What are some of the biggest risk you see facing the managers of wildland situations?

We have a tendency … to focus in on the job at hand. As with past accidents and fatalities, I think we tend to lose that situational awareness in looking at the big picture of what's going on.

Every firefighter out there has a personal responsibility for safety. It just doesn't lie with the incident commander or the safety officer on the team; each of us has a responsibility for safety.…

I'm really big on human factors and there's hesitancy to place blame on individual firefighters. They have a responsible role for their safety as well. I just feel like we need to reiterate that throughout the ranks, and we each play a part in that.

What was your experience during the South Canyon Fire?

I was the squad boss for the initial-attack squad. Our job was fire chasers, and we were receiving a lot of initial-attack fires and we broke up into initial-attack squads. My squad showed up in the initial attack on South Canyon.

I had a few amber burns and radiant heat exposure, but it was minor. Emotionally, at more than one more point, I thought my life was over on that day. Our group was working on the ridgeline versus down in the drainage inside. Once that fire and the blow-up occurred, I don't think anybody was safe anywhere.

How did you recover from the trauma of that day?

For me personally it was a matter of the old adage, “If you get bucked off a horse you have to get back on,” and I just felt like the fire program was important to me and it was. I guess after that happened, it was, “What are the steps I need to take to help firefighters and firefighter safety?” No firefighter should have to experience what I experienced on that day. That really became my passion and to do that I had to get right back. I took a couple weeks off, then back on an engine and then on an attack crew the rest of the year. For me that was most healing, to get back into it and build up some more confidence and stay focused.

What's changed since South Canyon? I know there's a focus on risk management.

I think one of the things that really changed … is fatigue management. I went on my first fire that March and it never really slowed down, but that was OK. [Fire was] what we lived for; sleep wasn't that important. Looking back, I realize how fatigued and tired I was, and studies show that it affects your cognitive ability and I know it did for myself.

We instituted the work-rest policy and we hold people to that standard. At that time it was get as much rest as you can, but now we have a very definitive work-rest policy.

What are some of the items you cover when you teach safety risk management?

I go over the hazards we look for in a fire-line environment and what mitigation is appropriate for that hazard.

One example could be a snag-tree area on a fire line where you have different options to mitigating. We can either — if it's small enough — bring in a sawyer and remove the snag or if it's too large of an area, we flag it off and just use avoidance of that area and put the fire line somewhere else.

Another example would be a windy, dusty, single-track mountain road. If we have a lot of traffic on that road, what's mitigation going to be? We may have certain hours where there's only one-way traffic or maybe we need to do dust abatement on that road.

Is safety more of an issue than it was 10 years ago?

I think firefighter safety has changed from 10 years ago, and I believe it's been a good change. Before, safety was important and we trained that way. Since that time, we have moved into the concept of risk management and behavior mitigation, and also it's more ingrained in our culture than it was 10 years ago.

BIO

Michelle Ryerson-Grett is a safety and occupational health specialist for the Bureau of Land Management, where she oversees policy regarding firefighter safety and health issues. She also is a survivor of the South Canyon Fire, which has it's 10th anniversary this summer.