Dave Campbell - Taking the time to make smarter decisions

In my view, the people that assist you in making that decision just make you a little smarter about the choices you have out in front of you. The strategic planner should be able to do that; they'll run models and they'll give you statistics and they'll do a lot of analysis that they'll present to you, but I think it's important the line officer realize that they have to be engaged and make that decision based upon the advice given, and the Strategic Planner, with the tools they have, with the models they have, with the experience they have with the, all the various skills they bring to the table just helps to do that. How's the fire going to play out? What's, how likely is it going to stay on this side of the river, that side of the river? How likely is it going to be to back that value at risk? How far out do we have? How long do we have to think about this? How long do we have to put plans in place? Do we have to do something immediately or do we have time? We almost always have time. We almost... One of the mistakes people will often make is to rush to judgment. But those tools, those models, those kinds of things that really are the Planner's expertise and so the assemblage of all that coming from the Planner is really a human interface. It's a, the line officer I think would sit down and say, okay, what do you think about this? How do you think this is going to go? And sure, show me the, the roads or the percentages and all that stuff and that's really important. It's important to back up and show you how they came to that conclusion, but at the end of the day it really, you got to make the choice, you got to make the, you've got to engage and the line officer's got to know, it's got to be their fire, whatever the outcome and it may be a case where and I've had that happen where the fire use, the predictions are that this is going to happen. Then I just said, well I don't quite believe that, and so I have to go with some combination of what is being predicted and that one I believe is going to be the predicted and I think that combination and experience over time helps you to use the models but not have complete faith in them; I think that would be a mistake. It raises the level of complexity when you have, as we often do, have a dozen starts or something, and right then it's often a triage kind of situation; you say, well which ones do we want to keep as potential to, to utilize that fire, and which ones do we want to just wipe the slate clean on them, and usually that's not too hard a decision to make well I have the benefit of being in one place for a long time, that benefit or someone may call it something else but, but it's it does then say okay if we got a fire in a certain place that's, this time of year, it's the first of July, we're going to live with this fire until September, that's different. If it's in the front country, then it's in the the back country to make this simple. But even when it's in the back country, are they complicated enough that they will look like their going to interplay with enough, we're gonna need some kind of planning capacity we don't have to to figure that out. And we have time, the, the, if they're not ones that, that we've triaged and said that we're gonna staff those fires and take them off the books. Or it may be one fire that, I've often liked to say that the fire you most want to have is the fire that's the most difficult to have 'cause that's the one that will give you the most benefit for the future in terms of fuel reduction closer to values at risk, private land or whatever. So you may have one of those start and you say, well I have a little time and maybe this one fire has enough potential if we use it for a benefit, that we're gonna need to scope out all the complexities of dealing with smoke and roads fire close to communities, that kind of thing. So what'll go through my mind is how complex, I guess, is it likely to get and how fast and and how, what's the time of year, we really, are we really likely to start this long-term event now, because the first decision is pretty critical whether we decide to suppress the fire, to try to utilize it. But it's, there's always time to take a deep breath, collect your thoughts, gather some trusted adviser around you and say, am I nuts or are you seeing the same think I am? And hopefully they'll tell you if they think you're nuts. And how does a SOPL help you sort through your new options under the 2009 Guidance document? Now we have a policy that allows us to look at each fire as not just good or bad fire, it's not good, bad fire, its, and portions of those fires. So you have this large complex fire, say the size of this Rhombo fire of 2007 ended up 30,000 acres and you think in each one of those, you go back and say, okay, when did we come across some points we could have made a different decision, and if we had made a different decision... I do that all the time; it just helps me to figure it out. Rhombo, I think we could have maybe pinched off at a third of the size, and should be have done that, the way it turned out? But in order to see if we really could, that Planner is gonna help... is that really feasible to do that, I mean, I may say, if we limited the fire to this size in this area, is it really, do we have a snowball's chance in hell of actually doing that, and they, they would help us know that. And then with the local knowledge, then you could take those pieces of the fire and say, where is it that we're going to gain some benefit? Can we logically move the fire in that direction, in the right time, to accrue that benefit. Say it's stand monoculture where we can punch some holes in the carpet and create some diversity, or could it be one of those places where I'm just off the top of my head I'm thinking of many drainages that are lined for late fall wind events, and every time we get a fire in one of those drainages, we're just waiting for that September cold front, and if we had a fire that was out ahead of one of those that, before that September cold front, that we could create a little bit of of of a pattern out there to work with later, could we do that and still main, still manage for the values that we're trying to protect while maybe were full suppression on the other part of the fire. But i think we have that option. I think we just have to now try and think through what, if it's possible, to the strategic planner, it's, let's get our best fire minds around and say, can we do this? Can I have this the way I'd like to have it? And it, and we've tried that fire use before, we've taken short sections of our fire-use fires and we've and we've slowed the fire down, not put it out, but slowed it. We've managed that fire to try and, and gauge the and the pace in the event, if you will, the size of the event without, it's altogether, it's not commonly done and one of the challenges is of course going to be resources that we bring in that are used to doing something else, but they're ready to do that if we make clear our intent as to what we're trying to do, and I can, Monday morning quarterbacking, quarterbacked several times where I don't think, personally, I've made my intent clear enough to the, to what we're trying to do and then you use that to learn from, you say, okay that, let's be a little clearer. But each one of those fires, now, the great thing about it is, I really do think that this is an evolution out of fire suppression and fire use to fire management that allows us then to say, of this 30,000-acre fire, we want we wanna put all the effort we can into suppressing this part of it. But over here, it's burning into, into roadless; it's burning into the back country. We don't wanna, we don't have the public at risk, and we don't want to put our firefighters at risk. And we had, can see some benefits of regenerating white bark pine or aspen or creating better habitat. So I think we sort of take our, free our minds up to think creatively about what can we really do here and then ask the strategic planner again that question, is this a reasonable question if you ask it? Does this, can you foresee how we would do that? And then the fire management team, the Operations person on the team or the IC, we're saying, how do you feel about doing this? Knowing where you're going to end up with this fire, September first, waiting for a dry cold front. On our district, that's one of the things, well, when is this going to hit, and how do you think you're gonna, we're going to be able to react when that time comes? You can raise that comfort level perhaps by bringing in this expert person who can have something more than the seat-of-the-pants estimate that I might bring and say, I might say to my new forest supervisor, I've been down this road before; don't worry about it. I can see this is not a problem. Well that doesn't have much evidence base to it. It just has me saying that, which may or may not have the desired effect, so, perhaps at that time, it'd be good to have, okay, let's go out and, let's do an assessment, let's have somebody come in and do an assessment. And I know you've done this numbers of times, was that before we set a course of action, we going to have somebody come in and assess this to see what our chances of success in different ways are, and then we'll proceed. And it's probably even more important when you're trying to, to, when you have to coordinate, as we often do, with a neighbor on another forest or on another district or perhaps even an upper-level manager who is who is more worried about, about the conditions and lookin' at things from a different perspective that often seems like the fires, the fires are always more dangerous the farther away you get from them, in terms of perspective. And we might just be able to bring that down to, okay, here's what we're really looking at and not just by my seat-of-the-pants effort, but here's some data, here's some analysis that you can hang your hat on, or at least use it to support what you end up doing. I guess as a District Ranger, I've always, I like to think I'd like to... and any of us would like to just end the day just a little smarter than we started. And somedays that just doesn't happen, but there are folks out there that have some real skills and are anxious to share them with you. In my position, they're always anxious to share them with me. And you can go up to the fisheries biologists and say, I just don't understand what is it about bull trout? Well, they'll tell you; they'll be anxious to share that information with you. Same with the strategic planners... how'd you, you get to this point, tell me about this. Give me a little more information. And we can be a little smarter, we can be a little smarter on decision making, and we can also show that we're interested in the work they're doing for us, 'cause they are doing it for us.