NRCG Meeting
April 12-13, 2006
Val-U Inn, Missoula, MT
Present: Tom Maloney, Dan Cassidy, Craig Campbell, Ted Mead, Jeanne Robertson,
Brett Waters, Brian Shiplett, Tom Corbin, Pat Garbutt, David Geyer, Mike McMeekin,
Ken Schmid, Bob Gilman, Larry Dawson, Bob Cunningham, Phil Gill, Dave Overcast,
Jack Kirkendall, Jim Kelton, Len Dems, Jamie Rosdahl, Nancy Gibson, Bob Lippincott,
Jim Gray, Dan McGowan, Tracey Nimlos.
COMMITTEE REPORTS:
Ops Committee (Bob Lippincott)—main focus of the Ops committee this winter was
filling the IMTs. We managed to fill all 10 Northern Rockies teams. Region 1 of the FS
and Region 3 are developing a formal resource sharing agreement. The Ops Committee
also worked on ways to get more local gov’t participation on IMTs and ways to break
down barriers for those folks. One method discussed is having interested individuals find
a mentor to help them work through the process. Would like to push this issue up to
NWCG and ask to have legal incentives developed for IMT participation. We would also
like to attempt to move this forward through state gov’t to the governors. International
Association of Fire Chief’s is lobbying nationally for incentives, mostly for volunteer
departments. Training equivalencies is probably a bigger barrier to local gov’t
participation. The National Fire Administration is working on competencies for all
emergency response positions.
Ops committee recommended all IMT team plans be combined into one plan for the
Northern Rockies. Kathy Elzig is working to have this completed this year. Re-worked
the Ops committee charter again and would like to have it approved.
Type 3 Strategy (Jack Kirkendall)—handed out copies of the draft strategy. This issue is
occurring in geographic areas across the country. We found that zones and/or units are
managing IMT3s well at the local level and that they are being moved pretty well across
units and zones. Some zones are able to fully staff IMT3s, others are not. Budget cuts
and reduced workforce is the main reason some zones cannot fully staff IMT3s. The
qualified individuals are needed to meet drawdown levels at the local unit.
The strategy addressed several other issues and recommends solutions including liability
issues for ICT3s, composition of IMT3s, delegation of authority, complexity analysis for
use by agency administrators.
Recommendations include maintaining management of IMT3s at the zone level,
assigning several responsibilities to the geographic area, and responsibilities at the zone
level. Several assignments are suggested to produce products like training programs,
operating guides and standard delegation of authority. Jack feels recommendation
number one is the most important.
Training Committee (Bob Cunningham)—NRCG will have representation at the national
Training Working Team meeting. Our biggest issue is responsibilities in the all-hazard
arena and how we are going to bring together all the competencies required to meet DHS
requirements, etc., and how those mesh with our national ICS training policy. We are
currently working on a strategic plan for the Northern Rockies Training Center to look at
the cost of training at the NRTC and a strategic plan for the type of training provided.
Hope to have recommendations for the board around May 1. NRCG training committee
draft curriculum was handed out.
Prevention Committee (Jamie Rosdahl)—sponsored an area restrictions and closures
meeting in March. The committee has worked up some “frequently asked questions” for
restrictions at the geographic area and state level. Found that there might be a need for
training in dealing with the public regarding restrictions and closures. This may be able
to be a self-study course that could be downloaded from the web. The committee worked
on coordination between the zones. During the committee meeting worked on member
recruitment, membership roles and responsibilities. A group is working on the 2006
North Rockies/Great Basin Prevention workshop in Moab, UT. The 2007 workshop will
be in Coeur d’Alene.
Native American Crew Committee (Tom Corbin)—section was added on Type II IA
crews to the NAC Plan. Crew numbers are down this year.
Business Committee (Jeanne Robertson)—there will be no equipment rate changes for
this year mostly due to best value contracting. Forest Service units will renew EERAs for
equipment other than water handling. Northern Rockies will fill only one Buying Team
this year. Training is out for the new I-SUITE program. New AD rates are out, with
some rates going up and a few going down. DNRC was not able to adjust EFF rates
because of the late release of the AD pay plan so state rates may not match AD rates.
Fire Procurement workshop is next month, COTR workshop to support best value
contracts was completed last month.
Aviation Committee (Rick Hafenfeld)—tried to do a needs-assessment of aviation IMT
positions and developed possible solutions to these problems. Rick handed out the list.
Recommendations are to add an AOBD position to Type II teams, and assure that the
ASGS position task books can be completed and signed off with or without a Type 1
trainee assignment. There is a barrier to becoming an AOBD in 310-1 which requires an
individual to come up through the helicopter ranks not just fixed wing ranks.
Equipment Committee (Tim Murphy)—put on training for COTR and now we have 50
people who can go out as COTR. Put on an equipment inspectors workshop in CDA
which got rave reviews. Equipment inspections are currently being performed.
Montana Radio Interoperability Project (Mark Adams)—a different approach of local
agencies working through counties to form a state interoperability board where state and
federal partners join in. Lewis & Clark County was the pilot area and the northern tier
will come on line over the next year. All government agencies are being asked to
participate. The main funding sources have been DHS and State of Montana.
For more information about Concept Demonstration Projects, the 1033 Program, SIEC,
or Public Safety Services Bureau, please visit our website at
http://www.discoveringmontana.com/itsd/techmt/pssb.asp Information on Concept
Demonstration Projects and Consortiums is added as it received by the PSSB.
Radio Training Update (Bob Gilman)—Northern Rockies has sent people to Boise for
training and Boise will come to us Tuesday May 2 in Missoula and Thursday May 4 to
Billings to train folks.
Best Value Contracting (Tim Murphy)—350 contractors entered information into EaTIS
for best value contracts. Inspections of this equipment are ongoing. Equipment
inspections end on May 19. By next year EaTIS will talk to ROSS and ROSS will talk to
I-SUITE.
National crew contract solicitation goes out May 1. We typically host 6-8 national crews.
DNRC is handling sack lunches, hand wash stations, portable toilets and car rental
contracts. The FS is doing the bus contract.
ACTION ITEM: Tim asks NRCG for weed specialists or soil scientists to help with
disposal of weeds washed out at weed washing stations.
Does NRCG want to continue with the Strategic Action Committee to figure out how to
competitive source the rest of the equipment we hire?
Does NRCG want the SAC to work on a contract for equipment inspections and training
record verifications for 2007?
CATS – contracting administration technical specialist. Do we still want this position in
the Northern Rockies since NWCG did not approve?
June 15 an overview will be given to the congressional and governor’s staffs on BVC.
Do we want to expand that to a seasonal overview as well?
Contractor’s associations want to put out a database of red carded individuals for fire
assignments and IMT participation. Do we want to do this?
ZONE REPORTS:
SW MT (Nancy Gibson)—will have a zone-wide meeting to reconfirm board members.
The board will talk about the equipment mob board also since it will no longer include
contractors. MDC had an independent review conducted which resulted in some shortand long-term recommendations. Most important items are to develop a charter to
identify roles and responsibilities. Issues identified to elevate to NRCG are roles and
responsibilities of dispatch centers in all-risk and IT and communication support to
dispatch centers. SW MT zone may also ask to look at the dispatch zone boundaries.
NW MT (Dan Cassidy)—developed a rotation for the zone chair and vice-chair. Issues
include support from finance and human resources and how to deal with Type 3
organizations. DNRC has hired quite a few new folks. Kootenai NF is feeling the effects
of several retirements. The zone has been sending folks to Texas and Oklahoma this
spring.
South Central MT (Craig Campbell)—working on putting together a Type 3 team which
will work the engine academy this year. The zone will also test radio interoperability at
that time. Will do a multi-agency sand table exercise to work on multi-jurisdictional
response.
North Dakota (David Geyer)—working on restrictions within the zone. Trying to decide
whether to go with a Type 3 organization or actually build a standing Type 3 team. The
zone will be hosting its first engine academy in June. Trying to put up some RAWS
stations. North Dakota is well into fire season.
North Idaho (Jim Gray)—working on an interagency dispatch center in Grangeville. The
tribe is not participating in the interagency center, but will run their crew dispatch thru
Grangeville to the NRCC. Center should be functional by mid-May. FS is having a few
issues with interagency medical standards. IDL has 22% fewer firefighters this year.
Staffing levels on the Idaho Panhandle and Clearwater/Nez Perce Forests are the same or
higher.
Eastern MT (Dave Overcast)—in final phases of hiring seasonals. BLM aircraft is
coming on around May 15. Had zone meeting that spent a good deal of time going thru
the zone operating plan. Have set up a logistics/finance/plans trailer for Type 3
organizations. Have been accomplishing some Rx burning in Ashland and the CMR has
some planned within the next week. Developing an agreement with NRCS so they can
help with wildland and Rx fire. Dave will share this agreement with everyone. Have
developed a zone website for one-stop shopping within the zone.
IMT All-Risk Strategy (Dan McGowan)—DES is looking at ways to better assist local
and tribal governments. First thresholds need to be developed for local gov’ts to call the
state for assistance as well as thresholds for the state to ask the feds for assistance. DES
has a 24/7 duty officer; DES can send a district rep and an IC coach or send a group of
technical representatives to assist and coach; develop a more refined and developed
incident command organization for all-risk incidents for state level responsibilities;
training is needed from the ICS Fire community for the non-fire response state agencies.
If funding comes from the legislature Dan will put together a task force to work on this
strategy.
Local Government Hiring (Ted Mead, Brett Waters, Tom Maloney)—the wildland
committee is working with the MT Fire Wardens Association and MT Fire Chief’s
Association on how we will work with local government including rates will use to
reimburse each other for services provided. The wildland committee and the NRCG
committee negotiated the rates we will use to reimburse each other. Harrington asked
Ted to work on a way DNRC will hire local gov’t within their own jurisdiction when
DNRC forces are not sufficient during the peak season. This is a major change for
DNRC. DNRC will pay for the volunteer firefighters and pay them under EFF authority;
they will not pay for the fire department equipment. This will kick in after the first 24
hours of the incident. Requirements will also be laxer for CDL requirements and will
allow fire chief’s to attest to the level of training of their firefighters. This will be
effective this fire season.
The goal is to eventually have consistent rates in North Dakota, Montana and Idaho.
The Business Committee will continue to work on standard rates for reimbursement
between the states and the federal agencies.
Keep Montana Green is holding a luncheon to present poster contest and prevention
awards on 4/21 11:30-1:00 in Missoula at the Hilton Conference Center. RSVP to Ted.
The DNRC Equipment Development Center will have an open house in Missoula from
1:00 – 7:00 on May 3. Everyone is invited.
Montana Fire Alliance is in Butte at the Copper King Inn June 9-10. All the Fire Chief’s,
Fire Wardens, Volunteer Fire Departments, Fire Instructors and Fire Districts will be
meeting together. Federal and state wildland agencies are invited to attend. This is a
good opportunity to network with your local government partners.
Dispatcher Costs (Ted Mead, Kathy Elzig, Ray Nelson)—there has been some confusion
in the dispatch centers regarding overtime hours for dispatch personnel. Historically base
hours have been charged to regular salary codes and overtime was charged to a fire code
and agencies didn’t cross-bill for dispatcher’s regular time. Our annual operating
agreement says we will not bill for regular dispatcher’s overtime.
We will ask a group to look at the MT annual operating plan and research the change in
direction for charging overtime costs for dispatchers. “All overtime for fire suppression
will be charged to the appropriate incident”. We will ask Roberta Whitlock, Sandi
O’Brient, Cathy Scofield and a DOI rep to address why the change and what the
appropriation laws say pertaining to this issue. Make it as simple as possible and try to
avoid cross-billing if possible. The board’s preference is that base time would be charged
to the agency code.
AFD Agreement—Bob Gilman, Ted, Len, Brian and George will work together to make
a proposal for the Board. They will meet June 1 at the AFD.
Strategic Plan (Bob Gilman)—took last year’s plan and currently working with a group to
update for this year. The biggest challenge to this plan is getting current fuels
information back from the field. If we don’t get information back from the field the plan
will not be valuable. Hope to have the plan out by May 1.
Periodic assessments done throughout the year by predictive services will change a bit
this year to try to make them more useable for the ground level firefighters.
FPA After Action Review—there was good participation from all the planning units
across the Geographic Area. Don asked questions about the burden on the individual
planning units and their issues working through it. Lori Clark, Lee Clark, and John
Barbarinos are representing the Northern Rockies at the national after action review in
Tucson this week. The weighting process was a big issue for everyone. The numbers
each FPU gave to each criterion were somewhat meaningless. WUI and fire frequencies
seemed to drive everything. A suggestion was made that Lori and John start visiting
individual FPUs are diving into them further. Units seemed to be looking for more
guidance and side boards. The end results were that all but 2 FPUs submitted, and one of
those was submitted late. We were pretty successful across the geographic area. It was a
very productive meeting with everyone having a positive attitude about their findings.
Long-Term Decision Support and Assessments (George Weldon, Bob Gilman)—
proposal to develop long-term plans for long duration events. The proposal is to let a
contract for individuals who can help units with long term planning and also products
available from the Fire Sciences Lab for decision support. The individuals contracted
would take the decision models and technologies from the Lab out to the field and
explain them to agency administrators and fire managers. This could also a pool of
individuals to advise the MAC group. Another use could be to help the predictive
services group to update pocket cards. Want NRCG to read the proposal and decide if it
is broad enough to cover the needs of the agencies and also suggest potential bidders.
The criteria for success are that we make informed decisions using the best science
available. The board gave approval to George and Bob to go ahead with the proposal.
Preseason briefing for governor’s and congressional delegations—give a preseason
overview of our assessment and available resources. A part of that could also be an
update on best value contracting. The leads for this will be Ted Mead, Dan Bushnell,
Brett, Dan McGowan, Tim Murphy, and Mike Oliver. Gilman will request predictive
services assistance. The suggested date is June 15 in Helena or Missoula. Ted will
finalize the date based on the MT governor’s availability.
State DEQs have requested representation with the MAC group mostly so that they can
stay current with the information available. The board does not support DEQs being
sitting MAC members, but are happy to have DEQ set up some sort of conduit for
information to them.
Ops Committee—proposal is made to appoint Bob Gilman’s position as the permanent
executive vice-chair of the committee. This would provide continuity and hopefully help
assure tasks of the Ops committee are completed. APPROVED: Bob will work with the
Ops committee to add into the Ops charter.
Type 3 Strategy—we will not form Type 3 teams at the geographic area level. NRCG
supports Type 3 organizations and encourage zones to formalize these organizations for
rapid mobilization. It takes encouragement to the zone to participate with cooperators for
have these organizations in place as well as leadership within the zone. We need to pick
leaders within the zones and encourage them to use the resources available in their zone
to form these organizations. We will remind local units that we are directed by NWCG
to accept each other’s qualifications at the local level. We need to send direction to the
zones to implement Type 3 organizations.
Brian, Tom Maloney, Brett, Bob Gilman and George Weldon will work together to
respond to the Type 3 Strategy and develop direction to the zones. Tracey will get the
recommendation paper electronically and send to the above. The focus of the response
will be to the strategy’s recommendations.
Aviation position recommendations—we will not add The AOBD position to Type 2
teams and we do not require a Type 1 assignment to certify an ASGS task book.
Growing future AOBDs should remain a priority for the aviation community.
SAC Committee recommendations—NR SAC Mission reassignment approved. NR SAC
contract inspections and training record verification for 2007 approved provided research
is done on our obligations to pay or supplement this contract. CATS position approved;
board would like training and standards developed. Contractor overhead/IMT pool—
contractor association can do this if they want, but we cannot contract for command and
control positions. We don’t anticipate using a database of contractors and we don’t have
the capacity to support it.
IC’s requests to NRCG—they need clarification on payment and participation on all-risk
assignments. [Each agency will pull together their authorities and policy based on
scenarios and we will form it into a matrix to give to the IMTs. Board members will send
Tracey their documentation by June 1.] Also would like to see all-risk assignments
addressed in our statewide agreements. They had varying perceptions on qualifications
for all-risk assignments. [This is being addressed nationally]. Also, they would like
NRCG to request the IOSWT re-look at eliminating the line qualifications for planning
section chiefs. We will pull our letter from last year and send it to the other GA chairs
and ask them to take this forward to NWCG with us.
Barriers to IMT participation—Harrington asked for this again at the IMT meetings.
• Additional support is needed from agencies other than the FS in finance positions
• Individual letters need to be sent to local agency administrators specifically
requesting availability of individuals on teams. NRCC can do a break down of team
members by home unit.
• NRCG agency administrators go to non-traditional agency administrators and ask for
participation of their employees
Tom Maloney will draft a letter by May 1 to respond to the agency administrators.
Tentative date for the next meeting is Oct. 16-18, 2006, noon to noon, in Polson.