NRCG Meeting Notes
December 12-14, 2006
Polson, MT
Present: Tom Maloney, Brett Waters, Bob Gilman, Jim Kelton, Cory Winnie, Jim
Reuter, David Geyer, Tom Corbin, Len Dems, Dan McGowan, Bob Lippincott, Dave
Overcast, Kathy Elzig, Dan Cassidy, Ted Mead, Jim Newton, Nancy Gibson, Jamie
Kirby, Cathy Scofield, Mike Gagen, Beth Card, Tracey Nimlos, Biddy Simmet, Phil Gill.
Committee Reports:
Operations—Bob Lippincott handed out a white paper with the Ops report and a white
paper outlining a plan to enhance participation of Forest Service Albuquerque Service
Center employees on incident management teams.
Equipment—Jim Reuter passed out the Equipment Committee 2007 Plan of Work.
Working on weed washing, putting on another COTR workshop and Equipment Inspector
Workshop, equipment typing, and input to Best Value Contracting group. There is a
question on new engine specifications coming from NWCG and whether those specs
agree with NFPA specs.
Training—Beth Card is the new chair. Paul Fieldhouse approached the training
committee to gather a cadre to present a train the trainer session on running sand table
exercises. S-420 non-operations candidates are a shortage. The committee discussed
agency needs vs. employee wants and steering individuals to positions where there are
higher shortages. Discussed the training needs analysis and the accuracy of it. Looking
at other options including using IQCS. Northern Rockies is testing the electronic IQCS
training nomination process and will give input back to the IQCS committee. WIMS
training will be held in May in conjunction with the weather station maintenance training.
The committee also finalized course audit procedures.
Homeland Security training courses IS-700 and IS-800 are being required by the Forest
Service. The Interior agencies are not requiring them. The state and local gov’t agencies
may need to require them to qualify for grants. These requirements are agency specific.
Prevention—Jamie Kirby reports that there are still vacancies on committee membership.
A survey is out on the restrictions and closures process and how it worked last season. A
change may be made to be able to ban campfires without going into Stage 2 restrictions.
They are currently planning the 2007 Prevention Workshop in Coeur d’Alene May 1-4.
Business Committee—Biddy Simmet handed out the business committee report.
Native American Crew Committee—Tom Corbin reported for the committee. Not a lot
of new information to report other than working on tweaking the plan. Recognize that
crew numbers are way down and feel that there are a lot of different reasons for this.
Aviation Committee—(notes submitted electronically by Rick Hafenfeld)
1.) In response to a request from the NRCG Board of Directors regarding lack of
personnel for ICS Aviation Positions, the committee identified where some of the
problems currently exist and offered two solutions:
*First was a concerted effort to provide IC's and IMT's a listing of all qualified and
trainee red carded personnel for 2006. This listing was sent to dispatch centers, zone
coordinators, IMT's/IC's and to NRCG agency representatives last spring. It included all
agencies in the NR and covered EFF/AD's. The intent was to encourage use of trainees
and list those that had been through training/qualifications so that name requests and
individual contacts could be made to fill positions as needed for incidents. The original
listing was on legal sized paper and had multicolored bands to distinguish various ICS
positions. Maggie McDonald from the NRTC prepared the list and sent at least one
updated version.
*The second was a white paper that was prepared to discuss the various barriers to
participation and offered several solutions (attached below). This paper was first
presented to the NRCG Ops committee and to the IC's and OSC's at the team meeting this
past spring. I presented it to the NRCG BOD spring meeting and there was little
discussion at the time I presented it except from one member that stated it was up to the
aviation folks to get their act together if there was a problem with road blocks in the 3101. The NRCG BOD was to have further discussion on the recommendations one of
which was to add an AOBD to the Type 2 IMT's. We realized that there were no
AOBD's available to assign but we suggested a farm team approach and a way to qualify
people that have open Task Books. The feedback I got was that teams could order an
AOBD if they wanted one. Period. None of the other thoughts got any further discussion.
The aviation committee will take it on again if desired.
2.) We used the 2005 Interagency Aviation Conference as a forum to hold a formal
NRCG aviation committee meeting but due to budget constraints and other meeting
conflicts, the 2006 conference scheduled for Billings the week of February 20th was
cancelled. So we used email and telephone conferencing to complete the assignment
outlined in # 1 above. That conference is scheduled for 2007 in Billings the week of
February 19th and a NRCG Aviation Committee meeting will be held during that week.
3.) During the 2006 fire season, we had an interagency aviation conference call every
day during the period of high activity. Both the BLM and Forest Service field units
(Field Offices/Districts and Forest unit aviation officers) were regular participants. IDL
and BIA participated in some calls as needed for their fire activity. The purpose of the
call was to share information, establish aircraft needs and to the extent possible set
priorities for sharing and assignment of available assets.
4.) The committee participation has dropped off due to retirements, lack of a designated
member or other conflicts. Alan Edmonds and I have been co-chairs since 2004. I will
be retiring at the end of February. Alan has agreed to take over the committee chair or at
least until the full committee meets in Billings. Each NRCG member agency should
designate who their current or new member will be for the coming year.
Northern Rockies Training Strategic Action Plan—Beth Card presented a PPT and white
paper on behalf of Bob Cunningham.
Zone Reports:
NW MT—Dan Cassidy. Will be working on a zone operations plan. Reviewed fire
restrictions in the zone and felt they could improve on coordination with Missoula
County that is within the NW zone. The zone is working with Flathead Valley
community college to develop a training agreement similar to SW MT. Hoping to use
local fire department folks to help out with equipment inspections. The zone has met to
start organizing interagency zone Type 3 IMTs. Montana will be hosting the “Hands
Across the Border” meeting with Canada this year.
SW MT—Nancy Gibson. Fewer fires across the zone in 2006, but more human caused
fires than usual. Assigned over 400 best value resources in the zone and were pretty
successful. Zone MAC met weekly during the busiest part of the season. Two national
Type 2 contract crews hosted by the Lolo NF, but the national contracting officer
assigned Judy Dunham on the Helena NF as the COR. Despite problems, the crews were
kept busy all season. NRCG zone, dispatch zone and restrictions zone do not all line up
with each other and that causes some issues. Had some frequency compatibility issues in
the Missoula area. Met within the Missoula County Protection Association and worked
out and tested those issues.
Still have issues with local gov’t same as agency resources as far as dispatch priority.
The zone feels the letter on Intergovernmental cooperation needs to be clarified. There is
an issue with availability for large fire support and the consistency of availability by local
government resources. Direction in the umbrella document and the mob guide would be
helpful. Need definitions for “agency” and “cooperator”. This can be further defined in
the statewide annual operating plans.
Brett and Tom will take the availability notification issue back to the fire chiefs and fire
wardens.
South Central MT—Mike Gagen. Will have several vacancies to fill within the zone this
year. Park County has completed their CFPP and Gallatin County has a draft out. Very
active season in the zone this past summer. The zone’s mutual aid task force was
dispatched to several incidents. It was difficult to maintain IA resources and support
IMTs, especially with aircraft. The zone did very well sharing resources. The
cooperators held several sand table exercises prior to fire season. The zone will continue
with the annual engine academy. DNRC will sponsor S-420 and L-380 to try to get more
local gov’t employees into the training. The West Yellowstone tanker bases loaded
mostly SEATs this summer, rather than large airtankers. The zone is looking at forming
a prevention coop across the zone.
North Dakota—Beth Card. Worked on the statewide agreement this year. Fire season
was very busy in ND this year. 45 large fires this season. The last 2 large fires were the
week before Thanksgiving. The counties were very proactive with restrictions this year.
There was a lot of resource sharing within the zone and good cooperation.
North Idaho Zone—Bob Lippincott. The Grangeville Interagency Dispatch Center was
in operation for its first season and worked very well. Conducted a dispatch AAR and all
units were happy with the success of the center. Resource sharing worked very well
across the zone. The zone Buying Team made up of Forest Service and IDL employees
worked for 6 weeks. The zone is working on formalizing an interagency Type 3
organization.
Eastern Montana—Dave Overcast. The zone experienced an excellent year in safety.
The zone set up regular conference calls and included as many people as possible. The
zone implemented appropriate management response without having formalized it in
their operating plans. Equipment inspections were cumbersome and the zone is working
on that issue. Will hold a zone IC meeting again this year that will include all agencies
and agency administrators. The zone is putting out a brochure to recruit within the zone.
There are too many agency reporting systems for fires. The cooperation within the zone
was outstanding.
Season Review:
IMT evaluations did not reveal anything extraordinary. NMAC felt the Northern Rockies
managed their resources well and did not hoard resources but did a good job of
prepositioning. IMTs shared resources very well. There may have been a couple of
times when we hesitated to order a team because all NR teams were committed and the
order would have gone outside the GA. A couple of IMTs may have gone out short a few
times. Local units felt it was more successful to extend an IMT than to bring in another
IMT. It was felt that extending Turman’s IMT an additional 2 weeks was too much. The
team got too tired. Are we using our IMTs too much and burning them out? Will this
hurt recruitment? Will stronger Type 3 organizations help this situation? We need to
encourage agency administrators to be more accepting of out of area IMTs.
If we are unable to field our usual compliment of IMTs, a suggestion was made to have
one of our Type 2 IMTs be a short team.
IMT financial records could be improved upon as far as what is left for the hosting unit to
clean up.
We would like to have a team of 2-3 people to move between incidents to provide longterm projections. Add this to our MAC Operating Handbook. These teams should be
used up front before the decision is made.
If we want to continue to fully staff the number of IMTs we currently have we need to do
more heavy-duty recruitment and growing of new members. We also need to evaluate
the number of IMTs we need. What are our priorities for type and number of IMTs? We
need to identify new pools of candidates. We need a strategic plan to incorporate local
and state gov’t employees into our IMT positions.
Appropriate Management Response is the terminology that we are moving toward to
encompass all types of fire management. A large education effort needs to be made to
get our publics on board with this idea. There is a group working to combine the WFSA
and WFIP into one decision document.
Agency Administrators need to make their objectives clear to the IMT in order for them
to implement the AMR and to bring the appropriate size of team to the incident. We need
to help our agency administrators if they are to successfully implement AMR. This will
affect delegations of authority on joint jurisdiction fires, because the states only option is
full suppression.
Need to have the MAC Information Officer involved in the regular congressional call.
The MAC PIO needs to have some clear talking points from the MAC group for the
season. We need to continue to lay out our expectations for that position.
We need to consider adding a local gov’t liaison position to our IMT2s. We heard from
local gov’ts and county commissioners that this position is needed and where it was used
this past season it was very successful. We will encourage the Type 2 IMTs to fill this
position on their team as a dedicated position. We will allow this position to be added to
the total IMT number. Brett Waters will lead the group to identify candidates and
identify the needed skillset.
MAC activation via conference calls worked last season, but some felt more face-to-face
meetings would have been better. NMAC wants to revisit preparedness levels and we
should revisit ours as well. The other GACCs have done some work that we can look at.
The MAC duty officer was tried and seemed to work well as opposed to physically
activating the entire MAC. The coordination that goes on to support the MAC group, i.e.,
aviation, information, needs to continue. The role and decision making authority of the
aviation group needs to be articulated to the field and the dispatch centers. The MAC
group operation needs to be communicated to the field. The aviation support group needs
to be outlined in the MAC Operating Guide. We need to strengthen our relationship with
the zone MAC groups.
It was felt that severity resources were well coordinated at the local level. We need to be
careful about what we have contractors doing while on standby, because their workman’s
comp may not cover that type of work.
Intra-state Mutual Aid—EMAC requests that came through for hurricanes were unable to
be filled by local gov’t resources because there was no way to hire them. Legislation is
being proposed in MT for inter-state mutual aid provisions for the state of MT to hire
local gov’t employees.
Interagency Mutual Aid—the concern is that there is a huge variety of mutual aid
agreements and they’re all different. It’s hard for the IMTs to understand all the
differences and there is no consistency. We need a cookbook for agencies to follow at
the local level. Tom Maloney will form a group to work on an instruction book for local
agreements and mutual aid. DNRC will provide a person and Cathy Scofield, Brett
Waters and a BLM person will assist.
Human Resource Specialist Program—Jan Everett provided the HRSP stats for 2006.
HRSP are also trained to assist with the Critical Incident Stress Management process. If
an IMT determines that professional assistance is required then the HRSP would move
into the role of liaison between the IMT and the professional CISM team.
The CISM process identified in the NR Mob Guide is specific to how the Forest Service
operates. Do the other NRCG agencies wish to make this process interagency? Debby
Wivholm will bring this back to us in the spring for a decision.
Jan is proposing a Peer Support Group for critical incident stress management. The
group would include a mental health clinician, and team leader and a couple of
individuals from the peer fire community. Would NRCG be willing to utilize peer
support groups on incidents? Do you have individuals from your agencies or retirees
willing to participate on the group? Please consider this and Jan will come back for
answers in the spring. Jan will bring input back from the employee assistance program in
the spring.
Tom will draft a paragraph to add to the AD/EFF Hiring Guidelines outlining how to deal
with individuals who continue to cause problems when on incidents and move from
agency to agency to get rehired each year.
Gil Gale and Tim Murphy gave an update on the NRCG weed washer task group. They
presented a proposal to handle weed washing standards in the Northern Rockies.
Comments need to be back to Tim by 1/29/07.
Tim Murphy gave an update on best value contracting. One of the issues the SAC
committee is working on is a contract or MOU to do inspections on equipment and
contractor training records. They are hoping to have this in place by spring 2007.
NWCG FEWT is working on engine and water tender retyping. A new improved
software program call VIPR will replace EaTIS in 2008. VIPR should be linked to ROSS
and ISUITE.
Best Value Contracting Review Report—
NMAC/GMAC meeting report—many of the issues were referred to the GACC
managers meeting.
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Rotation for Type 1 IMTs—GACC can use their own teams without going to
national rotation
Staging IMTs—IMTs staged by NMAC will get first dispatch. IMTs staged by a
GMAC do not automatically get the next dispatch to a national order. If a GMAC
is staging an IMT, that team should get the first dispatch in that area.
Numerous instances of IMTs going to other GAs without a full team, especially
short in Aviation and Procurement. Holes need to be identified by the IMT prior
to dispatch.
NMAC was surprised that dispatch centers were unable to take orders from NICC
at times because they were overwhelmed by activity on their own units.
EXECUTIVE SESSION
AFD Cost Share Agreement—Len will write a task statement to give to NRTC to analyze
the cost of doing training and alternatives to funding the center. Tom Corbin will be part
of the group to do the analysis. The NRTC will be pulled out of the AFD cost share
agreement. Tracey and Tana Fuhrman will continue to work on the AFD shared position
analysis.
A question came up about support to the Billings Cache and their financial shortfalls.
Currently it is funded only by the BLM and BIA. Can other agencies contribute
financially to the Billings Cache? DNRC is requesting funding from the MT legislature.
IMT3 members invited to the GA IMT meeting? Command & General Staff of standing
organized IMT3s will be invited. Each agency will be responsible for inviting their Type
3 individuals.
NRCG Organizational Statement regarding gov’t and contractor resources will be posted
to the NRCG website so contractors will be able to see it. We will clean up the language
in that paper before resending it.
We will ask the Business committee to come up with a new agreement or a new name for
the agreement for states and local gov’t use for payment rather than using the EERA. We
would also like to have one rate for reimbursing local gov’t resources across the GA.
The Business Committee is currently working on that. ACTION ITEM
Ted will ask Ray Nelson how difficult it would be to get local gov’t into ROSS to
hopefully make it easier for dispatch centers to know availability of those resources.
2:1 work/rest ratio acceptance by landowners and local gov’t—DNRC has a video that
they will get out about firefighter safety and the importance of rest. This should be an
agenda item for the IMT meetings. ACTION ITEM FOR KATHY E. and TED MEAD
IMT3 Proposal—Tracey will send the Ops Committee Proposal back out for review as
well as Tom & Tom’s responses.
NR Fire Management Training Plan—Boil it down to issues that are applicable to the
NRCG and brought back in the spring.
NMAC/GMAC Meeting—NMAC is working on rewriting and making consistent their
delegations of authority. They also want to strengthen their delegations to give them
command authority.
Long-term analysis/projection team—Len, George and Bob will work on this concept.
Strategic Plan to staff and recruit IMT members from local/state governments—Brett will
head up this group with Phil and Ted.
Holes in IMTs—ICs need to ensure their team is whole before they agree to take an
assignment.
IMT Evaluations—need to encourage agency administrators to give honest, critical
evaluations to help teams identify issues and deficiencies.
Best Value Contracting Review Report—BOD members will review the report
recommendations and decide whether they agree the issue should be worked on and who
to assign the recommendation to. Send your responses to Tracey one week prior to the
January conference call. We will make a final decision on the conference call. January
conference call is on the 16th. Tracey will send out a format for responses.
NRCG Spring meeting will be April 11, 12 and 13th in Missoula.