A test should never risk a person’s health, and especially, never take a life. It is time to reassess how we determine a person’s ability to fight wildland fires.
Fire Culture
Things You Should Do
The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center wants you to learn. We collect lessons all year. We put the lessons in Two More Chains. You read Two More Chains. Then what?
Lessons from 2023: UTV Related Incidents
There were more UTV related incidents reported in 2023 than the past five years combined. The jump from 2022 to 2023 was over 300 percent (from 3 to 13).
Helping Women Navigate the Beginning of a Wildland Fire Career
I was also excited about helping women navigate the beginning of a wildland fire career. I feel like I had a pretty good experience my first couple of seasons in fire and I wanted to be a part of other people getting that.
Incident Resilience: A Critical Incident Stress Management Success Story
Firefighter and public wellbeing are primary values at risk on every incident, and that includes mental and emotional wellbeing.
2023 Incident Review Summary
Use this 10-page summary to guide your annual refreshers and prepare for the 2024 Fire Year.
The Inside Scoop on a 30-Year-Old Successful Wildland Fire Recruitment Program
Because it’s so challenging across the entire wildland fire service to recruit and retain firefighters, this program is more important than ever. It’s such a challenge to recruit and retain our wildland firefighting workforce. Our program represents a solution to that problem.
Don’t Lose the Dirt
I like the folks who are intentionally avoiding a traditional career arc and cobbling together an existence on the edges of societal norms. This element has long been a part of our demographic and I believe their contribution to our culture is more beneficial than we realize.
Wildland Fire Workers in America: The Bigger the Us — the Stronger We Are
In looking back, I want most of all to point out that fire management in the United States has never been one thing, nor have fire workers ever looked one particular way. Throughout our history, fires have been managed by indigenous practitioners, by unpaid and coerced labor (either enslaved or in penal servitude), by local volunteers of all kinds, by day workers, by government employees in jobs programs, and most recently, by workers hired fulltime primarily to manage fire. I believe how we understand ourselves now and into the future is inextricably linked to where we came from and why those organizations existed as they did.
Reflections on the Selma and Nuttall Staff Rides
As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, time is neutral. It ticks by inexorably whether we are moved to act or not. The challenges we see ahead of us in our organizations, whether our organization is a crew or a fire program or a fire agency, can seem vast like those sky islands of the Arizona desert. It seems unfair by comparison, but the actions of people are almost always familiarly and stiflingly small. And yet that is the scale where we live and most often have the freedom to act.
Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center 