1. when fire danger is high - more staff is put on duty - more vehicles are staffed - and staffing is increased on already staffed vehicles - every agency has a step up plan or staffing plan or response plan or mobilization plan ish - its all in writing
2. extra units are sent on first alarms when fire danger is higher 3. radio waves travel faster during red flag days - and computers work faster 4. sometimes extra fire units are prepositioned in the affected area from outside areas - this can be coordinated at regional or state or national levels 5. all federal type 1 helos and type 2 fire helos and airtankers and type 1 hand crews are considered to be 'national assets' - therefore Boise gets to decide where they are assigned and/or prepositioned 6. some state forestry agencies will surge some of their equipment from 1 part of the state to another to get ahead of fires - some state agencies dont seem to have enough manpower to surge anyone from anywhere to anywhere 7. "call when needed" equipment is privately owned assets that have written agreements with wildfire agencies to help out when needed - this ranges from engines to dozers to tenders to kitchen crews to helicopters to airtankers - all (or most) of the employees are trained to federal wildfire standards - ie - the private engines have 'engine bosses' and firefighter 1 and 2 staff - just like the government owned engines - both the feds and the states use these 'call when needed' agreements 8. many federal wildfire desk jockeys also work on type 2 hand crews - these are 'on call' hand crews - their primary jobs are not on the handcrews - the handcrew assignments are considered to be '2ndary' jobs - this is ak the 'local fire militia' which is a colloquial or slang term 9. apparently it is quite common in 2024 for federal type 6 engines to travel coast to coast on fire assignments - and its very common for fire 'overhead' (commanders) to travel coast to coast - there must be tons of money spent on airfares for all of these people 10. when all else fails - there are some military infantry units who have basic wildfire training - and they can be mobilized to help out at huge wildfires - but this only happens once every 5 years ish 11. USFS used to have a metric called MEL - "most effective level" - or maybe - 'most efficient level' - they would plot out costs of fire control vs losses due to fires - when they ended up spending more than what they saved - they would cut back on firefighting expenditures - not sure if anyone still does those calculations 12. all agencies have written "draw down levels" - the 'draw down levels' mandates the minimum number of fire fighting resources (etc) they have to keep in their area - this puts a limit on the amount of resources that they can send to help other agencies or areas 13. there might not be any standards that dictate how fast a fire call is dispatched 14. there might not be any written standards that dictate how fast a fire unit has to mobilize for a call - but 2 to 5 minutes seems typical - just like a structural FD - shortest for chiefs and engines - maybe longest for helos and airtankers (maybe 10 to 20 minutes) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "massfire" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/massfire/CAFXWwKbtwYJCRD1-EBskOf4aGWR2Bvperi30FHYOrZo8Fs2V_g%40mail.gmail.com.
