DOINews: NPS: Southern Area Interagency Incident Management Teams Conduct Training Exercise

From Feb. 2 to Feb. 4, the Southern Area Interagency Incident Management Teams (Red, Blue, and Gold) met for a training exercise in Atlanta, Ga., in preparation for the upcoming year.


Due to a lack of fire assignments from the previous year, this session provided "an excellent way to knock the rust off of current members, and to build cohesion with new members," said Mike Wilkins, incident commander for the Blue Team.


Approximately 331 personnel from federal, state, and local government agencies from across the nation worked together to bring an incident to a successful conclusion. The training incident was based on the Butler Fire, an actual incident that occurred in August 2013, on the Klamath and Six Rivers National Forests.


The mission of incident-management teams is to safely, effectively, and efficiently manage all incidents they are assigned by maintaining a cadre of skilled and productive team members.

The Southern Area is one of 11 geographic areas throughout the United States that manages wildland fire and other incident-management activities, such as natural-disaster-relief efforts.

For more information about the Southern Area Incident Management Teams, please click on the link below.

By: Christopher Derman, public information officer, NPS

Feb. 10, 2015


Related Links:

NPS-The Morning Report

Southern Area Incident Management Teams