When you hear about a large wildfire burning on the Gila, you probably envision green and yellow clad firefighters fighting the fire on the ground or maybe you’ve seen large air tankers drop water or retardant onto the fire from the air. There have been helicopters associated with some of our fires here. Although, these men and women are the front-line troops when it comes to firefighting, but it takes a bit more to tackle these wildfires.
The Incident Command System is in place and is being used by different emergency services agencies in the U.S. This system ensures people doing these jobs are managed in a manner that provides for the safety of responders and the public.
It would be confusing and dangerous to just tell the troops to go in and put the fire out. The Forest Service and other firefighting agencies use ICS to structure the firefighting on every fire. When a fire is first spotted and reported, the closest available resource will initially respond. This could be crews, engines, smoke jumpers, helitack crews, retardant aircraft or some type of combination of those. If the fire exceeds their capacity to extinguish it, then they ask the dispatch center to send additional resources and that’s when the complex system kicks in.
The closest available resources are ordered and then additional help is sent through the Geographical Area Coordination Center. If not enough resources are available then requests are sent to the National Interagency Coordination Center, which is located in Idaho.
“ICS is a way of organizing any type of emergency,” Forest Service PIO Elayn Briggs said. “It’s a huge boon to safety and allows people across different agencies to talk to each other and organize where there is no confusion.”
An example would be a fire that was caused by a vehicle fire a few weeks back near Mangus Valley. Law enforcement, and local volunteer fire departments were dispatched along with the forest service who utilized ICS to quickly extinguish the fire.
“ICS comes into play anytime we have a fire,” Briggs said. “The closest resources is what responds and our first priority is always health and human safety.”
As the fire grows and more resources are needed, Incident Management Teams are ordered to take over the management responsibility for the fires. These can be from Type 3 IMTs for smaller fires to Type 1 for larger ones. There is then an operations section that helps oversee the fires management system.
“We’ve had at least two Type 3 fires here,” Briggs said. “But, those have been downgraded and turned back into Forest Service management.”
The Operations Section organizes all of the resources including crews, engines and aircraft. These guys develop and plan the tactical responses to place the right resources in the right place at the right time.
The Logistics Section sets up the command post, which is like a village that supports the fire. This includes work areas, a food unit, sleeping areas, sanitation and even sometimes showers and laundry.
The Plans Section is responsible for resource accountability and organizing all the components into a coherent plan. This is done daily.
The Finance Section oversees the time keeping, procurement, contracts and cost analysis.
According to Briggs, each one of these is dispatched differently and stuff is very flexible because of what’s available, agreements and contracts. Briggs said she has seen command posts set up in schools, community centers and even open spaces in private land.
Although the monsoons haven’t fully engulfed southwest New Mexico yet, the fire season isn’t over. Briggs said that some smoke jumpers and hotshot crews may be sent to other areas when they are needed most, they typically won’t be released until the fire season is over.
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