Build a Fire Readiness Plan

This is the closest thing in the badge to what a real fire planner does. Pick a place you know well — your Scout camp is the ideal choice — and answer the question a duty officer has to answer at 2 p.m. on a red flag day: if a fire starts here, what happens next?

Choose your area carefully, because the whole project depends on it. Good candidates: your council’s Scout camp or a district camping property, a park or greenbelt near your home, a family farm or woodlot, or your own neighborhood if it sits in the wildland-urban interface. Look for somewhere you can walk, somewhere with real features worth mapping, and somewhere small enough to cover thoroughly. A few hundred acres is plenty; do not try to plan an entire national forest.

Part One: The Map

Your plan needs a map, and the map carries most of the information. Start from a real base — a printed topographic map, a satellite image, a camp property map, or a county parcel map — and add your own layers on top. Draw it by hand if you like; a hand-drawn map that shows the right things beats a beautiful one that does not.

Available resources

Mark everything a fire response could use.

• Fire stations with response distance and estimated response time to your area.
• Staging areas — large flat open spaces where engines and crews can gather safely.
• Helispots — clear areas at least the size specified for the helicopter type, away from wires and tall trees, with an approach and departure path.
• Water sources for aircraft — lakes, large ponds, and reservoirs a helicopter bucket could reach.
• Radio coverage gaps and high points where a repeater or lookout could be placed.

Water supplies

Water is the resource everything else depends on, so be specific.

• Hydrants — location, and whether they are on a municipal system or a camp system with limited storage.
• Draft sites — ponds, streams, and tanks where an engine can physically set up and pull water, including whether the approach is drivable.
• Storage tanks and cisterns, with capacity if you can find it.
• Swimming pools and stock tanks, which count in the WUI.
• Seasonal reliability. A creek that carries water in April and is dry in September is not a water supply during fire season, and noting that distinction shows real understanding.

Natural and manmade barriers

Anything a fire has trouble crossing is a potential control line.

• Natural: rivers, streams, lakes, rock outcrops, talus fields, wet meadows, bare ridgelines, and areas that burned recently.
• Manmade: paved roads, gravel roads, wide trails, mowed fields, parking lots, fuel breaks, agricultural fields, and irrigated lawns.
• Note the quality of each. A two-track dirt road with grass growing down the middle and brush leaning over it is not the barrier a 30-foot paved road is.

Access

Access decides outcomes, as you learned in Req 4b.

• All roads in and out, marked by surface type and width.
• Gates and locks, and who holds the key.
• Bridges, with weight limits — a bridge that will not hold a loaded engine changes everything.
• Dead ends and single-access areas, marked clearly. These are where people get trapped.
• Turnaround points for large apparatus.
• Trails usable by foot crews or UTVs.

Part Two: The Written Plan

The map shows what is there. The written portion explains what it means. Cover each of the following.

Fuel loads

Describe the fuel across your area using the vocabulary from Req 5a: fuel type, load, continuity, ladder fuels, and how it changes by aspect and elevation. Note where the heaviest concentrations sit and where fuel is continuous from wildland right up to a structure. Photographs of representative areas make this section much stronger.

Available fire apparatus

List what would actually respond, not what you wish would respond. Which department has initial attack responsibility? What engines and tenders do they run, and how many people staff them? How long until additional resources arrive? Is there an air tanker base or helitack base within useful range? Does your area have a mutual aid agreement, and with whom? A phone call to the responding department will answer all of this, and they will usually be glad you asked.

Structure protection needs

Walk the buildings and assess each one the way you learned in Req 4b: roof material, vents, decks, siding, and the first five feet. Note which structures are defensible, which are not, and which ones you would triage out because no engine could safely work there. Include propane tanks, fuel storage, generators, and utility lines.

Values at risk

Values at risk is the fire planner’s term for everything a fire could damage that matters. Be broad about it: lives first, then homes and buildings, then infrastructure (power lines, water systems, communications, roads), then natural resources (timber, watershed, habitat, threatened species), then cultural and historic sites, then recreation assets. Rank them, because a plan that does not prioritize is not a plan.

Medical and evacuation considerations

• Nearest hospital and trauma center, with distance and travel time.
• Medevac landing zone if the ground route is long.
• How many people could be on site at peak — a Scout camp in July is a very different problem than the same camp in February.
• Special needs populations: young Scouts, anyone with mobility limitations, and anyone housed away from the main area.
• Evacuation routes, primary and alternate, with the trigger point that starts an evacuation and who has the authority to call it.
• Assembly areas and a head-count method.
• Notification — how everyone on the property gets the word, including people out on a trail.
• Shelter-in-place locations if evacuation is not possible, and why you selected them.

Potential fire suppression tactics

Finish by running scenarios. Pick two or three ignition points — the most likely spot, the worst-case spot, and one in between — and for each, describe likely fire behavior given typical fire season weather and the terrain, the anchor point you would use, whether you would attack directly or indirectly, where the control lines would go, which resources you would want, and your LCES for the crews working it.

If a mapping project is not what you are after, the next option trades the drafting table for a conversation with someone who fights fire in your county for a living.