Last week, the La Plata County Incident Management Team hosted Lewisburg College students during a fire drill in the Edgemont Highlands sub-district and completed three tasks at the same time.

The afternoon fire drills and seminars included training for the county incident management team, actual fire mitigation actions in the Edgemont area, and learning experiences for 23 students in the Resilience and Society course taught by Deanne Grant.

The seminar was conducted under the National Incident Management System, as if it were a real wildfire. The county's director of emergency management, Shawna Legarza, served as the event commander for the seminar.

The students were given an event action plan that communicated the afternoon itinerary. The plan was drafted by Emily Spencer, Chief of the Planning Section of IMT, and showcases the tasks of the emergency response team, including team leadership and objectives; safety and medical information; and maps of surrounding locations, forest areas with nearby residences on the north and west and south Florida Road (County Road 240).

The workshop is divided into three main sites, where students learn about the wasteland-urban interface—urban development is eroding the environment of the wasteland; fuel reduction and mitigation; a pile of collected leaves and branches burned with live fire.

Alison Layman, OEM planner, is the mitigation instructor, and Scott Nielsen, the wasteland coordinator of the Durango Fire District, is the prescribed burn instructor. Emergency Management Coordinator Rob Farino (Rob Farino) leads the wasteland-urban interface station, which is close to the local house west of the woods.

He discussed the concept of the "Wildfire Triangle", which he said describes the different factors that combine to form various wildfire scenarios.

The triangle is composed of fuel, terrain, and weather.

"Fuel is what we are talking about," Farino said. "Fuel falling, fuel in the air."

He said that fuel is the most important factor that the incident management team can do in advance, whether through mitigation efforts or responding to active emergencies.

"When a wildfire occurs, the flame height is usually 1.5 times the fuel height," he said. "If you have such a high brush, the flame length can be one and a half times, almost twice as high."

Farino said, imagine a forest fire with dense trees.

"Now, your flame height is 150 or 200 feet," he said. "That is significantly more heat and extreme fire behavior."

For the wasteland-urban interface, the type of fuel surrounding the house or building determines the strategy the incident management team will use to respond to the fire.

Topography is a factor that cities and counties can manage with foresight.

Farino said building codes and regulations help control the development location of structures and prevent the construction of structures in areas that are particularly difficult to access or where wildfires can spread quickly.

The incident management team also considers terrain in their incident action plans and mission briefings.

But Farino said the third factor in the Wildfire Triangle is the most unpredictable and completely uncontrollable: the weather.

"Wind is our enemy," he said. "You will see the entire town disappeared from the map. You see the Santa Ana wind.... You see all these wind-driven events; then you will see the resource withdrawal."

He said that before the wind stops, the fire driven by the wind will not stop. He compared this scene to the fire on a blowtorch.

"We just don't have a chance," he said. "So, the weather, that's one thing we can't really control. It's completely beyond our control."

Farino also introduced several main strategies for extinguishing wildfires, such as the "car crash and escape" strategy and the "fire line follow" strategy.

He said that houses that seem to be salvable in an emergency are called "winners", and houses that do not have any hope of salvation due to the situation are called "losers."

"I think this is politically incorrect," he said. "But for us, it was a quick decision. If we come here, we can save this house. Or, on the other hand, it's impossible in hell. We don't feel safe here."

He said that it is necessary to use a critical eye to determine the threat of wildfires to houses and the measures that need to be taken to protect houses.

The "collision and escape" strategy requires swift action to protect the house before the fire breaks out, and then move to the next residence to do the same thing, always staying before the fire.

The "stand and fight" strategy is very simple.

Farino said that if the incident management team is in a situation where there is a good clearance and the house is safe and defensible, "we will get in, we will start the pump, and we will pull the hose between the houses where we don’t have more than 100 feet of hose. We will wait for the fire to spread to us, and then we will put it out."

"Follow the line of fire" is a strategy deployed when the fire is too hot, there is too much fuel and the weather is windy. Farino said that incident response personnel will follow, and when an opportunity arises, they will quickly put out the fire and put it out.

"Many times, houses are just burnt down by small embers and pine needles," he said. "When we can still enter and step on it, they will start small and use water, no matter what."

Farino said his background is in structural firefighting, but he spent a lot of time fighting wildfires in California. He said that as an on-site observer, one of his favorite tasks is to map the spread of the fire after the fire is extinguished.

"So I will walk along the line of fire after the fire spread. The staff drew a line or a wet line around the line of fire. This is how we will maintain an accurate map for the next few days," he said.

He said that in the field of structural firefighting, when he was called to a field fire, he would form a commando consisting of five fire trucks or five vehicles similar to the strike leader (usually an SUV). He said that the redundancy of having the same vehicle is for everyone to have similar abilities suitable for specific situations.

"When we are in a commando similar to a module or manageable unit," he said.

Farino said there may be 10 commandos in a department.

The students also learned about the different types of fuel that can fuel wildfires, as well as mitigation and field maintenance practices to prevent fires in the first place.

The students previously participated in the Emergency Management Office seminar held in Hakata Park on October 19, where they learned the basics of the incident command system.

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