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Wildland Fire Task Force
When weather conditions are just right for wildland fires (brush,field or woods), would your area dispatch system dispatch a task force instead of the local fire station.
Being in a urban area outside a major city, we have had times where they will dispatch a number of off road units plus engines and tankers on the first alarm and will notify state forestry if they will be need.
Our county off road units consits of 4x4 (3/4 or 1 ton) pickup trucks with skid units or mini pumpers (200 or 300 gal) Engines would be just regular structure units (500 to 1000 gal) and tankers 2000 or 3000 gal.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Bob Callahan on
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Last year when we were operating in a significant drought, my combo department, along with the 2 neighboring combo departments developed a plan where the 2 departments not paged to an incident would "informally" respond cold with either a brush truck or an engine and 2 personnel to a the third's department page of a possible brush fire. If the responding department arrived and found a working incident, the other 2 department's units would then upgrade to a hot response unless the primary department cancelled them.
The reason why the 2 other department's were not initially formally paged out response was not hot from outset had to do with the impact of automatic mutual aid under the LA fire rating system. If they were cancelled, we never generated a report. If they continued on, the response was logged as "mutual aid", not "automatic aid".
We also developed a plan later in the spring for a parishwide mutual aid response as it was obvious that based on the current and forecasted conditions, there would be significant fire problems in other areas of the state. Each department contributed a pre-determined number of personnel, including command staff, and type of apparatus. The plan also included a rotation system for personnel and resources.
As it turned out, we ended up responding to the parish to our west, a parish about 50 miles to our south, and east Texas for major brush fire incidents during the summer and fall.
Last year was our second straight very dry summer. The previous summer we had responded several times to the neighboring parish to our east for major brush fire incidents as a multi-department task force. We also operated at a large dry lakebed fire for 6 weeks both within our parish, as well as mutual aid, during that previous summer. Much of the planning for last summer was based on those incidents.
This winter has been wetter than normal so unless the rain slows up, it is unlikely that we will have a repeat of the last 2 years.
E-mail me at bcallahan@bpfd1.org if you would like additional information.
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Permalink Reply by Jim Conrad on
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in our dept we have good resources for wildfire. having said that we also have a good working relationship with other dept's in the area. if a fire got out of hand the chief would "pull the plug" and montana mutual aid would respond. most of the rural dept's are set up for wildfire moreso than structure. in 1991 we had a fire that burnt 180000 acres in a day and a half, most everyone came. but we dont have a taskforce per se.
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Permalink Reply by Jay Nicholson on
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Urban area. During a 'High Wildland Response' we will empty the barn. You get a full 1st alarm of brush rigs and a full first alarm structural protection response plus a copter. Other times during a 'No Special Response' level you will get a couple of engines.
If a station is cross manning an engine/brush unit and is 1st due, they will respond with the engine. Structural protection being the priority.
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Permalink Reply by ashfire on
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The way most of our calls for a wildland fire would go it would be a local alarm for the station in the area of the call. A engine will respond. If the station has a off road unit it will go with the engine.
After arriving on scene if the unit officer determs a need for more units and advise communications.
This will then a special alarm for additional units. They could have a number of special alarms to equal box alarms.
The county then decided to have task force operations during times of fire danger weather so a number of units will respond at the same time instead of waiting for units to come from stations.
Our county had one day where everything hit the fan for 24 hours from major brush fires to building fires some started by the brush fires. This also required the county to recall all career and volunteer personnel.
We had depts from around the state and the next state and commerical fire tankers from two states away.
One interstate highway was closed due to a mutch fire which jumped the highway. This was where the commerical tankers came in because of the company that owned the mutch company.
Our county not only had to handle these but medical and other regular calls using mutual aid depts and county units that were not on the street because of a incident and the number of county units was few.
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Permalink Reply by Derek J Sinesi on
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In our area they tone out that districts department. The chief will call for any mutual aid that may be needed. Dispatch also reports the call to NYSDEC at the same time. Whether it is a wild fire or a garbage fire. In New York it is illegal to burn garbage and any brush fire or camp can only be 3 feet by 3 feet so DEC gets dispatched also.
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