NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
                           MORNING REPORT


To:         All National Park Service Areas and Offices

From:       Division of Ranger Activities, Washington Office

Day/Date:   Friday, March 2, 2001

INCIDENTS

01-071 - Pacific Northwest Areas - Follow-up: Earthquake

The Seattle Federal Office Building and the Columbia Cascades Support 
Office reopened for business on Thursday morning. Damage to the 
building appears to be limited to large cracks in the plaster walls 
(particularly in the stair wells), displaced ceiling tiles, and bent 
framing for ceiling tiles. A good deal of cleanup will have to be done 
in the CCSO offices. Bookcases and file cabinets toppled over or 
spilled their contents, and numerous desktop items - including a few 
computer monitors - ended up on the floor. Employees are reported 
little damage to their homes, mostly broken items that fell from 
shelves or countertops. Secretary Jan Thatcher sustained a minor 
injury when a file cabinet tipped over and struck the back of her leg. 
[Rory Westberg, CCSO, 3/1]

                  [Additional reports pending....]

FIRE MANAGEMENT

National Fire Plan

NPS National Fire Plan implementation team deputy IC Steve Holder will 
speak at the Institution of Fire Engineers International Conference 
today in Indianapolis, Indiana.  The subject of his presentation is 
"Improving Fire Fighter Safety - Human Behavior and Organizational 
Aspects."

Jim Souby, executive director of the Western Governors' Association 
(WGA), was a guest speaker at last week's National Fire Plan 
collaboration coordinators' meeting in Denver.  "In the minds of the 
governors, this is the birth of collaboration," he told the meeting 
participants. "We need more collaboration, less politically driven."  
Souby shared some of the lessons learned by the WGA in working 
together with its partners. He talked about "Enlibra" as a new 
approach to environmental management. Enlibra was coined by the 
Western governors to symbolize balance and stewardship. Principles 
that form the doctrine include: national standards, neighborhood 
solutions; collaboration, not polarization; reward results, not 
programs; science for facts, process for priorities; markets before 
mandates; change a heart, change a nation; recognition of costs and 
benefits, and solutions transcend political boundaries.  For more 
information about Enlibra, visit WGA's website at 
www.westgov.org/wga/initiatives.

Fire Management

The NPS national fire management conference - "People, Parks and Fire: 
Better Together" - concluded on Thursday with several morning 
presentations and an afternoon of regional fire management meetings.

NAPA Studies

Tom Zimmerman of the Fire Management Program Center opened the morning 
session with a review of the National Academy for Public 
Administration's (NAPA) studies of fire management in the NPS and in 
the interagency fire community.

NAPA is an independent organization, chartered by Congress, whose 
objective is to improve government operations at all levels - federal, 
state and local. There are about 500 NAPA fellows, drawn from a 
variety of relevant professions and governmental organizations. NAPA 
was asked to study fire management following the Cerro Grande Fire. 
This task is being divided into two phases - Phase I is an analysis of 
the NPS fire program, Phase II is an analysis of all the fire 
management agencies.

The Phase I study has been completed. NAPA found that the 1995 federal 
fire management policy was essentially sound, but that it needed to be 
strengthened and fully implemented. They also found that:

o       Policies for interagency cooperation had been left up to the 
        agencies and weren't fully successful.
o       Additional accountability was needed in the NPS program.
o       Training on the 1995 policy was lacking in the Service.
o       Data collection and analysis needed to be strengthened.
o       Risk identification, evaluation, analysis and monitoring 
        needed improvement.
o       Additional attention needs to be paid to developing and 
        retaining a work force.

The full text of this study can be found on the web at 
www.napawash.org. It also includes analysis of issues associated with 
the Cerro Grande Fire.

Phase II is currently underway and focuses on all five federal 
wildland firefighting agencies. The focus is similar to Phase I. It 
should be completed by September.

The National Park Service is in the process of responding to all the 
recommendations in the Phase I report. The agency response to the 
recommendations will be included in the revised version of RM-18 that 
will be issued some time in coming months. 

Zimmerman said that it's likely that RM-18 will be further changed 
this winter to incorporate whatever recommendations come out of the 
Phase II report.

NAPA will hold a "best practices" conference on May 24th and 25th in a 
location to be determined. About 100 people from all five agencies 
will attend and discuss some of their recommendations for operational 
improvements. 

Fire Management Issues

Rick Gale, deputy chief ranger for the National Park Service, followed 
Zimmerman with an overview of current issues and future directions in 
the NPS fire program. Gale made a series of observations about lessons 
learned - or, more correctly, relearned - during the 2000 fire season:

o       Good communications with the public and political entities is 
        critical during fire seasons like the one we had last year. 
        Although we've made headway, more work needs to be done in 
        this arena.
o       In some circumstances, all the resources in the world won't 
        put the fire out. There are occasions when nature must do the 
        job. That's a difficult point to make with the public, but 
        some thought needs to be given to approaches that might work.
o       We need to learn more from the social science community. 
        Efforts toward that end are underway and need to be pursued.
o       "Mother Nature may not always be a gentle hostess, but she 
        gets to bat last." We need to study fire history more to get a 
        handle on what to expect in certain circumstances.
o       Last year was a bad year, but it wasn't "catastrophic" - a 
        term often used in the media. Gale said that the 1994 season, 
        when 34 firefighters died (including 14 at South Canyon), was 
        a catastrophic season.
o       Rather than study fire disasters, we need to instead look at 
        incidents where firefighters "almost lost it" but didn't. We 
        need to learn from situations that were potential disasters 
        and determine what was done right. We also need to focus on 
        "best practices and  lessons learned." Efforts are being made 
        in both areas.
o       In extreme fire conditions, Gale said, we need to determine 
        "what a fire will let you do" rather than just order more 
        resources. He cited a fellow Type I incident commander: "We 
        need to stop dropping back to the next ridge and start 
        thinking about dropping back to the best ridge."
o       We need to educate the public about our success stories, such 
        as the fuel reduction projects that greatly minimized damage 
        inflicted by fires last year at Mesa Verde, Wind Cave and Lake 
        Meredith.
o       Fire managers need to get out of "status quo thinking" and 
        instead look at what might happen on a given fire. "Strategies 
        and decisions based on the current situation rather than what 
        will be are doomed to failure." 
o       Leaders need to have common sense, appropriate training, and 
        experience. The latter two can be taught, and efforts are 
        underway to do so. There will soon be a four-step training 
        progression on leadership that will focus successively on 
        teaching people to become "leaders of people, leaders of 
        teams, leaders of leaders, and leaders of organizations." And 
        consideration is being given to more use of exercises and 
        simulations, coupled with effective evaluations of 
        participants.

Several other points emerged in the subsequent question, answer and 
comment session:

o       Additional emphasis needs to be placed on internal 
        communications, on keeping our colleagues abreast of 
        developments.
o       The NPS is studying Marine Corps leadership and getting some 
        good ideas that will be incorporated into the Service's 
        leadership training program.
o       We need to come together as a community and support the FMO's 
        and employees at Bandelier, who did a good job in dealing with 
        an extremely difficult situation (this comment earned an 
        extended and energetic round of applause).
o       It is absolutely vital that resource managers be involved in 
        fire management. 
o       It's important that we have both cultural and programmatic 
        diversity in the fire management work force.
o       The coming turnover in fire management will be high. When 
        members of the audience were asked to raise their hands if 
        they planned on retiring within five years, most put their 
        hands up. We therefore need to continue aggressive efforts to 
        train replacements. Those who didn't raise their hands were 
        challenged to "step up to the plate."
o       Trainees should accompany every person who goes out on a fire 
        overhead assignment, whether asked for or not.

Dealing with the 2000 Fire Season

Retired fire and resource specialist Orville Daniels led the 
concluding general session of the conference, an overview of last 
summer and its impacts on the fire community.

Daniels said that those in the room were members of a "noble 
profession", one that had advanced greatly since the first fire use 
conference 30 years ago, when all the attendees were able to get into 
just two vans for field trips. Despite these gains and justifiable 
pride in current fire programs, last summer's fires took their toll on 
everyone in the fire community.

He said that he'd contacted many people to determine how to talk about 
the Cerro Grande Fire and all the other intense fires that occurred 
last year. Daniels said that there were common themes in his 
conversation with members of the community, including doubt, 
resentment, a lack of self-confidence, a lack of confidence in leaders 
and in the foundations of the program, confusion, uncertainty about 
the future, and, more than anything else, "the need for closure" on 
Cerro Grande and the entire fire season.

Daniels said that the sense of grief common to so many people was the 
result of a "public flogging" that led to a loss of esteem and 
confidence. "Nobody has ever taken such an official flogging in public 
in the history of fire management," he said, noting that even the 
report on the 1994 South Canyon catastrophe didn't use the word 
"failure" in it, as did the Cerro Grande report when talking about 
agency failures. 

Daniels asked how many people could remember exactly what they were 
doing when they heard about Cerro Grande. About half indicated that 
they could do so. He likened this to the way in which people of his 
generation could remember exactly where they were when they heard of 
President Kennedy's death, and that both were indicators of strong 
emotional shock. The only way to resolve that, he said, is through a 
formal closure process. Since it's unclear if a final, comprehensive 
evaluation of the Cerro Grande Fire will ever be undertaken, the 
process of closure will be difficult.

Daniels told his listeners that people from all groups had conducted 
"a trial without facts." He compared this with the Challenger 
disaster, in which the engineers who were initially accused of flawed 
work on the booster O rings were exonerated after a thorough, 
ten-month investigation.

Daniels said that the lack of a thorough evaluation was an indication 
that people wanted to forget Cerro Grande, and cited a quote regarding 
the reason why: "Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an 
orphan." If there's no such evaluation, employees involved in the fire 
need to at least get together in small groups and talk things out. 
Otherwise, "you're running your thoughts around in a squirrel cage - 
going round and round, but going nowhere." 

He closed by saying that the National Park Service has an outstanding, 
groundbreaking program, and that everyone involved with it should be 
proud of it. The bad times will pass, and the fire community will move 
forward into a bright and challenging future.

Park Fires

No fires reported.

[Debee Schwarz, NPS Fire Information, WASO, 3/2; Roberta D'Amico, Dana 
Dierkes, Tina Boehle, Al Nash and Bill Halainen, NPS Fire Management 
Conference, 3/1]

CULTURAL/NATURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

No submissions.

INTERPRETATION AND VISITOR SERVICES

No submissions.

OPERATIONAL NOTES

No submissions.

MEMORANDA

"Review and Update of the 1995 Wildland Fire Management Policy," 
signed on February 22nd by Deputy Director Denis Galvin and sent to 
all regional directors. The full text follows:

"The 1994 fire season with its 34 fatalities precipitated the 1995 
Federal Wildland Management Policy and Program Review (1995 Report).  
This report resulted in the first comprehensive statement of wildland 
fire policy coordinated between the Departments of the Interior and 
Agriculture.

"Following the investigation and subsequent report by the Independent 
Review Board of the May 2000 Cerro Grande Prescribed Fire in New 
Mexico, the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture reconvened the 
Working Group that developed the 1995 Federal Fire Policy to assess 
the status of the policy and its implementation.

"The Working Group found that the policy is generally sound and 
continues to provide a solid foundation for wildland fire management 
activities and for natural resources management activities of the 
Federal government.  The 2001 Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy 
(2001 Federal Fire Policy) replaces the 1995 Federal Fire Policy.  

"The Guiding Principles remain the same as those contained in the 1995 
Report with the addition of the word international to the guiding 
principle on coordination and cooperation.  

"The 2001 Federal Fire Policy takes the 13 original policy statements 
from the 1995 policy and adds five additional policy statements.  The 
new policy statements complement and supplement the set, and include:  

o       The role of fire in ensuring ecosystem sustainability;
o       The need for restoration and rehabilitation of fire-damaged 
        lands and ecosystems;
o       The role of science in developing and implementing fire 
        management programs;
o       The importance of communication and education internally and 
        externally; and 
o       The critical need for regular, ongoing evaluation of policies 
        and procedures.

"A number of the 1995 Federal Fire Policy statements were revised to 
reflect experiences since 1995 and to underscore the importance of key 
issues.  These include:

o       Better recognition that Fire Management Plans identify and 
        integrate all fire management and related activities within 
        the context of approved land management plans;
o       Clearly stating that the management response to fire is based 
        on the circumstances surrounding the fire, not the source of 
        ignition or location of the fire;
o       Clarifying threat, following protection of human life, 
        suppression priority decisions include consideration of human 
        health and consequences on community rather than property; and
o       Clarifying the 1995 Federal Fire Policy on the Wildland Urban 
        Interface to recognize the role of wildland fire agencies in 
        protecting structures, but not suppressing fires in them.  

"The 2001 Federal Fire Policy has been accepted and the Secretary of 
the Interior has directed the NPS and other bureaus to undertake the 
following actions:

o       Update manuals, directives, handbooks and other appropriate 
        documents to reflect the 2001 Federal Fire Policy as soon as 
        feasible.
o       Take appropriate, timely steps to address the implementation 
        actions in coordination with other Federal departments and 
        agencies.
o       Work with the Departments of Energy, Defense and Commerce, the 
        Environmental Protection Agency, and the Federal Emergency 
        Management Agency to include them in the full range of policy, 
        planning and operational aspects of wildland fire management 
        programs, as appropriate and consistent with their programs 
        and activities. 
o       Work with State, tribal and other nonfederal organizations to 
        implement the 2001 Federal Fire Policy on an intergovernmental 
        basis.  

"The Director, Office of the Wildland Fire Coordinator is to provide 
Departmentwide leadership, direction, and coordination to ensure that 
the 2001 Federal Fire Policy is implemented in a consistent, timely 
fashion within the Department and with other Departments and agencies 
and to ensure that implementation is coordinated with the National 
Fire Plan and other wildland fire management activities and 
initiatives.

"It is critical that you and your staff review and understand the 2001 
Federal Fire Policy.  The document can be located at 
http://www.nifc.gov/

"Also I want to remind you of the status of the NPS Prescribed Fire 
Program.  Currently there is a ban on Prescribed Fires west of the 
100th meridian.  In September 2000 the former Secretary of the 
Interior approved the action items and time lines detailed in our 
strategic path for the NPS prescribed fire program (letter dated 
September 28, 2000, Y1421 (9560)).  

"We have scheduled a National Prescribed Fire Workshop for Monday, 
February 26, 2001.  Attendance is required for all NPS Burn Bosses, 
Burn Boss Trainees, Prescribed Fire Managers, Prescribed Fire Manager 
Trainees and Fire Management Officers.  This workshop will address the 
changes in prescribed burn policies, plans, required analyses and 
practices.  We will start approving the new burn plans in March and we 
will begin to implement the Prescribed Fire Program west of the 100th 
meridian in March 2001. 

"We intend to move carefully and slowly as we reinstate the program.  
The success of the program will require everyone's cooperation and 
understanding.  We must recognize the seriousness of the ban.  But we 
must also recognize that the prescribed fire program is a useful and 
valuable tool in our hazardous fuel program.  We do not want to lose 
that tool.  We must approach the reinstatement of the program well 
prepared and with a thorough recognition of the risk involved.  If we 
approach this reinstatement carefully and logically, we will have 
successful outcomes.  

"Questions should be addressed to the NPS National Fire Management 
Officer, Sue Vap, at 208-387-5225."

INTERCHANGE

No submissions.

PARKS AND PEOPLE

No submissions.

                            *  *  *  *  *

Distribution of the Morning Report is through a mailing list managed 
by park, office and/or regional cc:Mail hub coordinators.  Please 
address requests pertaining to receipt of the Morning Report to your 
servicing hub coordinator.  The Morning Report is also available on 
the web at http://www.nps.gov/morningreport

Prepared by the Division of Ranger Activities, WASO, with the 
cooperation and support of Delaware Water Gap NRA.

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