"Paul Gleason developed what we call under the acronym LCES, which is Lookouts, Communication, Escape routes, and Safety zones. If we're assigned to a fire, those four factors must be incorporated into everything that we do for fighting fire on the line."
I'd like to take time to reflect on something that's developed over the last decade in firefighting, and that is some basic firefighting orders that we follow. There's the ten standard firefighting orders that we follow, but one new concept has been developed by a firefighter by the name of Paul Gleason, after the fatalities in Colorado in 1994, where we lost fourteen firefighters, I believe. Storm King was the name of the fire that took their lives. But from that fire we've learned. And Paul Gleason developed what we call under the acronym LCES, which is Lookouts, Communication, Escape routes, and Safety zones. If we're assigned to a fire, those four factors must be incorporated into everything that we do for fighting fire on the line. We need to establish lookouts. These are people that are placed in strategic locations, oftentimes near the base of the fire, and/or above the fire along a ridge top, let's say. So they can watch what the main fire is doing while the rest of the firefighters or crews are working, building fire line or doing a burnout. These lookouts are assigned and have communications with the supervisors. Myself, for instance, as division supervisor, would need to maintain contact with that lookout, or with the crew boss who is the supervisor for that lookout, and be ready to move if that person says the fire has changed direction again, like it did to me at Lake Isabella in 1982, where we had to move rapidly. We didn't have a good lookout posted for that situation. Now we put lookouts in place, they communicate with us, and they let us know if we have to move away from our present position.
In order to move, you need to have an escape route. Oftentimes you're in very dense forested situations and it's not easy to move from your current location if you have to move rapidly. So you have to think in advance, "Okay, if we DO have to move, how are we going to do it, and in what direction?" So you have escape routes established already in advance, so that when you do move you all move in the same direction, and the direction you're moving in is towards the safety zone.
Safety zones are large areas, sometimes cleared in advance by dozers or by firefighters for that specific reason, or they can be areas that are already burned, that have already been blackened, and you can go in there safely and watch the fire go by. And that's the key to safety zones: they are areas that are large enough that you can go into the middle of it, and watch the fire without having to deploy a fire shelter to cover yourself up. Those should only be used in the most extreme situations, and you're oftentimes in a tighter area that you could not withstand the heat without additional support of a fire shelter.
So that LCES, again, is something that came out of Storm King, and the fatalities that occurred there. I think we've all learned some real serious lessons from that tragic year. We're working much more safely now. We're still seeing situations, though, that should be prevented, and could be prevented. Fatalities are still occurring. Burnovers are still happening. And we're finding that people are not paying attention to those factors of LCES and our ten standard firefighting orders that basically mandate that you follow. If you do follow them, you will be okay in any fire assignment. If you break one or any of those standard firefighting orders, that's when you start breaking down the safety barrier between the job you're doing and risking injuries and fatalities.