Midday on a hot August afternoon in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Sacramento, a welding accident at a remote industrial site ignited a small grass fire. Despite the best attempts of the welding crew to extinguish the fire, the light flashy fuels quickly spread the flames into nearby brush.

Within minutes fire crews from surrounding areas were dispatched to the fire, guided in by a rapidly growing, ominous column of smoke. The fire started in the bottom of a steep valley, with access to the fire possible only on foot. The initial engine companies began to attack the heel of the fire with progressive hose lays.

The first officer on scene was Mark Brunton, a battalion chief from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. “My first concern when I arrived was to determine what the fuels, topography and exposures were on the fire,” he says. Because of the steepness of the terrain, it was impossible to visualize the fire or its path from the incident origin.

But Brunton had a new tool in his arsenal that day: a prototype dubbed MICAS, the Mobile Incident Command and Accountability System. MICAS is a Geographic Information System tool based on the Incident Command System. It provides decision support and documentation, and it aids in incident process management. MICAS has been designed and tested over the last two years by chief officers from CDF, the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S. National Park Service, Dallas Fire & Rescue and El Dorado Hills (Calif.) Fire Department.

“Using MICAS I was quickly able to determine the fuels, topography, access routes and exposures in the area of the fire,” says Brunton. “With this information I realized that my most effective management strategy would be to deploy aircraft to stop the spread of the fire, to use ground crews and bulldozers to contain the fires perimeter, and to use engine companies to protect the many homes in the path of the fire's leading edge.”

Management tool

Brunton, along with the other unified commander, Chief Bruce Lacher from El Dorado County Fire, were able to quickly determine how many structures were immediately threatened and order sufficient strike teams for their protection. “Prior to using MICAS we would have had to take the time to send teams to drive the area, determining how many structures would need to be protected,” Brunton says. “This takes valuable time that we did not have on this fire.”

Not only does MICAS have the ability to show what structures are within a fire's path, it also allows agencies to predetermine a structure's risk factor before an incident. This way they don't use limited resources inefficiently protecting structures that don't need protection or ones that aren't likely to be saved. MICAS also keeps track of which engine companies are protecting each structure and documents a fire's effect on a structure, if required. This aids in after-action reporting and review.