Some of the wildfires still burning in the Inland Northwest are more than a month old. Those include the Kaiser Canyon and Modrite fires burning on Colville Indian reservation land. By now, those fires aren’t growing. Most of what’s active are little pockets here and there. The work the people are doing on the ground is pretty mundane. The Kaiser Canyon fire is listed as 98% contained, as is the Moderate.
I asked Dan Trapanese, the man currently overseeing the suppression of both fires, to explain what containment means in this context.
This interview is lightly edited for length and clarity.
Dan Trapanese: Containment is any sort of line or barrier around the incident, so a direct line or an indirect line that can form some level of containment. Typically, though, where we feel comfortable from an incident management team standpoint, usually we have some area that's been worked. Not only is fire touched to our containment line, which is a barrier for spread, but also we've done some work to ensure that it's going to be staying in that area. Doesn't mean that we're 100% into that controlled feature. Basically calling it contained and controlled is the point where we feel extremely confident that the fire will not move in that area. But containment for our purposes is line around the incident and secured in some form.
DN: Trapanese is the latest incident commander for this fire. He’s from Eugene, Oregon, and still getting to know the fires his team is working on.
DT: Traveled on the 13th of August up to the incident. We did a shadow day with Alaska Team 2 over on the west side for Kaiser Canyon and the next day we did a shadow with Northwest Team 3 and assumed both fires the day after.
Typically, we are on a 14-day assignment period. There are circumstances where we will extend if we're close to meeting incident objectives, if there are no other teams in the area and availability. But most of the time, for the health and safety of all the individuals with the team, and this goes for firefighters as well, we don't like to work people longer than 14 days. It allows us a chance to do a reset, get a little rest, reprieve, obviously deal with any sickness, health issues, and then be able to get back into the system. So, to keep our team strong, that's typically the goal.
DN: So, when you switch fires, you have to do your homework, kind of like studying for a final exam.
DT: Yeah, at times it can be a very big intake of information. I wouldn't say we always feel comfortable when it is our time to take the incident, but our team members are all professionals. They usually reach out to the team that is managing the incident many days in advance before our travel day, gather as much intel as possible. So, it's usually not just the one day of shadow, especially with going incidents and where we know the values might be impacted differently because the fire is still moving. S
There's going to be a lot of different variables out there that we can't account for. So, feeling completely comfortable, no, we're operating in a level of uncomfortability. But yeah, it's one that we gather as much intel as we possibly can. We continually work with agency administrators that are from the local agency. So, there's a build as we come into an incident and take over.
DN: So you move together as a group? It’s not just one small team of leaders who move from fire to fire?
DT: Yeah, most of our team members are signed up with our team. Every once in a while, we need to fill positions. So, we would get outside of our rostered team, some fill-ins per se. But most of it, the core group is our core people that have worked together for many years and we all wear the same hats, have the same logos. And yeah, we're specialized in our specific areas. But that's what makes us a complete incident management team. We have multiple section chiefs that are qualified. That's really nice because as we expand or contract, we can right-size our organization.
I am the only incident commander trainee, but we have an incident commander and a deputy, so there's some redundancy built in that we can all act in each other's stead and we have a very diverse command and general staff that are really complemented together to run a whole incident and meets the needs of a total incident.
DN: Do you have different shifts? A day shift and a night shift?
DT: It depends on the needs of the incident as you highlighted right there.
For the incident command structure, once the team assumes command, our incident commander remains in command 24/7 as long as we've had the incident.
For the shifts, that's typically operational and somewhat logistically driven. Within that, we can run multiple shifts that meet the needs of the incident.
When we took over Kaiser Canyon and Modrite, we did establish one night shift for both incidents. That was inherited from the Kaiser Canyon side. Very minimal on resources. They were out there doing more patrolling and monitoring because engaging at night is very dangerous. So, we want to keep people in a safe spot. But they were out there and they were gathering intel the whole time. So, when we came in the day shift, it was not a surprise.
DN: And how do you determine every day what you want to accomplish?
DT: Daily strategies are actually driven by our team process, which is looking out to a 72-plus hour plan.
So, the coordination between all of the sections is driven by, first, our incident objectives, which are actually derived from the leader's intent document, the delegation of authority that comes from the land agencies of the land management side, or in this case, it's the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation and Washington DNR.
Under that, we get what's important, the critical values, we build incident objectives, and then when we step in, we do a three-day-plus process that determines where we're going, what we're doing, how we're going to support those individuals. A lot of it is based on, obviously, experience. There's a ton of experience on this team that comes in and has a really good knowledge of where we need to go and what we need to do. The other thing that we really rely on is local knowledge. So, building those relationships early has been very helpful.
Weather, fuel, topography, and potential of where everything's going to spread, that develops a lot of our plan as well. Luckily, we are supported by the National Weather Service with their incident meteorologist. We bring a fire behavior analyst with our team. That helps us determine where we're going and what we're doing, and really what the conditions are that are going to drive a lot of things.
So, we want to put people in good places that they're going to be successful. A lot of that is driven, again, by our process and communication. So, within the team, operations drives a lot of this. They determine what's being met out on the ground, communicate it back. That helps us determine if we're meeting our objectives or not and, as we move forward, it really is a balance of what is needed.
Specific resources can be very useful in very specific areas and if they've outlived their usefulness for the incident, we don't want to hold on to them just for the what-if. We put them back into the system. So, really, it's operationally driven on the ground and that comes to the specific managers that are out there, our division group supervisors, our branch directors, and then to our operations section chief.
DN: Let’s talk about how you get the people you need. The demand for firefighters, both in this region and nationally, has been great.
DT: Yeah, the Northwest, being in a planning level 5, has been extremely tough to get exactly the resources that we need on every single incident. It's a challenge, but our people are typically creative, can utilize other resources that are close, or it just can dictate sometimes our strategy that we can't do exactly what we need to do because we don't have the exact resource.
DN: Let’s finish with this. The communication about wildfires has changed. Your teams have communications people who do briefings, sometimes multiple times a day, that are shared online. You do open houses for communities affected by the wildfires. How does that help you?
DT: I think it's very advantageous. It gets a little bit more real time of what we are doing and how we are supporting the communities that are affected. It's great that technology is here and we can actually do this and stream from really anywhere, because real-time information is really what everybody's looking for.
It can cause some challenges when we don't have that ability, but we still can rely on our older tactics, which go to our public information group getting out there, meeting with the public, building those relationships as well.
