The 10, the 18, and LCES

Wildland firefighters call these three items “the 10, the 18, and LCES,” and they are printed together on the back cover of the orange Incident Response Pocket Guide that every firefighter carries. That is not decoration. Almost every line of them was written after somebody died.

This page covers all three:

• 6b1 — the 10 Standard Firefighting Orders
• 6b2 — the 18 Watch Out Situations
• 6b3 — Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, and Safety Zones (LCES)

Because the requirement asks you to discuss these documents, the actual text is reproduced below so you can read what firefighters read. Your counselor will care much less about whether you can recite them than about whether you can explain why each one exists and what it is protecting against.

Requirement 6b1: The 10 Standard Firefighting Orders

Where they came from

In 1957, after 14 firefighters died in three separate fires the previous year, U.S. Forest Service Chief Richard McArdle commissioned a task force to figure out what kept going wrong. The group reviewed the records of 16 tragedy fires between 1937 and 1956, looking for what the fatalities had in common. What they produced — modeled partly on the military’s General Orders — was a list intended to be committed to memory by everyone with fire responsibility. Nearly seventy years later, it is unchanged.

The Orders

1. Keep informed of fire weather conditions and forecasts.
2. Know what the fire is doing at all times.
3. Base all actions on current and expected behavior of the fire.
4. Identify escape routes and safety zones and make them known.
5. Post lookouts when there is possible danger.
6. Be alert. Keep calm. Think clearly. Act decisively.
7. Maintain prompt communications with your forces, your supervisor, and adjoining forces.
8. Give clear instructions and be sure they are understood.
9. Maintain control of your forces at all times.
10. Fight fire aggressively, having provided for safety first.

How they are organized

The order of the list is deliberate, and understanding the grouping is the single best thing you can bring to your counselor conversation.

Order 10 deserves special attention because people misread it constantly. “Fight fire aggressively” is conditional on “having provided for safety first” — the clause is not optional decoration. NWCG guidance is explicit that the Orders are not a checklist to run once and forget; they describe conditions requiring continuous monitoring, and firefighters are expected to re-evaluate them as the fire and the day change.

Requirement 6b2: The 18 Watch Out Situations

What they are for

Shortly after the Orders entered training, firefighters developed a companion list originally called the “13 Situations That Shout Watch Out,” expanded to 18 in 1987. Where the Orders tell you what to do, the Watch Outs describe specific circumstances that should make you stop and reassess. They are more cautionary and more situational — the concrete conditions that keep showing up in accident reports.

The relationship is worth stating plainly: the Orders are rules; the Watch Outs are warning signs. Follow the Orders and stay alert to the Watch Outs, and a large share of the risk in firefighting comes off the table.

The 18 Watch Out Situations

1. Fire not scouted and sized up.
2. In country not seen in daylight.
3. Safety zones and escape routes not identified.
4. Unfamiliar with weather and local factors influencing fire behavior.
5. Uninformed on strategy, tactics, and hazards.
6. Instructions and assignments not clear.
7. No communication link with crew members or supervisor.
8. Constructing line without safe anchor point.
9. Building fireline downhill with fire below.
10. Attempting frontal assault on fire.
11. Unburned fuel between you and fire.
12. Cannot see main fire; not in contact with someone who can.
13. On a hillside where rolling material can ignite fuel below.
14. Weather becoming hotter and drier.
15. Wind increases and/or changes direction.
16. Getting frequent spot fires across line.
17. Terrain and fuels make escape to safety zones difficult.
18. Taking a nap near the fireline.

Reading the list in groups

Eighteen items is a lot to hold in your head, so notice that they cluster:

• Not knowing enough (1–6): the fire has not been scouted, the ground has not been seen in daylight, escape routes are unidentified, local weather is unfamiliar, the plan is unknown, and the assignment is unclear. Every one is an information failure.
• Losing the connection (7, 12): no radio link, or no eyes on the fire and nobody watching it for you. These directly attack situational awareness.
• Tactically dangerous positions (8–11, 13): no anchor point, building line downhill toward fire, taking on the head directly, unburned fuel between you and the fire, working below rolling material. Each is a position you can be caught in.
• Conditions getting worse (14–16): hotter and drier, wind rising or shifting, frequent spotting. These are the fire telling you it is about to change.
• No way out, no one awake (17–18): difficult escape and sleeping near the line. The final two are about what happens if the first sixteen catch up with you.

Requirement 6b3: LCES

Where LCES came from

By the early 1990s, firefighters were carrying 28 items to remember at exactly the moment when there is no time to remember anything. In 1991, a hotshot superintendent named Paul Gleason proposed distilling the fireline-safety core into four words that could be checked in seconds and re-checked continuously. He called it LCES.

After the 1994 South Canyon Fire on Storm King Mountain, where 14 firefighters died running uphill ahead of a fire that blew up below them, LCES became doctrine across the federal wildland fire agencies. The South Canyon investigation found breakdowns in every one of the four elements.

The four elements

L — Lookouts. Someone whose actual job is watching the fire and the weather, positioned where they can see both the fire and the crew, with a way to communicate. A lookout must be experienced enough to recognize when behavior is changing and empowered to call it. One person cannot both swing a tool with their head down and watch a fire.

C — Communications. Radios that work, on the right frequency, checked before the crew commits — plus a plan for what gets said, to whom, and what phrase means “get out now.” Communication failures appear in nearly every fatality investigation.

E — Escape Routes. Pre-identified, timed, and physically walked paths from the work area to a safety zone. Best practice is at least two, because fire can cut one off. Escape routes must be scouted, marked if needed, and continually re-timed: as a crew moves along a line, the route gets longer and the time to travel it grows. Escape time must always be shorter than the time the fire needs to reach you — and remember from Req 5a that a person carrying tools uphill is much slower than a fire doing the same.

S — Safety Zones. Areas where a firefighter can survive without a fire shelter. That definition is the important part. A safety zone works by distance from the flames, because radiant heat is what injures people; guidance ties the required size to the height of the surrounding flames and adjusts for slope and wind. Good candidates include large areas of the black that have cooled, wide rock fields, large water bodies, big meadows, and large open areas like parking lots. A road is usually not a safety zone, and a small clearing in heavy timber definitely is not.

Why LCES is checked continuously

Gleason’s insight was that LCES is not a form you complete at the start of a shift — it is a loop. The lookout moves as the crew moves. The escape route lengthens as line is built. A safety zone that was adequate in the morning may be inadequate at 3 p.m. when flame lengths triple. Firefighters are trained to re-establish LCES every time the situation changes and to refuse or renegotiate an assignment when it cannot be established at all.

That refusal is a formal part of the culture. Wildland firefighters are trained to say “I need to know my LCES before I take that assignment,” and supervisors are trained to expect the question.

How the Three Fit Together

You now know the safety framework that governs every action on a fireline. With that in place, it is finally time to look at the tactics themselves.