Dan Oltrogge Interview
| Hear interview excerpts: | Biographical data |
My name is Robert Marvin Garcia Hunt. We're doing a project at the Northern Arizona University called Fire on the Plateau. My colleague, Jennifer Kern, and my supervisor at the library, Karen Underhill, for Collections and Archives, are present here at this interview. [Today is July 19, 2001.] We are here at the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and we are going to get an interview from the chief for wildland fire and aviation. If you'd like to introduce yourself....
Oltrogge: My name is Dan Oltrogge, and I've been working here at the Grand Canyon in this capacity since June of 1990.
Garcia Hunt: Could you please tell us what brought you to Arizona, and your education, and also a little bit about yourself?
Oltrogge: My education is I have a B.A. degree in outdoor recreation from San Diego State University. What brought me to Arizona was the job here at the Grand Canyon. I transferred here in August of 1987 from Lake Mead National Recreation Area, working for the National Park Service. I came here as the supervisory ranger for the inner canyon. And then I transferred into my current position in June of 1990 as a fire management officer.
Garcia Hunt: Have you always lived here in the Grand Canyon area?
Oltrogge: Since I've been in Arizona, yeah, we have. We've lived on the South Rim since August of 1987. I also have a home in Flagstaff that for about three years we've been living in Flagstaff also. I was born and raised in Southern California -God's country, you know.
Garcia Hunt: Would you please tell us a little bit about your job as chief for wildland fire, and then maybe a lot about your aviation background also.
Oltrogge: For the wildland fire component, my responsibility is Parkway, which is 1.2 million acres, and it includes suppression of wildland fires, and prescribed fire, which is when we go out and take a management action under preplanned conditions and light fire for resource benefits. It includes also what we call managing wildland fire, or wildland fire use for resource benefits. That's what we have going on, on the North Rim right now. That's when we get a natural ignition, and under predetermined conditions we go through an analysis process that tells us to have this fire move across that landscape with that vegetative cover is a good thing, it'll benefit the resource that's out there, be it wildlife, vegetation, a number of different things, because we're a fire-dependent ecosystem. Fire is as much a part of the surroundings of this vegetative cover as rain is. And by excluding fire we've changed things, and now we're trying to correct that. Prescribed fire and wildland fire use are simply a couple of tools to help us do that.
Garcia Hunt: As we have been doing interviews throughout Flagstaff we know certainly there's a lot of ponderosa pine. How would you treat cedar as we see around the rim here on the south?
Oltrogge: Probably what we would call pinyon-juniper woodland, is that what you're referring to?
Garcia Hunt: Yes sir.
Oltrogge: That's a pretty good question. When we had a research symposium I think two years ago, we brought in a number of researchers because what we want to figure out first is what's the natural fire regime in this pinyon-juniper woodland that's in the park, because we don't have a good handle on that yet. Before we can go in there and treat it with prescribed fire, we need to know: what kind of a regime is it? And what kind of condition are we trying to achieve in that woodland? We don't have a good handle on that yet.
The other problem with pinyon-juniper is that it's a really narrow window when fire wants to carry through that. The problem is, it's stand replacement. That means it'll take out the whole stand, and then it may not return for hundreds of years. It's a very long return interval. To compound that problem, we've decided to build communities in the middle of that woodland, and you're in one right now. So we need to figure out can we use fire as a tool to help us reduce that risk, because obviously we'd have a zero tolerance for that.
And then on the resource side, using fire as a tool in the pinyon-juniper woodland, what's the right thing to do? How much fire, wind, under what conditions, all those kinds of things. Research is what we need.
Garcia Hunt: Do you have any partnerships with your research going on -any universities, any New Mexico sources, Utah, or anything like that?
Oltrogge: Well, a part of that, that I'm overly familiar with, we had a physician in the park who's our senior scientist, and he has point and manages the research program for the park. At any given time there are a number of permits that are operating in the park that are dedicated to research. We are working with NAU on a forest restoration research, to conduct that in the park. In fact, in the very near future, probably in a matter of weeks, we're going to come out with an environmental assessment which is part of the public scoping process, to get public input on that research initiative. And then assuming that that goes forward, we'll move into research with NAU on forest restoration in the park.
Garcia Hunt: How about partnerships with your Native American tribes around the area, or reservations?
Oltrogge: Related to wildland fire?
Garcia Hunt: Wildland fire or either science research.
Oltrogge: Well, again, there's probably a number of projects going on that I'm not familiar with that are outside of wildland fire. Specific to fire, and not specifically to research, Grand Canyon is in kind of an interagency coordination group with a number of agencies in Northern Arizona. The BIA represents the tribes on that board, and the tribes include the Navajos and the Hopi, Walapai, Havasupai, Southern Paiute, and they all sit around the table and we discuss policy and initiatives related to fire management in Northern Arizona. That's their voice at that table, is the BIA representative. And it's usually two or three of them, depending on if we're dealing with the Navajo Nation or we're dealing with the Walapai, Havasupai, it'd be the [Truxton?] Canyon Agency, or Southern Paiutes would be different. That's the way we're able to make that information move back and forth and kind of coordinate our activities.
Garcia Hunt: Do you coordinate with Washington, D.C. with the BIA programs also, to try and get better resources for funding or research also?
Oltrogge: I don't directly. That would probably come.... My contact, as we move out of the park into fire management organization in the Park Service is in our regional office in Denver. They have a direct link into our national office in Boise for fire management. That particular link, on national initiatives, on interagency cooperation, for us happened with their counterparts in the BIA.
Garcia Hunt: Could you tell us a little bit about your aviation background and maybe where you went to school, if you went to school to become an aviation expert, what your aviation background is here at the park?
Oltrogge: It scares me when I hear you call me an aviation expert, because I have that responsibility, I am not a pilot, I never wanted to be a pilot. I ride in aircraft, and I supervise a program that.... Let me think here a minute. I have five pilots and three aircraft. And really, my job is to ensure that we're in compliance with all the policy, and for us that comes right out of the Department of Interior, and that the safety aspect of that program is never compromised. That's really my focus. And I have a subordinate staff that does the real work. All I do is kind of keep my finger on the pulse, make sure we're providing a service, because that's what we do. With the helicopter program here we probably fly an average of 400 search and rescue missions a year. Fire alone here probably flies 200 hours on the helicopter, on different business we do. So the aviation component provides the service, and we just have to make sure we're doing that in compliance with policy and as safe as possible. Because what happens to us, the helicopters especially are involved in life safety issues as a matter of course. It's not unusual. So then we have to weigh, on whatever the incident is, the risk to the flight crew, and the mission we're trying to accomplish, and balance those two. We've had to say no sometimes, that we were not going to carry out the mission because it was too dangerous for the flight crew.
Garcia Hunt: Do you use your aviation helicopter to control prescribed burns or lookouts also? Or can you tell us a little bit about prescribed burns going on in the area?
Oltrogge: We use a method called aerial ignition, focus ground fire. Yeah, we do that a lot. The primary tool is the helicopter to do that. And that allows us to put a lot of fire across the landscape in a very short period of time, and there are a number of benefits if we're able to do that. One, it has to be under the right conditions, and it's not really a science -to me it's almost an art to figure out when's the right time to do that. And if you can do that by aerial ignition, and have all those other things lined out that you need to have mitigated, you're not exposing firefighters to the risk of being on the ground and dealing with fire in that forested structure. As far as air quality and the regulations we are required to work under from the Clean Air Act, it's called the best management practice, because you put a whole lot of smoke or emissions into the airshed at one time, and then you're done. If we don't use aerial ignition, we could get conceivably, as an example, 2,000 acres done in three hours. If I did that by hand, with people on the ground, to do that would take me probably two weeks. The Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, just from the air quality perspective, they like that. Under the right conditions, that's a good thing to do. And of course you have to make sure that the conditions, with the forest structure that you're putting fire into are right, that you're going to get the right fire effects from moving fire across that landscape. You don't want to burn it too hot, you don't want to burn it too cool. You want to be able to control it. If you can do all that, aerial ignition is an outstanding tool.
Garcia Hunt: Could you explain aerial ignition for us, how you go about doing that?
Oltrogge: We call it the ping-pong machine. All it is, is a sphere dispenser. We have little balls that almost look like ping-pong balls, and we load up thousands of those balls in a helicopter, and they have a chemical compound inside of them. When this machine drops the balls out of the helicopter and there's an operator operating the machine, when they make contact with the ground, on a delayed reaction, and it's only a matter of seconds, they will ignite. And then of course when they ignite and the conditions are right, they'll ignite the fuel then that's around them. And so basically what you're doing is you're flying grid lines or whatever your ignition pattern is, and as you're doing that, you're dropping those balls on the ground, and they're catching on fire, and that's how you're laying your fire across the landscape. So you just fly back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth.
Garcia Hunt: So we've seen drip torches used in ponderosa pine, using their drip torches to clean. Does the person operating that machine in the helicopter go through a special training within the Forestry Department?
Oltrogge: A bunch, yeah. Yeah. They have to maintain a certain minimum qualification for them to be able to do that. I think I have three on staff. And then they also go around the country and they teach other people to do that, so they make that minimum certification. Yeah, you have to have a qualification to do that.
Garcia Hunt: Can you explain the training in case somebody would like to know?
Oltrogge: In general terms, I can't. It would be a position we call an ignition specialist on a prescribed fire. And they have to go through a series of fire behavior courses, and a series of suppression courses to give them the formal background, to be able to understand what's going on out there on the ground. Once they've achieved all that, and then for the particular task of being the dispenser operator they have to go through a course just on that. And they have to be able to break it down, put it back together. They have to be able to explain the mechanics of how it works, why it works, if it breaks down how are you going to fix it, in the air how are you going to operate it safely? Because remember, they're in the helicopter, the door's open, and this thing sits on the edge of the helicopter, and the operator is tied in, but they're standing right next to it. So it's a hazardous situation. And they have to be able to operate in that environment safely. And then they have to be effective in laying that fire across that landscape. And they have to understand all the concepts of how that works.
Garcia Hunt: Are your pilots contracted or are they from the Forestry Department or Grand Canyon?
Oltrogge: The helicopter pilots are contracted. We have a year-round contract, so we have a helicopter out there 365 days a year. And the three pilots that staff the helicopter for us are not government employees, they're contract employees.
Garcia Hunt: Could you describe to us your typical day? When you come in, in the morning, do you have meetings where you talk about....
Oltrogge: I can always find a meeting. Yes, we do. A typical day for me, a normal day is going to have a couple of meetings in it. Exactly who that's going to be, whether it could be a personnel issue, it could be something with our science, am I dealing with wildlife biologist, or archaeologist, or air quality issues. Do I have meetings with cooperators? That's a big deal in fire management, because fire doesn't recognize political boundaries, it moves back and forth across those. We have to coordinate all our activities with our cooperators. I try and not be task oriented. I have a large staff, and sometimes they accuse me of not doing the real work. But my job is to make sure that I provide the direction and lay the support to meet the goals and objectives we have for the program for a given year. And so I have to kind of keep my finger on the pulse, and I have a layer of program managers and subordinate supervisors in the fire dispatch center, the helicopter operation, the fixed-wing operation, prescribed fire, wildland fire, use, suppression, engines -all that stuff. I've got experts that know how to do that, and my job is just to kind of keep my arms wrapped around that whole program and make sure its headed in the right direction. I do tasks myself once in a while. We have an initiative going on right now to rewrite our fire management plan. That's a herculean effort, it's been going on for two-and-a-half years. I've got point on that. We're building facilities to the tune of about $1.9 million on the North Rim for fire. I've tasked myself with kind of taking point on that, and working with our national office and our architects to keep the momentum going behind that, and keep that moving.
Garcia Hunt: Local houses, urban interface. Do you have programs going through the whole area? And also, tourist interface -campers, things like that -do you have special programs for that also?
Oltrogge: To deal with the issue of urban interface?
Garcia Hunt: Yes sir.
Oltrogge: Yes, we do. With the implementation of the National Fire Plan -and that's a document that the secretaries of Interior and Agriculture, by order of the president, implemented this fall, last September. Part of that, one component of that, is the urban interface initiative. Grand Canyon has nine projects that have been funded under that program, to carry out. And these projects go over decades. Some of them are projected out to forty-two years to actually complete, because the amount of work is so -the labor is very intensive. And that's about a total of 6,000 acres, just at Grand Canyon: the mechanical fuel reduction to deal with the urban interface problem. And we've received funding, I believe, that area of $1.9 million, to help us do that. It's a big part of our program. It's very problematic, too, because you affect all kinds of different entities and variables, and people's homes, and it becomes personal, and you have to give it a lot of time and attention. But it's important. It's what we experienced last year, and that's kind of that reason behind the National Fire Plan is that the president asked the secretaries, "Come up with a plan that may prevent us, or help us from not going through what we went through in the year 2000" -he's talking about the American people -"burned down a lot of homes."
Garcia Hunt: How about tourists with their campers and things like that, in this area? Do you have any programs for that?
Oltrogge: We do, and it's based on the fire danger we're going through at a particular time. Right now our fire danger is what we call high, which is not a real concern for us. We pay real close attention to it. If the fire danger goes up to an adjective rating we call very high or extreme, we will, usually with the superintendent's approval, impose restrictions; sometimes there will be closures; we'll close off roads, we'll eliminate campfires in the campground. It could be a variety of things that we may want to implement, because that time of year when the fire danger is so high, it's just so dry, so hot, and the natural fire regime in the ecosystem, we didn't get fire in there because we didn't have any lightning. Well now, of course, with post-European settlement, we bring fire with us. That's the issue, that we are the ignition source: humans cause fires during those extreme conditions. Now, when you look outside now, we're probably going to get more lightning today, or the potential, everything is moderated: it's a little wetter, it's a little moister and cooler, and fire can move across the landscape and not burn so aggressively like it can in the Southwest in May and June. So yeah, we do pay attention to that human-caused ignition source.
Garcia Hunt: Also, with your program management, I was noticing bicycle patrol. Is that a lot better than trying to run a truck or so and so?
Oltrogge: Well, you're talking about a program that I'm not directly linked to, and that's the uniformed rangers. And they have responsibilities in law enforcement and just a whole myriad of emergency services in resource management. I used to do that the first part of my career, the first ten years, so yeah, I think it is. You have a little more contact, it's a little more informal, you can kind of take the edge off of a contact because of that. There's tradeoffs, though, because you don't have the stuff around you maybe that you would need if a situation was thrust upon you where you need the protection or you needed immediate radio contact or you needed to put somebody in custody or you needed to move quickly from one place to another -you can't do that as quick on a bike as you can in a vehicle.
Garcia Hunt: Is there a language barrier problem with a lot of tourists, especially if you have a wildfire? Does your program initiate a language class or anything like that? Because I was just noticing that there's a lot of European -oodles and oodles of different speaking language....
Oltrogge: There are oodles, you're right. That's a good question. We think it's at or near 50 percent of the visitation is international. The fire I have over there right now, if we get the authority by the superintendent to manage that for resource benefit, it's going to get large, thousands of acres. It's going to be really high profile. So what we do is, we'll have the information component of the organization that manages that fire, they'll deal with public education and public information. We have displays that we bring out now, and it's not unusual to have different languages on those displays, because our visitation is so international. So we try and deal with it -probably not as effectively as we can, but we know it's out there.
Garcia Hunt: I know you're going to be going out into the sky crew pretty soon. Can you tell us your everyday work job with that situation also?
Oltrogge: You mean do I do it that often?
Garcia Hunt: Yes, like what happens? How do you log in, or some sort of…
Oltrogge: I don't know if I'm understanding your question.
Garcia Hunt: Basically from here, base, when you fly to a situation, who you contact on the ground? For everyday work — aviation.
Oltrogge: I'll launch off and I'll know about it. The aircraft is tracked by our dispatch center so they know where it is all the time. The communication is never broken, we also know where the aircraft is. So when I fly that recon in about an hour, I'm going to take a couple of biologists with me also, and we're going to go look at the fire. And I have people staffing that fire right now. There's a point of contact, somebody's in charge on that fire, and that's who I'll talk to, and I'll ask for him to size up the fire behavior, how many issues you're dealing with, anything that we can do for you, can we look at anything for you while we're up here, because a lot of times they may be looking for some sort of access or helispots where we can land the helicopter, or what's the fuel condition five miles in front of the fire, or where does that road come in? [It] could be a number of things. We'll do that for him. And then if I just want to get a feel for the fire, I have the responsibility to manage this fire right now. I've tasked myself with that. And so that's why I'm going to fly it, and then let the biologists look at it. I have a biologist here from the Fish and Wildlife Service, and also a biologist from the park staff, because it's a big issue when you have fire moving across the landscape like that -it affects all kinds of different things. And one of the things we're dealing with right now is the Mexican spotted owl in critical habitat on the North Rim where this fire is, so that's why we're going to do that. So then we'll land and we'll drive out to the fire, and we'll take them out there and we'll go look at it. I normally don't do a lot of recons. I have a bunch of other folks that do that. But on this particular fire, because of the level of this issue also, with the Fish and Wildlife Service, I've tasked myself with managing this fire. I'm going to do the recon.
Garcia Hunt: That was my next question, about [taos? house?] management, what do you do with the wildlife and how do you go about implementing wildlife preservation?
Oltrogge: Well, I'll give you an example of a process we use. The reason I was late, I just came out of a meeting we call interdisciplinary team meeting. And we were talking about this fire, it's called the Vista Fire on the North Rim. And so we have, sitting around that table, subject matter experts -archaeologists, wildlife biologists, air quality scientists, concession specialists -we're dealing with the businesses that we may affect -interpreters, public affairs officers. And we discuss the objectives of the fire: how are we going to manage this fire, what's going to guide it? And we get all those subject matter experts, to get the input from their disciplines into that process. So we consider all that stuff in the planning process before we make a decision on how we're going to manage the fire. So it wouldn't just be wildlife, it would be a whole myriad of disciplines that we have to consider.
Garcia Hunt: That was my next question…
Oltrogge: Sorry.
Garcia Hunt: Weather and forecast. Does that come basically out of here, or does it come out of another substation?
Oltrogge: The closest Weather Service station we work with is out at Bellemont, just....
Underhill: Six miles west of Flagstaff.
Oltrogge: Thank you, six miles west of Flagstaff. If the fire gets big enough, we'll bring in our own meteorologist. And their whole task will be predicting weather for that particular fire, and what weather may affect that fire. But in a general sense, we just work with the Weather Service in Bellemont. And if we're on the North Rim, sometimes we'll work with the Salt Lake City Weather Service office, because they can give us a better picture.
Garcia Hunt: Does that come straight to you, or does it go to another office?
Oltrogge: It depends. It's probably going to directly feed into my dispatch center, and it's not unusual to have a number of fires going at the same time. And then the incident commander -that's the person in charge of that fire -they or somebody on their staff has probably requested that information. Comes into Dispatch, that's the clearinghouse. And Dispatch then relays it to that particular fire that needed that information. If it's in the planning stages like we are now, we'll use that to build a plan for the fire that we're managing. And also we do reports twice a day that we read fire weather over the air so all the crews on the engines and helicopters -they're scattered all over the place -they can all hear that information.
Garcia Hunt: In case the fire gets out of hand?
Oltrogge: Yeah, or in case -weather is a huge deal for fire management. It's like the crux of everything we do. And there may not be any fire going on when they've started their day, but let's say we're expecting heavy lightning today, or there's what we call a red flag warning, because the wind's going to start blowing fifty miles an hour. They need that information.
Kern: You mentioned you had a fairly large staff. Can you tell us a little bit about the staff and maybe the engines?
Oltrogge: How they're organized?
Kern: Yes.
Oltrogge: Would that be good? Okay. I have five or six positions that work directly for me. I have a fire information officer, I have an aviation manager/pilot, and I have two program managers that have most of the personnel work under these two programs. One of those is a suppression manager and one of those is a fire use manager. And then those are broken down into smaller subunits. Take suppression as an example: The suppression manager is responsible for the helicopter program, the dispatch center, and the engine program on the North Rim and the South Rim. The fire use manager, on the other side of the organization, has program managers that are prescribed fire and wildland fire use. And that's when we manage natural fire for resource benefits. Fire ecologists, a GIS specialist, an archaeologist, wildlife biologist. I think that's it. And then that tiers down again to the people that actually do the real work, a number of technicians. I think that -and this is just a window -when we're fully staffed, say this time of year, we'll have between, call it fifty-five to sixty-five people working in fire and aviation. Some of them don't work directly for us, some of them we fund. I fund a number of positions in the science center for the biologist or archaeologist or GIS. And we don't have the expertise to provide them the leadership, so they're administered by the science center and they're tasked in their position because the product they provide during the work day is something that we need for that fire so we pay for the product by funding that position. It's a large organization for the Park Service. There's probably only three or four in the service that are as large. It's unusual.
Kern: What percent would you say are seasonal and more or less represent our full-time workers?
Oltrogge: That's really changing. With the national fire plan, another component of that was to make us to increase our rating as our preparedness to suppress fire. Working fire, we know that fire management is not seasonal. Just because it's raining or snowing, there's still so much work to be done, just to train and plan. It's not seasonal work. Well, this fiscal year, which for us starts October 1, Congress funded the Federal Fire Service for a large sum of money to help us fix that problem, at a near $1.5 billion. We've created in the Federal Fire Service -and that's the five main agencies that have wildland fire responsibility -between 5,000 and 7,000 new jobs in the Federal Fire Service. We've also converted a lot of jobs that were once seasonal and are now permanent. At the Grand Canyon -I want to say thirteen -we converted a number of seasonal positions to permanent this year. So my seasonal staff is getting smaller and smaller. But that's just the nature of the beast, because the work requires year round attention, plus the continuity and consistency. By the time you get somebody trained to do the level of work we're asking them to do and put them in an environment that is hazardous, so they have to have a lot of training to operate in that environment. To ask a seasonal employee to do that is almost unreasonable. I don't have them long enough. When we do have them, we have so much work to do we can't train them adequately. All those kinds of things. So to have them on a permanent basis is a much more efficient way to do business. It comes with a price tag, but to us it's the cost of doing business and it's the right thing to do.
Garcia Hunt: In case of a bad situation, what's your local -or do you set up a trauma center here at the Grand Canyon? If a situation occurred, fired up.
Oltrogge: The rangers, the level of expertise they have in emergency medical services is really high. There's a number of what we call park medics. A number of them are paramedics. And we also bring in this time of year we hire seasonal paramedics that come in here and work for us. So the emergency response to that kind of an incident for us is really good. Actually, we're really lucky, better than almost any other place that does this kind of work. We have a clinic here on the South Rim that can do some initial work, but for real definitive care, we'll transfer them to Flagstaff Medical Center. And the helicopter can bring them in there, or we bring in helicopters to do that transport for us.
Underhill: How has policy changed or evolved since 1990 when you took on these responsibilities?
Oltrogge: Well, regarding -we'll look at the wildland fire use, using fire as a tool to help us restore the natural forest structure that was out there in pre-European settlement. We have much more discretion how to use that as a tool on the ground than we did in 1990. The program is also not even in the same ballpark, the way it's funded now, as to how it used to be funded. There used to be a very hard ceiling, and you only had so much money to manage that type of fire. Now that activity is funded out of the same funding source as the Cerro Grande Fire last year -cost millions. And Congress authorizes a lot of money each year to manage those very large campaign fires. That same funding source is available to fire managers to manage what I have going on on the North Rim right now, which as of this morning was only four acres. Now, as it gets larger, you have to pay time and attention to it over weeks and weeks and weeks, and your costs will add up. Well, as long as we can be accountable for every dollar we spend, and we are, you have much more latitude to accomplish the objective you need to accomplish, because you're funded to deal with that. That's a huge change. And just to have the discretion that we have now, with the agency administrator's approval -I mean, they make all the decisions to use that as a resource management tool. That's another tool in the tool box. It's a good thing.
Underhill: Were there any changes across the Park Service as a result of Cerro Grande (Los Alamos) situation from last year?
Oltrogge: Oodles! (laughter) Of course the secretary of Interior placed a moratorium on the National Park Service and all federal agencies in Interior right after the fire for no more prescribed burning west of the 100th meridian. For all agencies except the Park Service, that was lifted about a month after it was implemented -for every agency but the Park Service. The Park Service had to go back and look, and they brought in kind of an objective look by the National.... I'm forgetting, but anyway, some public administration academy came in and did another study on the prescribed fire program for the National Park Service. And then the results of that study required a number of policy changes in the way we conduct our prescribed fire program on a national level. That wasn't completed until, I guess, late spring, early summer. So then once it was out, the new policy's out, now you have to revise all the existing plans you have for prescribed fire. That's a whole bunch of work. By the time we get an idea, that map behind you there is prescribed fires we're looking to do across Grand Canyon. By the time we get to a point where we point out a spot on a map and when we can actually go burn that piece of ground, if everything goes right, is probably two years of planning. So then when we've done all that on a number of them, now we have to go back and review and get in compliance with the policy changes, based on the Cerro Grande Fire. That's why it changed. And the Park Service is still under intense scrutiny because of the fire. So there have been significant changes.
Underhill: And your Vista Fire, that was a lightning strike?
Oltrogge: Yes. Well, it was discovered on Sunday, July 15. And so we're analyzing it right now, going through a planning process to see if we can manage it for resource benefits. In the interim period, we're not putting it out, we're monitoring it and watching it very closely, have it staffed basically sixteen hours a day. And again, it was four acres this morning, I'm sure it's grown since then. At some point in the very near future, our superintendent will make the decision. I'll come to him with a recommendation based on this briefing package, and brief him, and then he makes the call: yeah, we're authorized to manage this for resource benefits, and I'll let it get this big, 10,000 acres or 1,000 acres, based on my recommendation. Or, "No, I'm not comfortable because of these reasons. I need you to go put it out." It's his call. All I do is make recommendations.
Garcia Hunt: Do you have any of your team members, or do you yourself sit on the national team at all
Oltrogge: I've been on the national team since 1994, and I have three of my staff also on national teams -so four of us are.
Garcia Hunt: How does your evacuation plan work here?
Oltrogge: God, you know, it's like Eisenhower said: plans look great until you actually have to implement them, then you might as well throw them out the window. I don't know. On the South Rim we have plans that we did on an interagency basis that I think we originally authored back in 1991 or 1992. So you include DPS and Coconino County and Kaibab Forrest -all your cooperators help you build that plan. Knock on wood, we've never had to use it on the South Rim. We had to use it on the North Rim last year. When we had the Outlet Fire that went the same time as the Cerro Grande Fire, we evacuated the North Rim developed area. I wasn't here, I was over on the Cerro Grande Fire with my national team. The feedback I have, planning over.... Knock on wood again, but nobody got hurt, nobody died. So the end result was good, everybody got out of there, everybody came back in, and nobody got hurt. But there are some things we want to do to that to make it more effective the next time. Because if you look at the North Rim, there's only one way to get out, one road going in there. And that road was compromised by the Outlet Fire. And so your options get really limited after that.
Garcia Hunt: Would you consider implementing new roads, new highways into the area?
Oltrogge: Just by the nature of the beast, why the National Park Service is here, in our enabling legislation, I don't think that's palatable to the local delegation or the American public in general. Most of the park -and I don't have the exact acreage figure -is proposed wilderness. That means you manage it as wilderness. So probably we wouldn't.
Underhill: What is your role with the national team? Or does it change depending on the level…
Oltrogge: It changes depending on your level of qualification. My role this year is I'm the incident commander trainee for both of the southwest area and national teams. The reason we do that is, in the southwest, if you're the incident commander trainee, that's the person in charge of the team. We like you to get through your training experience as quick as we can and still have it be a good experience. So if a team goes out, we want the incident commander trainee going out with the team, so you can get that training experience. Because you have to have a number of things evaluated, and then signed off before you can be certified as any position. To become an incident commander for a national team takes at least twenty years to get there, it takes a very long time -forever -because of that reason, and that there's a chance you may be given either one of those teams to manage. So it's a good thing that you get familiar with both of those teams. So that's what I'm doing now. In the past I've been the planning second chief, and that's the person that does all the strategy and the intelligence gathering and all that kind of stuff for the team. Before that I was the fire behavior analyst, and that was the best job, in the wildland. Anyway, you just focused on fire behavior: where's it going to go, when's it going to get there, and how hard is it going to get there? That's what you do. The people on my staff, I have a fire information officer. In fact, she's out there as we speak, on the fire, the Thirtymile Fire that had the four fatalities last Monday. She's on that fire right now. I have another one who works in the aviation branch of the team, and another one who is a division supervisor. Those are the people on the ground that do all of the tactics, the bulldozers and the crews and the engines and all that stuff. They're the ones on the ground in charge of all that stuff.
Underhill: How does that impact your operation here? I know you're on call for two weeks, and then off for a couple of weeks. But obviously Donna is on another fire. Do you have someone cross-trained to serve as your public information officer for Vista? Or that's your job?
Oltrogge: It's my job to balance and take care of it. That's a good question. It's important, I believe, the National Park Service be a player in the interagency effort to suppress wildland fire. We need to be on teams, it's a big deal. But when you make a commitment, you make a commitment. Now, we make those commitments in January when there's four feet of snow outside. So when the bell rings, when someone needs help, and it's one of our cooperators who's in dire straights, and they need help, they need a team. And we have team members that go. I don't question that. They go, we're committed. The problem, Donna's gone right now. I just came out of an I.D. team meeting. That came up. I briefed the superintendent yesterday morning on this fire -that came up. I don't have anybody rolled in behind her yet to do her work. It's a tradeoff. But it's my responsibility to deal with it, I've got to fix it, and I'm going to fix it. But again, it's important to maintain a commitment. And actually, she's not even with her team up there, because of the level of scrutiny that fire has received because of the four fatalities. They needed help, they're getting national press up there. That creates this huge workload. Donna's a Type I or national information officer. They called her, I said, "Yeah, go help 'em, they need some help. Go do that." We always survive, we'll deal with it. But sometimes it's tough to fill in behind. And when we're doing that in January, we sit in this room, and on that board we figure out what are the priorities. We can be on teams. What does that do to us back at home? What's the minimum staffing levels we need to maintain? We've thought through all of that, but then when it actually occurs you have to deal with it.
Underhill: How does the pay work for the national team? Does that come from a different entity, or is it part of your regular Park Service package?
Oltrogge: The fire itself is funded, based on congressional authorizations. And if National Park Service employees are going to that fire, we simply create an account number that can access that funding source and pay for my time on that fire.
Underhill: So it's basically a buyout…
Oltrogge: Donna's time on that fire, yeah. The park's account -say I work 200 hours of overtime when I'm on one of those fires -the park's account doesn't have to pay for that. There's another funding source to take care of that. It gets really expensive.
Underhill: Well, we probably need to let you go to the North Rim. Never got…perhaps we'll have to have another interview and talk about that fire next time, four weeks from now.
Underhill: Thank you very much for your time.
Oltrogge: Okay, you're welcome.
[END OF INTERVIEW]