On 03 Oct 2018 the SWIFT Crew Boss's received the following email from our supervisor Andrew Dalton:
"There will be a new deployment procedure for SWIFT Crews effective immediately. At this time BV SWIFT will no longer be available as a Crew for Fires. Rifle and Canon will continue to be available for Resource Orders as a Crew for Fires but will only pull 15 Offenders. It will now require 3 Crew Bosses to deploy to a Fire. In the event that Rifle or Canon receive a RO each will report to the Incident the evening of the first operational period and will provide supervision of the Offenders while in camp for the duration of the Incident. The Crews original Crew Bosses will assume responsibility for Offender supervision after the morning briefing and will be responsible for supervision until returning to camp. Upon returning to camp the Crew Boss from BV will assume responsibility for supervision. This would mean that the two Crew Bosses from the original facility of the Crew will be On Duty at the start of the Morning Briefing through the Operational period and will go Off Duty upon returning the Offenders to Camp. The evening supervision Crew Bosses will go On Duty when the Offenders return to camp and go Off Duty when the Crew Bosses return from Morning Briefing. All Off Duty Crew Bosses are expected to be Off Duty and not performing any Duty Tasks. The camp supervision is expected to be alert at all times".
The main safety concern is that if the SWIFT crews, by this new internal policy, are only allowed to only "Pull 15 offenders" then the total crew number (with two CRWB) is 17, not the 18-20 crew members required by NWCG standards. From the CRWB perspective it takes 20 committed team members to accomplish the tasks assigned on wildland fire. I have personally worked the fireline with the minimum of 18 members and the loss of personnel was very noticeable. I feel that the loss of 3 crew members will reduce our effectiveness, work capacity and manpower, putting the entire team in unnecessary danger |