all of our boots on the ground. When it comes to that radio contact, sometimes you only have a finite moment in time to be clear and concise on the radio when that time matters. So to be able to train somebody to think before you talk. So as we also do with our teenagers sometimes, for those of us that have teenagers, it's like what you say matters, words matter. And that's a huge point that we like to drive home with our dispatchers. And, and I agree. We want to hire the right people for the job. We don't want to hire just because of quantity, just because there are vacancies on our table of organization we want to be able to hire the right type of people. And as a supervisor, it takes time to invest that time and make that time to do the interviews, to do the background checks and not just rush through the process of hiring to get a person a warm body in the seat, because a warm body isn't necessarily the right person for the job. So the HR component for us and the dispatch part of it, that onus falls back on us here at the local level a lot that hiring has changed over the years. I've seen the pendulum swing back and forth. Where are those subject matter experts? Are they, you know, at the HR office? Probably not. Are they here at our local offices? Yes. But do we get the opportunity to interview the right people for the job?
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Yeah, it's tough because I know a lot of people, like sometimes we always think of dispatch centers as maybe some of the dumping ground for all the injured firefighters, and sometimes it works out great. I know a few that have, you know, decided, actually, I really enjoy this. This job is for me, and it's worked out great. I know a few of those still in dispatch, but not always.
Katie, you were going to say something?
[00:19:48] Speaker C: I was just going to say and kind of tag off what Amy has said, too. You know, in the dispatch center, I don't think people realize that we are coordinating with daily, with so many different agencies with different policies, different procedures, different expectations, and it's a lot on our dispatchers at times, you know, especially as a center manager, yes, you are delegated that daily, you know, daily supervision of your interagency staff. You know, when I was a BLM center manager, I had to still do performance appraisals with my forest service staff, my bia staff, and coordinating within their agency supervisor as well. And so there is a lot of communication, a lot of understanding of what different policies are, different procedures within every agency. And I feel like with dispatch, you have a very good sense. You have to know, you have to have some knowledge about almost every single thing that's in fire. You have to know about some things in logistics, you have to know about some incident business, you have to know about some aircraft, you have to know about even just emergency procedures, things like that, because a lot of that is all run through the center. And when there's questions, more often than not, or more often than not, they all come to the dispatch center for us to try to be the problem solver.
[00:21:03] Speaker B: I guess I want to tag onto a couple of things that connect to both of the things that you said to, that both to be said, but I think historically, a lot of the challenges we faced in dispatch have been self inflicted through what's probably years and years of neglect and an undersighted lens of where the program should be going. Tying into those complexities and things like increases to dispatch staffing has always been one of the last things we've ever looked at. If we look at it at all, our center managers are expected to accomplish things where the complexities are probably comparable to our district, afMos, and probably even my position. The way dispatch centers have historically probably operated, I don't think is going to be a sustainable means to what today's needs are. And they probably don't meet the life work balance and expectations of personnel coming into our agency. So I think it's time, and I think we have current leadership who are looking at different ways to revamp a lot of different things. Consolidations being a good example of that, from staffing levels and to grades, to critically looking at what we're asking our dispatch centers to do so. But all these things need to happen at interagency levels to be successful.
[00:22:27] Speaker A: Yeah. So, Katie, is that kind of what you are looking at as an efficiency coordinator? Because I have not heard that term before or that position before.
[00:22:36] Speaker C: So the Rocky Mountain area is the first that I know has established these long term details, and they're calling them efficiency coordinators. So I am, for the Rocky Mountain area, the BLM coordinator, but then I work with two other counterparts. One's a US forest Service, and then the other one is a Colorado state coordinator. And the three of us are address, trying to address those things that Tommy said. You know, back in 2018, within the Rocky Mountain area, our dispatch committee wrote an issue paper up to our Rocky Mountain coordinating group saying, we need help. It's like Tommy said, our centers are not sustainable at this point if we don't start making changes. We had understaffed centers. I think we had more than a 50% vacancy rate in every center. A lot of our facilities are kind of out of date. They haven't been able to keep up with the demands. A lot of non core dispatch duties have became the dumping ground in the dispatch. You know, it was kind of one of those things that, hey, if we don't have anyone else to do it, we'll just tell dispatch to do it. And so it goes into that burnout, and it goes into the mental health of our staffs. And when the dispatch committee wrote up their letter, they said, we need you guys to look at us like we need help with this. And so there was a study done from 2018 to 2022 to January 2022. And in that study, they determined that, yes, our centers are understaffed and we need more staffing. They also determined that due to the cost of living, due to locations, that it was too difficult to continue into the future, having six separate interagency centers in Colorado alone. And so the recommendation that the fire executive council determined was that we're going to go from six interagency centers in Colorado down to three into the near future, and just to try to beef up the staffs. Most of the staffs have maybe six or seven people. If you're lucky, in the future, we're hoping to have maybe up to 20 people. So then you have a better work life balance. You have maybe night coverage, so you're not having to pull your day shift to say, hey, you guys gotta stay all night now, because we've got an outfire and we don't have anybody else to stay. So we're gonna have our regular dispatchers stay all night, and then we're gonna be super short staffed tomorrow when things heat up again.
So a lot of things, and I know within eighties neck of the woods, that's kind of. They're starting to look at that, too. Most of the geographic areas at this point are starting to look at these efficiencies and trying to look at consolidations to see how can we improve, how can we help our people, because we're kind of behind the game, but we're trying to get better.
[00:25:10] Speaker A: So you're looking at, like, consolidating, like, the lower tier of dispatch, the local level dispatch centers.
[00:25:17] Speaker C: Yep. Those tier three interagency centers.
[00:25:20] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:25:22] Speaker E: So you all have kind of touched on the challenges that dispatchers have faced. Like, you have to maintain speaking clearly and succinctly under immense pressure sometimes it sounds like, and also dealing with being short staffed. So, Amy, can you share what a typical day may look like at a local level dispatch center during a really intense time? Like a lightning storm rolls through with multiple starts? Like, can you describe what a typical.
[00:25:49] Speaker A: Day could look like or what's happening right now?
[00:25:53] Speaker E: Yeah, exactly.
[00:25:57] Speaker D: You know, one of those things about that whole eight to five job that non fire people are used to is that you can walk into the office knowing exactly what your checklist is going to be that you're going to tick off for the day. You create those checkboxes at the beginning of the day, you walk in, and some of those careers allow you to chink those off as the day goes on in dispatch. I try to make those checkboxes as well before I walk into the office knowing that as soon as I start working on one that's going to fall probably from a Monday to a Tuesday, slide into a Wednesday schedule and hopefully we take care of it by Friday. So, you know, Wildland fire, and that's the best thing about this job, is that every day is going to be different, especially in the Wildland fire season. And that varies across the nation, which is an actual fortunate thing, too, because we can go and help some of those other geographic areas make it through their high points and peaks of their fire season when we know that at home is just the normal eight to five job and you know that everybody's taken care of at home. So like I said, best thing about fire is you never know what your day is going to be. But when it comes to a fire bus day, I mean, most often or when it comes to a typical fire day, is that more often than not for us, we don't have the human cause factor. We have the lightning or we have the unique coal seam fires that some of the other states are also impacted with as well. So when we know those storms are coming through, that's a day that we can plan for. But you never know how many fires are going to come out of that lightning bus. Sometimes the fuel moistures are conducive for having those multiple starts, but more often than not, like a season like this year, we have those multiple starts happening and you just roll with it. And we know that we have the right people in the right seats to be here in dispatch to handle those workloads. We're constantly training and mentoring new trainees at the same time. So that's an extra, you know, add on stressor at times when you already know your boots on the ground are doing, are ordering resources and needing all the assistance that they need. But we're also mentoring at the same time, too. So a day can go from zero to 150 in no time at all.
Like I said, I think that's why I keep coming back to this job, too, is to, you never know when you're going to get that little fix or that little adrenaline rush and then you just go home and try to crash and try to do it all over again the next day.
[00:28:26] Speaker A: Yeah, and like most jobs in fire, every day is going to be different because like you said, you don't know what the day is going to bring. And it's not just Wildland fire you're dealing with either in dispatch centers, you're dealing with other emergency situations, correct? Like maybe with law enforcement dealing with things out that are happening on public lands aside from violence, fires or other agencies. Could be flooding, could be anything, right?
[00:28:49] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely.
[00:28:51] Speaker A: So I don't think people understand that there's that other layer just aside from wildland fire. It's the other calls you're getting as well.
[00:28:59] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we have some of those centers that are dealing with trails crews and they're resource tracking all the time for their personnel out in the field. But, yeah, every dispatch center is different. And that, I think that that's the unique part about us as well, too, is that we've tried nationally to do sops and put us all, paint us all into the same dispatch picture, but that's something that we can't really embrace and take on. I mean, every dispatch center is unique depending on the agencies that we host.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: I think that's where, when I bring up where we need to really look at what we're asking our centers to do is going to be so important in the future, because if we reference the red book and the interagency standards still pretty clear that our primary focus is going to be wild and fire and everything else above and beyond is kind of above and beyond what wild and fire is. So is part of the fatigue we're putting on centers because of all these other added duties that we've been tacking onto them? I mean, we see things. And again, just like Amy says, every center is so uniquely different from each other, and the expectations from each agency is getting to be kind of different, too. But are we having them do things that are adding to the drain and wear and tear of our people? And we need to take a good, hard look at if we are going to have things above and beyond wild and fire, how are we compensating the staff through supplemental staffing or other means to alleviate those burdens?
[00:30:30] Speaker A: Makes sense. Yeah. Well, I kind of think sometimes that the tier one, too, or tier three level, the local level, you're kind of like almost a 911 call center dealing with those. You know, I remember working at Boise district and just being in dispatch, hanging out. Sometimes you're waiting for a fire, and as a fire investigator, like, you know what's going on and, but just seeing what they're dealing with and the calls are getting into, aside from the fire stuff, it's interesting.
[00:30:59] Speaker C: Well, and you talk about the emergency side of things. It's not uncommon for dispatch centers to be supporting, you know, pretty heavy IA and then you have one agency and a whole different radio bank have a medical in the middle of it, and you're trying to support that medical and you're trying to deal with that, and then you're trying to explain to other people, like, can you stand by? Can you stand by it? Not everybody is patient, right? Patience is important at times. And, you know, you tend to then get a bunch of phone calls into the center while you're still trying to deal with the medical. And, you know, you're trying to explain to people, like, listen, we will call you right back. We're dealing with the medical. Oh, well, what happened? Who's hurt? What's going on? You're like, I don't have time for this. Like, I will call you back. Like, is it a critical me that you have right now? Like, oh, no, I just wanted to know how late your staff until tonight, you know, and I'm like, we'll call you back. And then you try to, you know, maybe even clear all the banks, because at this point you're like, hey, guys, like, this is pretty serious, depending on the situation, right? And then you'll still have people call in going, hey, how come you cleared the medical? You know, cleared the radios for the medical? And, and so at times, I don't think people understand that, like Amy said, things ramp up so fast and dispatch it. It's not like, I think at times there's this miss misperception out there that we're just sitting in there, you know, just hanging out all day, you know, an occasional radio call. It's not like that at all. It's pretty routine calls throughout the day. You're constantly tracking resources. You're doing training with your staff because I know most centers, you are training for these unexpected events. You are training for these what happens. You've got this crew out here on this field project and maybe they're doing some hazard tree removal. What are we going to do, guys, if something happens to somebody? Like, you're doing constant scenarios because when that emergency situation comes into play, you want your people to be fluid. I want my people, when I was a center manager, I wanted them to be able to take care of everything 100% without me being there. I didn't need to be there to babysit. I want them to know exactly who to call, what to do, how do we work together to get the information to where it needs? And then, yeah, they would call me afterwards if it happened to be a day off or something. But you want to train your people to handle those situations, because when you don't, that's where I see some of the burnout happen, is people get overwhelmed, they get stressed out. They're like, oh, my gosh, I just took this horrible situation. There was a bus accident, and instead of people calling the 911 center, they call your interagency center, and you're kind of like, well, this isn't really us, but we'll try to help get the 911s involved, and then you're trying to coordinate with them as well so it can go out to be in a rodeo pretty quickly.
[00:33:41] Speaker A: Yeah, sounds pretty intense.
[00:33:43] Speaker E: So it sounds like you get a lot of training on the job after you become a dispatcher about specific situations, but before you're even on the job, what kind of training is required to become a dispatcher, like classes or qualifications?
[00:34:00] Speaker D: So that's really the tricky part, is that it's mostly on the job training. We do have some courses that are available. We call them d courses, which is unique for dispatch. It's a delta. But we also want to provide those leadership opportunities, too, in order to, you know, mentor our dispatchers and give them tools for success. To continue to move on, move up, move wherever, or maybe even develop within our organizations is just to provide those opportunities. I think the other unique situation is to go out on assignments and go learn from those other centers, go see those other dispatch centers, and also go see the geographic Area coordination centers, and go work at the National Interagency Coordination center. We need that exposure at all those different tiered levels to better understand our job on the local level, national level, regional level, wherever we're at. We need that exposure to see how everybody else interacts through our dispatch community.
[00:35:05] Speaker B: To tie on to what Amy said. And again, this all goes back to the relationship part. If people aren't getting out to meet people, they're not building that core group of people that they can lean on when they really need them. And I could say without question, without people like Katie in this last year, where having a vacant center manager where I needed, I needed people who really knew what they were doing to step up and into the program when we were busy with teams or mobilizing teams and stuff like that, that without those connections, I would have been in a pretty bad position. So I think those exposures not only creates employees who are more well rounded to coming back to your center who could maybe bring better ideas to your own center, but you could also impart some things and build some relationships when they're out and about.
[00:35:51] Speaker C: Yeah, and I completely agree with everything Amy and Tommy said, you know, the one thing about the dispatch related courses is, unfortunately, they're not required anymore. And so we aren't seeing what we host these courses. We're not seeing, you know, classes getting filled up because it's no longer a requirement. They replaced all the D 110, which is that entry level dispatcher. It's no longer a requirement. Same with aircraft D 312. It's not a requirement. They replaced them with different eight courses from the IAT website, which are important. I think that they are definitely good information for our dispatchers to have, but I think we're missing a lot of that key component of bringing people in and exposing them to the 311, the initial attack dispatcher. I've had several people that are working on taskbooks that had never seen Wildcat, had been issued to them because, you know, a lot of classes just weren't required, and home units maybe didn't have the budgets to send people, or maybe people didn't understand that they could take this course and it would help them to be more successful. And so that's where I think we need to do better within our agencies, getting our dispatchers working with those training officers and saying, hey, how can I, you know, how can I advance my career? And also encouraging people, go take other classes, go work in finance. If you have an interest in the finance side of things and you want to take a. A finance course or you want to go take a logistics course, or, hey, maybe you've got a super organized, super dialed, and you want to start working towards plans. Like, I want to encourage my people to do that, to be more diverse, because all it's going to do is help us in the long run at our center.
[00:37:27] Speaker A: Yeah, I actually took the D 110 class, too, and it just helped explain or helped me understand dispatch functioning better. And even for just firefighters to understand that better, they're, like, feeling that maybe they're not getting what they need or they don't understand what's actually happening, you know, behind the scenes there. So it's, yeah, just important. If you can take whatever classes you can take to learn a little bit more about the different functional areas, it makes it better for everyone. It makes you more rounded well, and.
[00:37:58] Speaker C: Get your firefighters to come and rotate into dispatch, get them an opportunity to come in and sit in a dispatch center for a week or two weeks to. To learn what we do behind the scenes. So then all it's gonna do is make them a much better incident commander, a much better firefighter in the long run, if they come through, get some exposure. Understand? Oh, man. I did not know that your phones rang a thousand times throughout the day. You know, I one time had an agency administrator come in, and we had a lightning bust, and it was that typical. There were only five of us in the center, and it was just gangbusters of craziness. And I had a local agency administrator, super nice guy, show up at the dispatch center with a whole bunch of ice cream bars. And he's like, he goes, you guys look too busy to even eat this. I'll go stick it in your freezer. And then he just came back, and he just watched my staff for about an hour. And I'll never forget, after an hour, he looks at me and he goes, I think I've seen you answer that phone more times in the last hour than I have in my last month in my job. He goes, I had no idea. And then I said, well, you want to sit down and start answering one? And he goes, no. He goes, this has been exposure enough. He's like, I'll sit back and watch. But he hung out for about an hour, and then I will say, built a better relationship, because then he understood what the stressors are like, right? And he would periodically reach out, like, hey, how's your staff? You know, do they need some more ice cream bars? Or, hey, you know, what can I do? Or keep telling me, hey, I've got this young kid that I know that's graduating high school. He's wanting to get into fire. You know, I think he wants to be a firefighter, but do you know who I could maybe get him tied in with or things like that to help people start developing as well?
[00:39:31] Speaker A: So, anyway, yeah, we used to bring our dispatchers and milkshakes.
[00:39:36] Speaker E: Sounds like they needed.
[00:39:37] Speaker B: It's one of my big regrets as an FMO that I didn't spend more time in dispatching while I was coming up. And sometimes you think you know it all until you really sit in there and get a sense for all those different complexities like I spoke to earlier. So I feel like I'm a way better FMO today than I was just two years ago because I've had the opportunity to really sit in the mess with people and to see their challenges well.
[00:40:04] Speaker A: And there's that other side, the logistical stuff that you're doing as well, like ordering supplies, and the ICs are calling in, or the op section chiefs are looking at stuff. So logistics coordinators or, you know, whoever may be ordering or needing to order supplies or more people or resources for the fires, they're on the. So you're also dealing with that and also resource orders coming in from maybe the geographic area, looking for people to go on fire assignments and those kind of things. So trying to coordinate all that, it's.
[00:40:41] Speaker D: A lot, and I think that that's one thing, too, is that we do have a lot of things that are pulling at us all the time with multiple ordering, you know, from the fires and from our partners and our neighbors and everybody else that wants to order stuff all at the same time. The one thing when they do get frustrated with us, if they do, is that I also have to remind them that as dispatch, we don't go to just one fire. We go to every fire that touches our center. And that is something that is hard to grasp until you come in and you hear the multiple radio banks going off, the different agency repeaters, the phones going, fire management walking in, wanting to know what's going on with the fires and also us trying to put the information out there for those people that aren't co located with us. I mean, we have lots of partners that never come to our dispatch center or they're too far away to come in. And so for us to front load them with that information via fire text notifications, putting stuff out on Wildcat or Wild Web, I mean, we're trying to get that information push out there, too, as we're trying to, you know, embrace what's getting asked of us.
[00:41:54] Speaker A: So how does it work? We didn't kind of skip this question to just explain, like, dispatch the levels a little bit better, like, from the local to the geographic to the national. We all kind of talked about that or just touched on that. But can you explain, one of you explain, like, the different levels of dispatch and what kind of happens at those different levels?
[00:42:19] Speaker C: So at that tier three level, that's more of your local interagency dispatch centers. You know, that's your boise dispatch, your cody interagency dispatch, grand Junction interagency Miles city interagency. And at that level, it's more of that initial attack side of things. So you are the one that is mobilizing suppression resources to go put out that fire. You are the one that is daily tracking fire suppression resources as they go to different projects, different wildfires, different prescribed burns. You're also the one that's going to be taking those initial emergency calls. So if they have a medical call, something's going on, they're going to be contacting you first and you're going to be coordinating it and handling to get that 911 response, if need be, also heading out there. You're also publishing that daily kind of your situation report is what we call it, local. What happened in your zone? What fires do you have? Do you have to have a local multi agency coordinating group call where you are, incident prioritizing. You're going through and prioritizing your maybe 15 fires, and now you're prioritizing them as a group. So then you pass that information up to the next tier, which is the tier two, which we call it the geographic Area Coordination centers. So that's your Rocky Mountain Coordination Center, Great Basin Coordination center, you know, Southwest Area Coordination center. And so at that tier two level, that's where I see a lot more of the predictive services side that supports your geographic area. They also are the ones that take those resource orders that you can't fill locally within your zone, or maybe even with your neighbors. Say you have a need for at that tier three level, you had a need for an engine, and your neighbors don't have anything. You don't have anything. You push it up to the geographic area and they're going to shop it around at times with other centers within your geographic area, or there's times that they say, you've already talked to all the neighbors, you've already talked to everybody, hey, we're going to have to push this up to the National Interagency Coordination center. So then they push it up to the National Interagency Coordination center. Then the NIC, they are also doing more predictive services, more intel, more of that larger picture prioritization coordination. And at the NICC, they're also going to be pushing those resource orders and saying, okay, Rocky Mountain area, you guys pushed up this order for an engine. You guys don't have anything that's going to meet this need. We're going to have to send it over here to maybe the Northwest Coordination center, and we'll see if one of those centers between Oregon, you know, Washington, if somebody can fill that need that you have to meet, you know, whatever it is, your date and time needed, the type of equipment you need, maybe it's a special thing, you just never know. It depends on what the duty officer or I see your FMO needs on that resource order. And then, Amy, what else? I'm sure I've missed something.
[00:45:10] Speaker D: No, I think you totally hit it on the head, Katie. That was. It's. Sometimes it's hard to explain what dispatch does. I mean, dispatch makes magic happen, right? All of a sudden, ics are ordering things and they magically appear in the sky or down the road. And, I mean, hopefully dispatch is just communicating with the ics to let them know what they may or may not be getting. And, you know, those times that when they should be expecting those resources to roll in or just, again, that hub of communication.
[00:45:40] Speaker B: And I think every tier is there to support the one below it. So we're the ones below it. So Nick is there to support everything below. And that's how it typically works.
[00:45:49] Speaker A: And sometimes you're getting orders that you're not able to fill and you have to break that news to your ics or whoever's requesting that to as well.
[00:46:00] Speaker C: And sometimes people don't understand that. You know, when you explain, especially when we're at a preparedness level of five and you're asking me to find you, like this summer, I helped out a center that, you know, there wasn't a single plans, three anywhere for like five or six days, nothing available. And having to explain that to the local, you know, type three team that's truly needing that position fill because, you know, we didn't have anybody that was able to come with the team. The person that was supposed to come unfortunately had something else come up and couldn't make it. And so you're just trying to look anywhere in the nation for somebody to try to fill that. And I'm like, you know, I'm sorry, it's day five. You tf'd it again. There's just nothing available. You know, what else can we look at to try to fill that? Yeah, maybe there's a trainee opportunity. Maybe it's somebody else that we know that's super organized that we can maybe start training them to learn these skill sets on the job type of thing out there on the fire, because you got to start thinking outside the box because anymore there's just, it seems to be, there's not a lot of you hit those higher p levels. You've got to start thinking outside the box because there's just not enough resources that are going to be available. And if they are available, usually they're going to be prioritized depending on what that resource is. You know, it may be that there's a higher priority fire in the nation and they're more critical and they need a plans. And so that's where that position is going to go once that person goes available.
[00:47:27] Speaker A: So I know at like, our level, you know, working at NIFC and kind of working with Nick sometimes, the National Interagency Coordination center, and how we go sit in on those national, multi agency coordination group, the NMAC meetings, how they're always kind of working with the geographic areas and they're little mini groups and all the agencies involved with that. So at the local level, are you then kind of coordinating with that geographic area, too, and then kind of saying, hey, we're really short here. We need these types of resources, or we have these available? Is that kind of happening at that local level, too, with the geographic area kind of that coordination?
[00:48:08] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, when we have local fire bus that we've already talked about, is that, I mean, a local fire bus, we also have to prioritize those fires, too. Values at risk is a massive keyword when it comes to getting the resources that we need for fires, whether it be national resources like a large air tanker or a type two IA crew or even heavy equipment. I mean, we have to be, again, clear and concise about, you know, what, what does that picture of the fire look like on the ground as dispatch? We're sitting here in our air conditioned, fluorescent lit environments trying to paint a picture for fire management and those decision makers at the geographic level to understand why we're asking for the resources that we need.
[00:48:55] Speaker C: And I would say, just to tag onto that kind of like what you were saying at each of those different tiers, I would say we're all looking at incident prioritization, we're all looking at resource allocation. And there's often times when, you know, it may be at the local interagency tier three level that you're told by the GAC, I'm sorry, there is just nothing else out there. So you and your Elmac group need to work together. You guys might need to reallocate some of your resources from other fires to support this new, new fire that started, because, you know, you only have so many resources to have. And they also have to look at the bigger picture. You know, they're looking at the whole geographic area and they said, listen, we understand, you know, your zone has multiple fires. You guys have these needs. However, we have Wui down here, and this fire, it's going, it's burning homes right now. I'm sorry, you can't get that hot shot. However, maybe you can take that type two IA crew off of one of your other fires, and maybe they can help meet some of those objectives and those needs on this new start type of thing. So there's constant coordination. And I would say it's all interagency. I mean, it's all your agencies working together to try to, for the greater good you know, I will say that's one thing that I've seen in fire, is we have excellent partnerships. I mean, people really do want to work together. People really want to do the right thing. People want to take care of everybody. And I think that's a huge thing in fire that's been so successful in our programs, is because people do care about people and they care about the land and they want to take care of everybody.
[00:50:31] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[00:50:32] Speaker E: Yeah. Yeah. So this might be a hard question to answer, but especially for a position like dispatch, where it seems to me from an outside perspective, every single aspect of this job sounds challenging. But if you had to choose, what is the most challenging part about dispatch?
[00:50:50] Speaker B: I'd say managing the personalities that you're dealing with people could be passionate, and people want to do the right thing oftentimes. But, you know, sometimes friction and tensions can develop throughout that time period, especially when there's a high tempo and high stress level. So I would say managing the personalities.
[00:51:09] Speaker D: And with managing those personalities, I mean, we talk a lot about delivery and tone for how we're coming across to those people when we are already personally exhausted. But we also want to be that reassuring voice that comes across the radio to those boots on the ground that are probably having a worse day than what we are here in our air conditioned office. So, I mean, managing people is a hard thing to do, but it's also why we're in it as well, too. It's like we want to mentor those people to make them better at their jobs, too. We see those people that can continue on in these careers, and we want to develop them and help them. And sometimes it's a hard conversation on a therapy couch, like what I have in my office. That's what I call it anyway.
But, you know, sometimes we have to take a tactical pause during that stressful day, and we have to do a pulse check on our own dispatchers and, you know, make sure that they're okay and how is the home life and making sure that it's not impacting their work here. And also for everyone to understand that when you come to work, just be kind. That's all we need to do at the end of the day, is just be kind and know that we're doing the right thing.
[00:52:26] Speaker A: It's good advice for anyone.
[00:52:28] Speaker E: Yeah.
[00:52:28] Speaker B: And I think it's just like that customer service thing I was talking about earlier, where it's everybody's job. It's not just a dispatch center's job to show customer service. It's everybody's job, and it has to go both ways.
[00:52:41] Speaker E: Absolutely.
[00:52:42] Speaker C: Yeah. And I think Amy and Tommy hit the knee on the head with the people. That is one of the more challenging things because you care so much for folks. And, you know, I'll say I've seen where not all of our agencies have year round. We don't have, you know, fire season is not really term anymore. It's fire year. Right. It's year round anymore that we have fires. However, not a lot of our centers have the staffing for year round. You know, we have still a lot of career seasonals that are laid off for up to six months. And so when you have agencies that, you know, they maybe don't have the funding to keep people on your round. So we're trying to bake, barter, and steal through those off kind of winter cormorants, I guess you could call it, at times when your center has needs, but then when those primary staff come back into play, a lot of technology changes are constantly occurring in the dispatch center. It's amazing how in within five, six months, so many updates can happen to a program. Procedures change, there's a whole new process. And it's hard at times for people when they come back in after six months, they get overwhelmed because they're like, holy cow, last year, just six months ago, this is how we process these orders, or this is how Wildcat looked six months ago. Now I've got to learn a whole new thing, and it wears on people, and it can be very stressful for folks, and then it can also impact the morale of the center or it can impact the relationships if another agency was able to keep their staff on all year because they had the funding. So it can be at times, one of the harder aspects. And we've lost a lot of good ads anymore because we've had so many changes in the technology side of things that people just can't keep up with it.
That's another challenge is we've lost a great generation of ads because they've said, hey, we can't do this anymore. Too much is changing too quickly. And us as dispatchers, at times, we, too are struggling to keep up with it even when we've worked in it every single day.
[00:54:49] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. The changes from, like, I know, big change from IRoC or it's from raws to IRoC and just all those, all that technic. Yeah, tech changes get a lot of people, for sure.
[00:55:04] Speaker B: That's another thing dispatch center managers have to do. They're like their own it people. A lot of places, places you go. They understand the mechanics of each center and how to hook something up or how to get a new battery put in somewhere. It's impressive what they end up having to know, and it's way beyond what just the center manager or center should have to know.
[00:55:24] Speaker C: Website development, that's the other new thing that everybody has to add to their resume now is website developer. And I mean, trying to find the time to do that. It's wild.
[00:55:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:55:36] Speaker E: Helps to be completely self sufficient. Yeah.
Okay. Now that we've covered the difficult parts, let's talk about.
[00:55:45] Speaker A: Let's end on a high note.
[00:55:46] Speaker E: Yeah. Yeah. We have to end on a high note. What is the most rewarding part about what you do or what do you like the most?
[00:55:54] Speaker D: So the most rewarding part for me as a center manager is to work with the dispatchers and really kind of figure out what do they want to be when they grow up. Doesn't matter when they're starting in their career and to provide them the opportunities to go off district, to get to go to the weddings and funerals that some of us didn't get to go to when we started our careers, to provide them training opportunities and just to see them move on. Not move on. I don't want to say move on all the time, but you just want to see them enjoy the job, to want to come back to the job or stay in the job.
That's the key point of a success for me, is that those people want to walk into work every day, and hopefully we're having a little bit of fun along the way because it's not always a fun job, but if we can bring a little personality into this job and have a good time. Although being that professional key point, I think is really a success for me.
[00:57:00] Speaker C: I think the thing that I love the most about this is the team aspect. You know, that interagency, well, just the interagency partnerships, you know, just between the staff in the center, the fmos, the duty officers, the intimate business. I mean, you work with so many people that to me, I love it because I feel I've got great relationships, and it's fun because there's times that I may call somebody because I've got a great relationship with people and I know that they're going to help me, just like I would always help them. And it may be something that's totally not normally in their realm, but they'll say, hey, you know what? I'm going to help you tackle that. You know, that to me, shows success is when people are willing to step outside of their comfort zone to help you as well. And, you know, another thing that I think about is what I love most about this job and dispatch is feedback. Feeling good after a really hard, stressful, long day, but realizing when you look back that your staff and you, you guys kicked ass. But you do. I mean, there are some days that you're just like, holy cow. You came in at 637 in the morning, and then you look at the clock and you're like, oh, my gosh, it's already 11:00 at night. Like, where did this day go? Did I even eat lunch? Did I even go to the bathroom? But then you look at your staff and you realize, like, holy cow, they kicked butt today. Like, they were all over it. They knew what to do, when to do it. I didn't have to go out there and be like, whoa, whoa, timeout. You know, they were trained so well that, you know, they're happy, they're smiling, even though they know it was a super stressful day. They're sitting here like, holy cow. Did you see how many seats I was flight following? We had eight seats at one point, and then I launched the vlad, and then I ended up sending this there. And then you'll hear somebody else be like, holy cow. Did you see? I had to order, like, four shot crews, and what's the chance of us really getting those, you know? And so. But that team dynamic, to me, is super important. And when I see that in the center, I feel like I know that we're successful. And, yeah, you're going to have your bumps, you're going to have your bruises and your challenges along the way, but that camaraderie, that problem solving together is so huge in my mind.
[00:59:06] Speaker E: And sometimes you get free ice cream.
[00:59:09] Speaker C: Yeah, sometimes. And sometimes people like fruit, too. I like fruit, too.
[00:59:16] Speaker A: They'll take fruit.
Any kind of munchy? No. It seems like whenever I went into dispatch, they always had, like, a nice spread of snacks. Yeah, you have to, because you do get stuck there.
[00:59:29] Speaker C: You do. And I found out up until about four or five years ago in Cody, there was only one place that would actually deliver because we're kind of on the outskirts of town, and there was only one place that would deliver any kind of food out there, and it was Domino's pizza. So I'm fairly certain my staff put a couple of those kids through college with ordering pizza at the last minute at night because we knew they would deliver.
[00:59:56] Speaker E: What about you, Tommy? What's the most rewarding thing for you.
[00:59:59] Speaker B: You know, I think here specifically in our center, is specific to dispatching. We have a pretty aggressive program. That's the ad program, and then we have an intern program through our college. And being able to see people who are very raw and very young develop and mature into these positions where the way they're operating today, I'm just kind of flabbergasted by how far they've come in such a short amount of time. So that's pretty exciting to witness. And then something that I'm always super happy about is just the family atmosphere where we believe in having doors open. We want to invite people into our center to be a part of whatever this thing is that we have going on. We barbecue all the time just because I think food oftentimes brings people together. And so I get a witness that from probably a different perspective than a lot of other fmos. So I'm just super proud to be a part of it.
[01:01:00] Speaker A: Right. And I. Yeah, we're kind of going over time, I think, here. There's a lot I was wondering about with dispatch. Yes.
But in closing, anything that you would like to add, any closing comments or anything to people out there about what you do, why you would want to work in dispatch.
[01:01:21] Speaker D: I think the biggest take home from being here and with fire, including our fire management, our boots on the ground, the dispatch offices, all the other functions that support fire, including fire business, logistics, all the things, is that we are family.
It's amazing how many hours we spend together, more than what we do with our own families, which we know that that's not the healthiest work life balance, but we are family, and we are all taking care of each other at the end of the day.
[01:01:54] Speaker A: How about you, Katie?
[01:01:55] Speaker C: I would agree with everything Amy said. The family aspect of this is probably the most important thing to me. Although I left Cody dispatch about two years ago when I started this new long term detail with the efficiency thing. I still keep in touch with them. I still help out when I can. They still know that they can call me at any time and I'd come running in a heartbeat to help them and vice versa with any of the centers that, you know, I've worked with, especially in the last year and last couple of years, really. And it's so important to not forget your dispatchers because those folks have been in that office very long days, long season, working with multiple agencies and, you know, even just every now and again, a nice phone call just to ask some like, hey, how's your day? How you know how are you dispatcher doing? You know, what's going on these days. Sounds like you guys have been super busy on the radios. It's kind of nice. It shows that rapport with the field. It shows that, man, they do care about us. Because I think at times as dispatchers, you feel like nobody cares. And I don't think that's the case. But at times that's the perception. And just having those little relationship, you know, checking in, saying, hey, how's the family? Or hey, man, I heard you the other night at midnight. You had a long night. What was that all about? You know, just having that connection is what a lot of our dispatchers really truly want. And I think it's super important. And just don't forget about them. Go give them big hugs and bring them ice cream and fruit.
[01:03:25] Speaker A: Tommy, any closing words? Last words?
[01:03:27] Speaker B: You know, I just implore people, just like what both Amy and Katie have said, to be engaged with your center, learn the ins and outs, be present, presence really matters. And if you're not part of their narrative, you're outside the group, you're outside the team, you're outside the family. So I say get engaged, pay attention, and be part of the program as a whole. And that means stepping away from your desk, sometimes sitting down on theirs and be in the mix of things, but not too much, right, Amy? Not too much.
[01:04:01] Speaker A: And be kind.
[01:04:02] Speaker C: And be kind.
[01:04:05] Speaker A: Well, thank you all, Amy, Tommy, Katie for joining us today for the 30th episode of Wildfire Matters and telling us more about the crucial work wildland fire dispatchers do to support our firefighters and suppression operations and the challenges you face and the rewarding aspect of it as well. And hopefully with this, we'll find some good people for working in those dispatch centers that is so needed. And if you out there listening know people who may be interested in dispatch positions or other fire jobs, check out the BLM job portal under the Careers page on the NIFC website.
It has information on how to apply position descriptions, types of appointments, current job openings, USA jobs application tips, and more. And we're kind of heading into the hiring season, so a good opportunity for us to start recruiting for next year for sure.
[01:05:06] Speaker E: If you have any questions, comments, or even suggestions on different topics for our podcast, please email them to BLM fa NIFC comments at BLM Dot Gov and use Wildfire Matters podcast in the subject line. To learn more about NIFC or the BLM, please visit our website Niftsy dot Gov and follow us at bLMfire on Facebook X and Instagram and thanks everyone.
[01:05:34] Speaker A: For listening as we do head into our hiring season for 2025. Please join us next time when we spark a conversation with human resource specialists or two to dive into the hiring process and what types of positions are available. Until then, stay safe and be wildfire aware.
