staff ride approach to wildland fire behavior and firefighter safety awareness training: A commentary, The

Fire Management Today, Fall 2002 by Alexander, Martin E

My experience on the Dude Fire Staff Ride suggests that the wildland fire community has an excellent opportunity to develop its own unique staff ride tool.

I felt very fortunate to have been able to participate in all three phases of the Dude Fire Staff Ride that took place on March 3-5, 1999. Like the other staff ride participants, I found the whole experience to be extremely beneficial to my gaining a deeper understanding of the complexities involved in fire behavior and the associated firefighter fatalities resulting from the major run of the Dude Fire on the afternoon of June 26, 1990.

I am thus greatly honored to have been asked to contribute this essay for the special issue of Fire Management Today dealing with the Dude Fire Staff Ride. I sincerely hope that the comments offered here, based in part on the Dude Fire Staff Ride experience coupled with a 30-year career in wildland fire, will lead to enhancements as well as extensions of the staff ride concept in the future for training fire behavior analysts (FBANs) and in further developing firefighter safety awareness training.

Strengths and Limitations

Prior to the Dude Fire Staff Ride, I had only a superficial appreciation for this incident based on bits and pieces of information gleaned from various sources over the years (e.g., Campbell 1995; Gleason 1991; Goens and Andrews 1998; Johns 1996; Mangan 1996; MTDC 1990; NFES 1998a; NFPA 1990; Putnam 1995a; Rosato 1991; Rothermel 1991), including the official accident investigation report (USDA Forest Service 1990), and a conversation I had with Dude Fire veteran Paul Gleason in Missoula, MT, in June 1994.

Although the wildland fire community's adaptation of the military staff ride (Robertson 1987) concept provides a powerful learning technique, we need to recognize that it isn't necessarily a cure-all for increasing wildland firefighter safety awareness. Instead, it is just another tool in our toolkit. Nonetheless, my experience on the Dude Fire Staff Ride suggests that the wildland fire community has an excellent opportunity to develop its own unique staff ride.

The two greatest values of the staff ride are:

1. Onsite experience. Rather than just reading about the incident, you get to actually visit the site and obtain a "firsthand feel" for the fire environment, the operational setting, values at risk, and other things-a sentiment expressed very well in the video Battles Lost (NFES 199$b). For example, without actually having visited the site of the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire as I did in June 1994, I could have never fully appreciated from simply reading Norman Maclean's (1992) book just how difficult the foot travel would have been in the very loose soil.

2. Interaction with those involved. You are able to talk to individuals who were actually involved in the incident or who participated in the subsequent accident investigation.

Although these are certainly strengths of the staff ride, they also constitute a limitation for some people, because not everyone who would like to attend can, due to the expense involved and the timing of the event. Furthermore, it would be extremely difficult to assemble the same group of individuals for the eight stand locations (or presentation/discussion stops) associated with the field phase of the Dude Fire Staff Ride, as described by Paul Keller on page 19, on any sort of regular basis.

We need to bear in mind that the Dude Fire Staff Ride was, in effect, a field trip for FBANs, albeit a very significant one, held in conjunction with a major conference, the first National Interagency Fire Behavior Workshop. This was not unlike the field trips to the 1949 Mann Gulch Fire included as part of the first National Fire Behavior Training Course held in Missoula, MT, in March/April 1958 (McDonald 1979) and the Wildland Firefighters Human Factors Workshop, which was also held in Missoula, June 1216, 1995 (Putnam 1995b). Future staff rides would have to be linked to a major event of this kind in order to justify the time and expense of organizing a staff ride.

Videotape Value

Four groups of some 135 participants were involved in the Dude Fire Staff Ride. A number of the presentations and discussions that took place at the stands were videotaped and edited into a Dude Fire Staff Ride videotape produced by Paul Keller. This was certainly fortuitous, because it captured information and the personal feelings of certain individuals involved in the incident, such as Paul Gleason. It might not be possible to acquire this information at any other time.

Like many others who participated in the Dude Fire Staff Ride,I was mesmerized by Dave LaTour's account of death and survival; the USDA Forest Service's Missoula Technology and Development Center has incorporated his testimonial into the new Using Your Fire Shelter video (NFES 2001). I would strongly recommend that any future staff rides videotape all the presentations and discussions at each stand in the interest of historical documentation. This valueadded aspect of a staff ride should not be underestimated as we look to justify the time, expense, and effort of planning and carrying out staff rides in the future.