Updated 11.07.08

Prescribed Fire -

Learning from the past, Preparing for the Future

January 28-30, 2009

With speakers hailing from Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Utah, and Wisconsin, you can be assured that this conference will provide you with pertinent insight and information regarding prescribed burning issues and situations that you and your company will most likely encounter.

Keynote Speaker Mr. David Thomas

This year's keynote address is titled “Seven Dead in Seven Minutes, But “It Can't Happen to Me.”

Please note that Mr. Thomas is also conducting a double session workshop for implementing high reliability during the Friday ( 1/30/2009 Concurrent Sessions from 8:30AM - 10:30AM . Attendance of the first session is required for attendance of the second.

The following is a brief overview of the keynote: “Igniting and controlling a prescribed fire is always a high risk operation.  There are so many things that can go wrong.  No burn boss gives the order to light a prescribed burn thinking it's going to escape; yet, burns often cause many of the most highly trained and experienced burning crews around the U.S. trouble, sometimes major trouble.  It doesn't seem to matter how thoroughly our burning plans are prepared, or, whether we are using the most advanced fire behavior prediction models and state of the art weather forecasting systems—the unexpected just seems to happen.  Is there a better way to anticipate and contain these unexpected events?

By applying the concept of high reliability organizations (HROs)---organizations that are in high risk occupations but still have relatively few accidents---we will show how there might be another way to think about your prescribed fire operations so that you can become even better at managing unexpected prescribed fire events before and after they happen.

We will discuss a style of thinking used by HROs called “mindfulness,” and discuss how its five basic tenets---a preoccupation with failure, being wary of over-simplifying situations, a sensitivity to the “big picture,” deferring decision making to where the action is and having the practiced ability to bounce back after something starts or has gone wrong—can increase your odds of successfully pulling off a burn.

Numerous examples, from both wildfires and prescribed fires, will be used to show where the five principles of mindfulness were not fully applied and the serious consequences that resulted.   The Cerro Grande prescribed fire at Bandolier National Monument (one billon dollars in damage claims, 250 homes destroyed), the Geraldton prescribed burn in Ontario, Canada (7 fatalities seven minutes after ignition), the Cramer wildfire on the Salmon River breaks in Idaho (2 fatalities) will used, among others, to underscore the main points of mindfulness. A case will be made at the end of the talk that you can begin immediately using the concept of mindful thinking, that it is a practical tool that can help you make significant progress in getting fire back into fire dependent ecosystems.”

Dave Thomas is a retired Regional Fuels Specialist, Intermountain Region, USDA Forest Service. He served for 33 years in various fire management positions. He currently works as a private consultant in the areas of high reliability organizing, dialogue, organizational learning, and disaster analysis.

Mr. Thomas has done extensive work in organizational learning, adult learning and development, and high reliability organizing. Mr. Thomas' high reliability organizing experience includes a 12-year association with Dr. Karl Weick at University of Michigan concerning high reliability organizing, decision making under stress and human factors in fire fighting.

Mr. Thomas is currently working on a joint project with Dr. Dorothy Leonard, Harvard Business School , on capturing the "deep smarts" of our retired fire management employees with high expertise in the fields of fire behavior, prescribed fire and wildland fire use.

©Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council | Contact Us

Thank you Pheasants Forever and Driftless Land Stewardship for sponsoring our website!