A fire started in the community of Towaoc, CO. The fire was threatening multiple structures and multiple resources were dispatched. Resources arrived fairly quickly. Division 7 arrived on scene. Once this happened communications began to suffer. It was an hour into the incident before anyone knew who the IC was. Division 7 had trouble keeping his composure on the radio and yelled with no brevity on many occasions. For example one radio communication on Air to Ground to the helicopter lasted over 30 seconds that could have been resolved with "Start at the Head, on the Northwest side". This was a common occurrence throughout the incident. Other important traffic was lost when cut off by the division generally resulting in unnecessary information and confused many people, especially when they found out that the IC was not the Division.
Lessons learned with AAR:
1. There is a difference on between urgency and yelling on the radio. (Yelling causes confusion and leads people to believe that you are panicking)
2. Brevity is key. Important communications could not be sent or received as 20-40 second transmissions were being made on the tac and Air to Ground Channels. Often these transmissions produced no useful information to anyone on the fire. Make sure you think what you need accomplished before making the radio transmission.
3. Announce the IC and allow them to do their job. If there is a qualified IC, it confuses people when somebody else is making all the decisions especially on parts of the fire that they are unfamiliar. We all understand roles of operations and the chain of command but if this was the case on this fire it was never communicated. |
