Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Blog

  If you are Division qualified does that mean you should be able to handle ANY Division ANYWHERE in ANY conditions?  What happens when our abilities don't line up with the situation - regardless of quals? How do you react when you see someone hesitating?  How should you react?  Here's a tip, be kind.  There is most likely a reason for the hesitation.  Find out what it is, then you can discuss if it's warranted. Do you know enough to hesitate?  This is called humility - try it. Consider all this while reading this piece.

By Travis Dotson It's 11 minutes long.  Watch it. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKACzIrog24&w=560&h=375] So...?  What is the break down?  How much time do you spend learning vs performing?  Obviously when we are out on fire assignments we need to spend most of our time in the performing zone.  But we don't spend all our time at work on fire assignments.  Even on assignments, there is usually plenty of time for each zone. The point is, doing things well doesn't make you better - it's pretty much a plateau.  So what does this say about how much we v...

By Travis Dotson We have all been there.  The seated refresher.  All day in a chair.  Even if the videos are good, the process gets old.  The set up is not conducive to learning - it's more likely to result in drowsiness and habitual Facebook scrolling. So why do we do it? We all know most folks get told "you need to put on the refresher this year."  Then that person just replicates what they have sat through in the past.  We are not professional educators so what we get makes sense.  I happen to think there are a few small steps we can take to make our yearly tune...

By Travis Dotson   It happens often.  Second and third degree burns on the calf associated with using a drip torch.  Thats all.  Just letting you know.  You are now armed with awareness. Is that all?  Did the Lessons Learned Center just do it's job?  Think it will work? Of course we get leg burns from drip torches!  We're slinging gasoline around hot stuff right next to our legs...it's gonna happen.  What's amazing is how good we are at NOT catching ourselves on fire.  We scramble across crazy complex terrain with stupid heavy packs while carrying an unwieldy ...

By Persephone Whelan   What is a staff ride workshop and what will I learn? I wasn’t quite sure, but I seized the opportunity to attend the Shiloh Battlefield Staff Ride with both hands and didn’t let go. I knew we were going to revise the Mack Lake Staff Ride for the Mio Ranger District on the Huron Manistee National Forest and if this was part of the process, count me in! I had no expectations and really wasn’t quite sure what would happen. The first part of the workshop we were definitely not part of “the gang.” Two interagency hotshot crews were present. I...

By Travis Dotson [caption id="attachment_2431" align="alignnone" width="1428"] NWCG Definition of "Entrapment"[/caption] I have been entrapped - multiple times. It feels awful to say that and I know exactly why - to most of my peers that statement means I'm a bad firefighter.  Entrapment is a bad thing, and if it happens to you it means you didn't have LCES in place - it's YOUR fault. OK, I can handle that.  What I want to talk about is how common entrapment is and how hard we try to convince ourselves it didn't happen to us.  You ever had to "scra...

We just published another episode of our Podcast, you can listen here: http://wildfirelessons.podbean.com   We talk about some of the "numbers" from this season.  Things like four cases of early season Physical Training Rhabdomyolysis in four days (May 4-5) and nine instances of "equipment burn damage"  (vehicles, chainsaws, camp equipment, etc).  Are those "trends"?  I don't know for sure but I tend to resist using the term "trend" because I feel like it's been thrown around way too loosely in our business. How many safety officers have you heard get up at br...

Yep - another one.  Another firefighter has been hospitalized with serious burns after their saw spewed fuel all over the place and then ignited.  This isn't the only instance we see over and over again.  This one feels different because it's a relatively new phenomenon, really within the past 3-5 years.  But vehicles catching fire while parked in the black is a common occurrence as well.  So are chainsaw cuts and getting hit by the tree your cutting down.  The lessons written down after these instances are a little different from time to time, but overall they are ...