Few will argue that firefighter safety and interface fires aren't among the most important issues in wildland fire suppression. Firefighter safety on interface fires, in my opinion, is the most significant issue that we as fire managers must address.

Over the past 20 to 30 years, as more folks have chosen to establish residences in the fire-prone areas that we call the WUI, there has also been an increased expectation by those residents that we save their homes, regardless of the burning conditions, fuel accumulations or the property owner's lack of fire-safe precautions. When fires start and smoke rolls, we're supposed to be there with our highly trained and experienced fire folks to defend property, no matter what.

Enter the structural protection specialist. The National Wildfire Coordinating Group has developed a highly refined process for qualifying wildland fire personnel, from mandatory training courses to task books that prove an individual can perform on actual fire operations, to ensuring that personnel have successfully worked in their jobs within the previous five years. The structural protection specialist is classified under ICS as a “technical specialist,” and is not held accountable to meet these NWCG standards. Anyone who wants to be a structural protection specialist can unilaterally declare himself or herself one, and there is no legitimate challenge to the claim.

So that there is no misunderstanding, I'm not challenging the skills or qualifications of those individuals who serve as structure protection group supervisors. These folks meet all the NWCG 310-1 criteria for division/group supervisors and are highly qualified and competent wildland firefighters. My concern is with those individuals who have little or no wildland training or experience. They may get their assignments because of the number of bugles they have earned in their structural department; they may be the senior person with the engines that are sent to protect threatened structures; they may come from some urban fire department with no real wildland component. Still, they just declare themselves to be structural protection specialists, using the old PR concept of “say it loud enough and often enough, and people will believe it.”

There have been too many WUI fires in recent years where engine crews, under the direction of a structural protection specialist, have been placed in situations of unacceptable risk, entrapped, burned over, seriously burned or killed trying to protect structures. Have those “specialists” been trained at the most basic levels of wildfire suppression (S-130 and S-190), let alone in the higher-level courses that we require to qualify at the single resource boss, strike-team leader and task-force leader levels? Have these folks been required to even take S-215: Fire Operations in the Wildland-Urban Interface? Do they know the basics of LCES in the wildfire environment?

Home owners continue to have sometimes unreasonable expectations about our ability to protect their homes from wildfires, and often the structural protection specialist must make critical and timely decisions that ultimately affect firefighter safety. Isn't it time that the need for training and qualifications follows the same process as is required for all other positions in the operations section on wildfires?

As NWCG works on the 2006 update to PMS 310-1, there is a real window of opportunity to clearly define the expectations for training and experience that must be required for anyone to be called a structural protection specialist on wildfires. The IAWF stands ready to support the NWCG Training Working Team and the other working teams involved to make this a reality next year.

Contact the IAWF

International Assn. of Wildland Fire
P.O. Box 261
Hot Springs, S.D. 57747-0261
ph: 605-890-2348
fax: 206-600-5113
iawf@iawfonline.org

To join the IAWF, visit www.iawfonline.org

Letters

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Wildfire Magazine
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Attn: Lisa Allegretti
lallegretti@primediabusiness.com