"The national agencies made a shift from what was called a large fire organization, or LFO… to a different terminology that was called ICS or incident command system."
In about 1983 or so, the national agencies made a shift from what was called Large Fire Organization, or LFO, from terminology used in that—like fire boss, line boss, division boss—those things, to a different terminology that was called ICS or incident command system. And that changed those—not so much the job, as the terms for those people—so that it was more consistent with the states and rural fire departments and the like. So we had, instead of a fire boss, we established the incident commander; instead of the line boss, we established the position of operations chief. A part of the large fire organization is not just the putting out the fire, but it's also the planning for it. So there's a planning section chief. There's a logistics chief who's in charge of getting all the equipment there, the hoses and the shovels and the meals and the toilets and everything else to fight a fire. And then there's a finance chief that is in charge of making sure that contractors are paid, and that firefighters are paid, and the records are kept of expenditures on the fire, and that aircraft are being properly paid for, and those kinds of things. So that is the structure, then, that we developed in the early eighties, called incident command system.