Fire Expert Witness: Firefighter Death Could Have Been Avoided

I have 43 years of experience in Wildland Firefighting, which includes from basic hand crew work, up to  Incident Commander. I am currently assigned to a Type 1 U.S. Forest Service Interagency Incident Management Team  as an Operations Branch Director, where I regularly am assigned to large wildland fires through the western United States.  I command, manage, and supervise large numbers of resources of all types for wildland firefighting including air tankers, helicopters, fire engines, bulldozers, hand crews, etc. and I am on duty at these incidents for up to as many as 26 days at a time.  I also hold the qualification as a Type 2 Operations Section Chief, where I Command all Operations on Type 2 Incidents throughout the country.

Over the last 36 years I have been an instructor and educational designer, developing and instructing courses in all types of Firefighting, Incident Command, and Emergency Response, from small basic calls, up to and including disaster response.  I have participated in the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Program, and achieved the position of Operations Section Chief overseeing all operations of the Urban Search and Rescue Teams on many deployments to various disasters around the United States.