The Wildland Fire Management RD&A hosted three mentees for two week assignments during the summer of 2016. These individuals played a critical in helping WFM RD&A to support incident's use of WFDSS, fire modeling, and decision support. The following individuals provided exceptional support to the field.
Casey Teske
NPS Grand Canyon National Park
Casey provided large fire decision support to the Forest Service in the Rocky Mountain GACC. This includes advising on decision content, seasonal fuels and weather condition assessments, and fire behavior analysis. Casey also participated in daily morning briefings for the regional FAM staff and weekly briefings to the Regional Forester and AD’s. These briefings required Casey to gather and compile fire situation information as well as weather and outlook information and present this information to the regional Fire Planner and to the groups themselves. In addition to support at the regional level Casey also provided in-depth support to several incidents. Incident support included season end date analysis, seasonal assessments and fire behavior and growth analysis.
Daron Reynolds
USFS Medicine Bow-Routt National Forests
Daron provided WFDSS decision support to Region 2. Including advising units on decision content in WFDSS on emerging incidents as well as providing a critique and advice on decision content after the fact to improve future decisions. Daron also ran a few fire behavior analyses in support of emerging incidents as well as providing advice on existing analysis and how to improve those in the future.
As part of providing support to the Rocky Mountain Region Daron provided morning situational briefings to the regional FAM staff and weekly briefings to the Regional Forester and AD’s. These briefings required Daron to gather and compile fire situation information as well as weather and outlook information and present this information to the groups using graphics. Daron developed a spreadsheet with formulas to allow him to enter each day’s data and the sheet would calculate change from the previous day. Staff was most interested in trends. In addition to these other duties Daron also provided some WFDSS overview training to several people.
Sean McEldery
BLM Southern Nevada District Office
During Sean’s mentee tour he worked as a GSAN on a fire assignment to support fires in Region 2. Sean assisted the Pike San Isabel NF and USFS Regional Office in Denver, CO with analysis, decision support, presentations and documentation for the Hayden Pass, Beaver Creek, Arden, White Peak, and Lava Mountain Fires. Sean maintained a positive attitude throughout and was always eager and willing to take on any task assigned. He was adaptable with each situation and always able to produce quality products in a timely fashion. His wealth of knowledge with T & E, NEPA, GIS, along with persistence allowed him to organize and provide key information needed in developing incident decisions, long term products, fire behavior modeling and spatial fire planning. Sean also did an excellent job documenting, making recommendations, and assisting with after action review information for the region.
We would like to extend a huge thank you to all of the mentees!
~WFM RD&A Staff
