NRCG Fall Meeting
November 29 – 30, 2005
Missoula, MT
Present: Tom Corbin, Cindy Christophersen, Ted Mead, Phil Gill, Nancy Gibson, Tim
Murphy, Kevin Erickson, Dan Lieberg, Dan McGowan, Roberta Whitlock, Scott
Waldron, Brett Waters, Bob Gilman, Tom Maloney, Kathy Elzig, Bob Lippincott, Larry
Dawson, Jim Kelton, Craig Campbell, Jamie Rosdahl, Dan Cassidy, Frank Waterman,
Cory Winnie, Mike McMeekin, Tracey Nimlos.
COMMITTEE REPORTS:
Business Committee—Cindy Christophersen (see handout for accomplishment report)
Business Committee has made good progress in establishing good working relationships
with other committees.
Operations Committee—Bob Lippincott: The Ops Committee would like to recruit an
agency administrator representative on the Ops committee. Type 3 Strategic Planning
team is being led by Jack Kirkendall and will have a final draft to recommend to NRCG
by late January. A task group from the Ops committee is working with the equipment
committee on specs for equipment hired under best value contracting. Committee
recommends we maintain 2 Type 1 and 6 Type 2 teams, plus the 2 Fire Use teams. The
Ops Committee feels we can fully staff this number of teams. Have 4 outgoing Type 2
ICs, but 6 were signed off as qualified last season.
A subgroup of the committee is working on recruitment of more candidates for S-420 and
S-520/620. The Ops committee is also working on planning the spring IMT Meetings.
Prevention Committee—Jamie Rosdahl: Still trying to recruit representatives from all
the zones. Zone reps need to ensure they have a representative to the Prevention
Committee designated. Jim Kelton will also send a message emphasizing participation.
Revised the committee charter for next year and need Board approval. The committee
also wrote a mission statement. Zone restrictions coordinators will be meeting via
conference call to gather issues and concerns, and to clarify definitions. The Prevention
Committee will be sponsoring the Northern Rockies/Great Basin Fire Prevention
Workshop in May 2006 in Moab, Utah.
The committee identified the need to educated county commissioners and the media on
restrictions coordination.
Does the board want to assign restrictions and closures to the Prevention Committee as an
oversight and education aspect? Yes. Talk about this on the next agency administrator
call.
Native American Crew Committee—Tom Corbin: The committee rewrote the NAC Plan
to update according to our current policies and reduce redundancies in the plan. Tom
Corbin e-mailed the new plan to everyone. Please get comments back to Tom or Tracey
by the end of December.
Training Committee—Frank Waterman: Fall meeting had a long discussion on S-420
and getting people up that level. They put a team together to come up with some possible
solutions. Discussed funding to the NR Training Center and put together a group to look
at agency contributions per student. The Training Committee will be completing an
IQCS implementation plan.
Equipment Committee—Kevin Erickson: Have not had their winter meeting yet, so do
not have a formal plan of work yet. Put on an advanced equipment inspector workshop
this spring. See handout for more information. The Equipment Committee asks NRCG
to continue to support committee participation.
Fire Use Committee—Larry Dawson: Put together a draft charter to renew this
committee. Would like NRCG to re-charter the committee or dissolve. There have been
requests from the field to reinvigorate this committee. Another option is to have this
group a sub-committee of the Operations Committee. The draft charter will be reworded
to be a charter to a subcommittee which will report to the Ops committee.
Radio Communication Task Force—will focus on the training side of the issue which
will be a spring job. Bob will be meeting with the Area Command team that was tasked
with this issue nationally. An idea is to have a short training session to teach people
about all the operator errors that are occurring and creating communication problems.
Make this a train the trainer session. We are expecting that our communication people
will be getting some additional training. Zones need to set up an exercise with your
dispatch centers to test radios and frequencies to make sure they work. Zones need to
identify their issues before the fire season. The task force will disseminate the findings of
the Area Command radio team so at least everyone is informed.
Strategic Action Committee Update—Tim passed out a schedule to come on line with
best-value water handling contracts by next fire season. Comments on draft solicitation
are due Dec. 5. Governor and congressional staffers were briefed on the best-value
contracting process and warned that they might receive complaints. Tim also passed out
the point factoring system the SAC is proposing for evaluating contractor proposals. 50
percent will be based on contractors’ bid and 50 percent will be based on point system for
equipment and personnel. We also have to figure out how this system will interact with
the EATIS program. The equipment committee will be coming up with some common
inspection standards.
Montana Mutual Aid Meeting—this occurs twice per year and the group consists of local
government agencies that have agreed to procedures to help each other throughout the
state on all-risk and wildland fire operations. The message from this group is that they
would like to see their state and federal partners attend this meeting. There are issues that
come up when mutual aid is used and then local gov’t departments are hired on an
incident. The next meeting is the first weekend in March.
NR IMT Use on local non-declared emergencies—the need exists for management teams
on all risk incidents. DNRC and DES are exploring ways to use teams and cache items
for non-declared local incidents. Are the teams available, and if not, is it because we
don’t have the authorities or do we need to put agreements in place? This may also open
a window for state employees who have not been allowed to participate on our teams in
the past. There are also no funding mechanisms in place. Ted and Dan will put together
a small group to look at this issue.
Annual Emergency Management Conference—this was formerly called the “Governor’s
Conference on Emergency Management”. It will bring together emergency
administrators from local, state and federal levels, as well as private industry like power
companies. It will take place 2 days during the week of May 22. Dan will send
invitations to NRCG Board members. Let Dan know if there are fire specific issues that
you think should be on the agenda.
ZONE REPORTS:
Eastern MT—(Phil Gill) BLM has a new aviation plan that won’t have a lot of effect on
MT. The WO of the BLM decided to go to 90-day contracts and have cut down the
number of aircraft. They’re hoping this will be more efficient and cost effective. All
contracts will be done in Boise and the national office has control of the aircraft.
Previously MT had 4 SEATs, 2 light helicopters and 2 air attack platforms. Montana will
cut down these numbers, but it should not be a big impact on the Northern Rockies and
may actually help us.
South Central MT—(Craig Campbell) YNP has gone to narrow band and has new
frequencies and DNRC will have new frequencies also. The zone is working on their
Type 3 strategy. Gallatin NF will still have 1 helicopter and a fixed wing.
Southwest MT—(Nancy Gibson) had an average fire season this year which gave all the
agencies the opportunity to do some planning to become more efficient and effective.
The Dispatch Centers had some real challenges with business management. Missoula
County Fire Protection Association continued to meet and discuss restrictions and
closures. Still have some confusion about definitions relating to closures. Questions: in
light of NRCG letter regarding inter-governmental cooperation, and the best-value
system eliminate the need for a rotation. Do the dispatch centers need mob boards
anymore? Even if we keep mob boards there needs to be some direction about rotation
schedules. Will the State of MT continue to do EERAs with local gov’t or how will we
pay them for work on federal fires? DNRC business committee will work on the issue of
how to reimburse local gov’t resources and then bring that forward to the NRCG
Business Committee.
Tim’s briefing paper and issue paper needs to be clarified that non-BVP and nongovernment resources will be replace with BVP resources beyond extended attack.
Northwest MT—(Dan Cassidy) met a couple of bumps and coordination problems with
restrictions this year. The zone is working on this. NW MT has assigned new people to
the various committees. Allen Chrisman will be the restrictions coordinator.
The national coordinators group is looking for a way to show both ownership and
protection on the situation reports.
NRCG is still planning to visit and review agreements at the interagency dispatch centers.
This will focus on workload and fair share between the agencies.
North Idaho—(Bob Lippincott) the zone had an average to below average fire season.
The zone managed numerous Fire Use Events, a major suppression incident and a large
landscape prescribed burn concurrently. The zone is forming an interagency dispatch
center in Grangeville this winter which they hope will be operational by April. North
Idaho had some air quality issues with ID DEQ during all the burning. The interagency
SEAT program went really well between the FS and IDL. N ID deployed a Type 3 team
twice. Had quite a few Type 3 incidents that were managed well and saved from
becoming Type 2 incidents. The ID Panhandle maintains 3 Type 3 teams that are on
rosters. There is one for each of the 3 Panhandle zones. The Clear/Nez zone has a pool
of qualified individuals for Type 3 teams. They had some difficulties getting contractors
paid on time.
North Dakota—(Beth Card): Here are the issues that the North Dakota Zone is working
on: completion of the 5-year update of the Cooperative Fire Protection Agreement (6Party Agreement); implementation of the Interagency Medical Standards; North Dakota
Dispatch Center is moving from Upham to Bismarck; increasing participation in NRCG
teams and committees; development of a Zone draw down plan; establishing a formal
agreement between the Dakota Prairie Grasslands and Theodore Roosevelt NP to provide
shared duty officer coverage and responsibilities; establishing how Best Value
Contracting will affect our contractors; finishing up FPA; standardization of the
mobilization of North Dakota Type II hand crews out of ND Zone.
Depending on when the next NRCG meeting is, Oscar Knudtson may be the
representative. Beth's tenure as Chair of the ND Fire Council is up in spring. Oscar is
Vice Chair and will take the Chair position when Beth vacates it.
EATIS/Best Value Contracting—(Sue Prentiss) Tracey will e-mail handouts.
BIA has a requirement that background checks are done on drivers of contracted vehicles
including engines.
Do we want to limit the number of best-value contracts?
Initial solicitation will be for one year.
It will be critical to put performance ratings into the system to be used both in rating the
best value and to give us the ability to remove a contractor from the system.
The solicitation for water handling equipment for 2006 will be a Northern Rockies
solicitation.
Billing between agencies—(Roberta Whitlock): a progress report from the ad hoc
committee of the Business Committee. The committee has set some rates for local gov’t
reimbursement for 2006. In the meantime representatives from local gov’t in our 3 states
will form a group to help identify rates for reimbursement of actual costs. Another group
is still looking at reimbursement rates for state and federal agencies.
The group is suggesting we not put local gov’t on EERAs but rather reimburse them the
same way we reimburse between state and federal agencies. They are looking at what is
occurring in Idaho to use as a template. If we make these decisions we need to reflect
changes in our statewide agreements. They also need to be added to statewide annual
operating plans and local annual operating plans.
Roberta will send out progress reports through Tracey.
S-520/S-620 Candidate Selection—(Bob Lippincott) The selection committee was
comprised of Bob, Jeff Scussel, Bob Cunningham, Wally Bennett and Bob Sandman.
Need to look at mentoring trainees and how we can enhance team participation. Task the
command and general staff positions to do this for their functional areas. They need a
recruitment strategy and mentoring strategy.
EXECUTIVE SESSION:
FPA Position—options to split the funding include land mass, acres planned, total
budget…we will ask Don and Pat to come up with an equitable funding split. The federal
agencies agree to go forward with this position. Forest Service will host the FTE. If DOI
comes up with additional funding from the national office we will use it for this position
first.
Predictive Services Vacancy—Bruce Thoricht retires Friday, which leaves us with one
meteorologist. BLM will fill the vacant meteorologist position.
Update to NRCG Charter—get comments back to Tracey and the proper signature
block for your agency administrator.
AFD Agreement—agreement still is not in place because of verbiage that contracting
people cannot live with. Gilman will go back to the agreements people and make it an
annual agreement for this year and we will work on another plan for next year to have
each agency sponsor and pay for their own positions and exchange as little money as
possible.
Chair Rotation—Tom Maloney will be the chair for 2006 and Tom Corbin will be the
vice-chair. Tracey will rework the rotation schedule so that a federal rep is either chair or
vice-chair every year.
NRCG Contractor Liaison position—Larry will pursue converting the position to
permanent.
Local Fire Management Leadership—April 7th as many board members as possible come
to the training for a panel session about NRCG.
NMAC/GMAC meeting—Kelton, Elzig and one of the Toms will attend.
We will circulate the Prevention Committee Charter and the NAC operating plan for
comment and then sign off on both documents.
Do we still need mob boards? At this time, yes.
Ted handed out a flyer for the Montana Communities & Wildfire Conference which is
2/27 - 3/1, 2006, in Helena. Please circulate in your agency.
Team announcements will go out next week. Type 1 ICs Chuck Stanich will be on a 4year term and Wally Bennett will be on a 2-year term. All team positions will be
advertised. Selections will be in the 1st part of February.
Tracey will get thank you letters out to team members for their participation in 2006.
Next NRCG meeting will be April 12-14, 2006, in Missoula.