NRCG Spring Meeting
March 14, 2005
Present: John Specht, Mike Plattes, Ted Mead, Tom Maloney, Brett Waters, Jim Kelton,
Mike McMeekin, Dave Overcast, Eric Johnston, Ken Stump, Tracey Nimlos, George
Weldon, Dan Cassidy, Marci Giblin, Bob Sandman, Cory Winnie, Dale Glenmore, Tom
Corbin, Phil Gill, Dan McGowan.
Tim Murphy is planning to meet with congressional staffers in MT and ID to brief them
on contracting before fire season.
Budgets, Preparedness—IDL is planning resources as usual, but doesn’t have the
opportunity to bring firefighters on early because they rely almost exclusively on college
students. Budget is a challenge for Forest Service this year, trying to come up with
creative solutions, will have all air resources same as last year. FS will be letting
airtanker contracts this week for 8 tankers and an ad is out for a total of 20. BLM has
budget equal to 2004 and are hiring resources the same as the 2004 level. Erv Leach will
be new Billings District FMO for the BLM. Fish & Wildlife Service got 12 new
positions and funding service-wide, Region 6 however, took about a 5% cut. Able to
fund people, but not much equipment, but are expecting a reallocation later in the spring.
Counties are gearing up as best as they can; mutual aid agreement in MT is in place.
NRCG could help engage all counties by putting a briefing in the MACO newsletter on
NRCG and how they operate. DNRC just submitted budget proposals to the legislature
to support aviation program at a higher level, to support the county coop program,
increased helitack at some zones, additional support for Type 3 IMTs, and to create a
fund for severity. Staffing is at normal levels and may be bringing some resources on
early. An interim legislative committee may be formed to review all the fire statues in
MT. Have 3 unit manager positions vacant that won’t be filled until after July 1. BIA is
down a little bit from last year in suppression and fuels. Were told by their national
office that severity funding might be tighter. Planning to bring a CL-215 to N Idaho and
NW MT this year. Putting more money into prevention this year.
IMT Size—National AC/IC group told NMAC that 33 members on Type 1 teams is not
acceptable. They are recommending 50 positions. NMAC will talk with NWCG about
the recommendation.
Only 2 of our Northern Rockies Type 2 teams submitted rosters with 33 or less people.
Human Resource Specialist Program Update—Jan Everett presented an update on the
program and contacts made by HRSPs on incidents. Northern Rockies currently have 20
qualified HRSPs and 15 trainees.
Future IMTs—Bob Sandman will be a Type I IC for this year only.
Suggestions for NRCG are to target individuals and remove obstacles blocking them
from becoming qualified. ACTION ITEM: Task Ops Committee to draft a succession
strategy. Bring issue up at NMAC/GMAC meeting.
AFD Financial Plan—The changes occurring in DOI and FS financial management
organizations and procedures will make this plan almost impossible to execute. John
proposes each agency pays for their own interagency employee, which comes close to
matching the share they pay toward the overall agreement. Need a group to look at if the
split is equitable. Need another group to look at financial structure and how to do
agreement or exchange funds.
Local Government Relations (Bob Sandman)—Bob and Steve Frye met with reps from
local Fire Chiefs and made recommendations for better working relationships between
NRCG, IMTs and local government. Items include jurisdictional responsibilities, unified
command, multiple and overlapping jurisdictions.
Another proposal is rapid deployment of a “short” IMT or even 2-3 people to Eastern MT
for oversight. By the time an entire IMT is mobilized to E MT often times it is too late.
Would like an informational packet developed to include the answers to all these
questions. Might be included in the Mobilization of Local Gov’t Resources book.
Another place it might reside is in the County Emergency Operations Plan.
Aviation Committee (Willis Curdy)—we expect to have up to 9 P3 airtankers available
shortly, possibly 3 more before the end of the season. P2Vs and DC products will be
evaluated for Operational Service Life. CL-215s have been put on a national contract.
Other companies are developing aircraft to be airtankers. Expecting 46 exclusive use
SEATs and 40 CWN SEATs. There are 6 Type 1 tanked helicopters on exclusive use
contract for this season nationally. There will be no NMAC helicopters. There will be
no Barons in the system for lead planes, but will lease 10 King Airs. Interior will have 4
ASM platforms and 4 tactical platforms in the Region. We will have the same number of
smokejumpers as last year. Automated flight following has been required on a number of
contracts this year. Ops committee requests a rep from the Aviation committee to attend
Ops meetings.
NRCG would like direction from NMAC on how aviation is used strategically this year
and we will add that to our Northern Rockies Strategic Plan.
Native American Crew Committee (Dale Glenmore)—Have included all units but one
into the Operating Plan which will be geographic in scope this year.
SW MT Zone (Chris Accetturo)—Kootenai Dispatch will now be dispatching Carlson’s
Type 2 team. MOU is being written for moving resources (non-aircraft) between
agencies within the zone. Have already had some fires on the Lolo. Some units are
already too dry to do Prescribed Burning. The Missoula Center Manager will probably
not be filled until June.
Equipment Committee (Kevin Erickson)—The Committee is sponsoring an advanced
inspector course this spring with the DOT. Will also be having another basic inspector
course in April. Kevin and Murphy have been working on the national template for the
engine and crew contracts to be used by the Regions. Are still working with the Strategic
Action Committee on best value contracting. Hope to use this method for water handling
equipment in 2006. Contractors need performance evaluations from fires they are on this
summer. Specialized equipment workshop will be held May 3-4 in Missoula and Arlee.
Training Committee (Bob Cunningham)—Presented issue paper on effects of IFPM on
Northern Rockies Training Center. NRCG would like to know what kind of budget
increase we’re looking at to accommodate the additional training being requested for
individuals to meet the IFPM standards. Draft 310-1 will be out in June; Geographic
Area can review and submit comments and will do so with an interagency work group.
NRTC will be hosting an IMT3 Workshop the week of April 18th.
Business Committee (Marci Giblin)—The biggest job for the Business Committee has
been the Strategic Action Committee (SAC) for contracting. SAC is working on copying
a template for the PNW for a method to do best-value contracting method. Biggest
challenge is getting performance evaluations for contractors. NRCG supplements to the
Business Mgmt Handbook will be out mid-April. Chapter 30 will have new direction for
IMT on how to handle replacement of consumable cache items. Finance and logistics
workshop will be in Missoula April 27-29.
Eastern MT zone (Dave Overcast)—Lewistown has already had a few fires. New FMO
positions have been filled for the BLM in Lewistown and Billings. Miles City is working
on one annual operating plan for the division. East zone is trying to put together a Type 3
team.
North Idaho (Ken Stump)—An issue in North Idaho is delegations of authority between
jurisdictional and protecting agency. Cathy Scofield and John Specht are working on
resolving this.
Northwest MT (Dan Cassidy)—Charlie Webster will be the MAC chair and Dan will be
the restrictions coordinator for this year. Forest Service Staffing in the zone will be down
from last year due to budget. Have had about 8 fires so far this year. DNRC staffing
may be up a little; all other agencies are about the same as last year.
South Central MT Zone (Brett Waters)—The Gallatin FMO position closed and will be
filled soon. Yellowstone NP is status quo as are the counties within the zone.
Operation Committee (Mark Romey)—Charter was updated recently. We have a new
interagency agreement with the Eastern Area for representation on our IMTs.
Coordination Centers will be point of contact for any issues. Ops committee talked about
how many teams we can support in the geographic area. Decided to go with five Type 2
teams and two Type 1 teams. Next year an option may be to drop a Type 1 team in order
to maintain six Type 2 teams. Talked about bringing trainees along more quickly.
Priority should be given to trainees who are almost ready to move into IC positions and
take over teams. Also need to take advantage of Fire Use teams. Would like a letter to
go to agency administrators to make them aware that we had to stand down a type 2 team.
Ops committee has the lead in developing a performance evaluation process for the SAC
committee to use for best value contracting. Operations folks on IMTs need to complete
performance evaluations for contractors.
Executive Session – March 16, 2005
Give John feedback on his proposal for the AFD Financial Plan. Will review percentages
charged to each agency and which positions are included in the split. The Fire Org
program is being used to assess fair share charges to agencies in the dispatch
organization.
Would like to schedule a day for a MAC preseason meeting and could maybe tag the
agreement discussion on to that. Will schedule for the week of July 11 (12, 13 & 14).
May want to have a conference call with the new NRCC manager and Ops Officer before
that to relay out our expectations in P.L. 1, 2, and 3. Will also set up an NRCG duty
officer rotation starting April 1. Tracey will set up a rotation.
Northern Rockies Training Center Proposal—need statistics on numbers of students who
need courses to qualify for IFPM. NRCG approves Option 2 where each agency
develops guidance on student priorities for training. That needs to be communicated
from each agency to their folks at the zone level. Zone training committees need to
communicate back to NRCG if this is causing problems with equity among non-IFPM
agencies, i.e. states. There is concern that students will be taking courses simply to get
their ticket punched for 401 and don’t necessarily intend to perform in the position they
are training for. Jim will draft a letter emphasizing priorities for the NRTC.
Eastern Area Coordinating Group IFPM Trainee Strategy
Find out from Plattes if we have a priority trainee list. Encourage NMAC to do what they
can from the national level to possibly increase team size to accommodate more trainees
or assign a national fire code to pay for trainees to go to state fires. Jim will include the
trainee issue in the letter regarding training in the above paragraph. Send this paper to
the Ops Committee to look at developing a priority trainee list for IMT participation.
Have them look at the paper and identify ideas to facilitate getting people through the
system quicker. Come up with options to remove barriers. They need to work with the
training committee to get these people into training.
Local Government Relations with IMTs—DNRC will get out the word on how to deal
with local gov’t delegations of authority this fire season. Jim will take the issue to the
NMAC/GMAC meeting this fall to suggest we change the title of delegation of authority
to make counties more comfortable.
Develop an informational briefing packet for out of area teams—the Native American
Crew Committee is working on a briefing for teams who are dealing with Native Crews
and tribal governments. Brett, Ted and Tom C. volunteer to work on this project. Will
request Specht’s help from IDL as well. Target to have completed by MAC preseason
meeting.
Brett and Tom will take the rest of the items on this list to the Joint Fire Chiefs/Fire
Wardens Association meeting.