National Wildfire Coordinating Group
National Interagency
Fire Center
3833 S. Development Avenue
Boise, ID 83705
Several local fire departments have established programs to sign-up qualified resources to be dispatched to incident assignments under agreements between state or local fire departments and Federal partners. A review of these agreements and Annual Operating Plans has shown a variety of pay rates, overhead rates, backfill, and methods of pay (“hours worked” versus “portal to portal”), leaving receiving units unclear as to what they are paying for a resource mobilized from out of their geographic area..
The NWCG and the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group (NMAC) have determined that wildland fire agencies should continue to allow local Federal land management offices to enter into agreements with local fire departments that include supplemental resources for mobilization. However, we feel that there should be controls on the terms of these agreements to ensure consistency across geographic boundaries. The NWCG tasked the Incident Business Practices Working Team to develop standards and controls for the following:
- Provide definition of supplemental fire department resources so that a consistent application is applied.
- Establish standard rates for supplemental fire department resources, using General Schedule tables with locality pay applied.
- Require supplemental fire department resources to be paid on an as-worked basis; not portal to portal.
- Recommend a standard administrative overhead rate for supplemental fire department resources.
- Develop a process to assure there are no backfill payments for supplemental fire department resources.
- Develop a standard template for local agreements that include supplemental fire department resources.
- Develop standard ROSS and dispatch protocols for management of supplemental fire department resources.
The attached documents and templates have been developed as directed and approved by the NWCG. All agencies are requested to provide direction to the field to implement these required modifications to local and/or state agreements that provide supplemental fire department resources for national mobilization prior to the 2009 western fire season.
Attachments: