The wildfire season has begun again. Public information campaigns are in full swing to raise awareness about the risks of fire in natural areas. At the same time, fire services are also preparing for wildfire suppression.
Because despite all campaigns, the question is not whether a fire will occur, but how you respond to it in order to limit the damage.
Sometimes an incident remains small and a fire can be extinguished in its early stages. At other times, large-scale response is required to bring the fire under control. In all cases, the principle applies: the better the preparation, the more efficient the response.
Training is therefore essential to protect our natural environment and its use.
Realism as a starting point
If you are familiar with FireWare, you know what we stand for: realistic staging.
You need realism to make participants believe it is not an exercise. This creates the pressure you would also experience during a real incident. And it is precisely under that pressure that you learn to act.
Our website is full of tools that support this approach. In the Simulation Academy you will find the underlying principles and practical examples.
But wildfires present an additional challenge.
A residential fire, industrial fire, or Workplace Emergency Response exercise can be large, but it often does not compare to a wildfire platoon exercise. The scale is bigger, the environment is less controllable, and unpredictability increases.
The question then becomes: how do you maintain control over your exercise?
Start with the learning objectives
As with any exercise, everything starts with the learning objectives.
In a large-scale wildfire exercise, these objectives can quickly diverge. A firefighter-in-training develops different skills than a platoon commander. While one focuses on operational execution, the other concentrates on decision-making, communication, and coordination.
These objectives determine what you need to stage—not the other way around.
Build a solid foundation
Make sure participants are not unprepared when they enter the exercise.
As an organization, you invest a great deal of time in an exercise. In return, you can expect basic skills to be in place. Think of hose deployment systems, moving firefighting techniques, and knowledge of vegetation. By training these elements in smaller sessions beforehand, you prevent the exercise from getting stuck at a basic level.
During the platoon exercise itself, the focus can then shift to decision-making, communication, and teamwork, as well as the application of previously learned skills in a dynamic situation.
Staging: think big, execute with focus
Staging a wildfire exercise can be challenging. The area is large, and you cannot place physical props everywhere.
You can work with flags or markers to indicate the extent of a fire. This allows for effective training in moving firefighting techniques, hose deployment systems, and logistics.
But where is the dynamics?
How do you determine the rate of spread, which areas are under threat, and how much time you have to protect them? Where do you establish your containment line?
Without dynamic fire development, these remain theoretical decisions.
Dynamics: make the fire visible in motion
If you want to train development, you need to make it visible.
Smoke is a powerful tool for this. It provides visibility from a distance and conveys a realistic sense of threat. This creates pressure to act. When used correctly, smoke makes it possible to let a scenario truly develop.
By placing multiple sources in the field, you can simulate spread and create new ignition points, for example as a result of embers. Not by adding more smoke in one location, but by letting the scenario evolve over time.
The right equipment makes the difference
In wildfire scenarios, you need powerful smoke that remains visible even outdoors.
The Stratus smoke generator is highly suitable for these types of applications due to its high output capacity. In combination with the heavy-duty Smoke Fluid Fire Training Extreme, it produces a dense smoke that lingers even in open-air environments.
With a Smoke Hose Set Perforated, a point source can be transformed into a line source of approximately ten meters. This is ideal for simulating a fire line, such as the head or flanks of a wildfire.
If that is not sufficient, the BAMBI Wildfire simulator offers the possibility to connect smoke hoses up to fifty meters. This allows you to create complete fire lines.
By using multiple setups and activating them in stages, you can let the fire scenario expand step by step.
Working with information
Wildfire suppression is increasingly driven by information.
Map data is essential for determining access points and staging areas, as well as for quickly gaining insight into vegetation types. In addition, up-to-date meteorological data plays a crucial role in the development of a wildfire.
Ensure that during an exercise you work with the same type of information as in real incidents. Use realistic maps, involve the land manager, and work with current weather data. Avoid inventing situations that are not visible or explainable, as this undermines the credibility of the exercise.
Aerial situational awareness
Drones are playing an increasingly important role in wildfire suppression.
If you include a drone team in an exercise, involve them in the preparation phase. They often have specific learning objectives, such as mapping the extent of a fire and tracking its spread.
It is therefore essential that the scenario is also readable from the air. Flags and markers quickly disappear into the landscape, whereas smoke remains visible and moves with the wind. This not only clarifies the scale of the incident, but also the direction and development of the fire.
By adapting your staging accordingly, you create usable information for the drone team and for commanders who base their decisions on it.
In larger areas where physical staging is limited, this information can even be used to further steer the scenario. Not only what is visible, but also what is communicated, then determines the development of the exercise.
Finally
Wildfire response requires a different way of training.
Not just larger, but above all more dynamic. Not only visible, but also understandable. Not just focused on execution, but especially on decision-making.
Realism is not defined by the size of the fire, but by the way it develops.
That is the challenge.
If you have any questions or need support with your exercise, please do not hesitate to contact us. We are happy to think along with you.
In 2020, we also published a news article about staging wildfires:
Staging wildfires – news article
You can read more about realistic staging in the Simulation Academy:
Simulation Academy – knowledge platform for staging
More practical examples of wildfire exercises:
Wildfires – Portfolio
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