- [Narrator] Paul Gleason, a long time firefighter, and hotshot superintendent, developed LCES,
Lookouts, Communications, Escape routes, and Safety zones.
- LCES pretty much came from my years down in Southern California in the '60s fighting
fire.
We didn't have squad bosses there called crew pushers.
My job was to make sure the crew was physically fit, running in their boots, as the starch
had green Levi's on and t-shirt.
And chanting, through the fire through the flame onto victory onto fame, hotshots hotshots.
You know...
And that went, real strong in '64, '65 and '66.
And then November 11th when the Loop Fire occurred.
And, 12 fatalities there.
That kind of just swung at least my attitude all the way around from, chanting this kind
of stuff.
And I guess I realized after the Loop Fire, that people could get killed on fires.
And the LCES was for me, and it was so I could, try to, save a house.
Protect some area, accomplish a tactic in volatile condition.
And not end up the end of the year opening up a closet and having 12 skeletons hanging
in my closet.
So, you could be up close and personal with a hot running fire and still do it safely.
- [Narrator] Today, the use of LCES is common practice in the firefighting community and
continues to evolve with each passing year.
In this program, we will focus on the L, Lookout, in LCES.
- A lookout needs to be somebody that's not engaged with the work itself.
And somebody who's monitoring, watching the environment, not watching the ground or swinging
a tool.
If safety is our number one priority, and I believe we all want it to be, then, having
a person apparently, not producing fire line but monitoring the whole fire department is
critical.
- [Narrator] This program will cover: picking a lookout, picking the number of lookouts,
determining the best spot, mentoring a new lookout, looking out in the Wildland Urban
Interface, looking out at night, communicating, talking on the radio, and paying attention
and keeping engaged.
- There's a couple things.
There's a difference between a lookout and a set of eyes right?
A lot of people, maybe they mistake the two.
So there's a person and you might put 'em up on a ridge line.
But, they're just a set of eyes.
I'm just asking them to look at..
Help me navigate, I can't see cause I'm buried in 10 foot brush or in 50 foot trees.
I can't see too well.
I can't see exactly some of the things.
You're just a set of eyes.
They're not telling me to get out, right.
There's a difference.
If you look at the lookout as a component of the LCES system, right, which it is.
The lookouts job is to sound the alarm.
His job is to tell those folks they need to move.
That's their job, that's the sole purpose.
- We want to have the best eyes on the fire as we possibly can.
You want to have someone who has...
At least a few years of fire experience, so they have an understanding of what's important.
If you put someone that's too new in that position and they see a single tree torch,
and they get on the radio, and get a lot people excited about something that's not a big issue,
then, you know, that can cause a lot of confusion on the line.
They got to be confident in their knowledge of fire suppression.
And what's a problem and what's not a problem.
- You need to have somebody that knows fire behavior.
Appropriate terminology.
That way, you know, when you're talking back and forth with them.
If you're their contact on the fire, and they're using the terminology that you're familiar
with.
- Usually we'll have a lookout that is from the area.
Knows the area, knows the vegetation, the fuel type.
Knows the fire activity in the area.
Just because, you can trust someone that has experienced it, that has seen it.
- That's what we mainly look for, is experience and confidence in themselves to be able to
serve as a lookout.
- I'm paying that person to tell me to get out.
I don't want them to go, "Hey, what do you think, should you go?"
I want them to say, "Hey, it's time."
And sort of a sub-part of that decision making is the confidence, right?
You got your crew down there, and you start to second guess.
Is that smoke really a problem?
And what if I...
What if I call those guys to get out and it's nothing, right?
And so there's this balancing act.
You gotta be able to make the decision and you have to have the confidence to pull the
trigger regardless of... if it was a threat or not.
You can tell if somebody has the ability.
We call it the ability to run it.
The ability to run a situation.
And the ability to run it just means that, regardless of the situation, regardless of
how they got there, they're going to continue to solve the problem.
And so there's people that are not confident and they can't run it.
They're not there yet.
And then when they're put in the hot seat, who knows what's gonna happen.
But, I know this person is gonna at least try to solve the problem.
- How they're picked and who should be picked its, there is a difference at times.
And sometimes the wrong person gets picked.
Sometimes it's the one that's a little, I wouldn't say, inept...
But, maybe sometimes not pulling their weight.
Maybe they're not feeling too good.
They might have maybe a small injury, where they can't stay on the line for very long.
But, that's not the right reason to do it because, they need to be able to be mobile.
And also be able to do the job correctly.
- Make sure whoever you have, or whoever you select, you know you can trust them and you
know that they know what they're doing because they are watching your back for you.
- I mean the L, just like any other part of LCES, the L, the C, everything changes depending
on the situation.
What's an appropriate lookout in one situation might completely be overkill or way, you know,
way less than what you need, depending on the situation.
If we go up on some little lightning fire and it's a tenth of an acre and we're all
circled around it, lining it, we're all being a lookout.
Are you really gonna have somebody up on a hill when you can see across the whole fire
and you can see everything around you?
- The real small fires, during initial attack phase, it's pretty simple, all the firefighters
themselves are acting as lookouts for one another.
When you have a small group of people they can look out for one another.
It just depends on the size and location of the fire.
Again, as you start the growth of that fire, you have to provide more lookouts, more of
these people that are working, so if you have broken up into divisions, you might have several
of these people that are being more mobile on that section of the fire, that can see
sections of the fire at a time, so you have multiple lookouts.
- [Leif] So it comes down to, probably how new or unfamiliar you are with that piece
of ground.
So, first day on a fire, with this fire being your first day in this region, first across
the board, right?
You're gonna have a lot of lookouts because there's a lot of unknowns.
There's a bunch of open line, don't know what the fire behavior is, don't know where anything's
at, don't have any reference points, not oriented, whatever.
- [Catherine] A lot of times, it can't just be one person just going and getting that
good, primo spot where they're just gonna see, because there isn't one.
So you're gonna have to have people, best place that I can see this, and somebody else
over here where I can see that, and maybe you can, it's almost like trying to put together
a big puzzle where you just piece everything together off of the different lookouts that
you might have to set up and kind of, get a picture by just everybody pitching in and
seeing what they can see.
- So, that can be the big challenge, is just finding a good spot.
And it takes a while, sometimes it takes a while to find that, especially if you're far
away from the fire and there's no clear view.
- As far as location, I like high points myself.
Somewhere where I can see all around a 360 view, somewhere I can get out on the radio.
- A lot of stuff is just being able to see and to observe the fire.
Sometimes that's the big challenge.
You're in a good place for a little bit, for half the day, things change and then you gotta
move.
And so, if the fire progresses, you need to progress around with it.
- Sometimes it's difficult to get into a good position to be the lookout.
Say you're across the canyon.
You might have to do some serious rock climbing to get up to a lookout.
So then what if something flared up on the fire side and threatened to cross?
How long is it gonna take you to get down?
Or get out of the way?
And maybe going up isn't an option because you might have a long ways, steep country.
It's something, as you're setting up your lookout, sometimes you might defer to put
'em in a place that's not gonna be threatened.
- Obviously the biggest difference is we don't have topography here, we have little bits
of hills but they're pretty minuscule.
Generally when you're at a fire, you're looking at canopy blocking your view of a broader
area.
- I keep thinking about, especially going back east and stuff, I mean we just don't
get as scattered out, typically.
You're looking out from the line.
You're looking out from the edge.
You're not just on a high point somewhere because you can't see everything.
- As we're stretched out up and down this chunk of line, we are each other's lookouts.
So, the tail's back there, and that's where cold black is, that's where our safety zone
is, and so this is our egress from the activity where we're all working out to the safety
zone, so we're lookouts for each other up and down that piece of line.
So we all need to be talking up and down the line and communicating, so that we all understand
the big picture.
Some of the things we'll try to do is get somebody to back up from the fire.
And that may be going out into the lake.
Paddle out into that lake, go out on that island and park out there, you may not be
able to see the exact where the fire is and where the firefighters are, but if something's
puffing up and starting to get real active, it's just like going up high, it's not quite
as good, but we can back up and see the fire activity from what the smoke columns indicating.
- Out west you have a lot different role, you're really able to see everything, see
what everybody's doing, where here, you can't see everybody so basically you're relying
on the communication to know what everybody's doing, what both sides of the fire are doing,
we might send them to what we're gonna call a high spot for this area, it's an area they
won't be able to see the whole fire, they might be able to see a portion, but that's
just an area they can communicate.
Here, most of the time our lookouts are around their truck or able to drive to the point
where they're serving as the lookout.
- We have so much road access down here compared to out west, we got a lot more road systems
in our forest than the western states do, so you can get a lot more places.
Sometimes it's as simple as going around the corner of a road, you might be able to see
one half of the fire over here, or that other half of the fire over there.
- How we use lookouts is we try to find a higher point, if not then we try to find a
best area that's kind of clearing a view to where the fire's at and where the crews will
be working at.
So even if it's on the bottom and it's big enough and clear enough to where you can see
up ahead, where the crews are working, then we'll use that if need be.
- And try to do the best you can to find a spot.
Where you can get on top of a vehicle, or someone that's actually just monitoring smoke,
and an increase in fire behavior.
If we think it's the hottest part of the day we'll maybe get to a safe area, closer to
the safety zone.
If we know previous fire behaviors, if it's gonna blow up or something, things are gonna
start picking up, we'll get closer to the safety zone and not have to rely on the lookout,
because it's so flat.
- We're flatlanders, we don't have mountains to be lookouts, so what we use is aircraft
a lot of the time.
- Another thing we use heavily, heavily in the south is our helicopters, that's probably
our number one lookout.
They have vantage point of every personnel on the ground.
They can communicate with their personnel on the ground.
And they can see what the fire's doing.
It's not uncommon at all to call a helicopter just for a lookout purpose.
- There is a point where, if you're relying on aircraft to be a lookout, there is a point
where they're gonna be gone, that's just a fact.
You should always plan on not having aircraft, because what are you gonna do when they're
gone?
What's your out?
And they're gonna be gone.
They're gonna have to go get fuel, or they're gonna have to go eat lunch, something's gonna
happen.
If you're relying on that and they all go away, then you don't have an alternative,
there's no plan B, and that's not a good place to be in.
- But if you take out that arial lookout that's looking down on your fire, you might have
to have multiple lookouts on each little section of the fire to see all the portions of that
fire.
- If I was gonna train on one thing, it's decision making, because that lookout, their
job is to say, "hey, get out of there."
On paper that's super easy to say, but you need to train, you need to train on decision
making.
The best way to get good at hiking is to hike, right, the best way to get good at decision
making is to make decisions, so they have to get exposure to it.
There's not always the chance for the first year guy to sit on the rock and make the big
decision, the decision to pull the crew out, but there are thousands of opportunities a
season, to put somebody in the hot seat in the sand table and go, you know, no risk,
here, make the decision, practice it.
- If there's a rookie up there, we place them up there with an experienced individual, so
that way they'll teach them what they need to look for, what they need to expect.
- For the new lookouts, just having somebody showing them the actual on the ground example,
here's the fire, here's the crew, this is what's happening, and then explaining to them
their part in all of that and what they should be doing, what's the communication they should
be giving and what are they seeing?
That's kind of where it starts.
You know, there's only so many things you can do, like in a checklist, in a classroom
situation, you could go through all of this stuff, but until they're actually out there,
on a fire, and then they can see it and then be hearing from the person who's training
them, hey, this is what we talked about, this is what it looks like in real life, and then
they're not just sitting up there like, "oh, what am I supposed to be looking at?
What am I seeing?" and it really helps them get more of the idea of all the things that,
instead of them sitting by themselves, is this significant, is this something I should
share?
- You don't just send 'em out and say you're our lookout, alright, goodbye.
Over the course of the day or days, give 'em good feedback.
Definitely at the end of the day, but even during the day you can come on the radio and
come back and say, yeah, that was good, or maybe too much, but still keep 'em encouraged
to the point to where you don't scream and holler at 'em.
You want them to have confidence, to be able to come back and say "hey, this is what I
see, this is what I've got."
If they are giving too much, then say hey, maybe tone it down just a little bit, but
thank you for the information, good for the eyes, thanks for the eyes out there.
It builds their confidence too at the same time.
- It always seems like when you do have crews in the urban interface, where it's shoved
up, shoved up some drainage where you can't see and some houses tucked in, just deep,
deep in the brush or the trees, it's challenging because very rare you come across a structure
that's also a safety zone you can be in there and you feel good with the escape times and
things, it's time to get out, mobility becomes super challenging.
Fire moves fast, if it's burning through the houses it's typically wind-driven, it's not
backing in all gentle, so everything's accelerated timing and speed and getting out, and everything
is a little bit more complex.
It's tough to have a classic lookout in that situation, it's a lot of short-range stuff,
and somebody can see right in front of you what's going on, here, right now, but maybe
not have a complete view of the big picture, and so those things are challenging.
It's right out of LCES, another thought, I think, Paul calls them roving lookouts, for
short-range stuff, where they're just, there's not the location to see everything and so
you're short-range, I can see this operation in front of me, I can see this drainage, I
can see this chunk of line we're cutting right this second and I can see the issues that
effect me here, but I don't have a view of the big picture, so you're relying on a ton
of communication back and forth, because there's a lot more to the picture that you're trying
to fill in for that person and vice-versa.
-
Being a lookout at night is a real challenge.
That in itself, even for the experienced person, you can't really see a whole lot, you have
to base it on fire behavior, because all you've got is smoke and flame.
Sometimes personnel, you can see that, because of the headlamps, but sometimes you can't,
because of the vegetation inside there.
It's tough, all your visual cues are gone.
You can't see the line, you can't see the edge, so there's like, the worst-case scenario
you show up at night, you haven't seen it in the daylight and you're trying to figure
it out to try to keep oriented and stuff, hang glow sticks on the low parts of the line
so you can tell, okay, glow sticks here, everything above it, there should be red glows, anything
below it's no good.
Some basic things like that.
And, again, it's a lot of communication.
Headlamps, people moving around.
It becomes really important for the person on the ground, the person being looked out
for, to be able to communicate back, this is what this is.
At night everything looks worse, you see a glow and man, that looks bad, and the guy
goes, hey man, that's a log buried in whatever, so that person's ability to articulate back,
hey this is what that is, for a frame of reference, that giant glow you saw was nothing.
Or it wasn't a threat and this is why.
Again, it's being able to paint the picture of what's really going on on the ground.
As a lookout at nighttime I find I end up sending people on a lot more hey go find,
go tell me what this looks like missions, go walk that piece, and you see the headlamps,
the glow, and then you get that feedback, they're gonna go, no, that's not an issue,
that's a smoldering log in a rock patch.
I find myself, at nighttime, they probably don't like it but there's a lot more, hey,
go check this out for me, tell me what this looks like, and those types of things.
And then finding a location and stuff too, so if you haven't seen it in the daytime and
you're trying to find a location at night on unknown terrain, you could have great map-reading
skills but you're still gonna have a hard time finding the place and getting into a
good location.
- Trying to find your way back is another challenge.
Getting lost is not fun.
If you walk out there during the day to your site, then you gotta walk back at night.
If you didn't flag your way in, trying to find your way out in the evening's really
tough.
- Helicopters, they might help ease some of those lookout challenges, especially with
the air tech at night, they're a lot less, there's no air tankers flying at night so
they're a lot more focused on the ground people at night, and they can be much more helpful
than in the day.
In the daytime, there's no way you would get that kind of one-on-one, because there's just
so much going on.
- The lookout position can be kind of make or break communication, I mean that really
puts a lot of weight on that lookout spot, it's not just the eyes for the crew but it's
also just the entire operation could be compromised by not getting that right information to the
different folks and then it really could effect the success of the whole mission, and not
just your crew but everybody on the whole division, or the whole fire.
- Because communication's a two-way street.
It works out both ways.
And sometimes they'll communicate back to you, sometimes they forget, and if they do
then that'd be your job to say, "hey, come on, did you hear this?"
After everybody else starts chiming in, and says, yeah, we copy, we copy, and sometimes
that's all it takes, remind some folks, but sometimes maybe they're in a hole and they
can't get out, you have to wait a little bit.
Or it might be something where they really can't, so then you have someone else would
probably go check up on them down the line.
- The person you're talking to who's being looked out for, that communication back-and-forth
is super critical.
He can't see because he's buried in 10-foot brush and the lookout can't see the fire behavior
on the ground and how steep the train is, and the rocks and things like that, it's sort
of the communication that's filling in the blanks for both sides.
That helps the lookout make a better decision, that helps the person on the ground do their
job better.
- And I know for a lot of the new lookouts, it seems to be one of the things they get
nervous about, well what if I don't tell you something when I need to tell you?
And what if I'm not telling you what you need to know when you need to know it, like, what
if something's burning a little bit hotter, when do I get nervous?
- If you're not sure, and I've been unsure so many times, you think maybe, should I call
it in, does it look minor, is it gonna be major, I finally learned, just go ahead and
call it in, if it turns out to be a wrong call at least you were smart enough to call
it in, because it could turn out different the other way.
- I tell those guys, well if you're wrong, we can always go back in, we can always hike
back in.
But I don't wanna get chased out because you're hemming and hawing and hesitating, but I'd
rather err on the side of caution than get chased out of there and fear for my life.
- When I say good communication skills, I'm kinda talking like you need to have your map
in your hand referring to drop point whatever, use very clear language on the radio, and
not a lot of that, "over there by the big rock where we got stuck at" type stuff, that's
what I call good communication skills.
- One of the biggest is just getting the, we're saying the same thing but just making
sure we have the same meaning, for the same terms.
How we say, just our hollers or our creeks, something like that, it's something that that
communication barrier is usually always addressed first couple days, you know, when y'all saying
that, are you meaning this?
And they're like oh, yeah, yeah, and you're like okay, then let's get that squared away
so we won't have any issues there.
- And sometimes they're just not good communicators, that could be another thing, once you put
a radio in someone's hands, the human nature is, I don't wanna talk on this thing.
- You could take a confident 20-something man or woman who's been successful all their
life and you put a radio in their hand and it freaks them out.
So you do that on the sand table 100 times and then when they have to go do it for real
in the field they're a little more confident.
All we're really doing is just giving them a problem.
It's just a random thing, it doesn't matter, it doesn't even have to have a solution.
You give 'em a radio, you give 'em a frequency, you get somebody in the other room on the
other end and they just practice talking into it, they get their little shaky hand when
they're trying to talk into it, the first time and the second time, at some point they
get a little bit more comfortable and that doesn't become an issue, so then you can challenge
them a little bit more.
- One of the things for new people is, they can get too verbal with what's going on, and
so you've gotta watch that, just keep it short, keep it simple, it's not a big conversation
piece.
- A lot of times you get folks that get in those positions and they get a little bored,
especially on slow days, and they start clogging up traffic and just being clear, short and
to the point of passing on messages, don't drag stuff on too long, because especially
if you're on a tactical frequency, as a good communicator, someone who's good with sending
clear messages, and getting to the point, passing the message on in short messages,
not dragging out too long.
- But a lot of people, they're not able to go through the whole process of not having
the immediate feedback that you would get if you were having a conversation with somebody,
face-to-face, or if you're talking with them on the phone, it's not a constant flow of
conversation.
It's a, I talk then you talk then I talk then you talk.
Then there's also the people that are always thinking ahead, they're one step ahead of
you, and those are typically the people that talk over you, you know when you're in a conversation
with somebody and they cut you off in the middle, those types of people I've found have
horrible problems when they're talking on the radio because they can't do that.
Those people that cut you off are kinda, they have to wait for you to get done.
- Sometimes we have certain lookouts that are very good at being a human repeater, I
mean they don't change the message, and they don't alter it, they don't paraphrase it in
a way that takes away the meaning and you can rely on them impeccably to tell the other
person exactly what you're trying to tell them, and that's really key, for me if I'm
trying to relay an important message down to the crew and I'm in a different location
but I can't reach them, if my lookout changes what I'm saying, not intentionally, but if
they just aren't quite understanding, then that increases a lot of the radio traffic
trying to get that clear message through, meanwhile the guys on the other side are getting
something different, and then they're like, what?
That doesn't make sense.
- Another thing about being the lookout, how do they talk over the radio at times?
If they're not real tense and think everything is a big to-do, I guess you could say, that
could be just as helpful to the folks on the ground.
Not the other way, run away, run away!
Everybody grab your shelter and get out!
You'd be surprised in times of a stressful thing the voice over the radio gets you thinking
a little bit better, amping you up.
- But the real main part and the real crux of the whole issue of being a lookout is making
sure that you're paying attention to what's going on and you've got good situational awareness
of everything that's going on.
- You're in one place, and you have to just concentrate on staying awake and being alert,
that's the hardest part.
And you are in the sun, that makes it that much more worse, because you're not moving,
you're not really doing anything physical, so it does work on your mind, put it that
way.
And I can admit it, I've been a lookout before and been bored, been sitting there, kinda
like, there's nothing going on, this is kinda lame, I wish I was down there cutting down
a tree or whatever.
But then I caught myself, I need to get back on, I need to get back on task here.
The way I see it that's the biggest part of being a lookout, is having that constant mentality.
So if you set some sort of a trigger up you kind of reel yourself back in to what you're
really supposed to be doing, you could establish some way for yourself, whatever stimulates
your brain and get back on track, it could be anything from setting an alarm on your
watch or on your smartphone.
- I usually try to pick out stuff.
I'll say, every three minutes, I'm gonna look at these points.
I just turn it into a game, see if that bird's still on its nest over there, every so often,
identify trees as far away as I can, but stay focused in that direction of where you're
supposed to be watching.
- You know, get up and move around, or do some push ups, maybe do, you don't wanna take
a bunch of time and do a bunch of push ups, because it's not what you're supposed to be
doing when you're the lookout, but maybe do like 25 or 30, whatever, get your blood going.
- Yeah, little forms of entertainment, something to do, you can make a little cook fire, have
your lunch, be a little innovative.
Having something else there, like a radio of some sort, if you can get some kind of
reception, but nothing, no ear buds, keeps your mind a little occupied on some things,
but you can still pick up and you can still hear what's going on and you can see what's
going on.
- One of my brothers asked me, did you get any sleep?
I told him I really wished I could, I really do, but that is so unsafe and so stupid that
it's, can't even think of something like that.
I would think that if he or she is really not into it they should step down and let
somebody else take over because its not something that you can just take lightly.
You have to pay attention, you have to be alert, you can't have your mind at home and
your body here.
- When I was first coming up in fire, you did not wanna be as lookout, because you didn't
feel like you was getting full impact of the fire, full access to the fire.
You wasn't down there in the line, you felt like your role may not be as important as
somebody else's.
Don't get discouraged if you keep getting put in lookout.
It's because the people that are putting you in positions just respect you and trust you
and know that you'll do a really fine job, and they're basically putting their lives
in your hands, in case a situation turns bad.
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