NPS Morning Report - Sunday, September 2, 2001



                        NATIONAL PARK SERVICE
                           MORNING REPORT


To:         All National Park Service Areas and Offices

From:       Division of Ranger Activities, Washington Office

Day/Date:   Sunday, September 2, 2001

EDITOR'S NOTES

Today's Morning Report is given over to some brief notes to readers 
and correspondents regarding a few questions and issues that have 
arisen over past months. Fire and incident reporting will resume on 
Monday.

Note To Readers

Dissemination - Of most potential consequence to readers is an 
impending change in the way the Morning Report is disseminated. The 
National Park Service is the process of transitioning from cc:Mail to 
Lotus Notes Servicewide. Many areas are already using the latter, and 
most/all will be using it by next year. When the Morning Report was 
set up on cc:Mail a decade or so ago, it was established as a "bank 
shot mailing list" instead of a bulletin board. Through this 
relatively unique system, the Morning Report was delivered directly 
from the editor to the reader's mailbox. This feature is not readily 
available in Lotus Notes. So, effective later this fall, the Morning 
Report will be available ONLY through one or the other of two 
sources - the NPS web site or a Lotus Notes discussion database. It is 
already posted at both locations. The address for the web page is 
www.nps.gov/morningreport; the address for the discussion database 
locator is http://my.nps.gov/project/webmail.nsf/bbpage?OpenPage. 
Additional details on the transition will be provided in coming 
months. 

Contents - A special note to those of you outside the NPS who read the 
Morning Report on the web: Although the Morning Report generally 
carries between 600 and 700 incidents yearly, these are by no means 
ALL the significant incidents that occur in the parks. To begin with, 
the only reportable incidents are those mandated by the Service's 
Washington Office. These criteria are disseminated by internal 
memorandum, most recently on June 18, 2000. And parks aren't always 
able to report incident meeting these criteria simply because of 
volume and lack of time. The Grand Canyon, for instance, has over 250 
helicopter medical evacuations annually; the majority of these occur 
in the summer, when there are two to three each day. They therefore 
submit only those that are truly unique, noteworthy, or involve a 
significant commitment of resources. For that reason, not everything 
that occurs in parks appears in the Morning Report.

Frequency - The Morning Report is generally published each weekday 
from Monday to Friday. During the summer, however, there are also 
weekend editions, insofar as is possible. This is done mainly to keep 
pace with fire situation reports issued daily by the National 
Interagency Fire Center, but also to keep up with the increased flow 
of incoming incidents between Memorial Day and Labor Day. At present, 
it is appearing seven days a week. That pattern will likely continue 
until the national fire preparedness level drops to PL 4 or PL 3.

Timing - The target release time for the Morning Report is 10 a.m. EDT 
(or EST) on weekdays, a bit later on weekends during the summer. This 
is not absolute, as exigent circumstances (particularly the press of 
local business) may require a later release time.

Note to Correspondents

Posting of Submissions - As noted above, the volume of incoming 
incidents and the relatively small time window available for preparing 
and transmitting the Morning Report each day means that some 
submissions are not posted immediately and may in fact not appear for 
several days. But any report or entry that meets submission 
criteria - either the incident reporting criteria established by WASO 
memorandum (June 18, 2000) or the general criteria for other sections 
of the Morning Report - will appear. Both criteria are available from 
the editor.

Incident Submission Recipients - As per the WASO memorandum, all 
incident reports are to be sent to two email addresses - Dennis 
Burnett, acting chief, Ranger Activities Division, WASO, and Bill 
Halainen, editor, DEWA.  Those are the only two addresses required at 
the Washington level, though most regions stipulate additional 
recipients at the regional level.

Format - Submissions can come in any format, but two are preferred - 
either an email text message or a Word attachment using the font 
employed by the editor: Bookman Old Style, 10 point. No italics, no 
boldface, no underlining. Bookman Old Style is among those available 
to Word users. Although submissions will of course be taken in ANY 
format, these two are preferred and are a considerable aid in 
expeditious preparation of each edition.

Contents - There are a few other things you can do to help the editor:

o       Please, please, please avoid jargon wherever possible, 
        particularly highly technical jargon that needs translation 
        into lay terms. Remember that the Morning Report is very 
        widely read, both in this agency and in other agencies and by 
        the public, and that most of them are not specialists. 
        Simplicity in language, style and syntax are much appreciated. 

o       Include the full names of all people referenced in the story, 
        particularly park staff. If you do not want to include names 
        due to concerns about confidentiality, please at least provide 
        genders. It's hard to read a story where every reference is to 
        "the subject" or "the victim" or "the ranger."

o       Include your name, title and park on the report. Until the 
        conversion to Lotus Notes, it was possible to at least deduce 
        the park from the address, but Lotus Notes just says that 
        you're from "NPS." A surprising number of submitters forget to 
        include their parks, titles, and even their names.

Thanks!

                            *  *  *  *  *

The Morning Report solicits entries from the field and central offices 
for its daily and weekly sections (below). The general rule is that 
submissions, whatever the category, should pertain to operations, be 
useful to the field, and have broad significance across the agency. 
Additional details on submission criteria are available from the 
editor at any time (Bill Halainen at NP-DEWA, or 
Bill_Halainen@nps.gov). Ask for either incident reporting criteria 
(issued by WASO, June 18, 2000) or general criteria. 

Daily and weekly sections are available for news or significant 
developments pertaining to:

Field incidents                 Interpretation and visitor services
Natural resource management     Cultural resource management
Operations (WASO only)          Memoranda (WASO only)
Requests/offers of assistance   Park-related web sites
Parks and employees             Media stories on parks
Training, meetings, and events  Queries on operational matters  
Reports on "lessons learned" 

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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