National Wildfire Coordinating Group

RT-130, Wildland Fire Safety Training Annual Refresher (WFSTAR)

Human Factors: The Gap

RT-130 Decorative banner. Group of photos depicting wildland firefighters performing various duties.

This module compares how work is designed from a management perspective to how work is actually performed by firefighters on the ground.
Category: Leadership
Core Component(s): Incident Reviews and Lessons Learned;
Human Factors, Communication and Decision Making
Estimated Delivery Time: 30 minutes; Video Length: 9:29

 

Intent

Examine how differing points of view during the decision-making process may lead to an accident on the fireline. Understand how work is designed from a management perspective and how work is actually performed by firefighters on the ground.

Facilitator Preparation

  • Review the video and module tools.
  • Consider additional activities and discussion questions pertinent to the location and agency.

Facilitating the Discussion

  • Show the video.
  • Facilitate a small or large group discussion using the discussion questions.

Discussion Questions

  1. Describe an incident when your perceptions of events were different from the perceptions of your co-workers.
  2. Describe an incident when your fireline supervisor had significantly different perceptions of events than you and your coworkers did.
  3. What are some examples of the gaps you have seen at your unit or while working on or in support of wildland fires?
  4. What are some vague or poorly-defined words or phrases that we use while working on or in support of wildland fires?

Resources

Additional Video Information

This video is also available as a download. (Size 29 MB)
Download the .srt file for closed captioning (you may need to right click and Save As). For information on how to add closed captioning to a video, see this how to page. 

Note: For Chrome, Firefox, and Edge, right click the word download and select Save Link As; for IE, right click and select Save Target As.

 

 

 

Print This WFSTAR Module

 

 

 

 

Page Last Modified / Reviewed: 
2023-04-06

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