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Organizational Learning from Prescribed Fire Escapes: a Review of Developments Over the Last 10 Years in the USA and Australia

Current Forestry Reports volume 6, pages 41–59 (2020)Cite this article

Abstract

Purpose of Review

Prescribed fire escapes continue to challenge most fire and land management agencies and many communities. This article considers the issue from knowledge management (KM) and organizational learning (OL) perspectives. We review organizational initiatives and the literature that have developed over the last 10 years to support learning from escaped prescribed fires, then use this to evaluate current learning practices and identify potential next frontiers for improving performance. Due to the difficulty obtaining statistics for non-federal entities, this review focuses primarily on developments in the US Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, but also captures reviews from the US Department of Interior, and the State of Victoria, Australia.

Recent Findings

The recurring issue of prescribed fire escapes may in part be explained by the increasing challenges and expectations fire and land management agencies and prescribed fire managers face. Agencies are being asked to burn more area and suitably contain prescribed fires with fewer resources. In many jurisdictions, this challenge is heightened by increasingly tough climate conditions, shifting demographics internal and external to their agencies, changing patterns of land use, and requirements to meet increasing fuel reduction targets. A range of interventions has been developed and implemented by state and federal land and fire management agencies to support improved performance through KM and OL. However, prescribed fires continue to escape, often for the same reasons they always have, leading us to ask: is there a next frontier or level for improving performance though learning?

Summary

This paper reviews recent developments in KM and OL to develop a model of organizational learning for prescribed fire. We then use this lens to review learning from prescribed burn escapes in Australia and the USA, highlighting the opportunities and challenges that agencies continue to face. Four areas of concentration to further strengthen OL are proposed, namely (i) strengthening the organizational learning culture, (ii) greater use of communities of practice to enhance lesson sharing, (iii) addressing the slow build time for prescribed burning expertise to replace pending retirements, and (iv) improving non-technical skills and human factors training.

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Notes

  1. The term bushfire is a collective term used by Australians to describe fire in the rural countryside and includes grass, scrub, and forest [10]. A bushfire is known as wildland fire in North America.

  2. In the USA, when project resources are not able, or are projected to not be able, to contain any fire outside of the approved burn unit within 24 h, it must be declared an escape. Sometimes an escape is also called when additional funds are needed to pay for contingency resources.

  3. In Victoria, the Forests Act of 1958 designates that DELWP is “responsible for the immediate prevention and suppression of fire and for planned prevention of fires in state forests, national parks and on public protected land” [32, p. 4]. The Country Fire Authority (CFA) is responsible for suppression and prevention of fire on private land in the more rural areas of the state.

  4. The 2018 FLA Implementation Guide cautions against trying to make too much of a single data point (any single event), and falling into the trap of causality, which often leads to creation of “fixes” in the form of system-level changes via recommendations [67].

  5. AFAC: Australasian Fire and Emergency Service Authorities Council (www.afac.com.au/).

  6. “Residual risk” is 100% if none of the land has been burnt. It is not possible to reduce this risk to zero. A benchmark of 70% is seen as a practical figure.

  7. In 2003, a prescribed fire escaped from the Cobaw State Forest, an incident that pre-dated the 2015 Lancefield-Cobaw fire escape. The 2003 escape formed the basis of a staff ride developed in 2012 [101].

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Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Dr. Marty Alexander for his encouragement to conduct this review and his guidance throughout. We also whole-heartedly thank two anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. USDA Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station, Missoula, MT, 59801, USA

    A. E. Black

  2. RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia

    P. Hayes

  3. Country Fire Authority, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    R. Strickland

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Black, A.E., Hayes, P. & Strickland, R. Organizational Learning from Prescribed Fire Escapes: a Review of Developments Over the Last 10 Years in the USA and Australia. Curr Forestry Rep 6, 41–59 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40725-019-00108-0

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Keywords

  • Prescribed fire
  • Organizational learning
  • Knowledge management
  • Escaped fire