FOCUS Wildfire management
• adoption of LACES (Lookouts/Awareness/ Communications/Escape Routes/Safety Zones) protocol in safety briefings
Operations and timeline
Although the WTA Concept of Operations suggests a minimum of two WTAs in a deployment, the decision to initially provide five proved to be beneficial, as it allowed some personnel to be committed to support fireground operations whilst maintaining WTA support to the incident commander and command team. In order to maintain WTA resilience, additional personnel were requested, and two WTAs and a Burn Suppression Team were mobilised from South Wales FRS. Work continued at Saddleworth, with regular situational assessment and tactical briefings provided to the incident commander and command team until a point was reached when the involvement of the WTA was being scaled down. When Winter Hill was declared a major
incident by LFRS on 30 June, there was only one WTA from Northumberland FRS remaining in attendance at Saddleworth. Given the serious concern about the risk to the Winter Hill mast installation, the Northumberland Tactical Adviser was redeployed to Winter Hill and the South Wales WTAs and Burn Suppression Team, who had been released from Saddleworth earlier that day, were redirected to the Winter Hill incident with the agreement of SWFRS. Defensive burn operations were undertaken, with the WTAs and the SWFRS Burn Suppression
26 SEPTEMBER 2018
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Team undertaking operations extending beyond midnight to burn out vegetation and fuel load surrounding the masts, to protect them from the risk of a wildfire burn over. This operation was very successful and eased a lot of anxiety about the potential impact of the wildfire damaging or destroying mast infrastructure. Focus of WTA operations now turned to Winter Hill, and relief WTAs from Northumberland, Hereford and Worcester and Defence Fire Risk Management Organisation (DFRMO) were mobilised, with additional deployments from Lancashire and Merseyside ensuring that support could be maintained to the incident command team. A further request was made by GMFRS for WTA
support for the Saddleworth incident on the evening of 1 July, resulting in WTAs from Dorset and Wiltshire, and Hampshire, being mobilised early on Monday morning and arriving at around 12.30pm. In addition, remote advice for the GMFRS incident command team on helicopter tactics and deployments was provided by a WTA from South Wales, with considerable experience in managing aerial operations. As well as the provision of tactical adviser
support and advice on the areas previously provided by WTAs on the first deployment to Saddleworth, the latest tactical advisers have also assisted with the management of aerial assets and the identification of some environmental considerations relating to mitigating potential watercourse contamination. Ongoing support from NFCC WTAs continued until GMFRS and LFRS were content for the deployments to be drawn to a conclusion.
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