A special thanks from FEMA to the U.S. Forest Service
It happens only in special circumstances: The Federal Emergency Management Agency has presented its Outstanding Public Service Award. The recipient is the U.S. Forest Service, which the agency says has rendered “outstanding assistance … in providing guidance and information to FEMA concerning forest and grassland fires, and programs to mitigate the effects of such fires in the future.”
The USFS, a part of the Agriculture Department, has been involved in several efforts, explains its assistant director of fire and aviation management, Bill McCleese:
- Using evaluations of disastrous wildfires to improve mitigation of future fires. The research is identifying fire prevention measures that affect such items as building codes and housing development design.
- Participating in a national plan for federal response to catastrophic earthquakes. (See “In the Future: Interagency Federal Response,” on page 32.]
- Developing a tool to identify parts of the country where weather conditions are so severe that, if a fire started there, it could quickly become a disaster. The Forest Service issues a daily map that highlights such areas; it will be testing that system’s predictions against last year’s stored fire data and this year’s unfolding wildfire experience.
The Forest Service has a refined national response mechanism through its highly trained National and Regional Response Teams for wildfire, and its role in earthquake response would draw on that experience. The Forest Service’s responsibility will be for coordinating fire control—bringing in equipment to replace that destroyed by the earthquake, as well as additional people.
