Suppression Tactics

This is a hands-on requirement, and it is one of the most enjoyable in the badge — essentially a tabletop wargame where the opponent is a fire. You will move tokens across the diagram you drew for Req 5c and talk your way through six tactics:

• 7a1 — direct attack
• 7a2 — indirect attack
• 7a3 — minimum impact suppression tactics
• 7a4 — use of hand crews, machinery, and aircraft
• 7a5 — mop-up
• 7a6 — repair and restoration

Setting Up the Demonstration

Do the setup well and the rest of the requirement mostly runs itself.

Your map. Use the diagram from Req 5c, a topographic map with a fire perimeter drawn on it, or a sketch of terrain you know. Whatever you choose needs terrain (a ridge, a drainage), at least one road or trail, water if it exists, some indication of fuel types, and at least one value at risk — a house, a campground, a communications tower, a watershed. A fire on featureless ground gives you nothing to decide.

Your tokens. Anything works as long as each type is distinguishable and you tell your counselor what it represents. Coins, colored beads, LEGO pieces, poker chips, cut paper squares, or dice all do the job. A reasonable set:

• Hand crew (a 20-person crew, or a hotshot crew)
• Engine
• Water tender
• Dozer
• Helicopter
• Air tanker
• Lookout
• Safety zone marker
• Anchor point marker

Your fire. Mark the point of origin, the current perimeter, the head, both flanks, and the rear. Write down the wind direction and speed, the time of day, the fuel type, and the terrain. Then keep those conditions in mind — because every tactic decision has to be justified by them.

Your safety narration. Before you place a crew anywhere, state its LCES: where the lookout is, what channel they are on, which two escape routes lead where, and which safety zone they lead to. Do this every time you move a token. It will feel repetitive. That is exactly the habit the requirement is trying to build.

Requirement 7a1: Direct Attack

Direct attack means working right at the fire’s burning edge — putting water on flames, throwing dirt on them, and scraping line immediately adjacent to the black so that the control line and the fire edge are essentially the same thing.

Use it when:

• Flame lengths are short, roughly under four feet, so people can safely work at the edge.
• Fuels are light — grass, light brush, scattered surface litter.
• The fire is small, new, or has laid down in the evening or early morning.
• There is good access and a clear escape.
• Every acre matters: near homes, in a sensitive watershed, or where the fire must not grow at all.

Do not use it when: flames are long, the head is running, spotting is frequent, the smoke and heat make the edge unworkable, or terrain would put crews below the fire.

Advantages: the burned area stays as small as possible, crews always have the black immediately beside them as an escape, and no additional acreage is intentionally burned.

Disadvantages: crews work in heat and smoke, the line follows every twist of the fire edge and so gets very long, and it simply does not work on high-intensity fire.

On your map: anchor at the road, then place hand crews on the flanks working from the rear toward the head, right along the edge. Add an engine where the road parallels the fire. Explain that you are pinching the fire from both flanks rather than confronting the head.

Requirement 7a2: Indirect Attack

Indirect attack means building the control line at a distance from the fire — along a ridgetop, a road, a stream, a dozer line, or an old burn — and then, usually, burning out the fuel between that line and the oncoming fire so there is nothing left to carry it when it arrives.

Use it when:

• Fire behavior is too intense to work the edge: long flames, running head, active crowning.
• Terrain along the fire’s edge is too steep, too rocky, or too hazardous for crews.
• A good natural or existing barrier is available at a distance.
• The fire is spotting so much that a line at the edge would be repeatedly overrun.
• The distance buys time to get resources into position ahead of the fire.

Advantages: crews work in safer, cooler, better-scouted terrain; lines can be straighter and shorter; existing roads and barriers do part of the work; and firing operations can be conducted on the crew’s timing rather than the fire’s.

Disadvantages: everything between the line and the fire burns, so acreage goes up — sometimes a lot. The unburned fuel between crews and the fire is Watch Out Situation #11 until it is burned out. Burnout is a skilled operation that can fail if wind shifts. And if the fire arrives before the burnout is complete, the line may be lost anyway.

On your map: run a line along the ridge or the road ahead of the head. Place a hand crew and an engine holding it. Then show the burnout progressing from the anchor point outward, explaining that you burn with the wind or against it depending on how much intensity you want. Point out that you have just given up a hundred acres to protect a subdivision, and say out loud why that trade is worth it.

Requirement 7a3: Minimum Impact Suppression Tactics

Minimum Impact Suppression Tactics (MIST) is the practice of choosing the suppression method that accomplishes the objective with the least lasting damage to land, water, cultural resources, and scenery. The guiding question is not “what is the fastest way to stop this fire?” but “what is the lightest way to stop this fire that still works?”

MIST matters because suppression itself causes damage. Dozer lines can scar a hillside for decades and channel erosion. Cut trees do not grow back. Hand line in the wrong place becomes a permanent trail. Retardant is prohibited near waterways because it harms aquatic life. In wilderness, national parks, and areas with archaeological or cultural sites, the cure can genuinely be worse than the disease.

Use it when: the fire is in designated wilderness, a national park, a research natural area, near cultural or archaeological sites, in sensitive habitat, in a municipal watershed, or anywhere the land manager has specified it — which, increasingly, is everywhere by default.

What it looks like in practice:

• Use natural barriers, wet lines, and cold trailing instead of digging line wherever possible.
• Build line only as wide and as deep as the fuel actually requires.
• Cut as few trees as possible; if a tree must be cut, cut it low and camouflage the stump.
• Use hand tools instead of dozers, and dozers only with specific approval.
• Avoid retardant near water and in sensitive areas.
• Choose camp and helispot locations to minimize new disturbance, and pack out everything.
• Rehabilitate as you go rather than leaving it all for later.

Advantages: far less long-term resource damage, lower rehabilitation costs, and public support in places people care about.

Disadvantages: it is usually slower and more labor-intensive, and there are fires where it is simply not appropriate — nobody applies MIST to a fire running at a town.

On your map: show the difference explicitly. Draw a dozer line where you would put one if the fire threatened structures, then erase it and show a hand line following a rock ridge instead, explaining that the fire is in wilderness and the objective is containment without a permanent scar.

Requirement 7a4: Hand Crews, Machinery, and Aircraft

Every resource has a job it does better than anything else, and matching resource to terrain, fuel, and objective is most of what a division supervisor does all day.

Hand crews

A Type 2 crew is 20 people; an interagency hotshot crew (IHC) is 20 highly trained, physically elite firefighters who can be assigned to the most demanding line. Smokejumpers parachute to remote fires; helitack crews arrive by helicopter and can rappel in. Engine crews and inmate or state conservation crews fill out the picture in many regions.

Crews build line, hold line, conduct burnouts, fall hazard trees, and mop up. They can go where nothing else can — steep, rocky, roadless country — and they are the only resource that can adapt continuously to what they find. They are also slow relative to machinery and vulnerable to entrapment, which is why LCES exists.

Machinery

• Engines. Wildland engines carry water, pump, and hose and are typed by tank size and pumping capacity. Type 3–7 engines are built for off-road wildland work; the bigger Type 1 and 2 engines are structural apparatus often assigned to structure protection in the WUI.
• Water tenders. Mobile water supply that shuttles from a hydrant or draft site to keep engines full. Unglamorous and absolutely essential.
• Dozers. Build line fast in the right ground and are unmatched for cutting a wide line ahead of a fire. Limited by slope, rock, and wetness, and they leave the biggest scar of any tool.
• Plows. Common in the flat sandy soils of the Southeast, where a tractor-plow unit can cut line at a walking pace.
• Masticators and chippers. Fuels equipment used for mitigation more than active suppression.

Aircraft

The essential thing to understand about aircraft — and the point counselors probe most — is that aircraft do not put out fires. Ground crews do. Aviation slows a fire, cools a section, and buys time for people on the ground.

• Air tankers drop long-term retardant, the red slurry, in lines ahead of the fire to slow spread. Very Large Air Tankers (VLATs) carry many thousands of gallons.
• Single Engine Air Tankers (SEATs) are small, agile, and inexpensive to operate for initial attack.
• Scoopers skim water from lakes and rivers and can cycle rapidly when a water source is close.
• Helicopters are typed by capacity and deliver water by bucket or tank, insert and extract crews, and haul cargo. Type 1 helicopters carry the largest loads; Type 3 ships are light and nimble.
• Air Attack is a fixed-wing aircraft orbiting above the fire from which an Air Tactical Group Supervisor coordinates all aviation and talks to ground resources.
• Infrared mapping aircraft fly at night and produce the perimeter map that the next morning’s planning depends on.

Aviation limits are real: aircraft cannot fly in high wind, heavy smoke, or darkness in most cases; turnaround time depends on distance to the reload base; and drops through dense canopy may never reach the ground. Aviation is also where a large share of wildland fire fatalities occur, so aircraft are not risk-free simply because they are above the fire.

On your map: put a helicopter token over the head to knock down flame length, then move a hand crew in behind it — narrating that the drop bought you fifteen minutes, not a containment line. Place an engine where the road parallels the flank, a water tender at the nearest hydrant or drafting site, and a dozer only where the slope allows it. Show the air tanker laying retardant ahead of the head to slow it while ground resources get into position.

Requirement 7a5: Mop-Up

Mop-up is the work of extinguishing or removing burning material near the control line so the fire cannot escape after it is contained. It is the least photogenic and most time-consuming phase of wildland firefighting — crews routinely spend far longer mopping up than they spent building line.

Why it is essential: a fire is contained when a control line surrounds it, but it is not controlled until the interior no longer threatens that line. Stumps, root systems, punky logs, duff, and ash pits hold heat for days or weeks. One 30 mph gust across an unmopped edge can lift an ember over the line and start the whole thing again.

How it is done:

• Grid the area. Crews work systematically inward from the line — commonly the first 100 feet, deeper if fuels or wind demand it — rather than chasing whatever is smoking.
• Cold trail. Feel with a bare hand for heat, since a smokeless stump can still be hundreds of degrees inside.
• Dig it out. Break apart burning material, separate it, and mix it with soil so it cannot mutually radiate heat.
• Apply water and stir. Water alone runs off; stirring while applying water is what actually cools the pile.
• Use foam or wetting agent on duff and rotten wood where plain water beads off.
• Fell hazard trees that are burning internally or unstable.
• Extinguish ash pits and flag them, because they are burn hazards for anyone walking the area later.

Watch for: heat exhaustion (mop-up is hot, dull, exhausting labor), carbon monoxide in smoldering areas, falling snags, and stump holes that collapse underfoot into buried coals.

On your map: shade the first hundred feet inside your line and show crews gridding it, with a water tender supplying an engine that is supplying hose lays. Mention that you would mop deeper on the side the wind is blowing from.

Requirement 7a6: Repair and Restoration

Suppression repair is the crew’s obligation to fix the damage that firefighting caused, and it is now a standard part of demobilization rather than an afterthought. It is distinct from post-fire ecological recovery, which is a longer, separately funded effort.

Suppression repair — done by the crews, before they leave:

• Water bar hand lines and dozer lines. These are small diagonal berms and trenches that divert water off the line so it does not become a gully during the first storm.
• Pull berms back in. Dozers push soil into a windrow; leaving it there channels water and looks like a road cut for decades.
• Camouflage and scatter. Spread cut brush, limbs, and slash back across bare line so it does not read as a trail and so soil is covered.
• Cut stumps low and disguise them.
• Rehabilitate camps, helispots, and staging areas. Remove all trash, fill sumps, scatter compacted material.
• Repair fences, gates, culverts, and roads damaged by equipment.
• Remove flagging, signs, hose, and equipment. Miles of flagging left in the woods is a real and common problem.
• Block off new access created by dozer lines, which otherwise become illegal ATV routes.

Longer-term restoration — done by specialists afterward:

• Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) teams assess soil burn severity within days and prescribe emergency stabilization for threats to life, property, water quality, and critical habitat.
• Erosion control: mulching, seeding with native species, straw wattles, log erosion barriers, and channel treatments above vulnerable areas.
• Invasive species treatment, because bare ground after fire is an invitation.
• Reforestation where natural regeneration will not happen, and habitat and stream restoration.
• Hazard tree removal along roads and trails before reopening public access.
• Long-term monitoring of vegetation recovery, water quality, and wildlife response.

On your map: trace your dozer line and mark water bar locations at intervals down the slope. Show where you would pull the berm back in and where you would block vehicle access. Then note where a BAER team would focus — above a road, a stream, or a reservoir.

Tying the Six Together

You have now run a fire on paper. Real fires, though, involve hundreds or thousands of people from dozens of agencies who have never worked together before — and somehow that works. The system that makes it work is next.