Week of Remembrance 2025 has been spent in reflection of incidents that occurred during the 2015 fire season—10 years ago. Today, on the 31st anniversary of the South Canyon Fire, we also remember the Fallen 14 who lost their lives on Storm King Mountain in 1994. We honor you through our commitment to learning. You are not forgotten.
 

It should come as no surprise that many of the lessons from the 2015 fire year sound familiar and feel relevant in today’s fireground. There is a well of value in studying the past to build “slides” that help inform our actions today. On a daily basis, we gather intelligence of current conditions to make safe, sound decisions on the best available information. A parallel intelligence-gathering process can occur when learning from past events.

As we build historical fire knowledge, it turns into awareness. We may recognize a familiar situation, not because we lived it ourselves, but because we invested the time to learn from the past and considered how to apply lessons learned. In that spirit, here are critical questions and lessons (slides) to bring forward from this week’s practice of remembrance. Discuss each with your group.

Idaho BLM Physical Training (PT) Fatality:

• Medical emergencies can occur during routine daily tasks, like during PT. How is your unit prepared to respond to medical emergencies on and off the fireline? Consider skills, equipment, and training.

Sierra Fire:

• Is our behavior of accepting risk variable? Do we decline a certain level of risk one day and accept it another day? For example: on initial attack vs. when homes are at risk vs. on a slow, remote fire.
• How do you decide whether "the juice is worth the squeeze?"

Frog Fire:

• Firefighters cannot always process the raw data coming at them at a given moment. Instead, what a person pays attention to is a function of identity, past experiences, and one’s own understanding of their purpose. These are human factors in the fire environment.
• There is an expectation and unwritten agreement with the American public that firefighters will put out wildfires as best we can before they cause problems. This adds pressure into our risk calculus.

De Soto Helicopter Crash:

• In our uncertain operational environment, the measure of any given risk may be unknowable.
• Acknowledging that helicopter accidents happen requires us to focus equally on response planning as on prevention.

Twisp River Fire:

• On expanding incidents, crews get asked to provide leadership staffing and fill needed roles. Does your crew have a “draw down” limit? Does capacity to “loan out” positions change based on fire conditions/complexity?