NIFC Fire Shelter
According to the National Fire and Aviation Executive Board (NFAEB), Federal Agencies should be transitioned to the New Generation Fire Shelter by January 1, 2009. All agencies, cooperators and contracted resources are to be transitioned by January 1, 2010.
Incident Emergency Medical Task Group
The mission of the Incident Emergency Medical Task Group (IEMTG) is to establish a methodology that meets the emergency medical and occupational health care needs of managed incidents with the integration of local, state, tribal, and federal systems.
Firefighter Math
Firefighter Math is a web based user interactive resource that was developed to help prepare wildland fire personnel for math based training courses. The website is designed to start with basic math refresher skills and advance to topics that directly apply to advanced wildland fire calculations. The website was established strictly as a tutorial, and users are encouraged to focus on chapters that are most relevant to them. There isn’t a grading or completion certificate, but the site is interactive which allows the users to practice online with examples that are graded for learning purposes. If a user gets an example question incorrect, the site gives feedback and a step by step walk through of the process to ensure that the correct answer in achieved. Users are encouraged to visit the website prior to taking specific training courses and continue to revisit specific pages as individually needed. Our goal is to make math fun again and to show how it applies to wildland fire on a daily basis.
6
Minutes for Safety
This is an interagency safety initiative that, on a daily basis, addresses high risk situations that historically get firefighters in trouble. The Federal Fire and Aviation Safety Team (FFAST) encourages every fire program to become involved in Six Minutes for Safety. The safety discussions included in Six Minutes for Safety are reviewed annually and revised as better information becomes available.
Wildland
Fire Leadership Development Program
In
January 2002, the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) chartered
the Leadership Committee to establish a process for developing leadership
skills throughout a firefighter's career. The Wildland Fire Leadership
Development Program is the result of that initiative. The intent
of this website is to support the program by:
-Providing
the definitive reference for leadership values and principles
in wildland fire service.
-Providing current information regarding the status of the six
courses in the formal leadership curriculum.
-Providing a resource for leadership development tools, references, and training materials that can be directly accessed by all field users.
Wildland
Fire Lessons Learned Center
The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center (LLC) is an interagency resource center. The Center’s goal is to help the entire wildland fire community become a “learning organization.” Becoming and sustaining the level of a learning organization inherently includes working safer, smarter and continuously improving. The LLC is helping the wildland fire community become skilled at continuously creating, acquiring, interpreting, transferring and retaining knowledge and at purposefully modifying their behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights.
Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center Incident Reviews
The Incident Reviews site provides several ways to search a special collection database to find historical documents from wildland fire incidents (serious accidents, near misses, learning opportunities). The available documents include many types of reports: serious accident final factual accident investigations, escaped prescribed fire reviews, peer reviews, accident prevention analyses (APA), facilitated learning analyses ( FLA), multiple incident trend analyses and more. Often a single incident will have several reports, maps and images listed in its “Details” section.
Job
Hazard Analysis
The
Federal Fire and Aviation Safety Team (FFAST) and Region 1 of the
U.S.D.A. Forest Service worked cooperatively to develop a web based
library for wildland fire related Job Hazard Analyses (JHA's). Numerous
JHA's are posted on the site as well as instructions on how to prepare
a JHA. Keep in mind that OSHA regulations require that JHA's be
time and location specific so the JHA's on the website would serve
as templates for units to prepare their own.
Hazard
Tree website (Region 1, US Forest Service)
The Hazard Tree website is a growing resource library providing a variety of reference and training information. Digitized reports, brochures, and training materials may be downloaded from the site. Links and addresses are provided for lots more.
The centerpiece for this initiative is "Hazard Trees- an Interactive Study" (Reference # 18 on the web page). This 45 minute Powerpoint slide program guides groups or individuals through a discussion; participants learn to identify indicators of tree structural issues while they decide between three risk levels. Forest health issues, including fire damage, present increased risks each year. Fatalities and serious injuries due to tree hazards continue to plague firefighters and other forest users.
New for 2006 and 2007 is a falling limb exercise. To demonstrate how quickly a limb or tree top will fall, a sawyer pretends to saw down a flag pole with a chainless saw. When a soft dummy limb is released, the timing and communication realities are revealed. The essay details the procedure, and the link takes you to a three minute video of the exercise.
Link to Sim Limb: www.fs.fed.us/fire/safety/council/newsletters/may06/may06
Fire
Danger Pocket Cards
The Fire Danger PocketCard is a method of communicating information on fire danger to firefighters. The objective is to lead to greater awareness of fire danger and subsequently increased firefighter safety. The PocketCard provides a description of seasonal changes in fire danger in a local area. It is, therefore, useful to both local and out-of-area firefighters.
The PocketCard has a very important day-to-day "pre-suppression" use. When the morning and afternoon weather is read each day, the actual and predicted indices are announced. The firefighters can reference their card and see just where they are in range of possible values for danger-rating. This important information should be discussed at morning crew meetings, as well as tail gate safety meetings.
Most importantly, the card provides a method for everyone involved with wildland and prescribed fire operations to communicate a common understanding of key index values provided by the National Fire Danger Rating System.
Wildland Fire Radio Communications Website
This website is a resource for firefighters that provides details about all radios, including aviation and mobile radios, that might be found on a wildland fire. It contains training materials (including recently developed narrowband radio training), programming information, links to related sites and general communication information that is useful to all firefighters, whether in training or in the field.
FireFit Program
The FireFit Program is created with the intent to provide the interagency wildland fire community with a comprehensive, easy-to-follow, fitness program with the ultimate goal of improving firefighter safety and health and reducing injuries. This voluntary program provides a basic format for a well balanced fitness program that can be augmented as local units see fit. Program success will rely on management support at every level as well as individual’s motivation and participation.
Wildland Fire Community Center
The Wildland Fire Community Center is a rapidly developing part of the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center. It has been created to support informal “communities of practice” and formal teams involved in all aspects of fire management. This online community center connects firefighters across agency and geographic boundaries with other professionals in their field – their community. They form groups that share learning opportunities, discuss issues and concerns, and exchange knowledge using this support system. Teams also find the same “virtual work space tools” support their efforts to work across agencies and distances that isolate them.
|