Record Breaking Wildfires

In recent years, record-breaking wildfires in the western United States have posed a complex set of new challenges to incident managers. Not only have these fires been the largest in history but they have also created an enormous cost for states like Washington, Oregon, California and Arizona.  Many factors suggest that these fires are only growing larger and occuring at an unrelenting frequency; in fact, every year has been hotter, and each successive fire season has gotten bigger and lasted longer than the last.  Experts widely agree that we’ve entered into an era of apocalyptic “Mega Fires”.

If you’ve been thinking of deploying incident management software in your department, here are six key questions you need to consider before making the leap:

1. Is it mobile? 

Having the ability to track an incident from the very first seconds of dispatch from ALL of your devices is key to faster response times and higher situational awareness not just for the IC but for everyone in the department.

2. Does it automate my existing processes?

Some incidents are just worse than others.

When a high-speed train leaves the rails or a tornado rips the roof off the school gym, first responders face the confusion of a complicated incident scene. How many dead? Who is alive? Which of the living needs our help first?

Incidents like these require a different sort of response.

Sometimes a picture is worth much more than a thousand words. Especially when those words are taking up valuable radio bandwidth.

It continues to be VERY busy at work these days. I responded to 7 legitimate working fires for the month of May. And three of those have been two alarm fires. It’s been a really crazy run!

Two things happened last week in my life as a Fire Captain that simply could not have happened a generation ago.

For sports fans, myself included, Spring is a wonderful time of year. Of course there’s March Madness and tons of college sports championships, and the NHL, and NBA playoff picture is shaping up.