There is typically a centralized command on every incident, even if that centralized command is a group of individuals (Unified Command which will be explained in Chapter 7). This centralized command will always provide guidance and direction, but in most instances, the commander will provide the strategy and then give authority to a person who will make the field decisions.
From a historical perspective, we can see that General George Washington was assisted by an outside organization, and that organization was subordinate to the centralized command. We also see that General Washington held planning meetings, which utilized multiple individuals who helped in guiding the direction of the response, creating comprehensive strategies for the incident, or in this case, the war. A similar method is also undertaken in the IMS methods of today. In the planning phase, the centralized command utilizes the expertise of many (who are experts in specific areas) to come up with an overall comprehensive plan that is strategic. This type of planning helps to provide fewer surprises and creates contingency plans for if an incident does not go as expected.
Since the Revolutionary War, the United States Military has used similar methods to organize their strategies. It should be noted that this theory about the Revolutionary War contributing to modern‐day IMS is not widely acknowledged. Nonetheless, it has striking similarities, which might support that the Revolutionary War at least played some type of role in the IMS methods that we use today.
1.2 The Big Burn of 1910
The Big Burn of 1910 is considered, by some, as another incident that helped contribute to modern‐day IMS methods. As can be deducted by the name, this incident was an extremely large wildland fire. Many have called the Big Burn a major firestorm. This firestorm has been known by many different names, including the Big Blowup, the Great Fire of 1910, and the Devil's Broom fire.
To put the immensity of this incident into context, we first must understand the immense geographical area and the massive loss of life that is attributed to this fire. This enormous fire was so vast that it simultaneously affected the states of Montana, Idaho, and Washington, and in total covered a land mass of approximately 4700 mi2, or approximately 3 million acres. This massive fire is credited with causing the death of 87 people (78 of them firefighters), and injuring countless more (Galvin, 2007).
According to historical accounts, the main firestorm burned over 3 million acres in just 36 hours. This occurred between 20 and 21 August 1910. While the main fire, which was driven by 70–80 miles per hour winds, the ongoing clean‐up operations and firefighting efforts to address the smaller fires related to the Big Burn lasted well beyond October 1910.
Prior to the firestorm, various laws and agencies were put in place to protect the environment from man as well as protecting the environment from various types of disasters. In 1876, the US Congress created the office of Special Agent, as part of the Department of Interior. The Bureau of Forestry was created in 1905 by President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, and the responsibility for taking care of those forests were transferred from the Department of Interior, where they were originally placed, to the Department of Agriculture. The new forest service was named the Division of Forestry and the President Roosevelt appointed Gifford Pinchot as the new director (Williams, 2005).
One of the first goals of Pinchot was to decentralize the Division of Forestry from the Washington, DC bureaucrats. Prior to his appointment, almost all decisions about the forests and their ongoing health were made and based in Washington DC. This allowed decisions to be made by mostly uniformed politicians who were well removed from the forests they were charged with protecting. Pinchot believed that decision‐making should be done in the field. He accomplished this by creating forest districts and assigning District Foresters to monitor specific geographical areas (Williams 2005).
As part of his overall strategy, he hired and placed District Foresters in Denver, Colorado; Ogden, Utah; Missoula, Montana; Albuquerque, New Mexico; San Francisco, California; and Portland, Oregon. These District Foresters were charged with caring for these forests, based on the needs of the geographical locational, rather than using standing orders from a distance place. The previous method of standing orders inevitably protected some forests in the United States, while damaging others (Williams 2005). Pinchot believed that the newly formed districts would be more familiar with the unique needs of their geographical location, and those District Foresters would more familiar with local resources that could be utilized to meet those needs.
As part of the decentralization process, Pinchot built the forestry services first warehouse in a centralized location, Ogden, Utah. He filled it with a cache of equipment that might be needed to protect the forests, including firefighting equipment. Not long after creating the warehouse in Ogden, he began building other strategically located warehouses across the nation. He continued to build and fill warehouses in each of the forestry districts. In order, these additional warehouses were built in Ogden, Utah; Missoula, Montana; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Denver, Colorado; San Francisco, California; and Portland, Oregon. This ongoing strategy allowed the forestry service to have the firefighting equipment they needed within the district, and because they were located in locations with rail lines, supplies could be shipped to where it was needed in a relatively short amount of time (Williams 2005).
One of the District Foresters that Pinchot hired was William Greeley. Greeley, who was given the District Forester job in the Rocky Mountains, hit the ground running. Upon his arrival in the Rocky Mountains, he immediately tried to make agreements with lumber companies to help preserve and protect forests, much to the chagrin of Greeley's supervisor, Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot wanted to continue the practice of making verbal agreements with landowners in order to provide for the protection of forest lands, while Greeley wanted the forest industry to take a vested interest in protecting these lands (Williams, 2005).
Greeley continued down the path of trying to secure lumber company partners, and it did not take long before Greeley found a lumber company that bought into this strategy. George Long, who was running the old Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, was convinced that it was in the best interest of lumber companies to help preserve the forests. This decision by Long was partly based on the unbelievable loss of timber that Weyerhaeuser suffered a few years earlier. Because of losses, the company suffered in 1902. Long, and the company, were dedicated supporters of forging large private firefighting cooperatives. In June 1909, Long and Greeley made a formal agreement for cooperative forest management and firefighting efforts (Williams, 2005; “William B. Greeley,” n.d.).
To the best of our knowledge, this was the first formal mutual aid agreement for firefighting (other than landowner agreements) ever made in the United States. This campaign of mutual aid agreements soon spread across the American West. Oregon, Washington, and California soon began creating more forest protection associations, and they looked more at collaborative and cooperative efforts to protect America's landscape.
Greeley also worked to forge agreements with the train companies. Through his efforts, and partially because he tied some fires to trains, Greeley worked to create expedited delivery of firefighting supplies whenever forest fires occurred. Agreements were signed that essentially encouraged those operating trains to provide a quick response of equipment, and if need be, the personnel needed to fight fires. This allowed Greeley to place the equipment near rail lines, as Pinchot envisioned, but it provided priority service, so the trains could rapidly transport equipment to where it was need, much like (Pinchot) envisioned (Williams, 2005).
If another forestry district had an emergency, both manpower and tools could be quickly shipped by rail in a relatively short amount of time. In the grand scheme of things, Greeley felt that animosity should not be at the center of protecting forests. His goal was to protect forests through cooperation and communication among those that had a vested interest in protecting the forests, the stakeholders of the Great American West (“William Greeley,” n.d.).
Looking at IMS methods of today, it does not take much of a stretch of the imagination to see how these historical incidents fit into our modern‐day IMS methods. The first similarity is that Greeley incorporated stakeholders, those with a vested interest in the protection of forest. This is a common practice that is