When a more efficient and effective approach is needed to tackle a complex wildland fire or other hazard one of two National Incident Command Organization teams is called into takeover the operation.
A NIMO Team has had been in-charge of the East Zone Complex fire for the past month until their departure Wednesday.
A NIMO Team is different from other fire command teams just as a standing professional army is different from a mustered militia, NIMO Team Atlanta incident commander Joe Ferguson said.
"We can stay longer and I don't have to go home at the end of 14 days like the normal teams do," Ferguson said.
The team worked on the East Zone Complex Fire for 32 days after the fire was characterized as afire of "national significance" due to costs of the fire and the potential for it to affect people.
"This year we are really focusing on the cost of these fires," Ferguson said. "We're trying to shift to a principle based management that gives the firefighter on the ground the latitude to use his or her experience."
NIMOs formed last year Last year, the Forest Service funded two NIMO teams to manage large and complex wildland fires and other all-hazard incidents in an effort to save the federal government money and create efficiencies during a disaster situation.
A team in Atlanta and a team in Boise were hired to improve large incident management as their full-time jobs. When other incident command teams finish a two-week stint on a complex wildland fire, they go back to their regular jobs.
Managing complex wildland fires is the NIMO teams' full time job.
In between incidents, they work on training and better methods to improve the government's ability to respond to large incidents such as wildland fires, hurricanes, disasters and terrorist attacks.
They do this by:
-
Planning a larger and more aggressive vegetative management program.
-
Improving the capability and capacity of the current federal wildland agency workforce.
-
Streamlining wildland fire training and qualifications.
-
Adopting procedures for effective incident management across all levels of government.
-
Improving emergency hiring practices to increase capacity and capability.
-
Standardizing contracts to improve the use of management of private wildland fire services.
-
Developing a new model for managing complex incidents. After one year on the job, the Forest Service believes the teams are working well, said Bill Waterbury, who directs the two teams from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
The original idea was to fund seven NIMO teams nationwide, so far only the Forest Service has stepped up to provide funding, Waterbury said.
"We thought it was a good idea," Waterbury said. "But it took the energy of these first two teams to come up with out of the box thinking. They operate with little interference."
The teams have been busy in their first year, he said.
"It has proved invaluable," Waterbury said. "They can look into other techniques, and provide advanced training for our teams."
The number of firefighting crews is down nationwide from what they used to be, Ferguson said. When there are fewer crews, management of the firefighter crews needs to be more effective.
The incident command system has been in use by the Forest Service for about 30 years. It began in California in the late 19170s. but now it is being adopted nationwide.
It's something that we've kind of groan up with in wildland fire agencies," Ferguson said. "More and more of the structural departments and police departments and other response agencies are switching to that system and once it is adopted across the country it makes us very interchangeable."
"That's why I can have a planning section from New York City here doing just as good a job as wildland firefighters do and that frees up wildland firefighters to be doing other things and that is a win-win for all of us," he said.
A team from the New York City Fire Department has been working with the NIMO Team on the East Zone Complex Fire.
The U.S. Coast Guard has also adopted the wildland fire agencies incident command system as its management strategy for disaster incidents.
