At the Wildfire 2002 Conference in Kansas City in December, U.S. Forest Service Fire and Aviation Director Jerry Williams told attendees that “firefighter safety comes first,” emphasizing the “10 Standard Firefighting Orders” that wildland firefighters have been following for more than 50 years.

Williams went on to explain that firefighters are “can do” people, which makes them susceptible to cognitive bias, a concept espoused by Dr. Dutch Leonard at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. According to Leonard, cognitive bias refers to the notion that “what we're doing is going to somehow work, when all indications are that it is not.”

Leonard's summary of cognitive bias challenges include:

• Failing to notice that the current strategy is not working,
• Redoubling effort instead of rethinking the situation,
• Fixating on the current solution instead of finding a new one that's more likely to succeed, and
• Staying with an initial attack objective that has become unattainable due to a deteriorating situation.

Although cognitive bias can be a tough pattern to break, command officers need to force themselves out the comfort zones that can lead to such challenges. For some reason, perhaps because every wildland blaze is viewed as its own entity instead of being seen as “just another structure fire,” the wildland fire service has developed several techniques to avoid complacency.

For example, Doug Houston, an instructor at Mission-Centered Solutions, Parker, Colo., explained in Wildfire magazine several ideas that were created as a result of fatal incidents. One is called “Situation Check,” which allows firefighters to approach leaders tactfully when their sixth sense tells them something isn't right. This is a way to call a leader's attention to changes seen on a fireline, without standing up and telling the leader that he or she is wrong. When a leader is asked to do a Situation Check on a fireline, it triggers a timeout to listen to a person's observation or concern. With this new awareness, the situation can be re-assessed.

Other tools include an annually updated Incident Response Pocket Guide, which addresses how to properly refuse risk, and the acronym STOP, which stands for Stop, Think, Observe and Plan. Wildland firefighters also use LCES — Lookouts, Communications, Escape routes and Safety zones — and the 18 Situations that Shout Watch Out. Even the names of these techniques sound like common sense.

Wildland firefighting isn't perfect, but it employs some common-sense tools that are adaptable to structural firefighting. In the end, the goal of each group is still the same: Put the fire out and keep the firefighters safe.