An end to turf battles: New fire-fighting style tested at Camp 5 blaze

By Bill Harlan, Journal Staff Writer | Sunday, April 24, 2005

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U.S. Forest Service District Ranger Pam Brown and Joe Lowe, the state of South Dakota's top fighter of wildfires, were almost giddy Wednesday over what happened last Sunday during the Camp 5 forest fire near Deadwood.

"We came together as firefighters rather than as agencies," Lowe, who directs the state Division of Wildland Fire Suppression, said.

"From my perspective, this was huge," Brown, who runs the Northern Hills District of the Black Hills National Forest, said.

The fire ignited late Sunday afternoon about a mile south of U.S. Highway 14A, which runs through Boulder Canyon. It ran hot and fast into the night, burning 775 acres before firefighters had it 60 percent contained Monday and fully contained by Tuesday night.

Cool, wet weather Monday night helped administer the coup de grace, but Lowe and Brown were both emphatic that a crucial "burn-out" and fire lines built on the east side of the fire helped save homes in the Boulder Park subdivision.

What they were excited about was a fire management structure called a "unified command" — a concept that only a policy wonk could get giddy about.

Brown and Lowe, however, insisted that the "unified command" system could have profound results in the fire-prone Black Hills.

"They've used it for years in California," Lowe said. He spent most of his firefighting career there.

Unified command is a management structure that allows various firefighting agencies to come together quickly to coordinate firefighting efforts.

Sunday night, for example, Lowe and Forest Service firefighter Terry Tompkins were among the first on the scene. The fire was on Forest Service land, so, under the traditional system, Tompkins would have been in charge. However, Lowe had already discussed trying the unified command system with Dean Berger, fire management officer for the Black Hills National Forest.

Lowe and Tompkins, talking on cell phones on their way to the fire, decided to give unified command a try.

Brown, who manages the ranger district where the fire started, also approved. "We had to get after it fast," she said.

Lowe and Tompkins met in person at the fire to discuss a strategy. Among their objectives:

n Fight the fire aggressively all night.

n Focus on the east flank of the fire.

n Set an east flank burn-out that, though risky, could help save homes.

They also agreed on a system for ordering people, equipment and supplies. They even roughed out a cost-sharing agreement.

Lowe said the most important objective, aside from safety, was to "build a box" on a map. "Once the box is defined, you look for ways to keep the fire in it," he said.

While Lowe and Tompkins were building the box, the initial responders, including volunteer departments, continued to work the fire, which was already crowning — moving fast through tree tops.

The fire plan, however, was in place, in writing, within minutes. Then Lowe and Tompkins picked an "operations officer" to run the effort. For the night-shift Sunday, that turned out to be Randy Skelton, a battalion chief with the Rapid City Fire Department.

Brown said that from Sunday night on, firefighters from about a dozen organizations worked as though they had trained together all year. They came from the Forest Service, the state of South Dakota, the National Park Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, volunteer fire departments and county agencies. They also included specially trained state prisoners from the Rapid City Trusty Unit.

"It's great when it's so effortless," Brown said, because multi-jurisdictional firefighting can be difficult.

Elements of the unified command system have been used here before, but Lowe said this was the first time the formal structure had been used on a big wildfire in the Black Hills.

Lowe is eager to use the system again. The Black Hills National Forest is honeycombed with private land holdings, he pointed out, which makes it ripe for turf battles — or at least jurisdictional confusion.

"When would unified command not make sense in the Black Hills?" Brown asked.

Contact Bill Harlan at 394-8424 or bill.harlan@rapidcityjournal.com