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Wildland fires are becoming more frequent, larger, and more intense, due to heat waves, droughts, and other environmental shifts driven by climate change. These fires impact vast and diverse geographical areas across the entire United States, ranging from public forest lands to utility corridors to the wildland-urban interface (WUI), where human structures and development meet or mix with undeveloped wildlands or vegetative fuels.
Wildland fires are a major public health and safety concern, impacting life safety, public and responder health, private property and businesses, the economy, and ecology. Response, mitigation, and prevention efforts for these fires are complex, requiring a multi-disciplinary, all-hands approach.
To adequately address the complexity of the wildland fire problem in the United States, a comprehensive look at national policy for wildland fire management and mitigation is required. This is the task of the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, which was jointly established in Dec. 2021 by the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of the Interior (DOI) and the Department of Homeland Security’s Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).
The Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission is requesting your input in February and March to develop recommendations for congressional action on a variety of wildfire mitigation and management topics. These recommendations will influence the formation of national policy related to:
- The prevention, mitigation, suppression, and management of wildland fires.
- The rehabilitation of land devastated by wildfires.
- A strategy to meet aerial firefighting equipment needs through 2030 in the most cost-effective manner.
The Commission held its first meeting on Sept. 14-15, 2022, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and established topical workgroups for the full suite of issues it was tasked to address in the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission Act of 2021, which became law on Nov. 15, 2021, as part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
The Commission has scheduled topical workgroup meetings throughout February and March. The Commission is requesting that any recommendations pertaining to the topic of an upcoming meeting be submitted prior to that meeting so that workgroups will have time to consider the recommendations and decide whether to advance them to the full Commission and ultimately to the U.S. Congress.
If you are interested in submitting recommendations, see the USDA’s website for more information on the Commission, its federal statute, upcoming meeting topics and dates, and submittal instructions.
If you have questions or would like more information, please contact the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission at wildfirecommission@usda.gov.
(Sources: USDA, FEMA, USFA)
The Society of Fire Protection Engineers (SFPE) has just released a WUI Virtual Handbook for Property Fire Risk Assessment and Mitigation. SFPE is hosting a webinar on Feb. 13 at 1 p.m. EST to introduce the new handbook to fire department personnel. SFPE will also host its 2023 Virtual WUI Summit, a series of sessions with subject matter experts in February and March focused on how fire engineering can reduce fire hazards in the wildland-urban interface (WUI).
Firefighters and fire departments operating in the WUI may conduct property fire risk assessments to facilitate structural hardening and adherence to defensible space guidelines or requirements. However, many WUI property fire risk assessments are based on simple checklists that don’t provide fire departments with the flexibility they need to make informed recommendations on assessment and mitigation in the field. Moreover, fire departments around the United States vary greatly in their experience with fire hazards in the WUI.
The purpose of this virtual handbook is to provide engineering-based resource materials to support fire departments in the WUI who conduct property fire risk assessments and recommend mitigation strategies.
The handbook is divided into two sections: 1) Structural Hardening and 2) Defensible Space. Within each section, the handbook provides numerous visual examples of structural or defensible space elements that create vulnerabilities to wildfire. For each structural hardening or defensible space element, the handbook provides a summary of the main concerns; typical design, vulnerability, and mitigation considerations; relevant codes and standards; mitigation strategies; available training; current gaps in knowledge; and links to additional references.
This handbook is intended to function as a reference to provide guidance and supplement existing approaches to property risk assessment. SFPE expects to expand the handbook as new information becomes available, including adding sections referencing community-level considerations.
This resource was developed with funding support from a FEMA Fire Prevention & Safety Grant.
You can access the WUI Virtual Handbook on SFPE’s website in two formats: 1) an interactive webpage with hierarchically organized, expandable sections and 2) a downloadable PDF document.
To learn more about this valuable resource, register for SFPE’s webinar on Feb. 13 at 1 p.m. EST. The webinar is free and open to all. Registration requires creation of a free account on SFPE’s Member Portal. Membership in SFPE is not required to create an account. The webinar will be recorded and available on-demand after the event.
Users of the new WUI Virtual Handbook may also benefit from attending one or more sessions of SFPE’s 2023 Virtual WUI Summit, scheduled on Feb. 15, 22, 28, and March 14, 2023. There is no cost to attend, and the Summit is open to anyone interested. The Summit will be an opportunity to hear from experts and to offer input to the SFPE Foundation’s WUI Working Group. The WUI Working Group wants input from stakeholders to identify and prioritize the areas of greatest need where engineering-based solutions can have the greatest impact. See SFPE’s webpage for the Summit for information about each of the four sessions and a link to register.
(Source: SFPE)
The Department of Homeland Security, (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I&A), National Threat Evaluation and Reporting (NTER) Office recently launched an eLearning module for the public titled Foundations of Targeted Violence Prevention.
Acts of targeted violence continue to impact the safety and security of our communities. These acts of targeted violence are not impulsive or irrational; rather the perpetrators of these incidents decide to commit violence and often undertake clear processes of planning and preparing in which threats or potentially concerning behaviors can be identified. Bystanders and third parties can impact and prevent targeted violence if they know how to recognize potentially concerning behaviors.
The goal of this new course is to educate the public on threatening or potentially concerning behaviors and where to report them, providing an opportunity for intervention to prevent targeted violence from occurring.
The course is free, self-paced, and estimated to take about one hour to complete. The course audience is broad, intended for all federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and private sector homeland security partners and community members.
DHS I&A partnered with the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to develop the course. It was developed based on the research and guidance of federal homeland security partners, including research published by the U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center (NTAC).
Because members of the Emergency Services Sector (ESS) interface with the public in a variety of ways, they may benefit from the awareness information this course provides. Additionally, emergency services personnel can help with the effort to educate the public on targeted violence prevention by encouraging the public to take this free online course, or by becoming directly involved as an educator on this topic through DHS I&A NTER Office’s related Master Trainer Program on Behavioral Threat Assessment.
Access this course, Foundations of Targeted Violence Prevention, on DHS’s website.
(Sources: DHS I&A, Wisconsin DOJ)
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