WILDLAND FIRE
Pullman Fire Department is responsible for mitigating hazards of many varieties and wildland fire is one of those well-known hazards to those living in the Pacific Northwest.
As the seasons become dryer for longer periods of time along with a growing population in Pullman and the surrounding rural areas of the Palouse, fires that once threatened only natural areas are now becoming increasingly and dangerously closer to our homes, businesses, farmland and livestock. The burden of protecting many of these homes and natural areas now rests on the shoulders of the SE Washington Interagency Incident Management Team.
The Southeast Washington Interagency Incident Management Team is an All-Hazard Type Incident Management Team comprised of personnel from local, county, state, and federal partnering agencies within our Type 3 Organization. There are three separate rotating Type 3 Teams in the SE Region that supports and manages all hazard incidents in impacted communities. There are a total of 10 teams covering the four Regions of Washington State.
The Southeast Region is expansive, covering central and southeastern Washington. The Team provides services to the following Counties: Adams, Asotin, Benton, Chelan, Columbia, Douglas, Franklin, Garfield, Grant, Kittitas, Klickitat, Lincoln, Walla Walla, Whitman, and Yakima counties. Currently there are approximately 100 highly trained and credentialed Command and General staff professionals that can come together from numerous agencies and deploy with the appropriate equipment and personnel to provide coverage to these areas.
Incident Management Teams (IMTs) are designed to assist local emergency services and support unusually large, complex, or long-term emergency incidents. The IMT identifies hazards and risks and makes time-critical decisions at the appropriate level using the expertise of skilled fire managers and resource specialists.
Comprised of single resources, our Team members operate in many different capacities to provide assistance at large incidents. Some of those skills include: incident communications, planning, safety measures for the incident, GIS and mapping, finance tracking, logistical (food, sanitation, housing, transportation, facilities, base camp setup, etc.) and/or resource acquisition, conduit for public information and the Operations Division that can be further configured in to part of a Strike Team or a Hand Crew as needed for the assignment. The Team combined responds to Federal, State, County and Local wildfires as well as, all-hazard incidents during peak fire season when government agencies and rural fire departments with limited resources are overburdened with fire response.
Team members consist of several qualified and credentialed wildland firefighters as well as Incident Management personnel. All Team members are required to complete the core wildland firefighting training through the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) to ensure quality and seamless interagency operations.
The primary mission of wildland firefighters is to utilize wildland firefighting techniques and tactics to control and/or extinguish large brush, wildland and urban interface fires.
Pullman Fire Department currently operates and responds to incidents with one Type 6 brush truck and one Type 1 urban-interface engine. When requested, the department has also supplied an ALS 4x4 ambulance to these fire incidents. In the past three years department members have logged over 6,300 hours on wildland fire incidents. During these hours on a fire incident, fire department personnel are committed to maintaining the same level of service to the citizens of Pullman. If needed, deployed personnel will be recalled to maintain staffing and apparatus in the city.
As the need for skilled resources of all-hazard incidents increases, the Pullman Fire Department will continue a proactive approach in providing those specific resources and services to benefit all those involved.