Wildland drills
A wildland scenario runs a drill on a map of real ground instead of a building. Choose Wildland when creating the scenario and the builder offers only what wildland uses: terrain maps, weather, and the fire perimeter. The crew reads terrain, weather, and a moving fire, and the centerpiece is the same thing the module is named for: the size-up report.
The scene#
The tactical map is a terrain view: real USGS imagery or a topographic quad of an actual place, with a real ground scale. The instructor authors a fire perimeter on it, with a spread direction, a size in feet, and a flame length at the head. Everyone on scene also sees the current weather in a strip above the view tabs: wind speed and direction, temperature, and relative humidity.
There are no Side A/B/C/D quadrants on a wildland map. Crews orient by compass and landmark, the way the real thing works.
Growing the fire#
The fire moves when the instructor moves it, using situation levels. Each level is a snapshot of the whole scene, and with this module it also carries the weather. Author a sequence in the builder: the fire at first sighting, the fire established, the fire after a wind shift. During the drill, fire each level when the moment is right, or let a scheduled inject do it.
The wind shift deserves respect. An unexpected change in wind direction or speed is one of the common denominators of fire behavior on tragedy fires, and authoring one as a level, with the weather and the fire's new run captured together, is exactly how to build that drill.
The size-up report#
Crew members (not instructors) get a Size-up tab during the drill: the twelve elements of the IRPG size-up report (PMS 461), from incident type through additional resource needs, with worked examples in each field. Fill what you can see and transmit; transmitting again later updates the picture, and every transmission goes in the record.
Everyone hears about it in the feed: who transmitted, how many of the twelve elements they covered, and how long after their unit's arrival. An early, honest report beats a late, complete one.
LCES#
Everything in wildland engagement hangs off four letters: Lookouts, Communications, Escape routes, Safety zones, established and known to everyone before they are needed. In the drill, declaring LCES is a command function: the incident commander (or the instructor) opens the LCES tab, places the safety zone and lookout on the map, states communications and escape routes, and declares.
The declaration broadcasts to every crew and draws on the terrain view itself, because an LCES only command knows about is not an LCES. The safety zone appears at its real radius on the ground, so anyone looking at the map can see it against the fire rather than reading a number for it. Declare again whenever conditions change.
The safety zone is checked the moment it is declared: doctrine requires the separation distance, the zone's radius to the nearest fuels, to be at least four times the maximum continuous flame height (IRPG PMS 461). The verdict is recorded with the declaration, against the flames as they were at that moment; if the wind is over 10 mph, the record also notes that the required size can more than double. An inadequate zone is never blocked: it is recorded, and the debrief is the teeth.
The debrief#
The after-action review shows each size-up report in full, next to what was actually true when it was transmitted:
- The estimated fire size beside the actual acreage of the authored perimeter at that moment. The fire keeps growing after the report, so the comparison is frozen at transmit time.
- The actual weather at that moment, which matters when a report was transmitted before or after a wind shift.
- Every element that was not transmitted, listed plainly. The gaps are the debrief.
- The LCES record: when it was declared, the safety-zone verdict, and, by name, every crew that was committed to a tactical assignment before LCES existed.
Elements the crew missed are conversation, not a score. The instructor's evaluation stays the place for judgment.