Friday, July 30, 2010

Staff Rides - Seeing is Believing

In my last post, I brought up the term staff ride. Are you aware of the Wildland Fire Leadership Development Program's Staff Ride Library?

"The intent of this resource is to provide a library of information on significant wildland fire events in order to assist individuals who want to conduct staff rides to those sites...and to provide a reference source for individuals who want to develop new staff rides for incidents of local interest."

Staff rides are an integral part of being a "student of fire." Physically walking the very ground where an event occurred is a powerful learning experience. Individuals are able to get a sense of the what those who came before them may have experienced--better so than by just reading or hearing about the event.

Those who have given their time to create the WFLDP's Staff Ride Library are to be commended for their efforts. The library captures our history, allowing others to learn the lessons of those who have come before us.

Fireline Challenge: Leave a legacy. Develop and submit a local staff ride for inclusion in the Local Staff Ride Archive.

4 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi Pam
I believe the use of staff rides are a valuable learning tool for the future. Do you know of any work being done to develop these in Australia. I have had some initial discussions with my CFA colleague Roger Strickland here in Melbourne. There is opportunity to develop one of these learning opportunities around a recent burn over here in Victoria Australia.

pmcdonald said...

Rod
I don't have much information about the leadership efforts in Australia. I will ask some of my contacts. Feel free to utilize the WFLDP staff ride template, however.

Maybe others will see this blog and respond.

Thanks for your inquiry. ~ Pam

Unknown said...

Following study tour of USA and Canada by Alen Slijepcevic and Andrew Buckley of DSE, DSE is investigating use of Staff Ride in Victoria. Bit early to update on any progress. Stay tuned Rod

Unknown said...

Rod,
We have and are doing some work to develop staff rides in Victoria. I was lucky enough to experience the South Canyon and Rattlesnake staff rides in 2006 and hopefully we'll eventually get there. I have had discussions with Jim Cook at NWCG and he has assisted me in some of the "organisational planning" :-)