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Hi I'm Steve Gage with the U.S. Forest Service here at NIFC. And I represent the Forest Service
to the National Interagency Coordination group or NMAC here at the Fire Center in Boise,Idaho.
As you know NMAC gathers during the peak of fire season and we take a look at
those critical resources such as air tankers, helicopters, hotshot crews, engines, smokejumpers,
and other items that... other assets that may be utilized in our wildfire efforts across
the West. And I come to this job with some experience as a Type 1 Incident Commander.
And as a Type 1 Incident Commander I want you to know that I relied heavily on my public
information officer to help communicate the message, not only from the incident management
team but from the line officers that we're working for, the other people that are in
the community, the elected officials. You are the voice for all of these people, not
only on the incident management team side but as far as the community as a whole. And
when I say community, again I go back to the line officers, the people we're working for,
those that are giving us direction. You hold that key to the success of the communication
package for us as we move along. Now when we talk about communications we hear a lot
about risk management. Good communications is a part of good risk management, because
risk is not just for the possibility of somebody getting hurt. There's risk if we don't communicate
correctly, that people don't understand our mission, people don't understand what we're
trying to achieve, people get the wrong idea of how we're going about doing our business.
So I think, today, we need to think about as we move into the 2014 fire season, about
how you all in public information, think about how to be courageous, creative, and committed
to your mission and again that's that mission of good honest communication as we try to
tell our story as we move forward. I talked a little bit about risk management.
So last year in 2013, we lost 34 wildland firefighters across the United States. It's
a terrible loss and you as public information officers are going to have to deal with
questions; you're going to have to deal with those issues that may come up regarding that in
this year's fire season. So, again, this is an area where you need to be prepared. How
we effectively communicate that part of our job as incident managers and part of our job
as fire line officers across the U.S. is we do put people in harm's way. And so how do
we tell that story? So that's a part of that courageous piece. We need to be courageous,
we need to have that ability to stand before the public, stand before the media, stand
before those that are asking the questions and tell our story. We need to talk about
how fire on the landscape works, what's happening with hazardous fuel conditions, what's happening
in our fire business, because our business changes on a yearly basis.
And again, speaking of changes, y'all are faced with quite an opportunity or quite a challenge
with the social media world. So, that's where that creative piece comes into this, how do
I be creative, work within the guidelines we're given, and yet feed the needs of the
people? Again, here's a risk, if we don't get into social media, if we don't talk the
way people want to talk, we don't communicate with people the way they want to be communicated
with, utilizing social media and other traditional media packages, we're not going to be successful.
And again I'm going to use the term "we" because we're all in this together, you just happen
to be on the point of the spear when it comes to communicating with the public, communicating
with the media, many times communicating with elected officials. Like I said, as a Type
1 Incident Commander, I relied heavily on my public information officer to be my voice.
Many times, there would be days when I would not have time to talk to the media. So again,
that's that courageous, creative, and you've got to be committed.
You've got to be committed to do the job to the best of your ability even though it seems
like things are overwhelming and you get on to Tweet accounts or you get into the social
media and things are rolling on top of you and rolling on top of you, you've got to be
committed to keep after it and stay committed to make things work.
It's not an easy business we're in and communication is always the key to making things right and
getting the right message out. We do a lot of business in the Wildland Urban Interface,
there are a lot of activities that go on there that affect a lot of people, again a high-risk
situation. For a public information officer, there is
a high risk that the information you put out last hour is not current this hour, so you
continually have to be upgrading that information. Again, social media, the advent of smartphones,
tablets, all of that new age, ever-changing media market that you work in is really tough.
So again, I would like to encourage you to communicate with each other, communicate with
leadership, communicate with your incident commanders, communicate not only up, but down
and sideways, that 360 degree communication. Be thinking about in this pre-season, how am
I going to be courageous? How am I going be creative? And how committed am I going to
be to get things done right? And do the right thing for the right reasons? So, we value
your work, we value your effort. Sometimes it doesn't appear that way when you have to
keep pushing things up, but we truly do value what you do, we appreciate what you do, and
before we start the 2014 season, I'd like to tell you thank you on behalf of NMAC and
the other leadership within all of the wildland fire agencies and on behalf of myself and
others let's do a great job and have a safe 2014 fire season.
Thanks for all you do.