Modeling the systemic risks of COVID-19 on the wildland firefighting workforce

Wildfire management in the US relies on a complex nationwide network of shared resources that are allocated based on regional need. While this network bolsters firefighting capacity, it may also provide pathways for COVID-19 transmission between fire sites. We develop an agent-based model of COVID-19 built on historical wildland fire assignments using detailed dispatch data from 2016-2018, which form a network of firefighters dispersed spatially and temporally across the US. We use this model to simulate SARS-CoV-2 transmission under several intervention scenarios including vaccination and social distancing. We find vaccination and social distancing are effective at reducing transmission at fire incidents. Under a scenario assuming High Compliance with recommended mitigations (including vaccination), infection rates, number of outbreaks, and worker days missed are effectively negligible. Under a contrasting Low Compliance scenario, it is possible for cascading outbreaks to emerge leading to relatively high numbers of worker days missed. The current set of interventions in place successfully mitigate the risk of cascading infections between fires, and off-assignment infection may be the dominant infection concern in the 2021 season. COVID-19 control measures in place in wildfire management are highly beneficial at decreasing both the health and resource impacts of the ongoing pandemic.

The collapse of sensemaking at Yarnell Hill: the effects of endogenous ecological chaos on enactment

Purpose Since Weick’s (1993) seminal Mann Gulch paper articulated a collapse of sensemaking, scholars have repeatedly investigated sensemaking downstream of enactment. Motivated by another wildland firefighting tragedy, the tragic loss of 19 firefighters in Arizona in 2013, this study aims to look at enactment itself and reveals that the endogenous creation and re-creation of the wildland fire caused a fatal feedback loop of “trigger traps” leading to perpetual enactment that short-circuited sensemaking. Wildland fires can have unpredictable consequences, which triggers in individual sensemakers a fatal and continuous return to the beginning of the sensemaking process. Design/methodology/approach This paper’s approach is a case study based on a textual analysis of sources investigating the 2013 Yarnell Hill fire. The authors also carefully compared the Yarnell Hill and Mann Gulch disasters in search of breakdowns in sensemaking that could help us understand why we continue to lose firefighters in the line of duty. Findings The simultaneously volatile and complex environment at Yarnell illustrates sensemaking antecedents to the study of enactment. The findings suggest ways that organizations – those fighting wildfire or those fighting a global pandemic – can avoid getting trapped in the early stages of enactment and can retain resilience in their sensemaking. Originality/value This paper introduces the concept of “trigger traps” to help explain the fatal feedback loop of repeated environmental triggers in the early stages of sensemaking in volatile environments.

Modeling Wildland Firefighter Travel Rates by Terrain Slope: Results from GPS-Tracking of Type 1 Crew Movement

Escape routes keep firefighters safe by providing efficient evacuation pathways from the fire line to safety zones. Effectively utilizing escape routes requires a precise understanding of how much time it will take firefighters to traverse them. To improve this understanding, we collected GPS-tracked travel rate data from US Interagency Hotshot “Type 1” Crews during training in 2019. Firefighters were tracked while hiking, carrying standard loads (e.g., packs, tools, etc.) along trails with a precisely-measured terrain slope derived from airborne lidar. The effects of the slope on the instantaneous travel rate were assessed by three models generated using non-linear quantile regression, representing low (bottom third), moderate (middle third), and high (upper third) rates of travel, which were validated using k-fold cross-validation. The models peak at about a −3° (downhill) slope, similar to previous slope-dependent travel rate functions. The moderate firefighter travel rate model mostly predicts faster movement than previous slope-dependent travel rate functions, suggesting that firefighters generally move faster than non-firefighting personnel while hiking. Steepness was also found to have a smaller effect on firefighter travel rates than previously predicted. The travel rate functions produced by this study provide guidelines for firefighter escape route travel rates and allow for more accurate and flexible wildland firefighting safety planning.