Forest Service seeks elite firefighters

BILLINGS – Two experimental teams of firefighters that would be dedicated to handling the nation’s most complex emergencies – from wildfires to hurricane response – should be in place by the end of July, an official with the U.S. Forest Service said.

But it’s unclear whether the seven-member teams will get on-the-ground assignments this year, said Jack Kirkendall, a fire management officer with the Forest Service in western Montana who’s also coordinating efforts to create the interagency National Incident Management Organization teams.

The firefighters will need time to adjust to one another. And some of them might be leaving part-time roles on the nation’s 16 Type 1 incident management teams to join. With the Western fire season at hand and hurricane season under way, the priority might be to keep the firefighters with their highly trained Type 1 teams at least for the next season, to avoid possibly slowing emergency response efforts, Kirkendall said.

In recent years, officials have struggled to fill many of the positions under the incident management structure. Reasons have ranged from an aging work force to an inability of people to commit. Members of Type 1 teams often must leave families and jobs with little advance notice for assignments that have ranged from not only taking on the country’s most complex wildfires but also helping to coordinate responses to the 2001 terror attacks and the Gulf Coast hurricanes.

Easing the demand for the expertise of Type 1 teams is one reason behind the pilot program. But filling the pilot teams, whose responsibilities mostly will relate to wildland firefighting, likely will mean luring firefighters from Type 1 squads, Kirkendall said.

It can take firefighters the better part of a career to reach that level. And it’s a degree of training that many experienced emergency responders or people from military backgrounds do not have, he said.

“I think a real stumbling block for many is, they have to have a lot of experience in the incident command system, particularly as it relates to wildland fire or all hazards,” Kirkendall said. Given what the teams will be called to do, however, “I don’t think we set the bar too high.”

Another job of the pilot teams will be helping find ways for emergency responders from different backgrounds to gain the required firefighting training without necessarily starting at the ground level, he said.

One pilot team will be based in Boise; the other in Atlanta. While the firefighters, at least initially, won’t have to live in those cities, they will be expected to spend a considerable amount of time together, in person, Kirkendall said. When apart, they can stay in contact using tools such as the Internet, he said.

There have been up to 50 applicants for each of the six command and general staff positions on the teams, Kirkendall said. Officials will conduct interviews in the next few weeks, he added.