Missoula Emergency Teams Train To Respond To Urban Fire, Practice In O’Brien Creek

The Missoula All Hazard Incident Management Team is doing a simulated wildfire incident exercise on April 12 and 13. Office of Emergency Management Director Adriane Beck explains.

“We are going to play out a fire that occurs in the O’Brien Creek drainage,” said Beck. “We will be using real information as far as where houses are actually located. We will use some projected fire growth based on what we anticipate conditions would be for the given day and time of the incident. We will give those injects to the role players and to the team members for them to make decisions based on them.”

Beck says it is more of a pen and paper situation so no one will actually be on the ground in the O’Brien Creek area. This unique team was formed a few years ago and some members of the team helped combat the Roaring Lion Fire last year.

“The team was formed in response to several events and several lessons learned over the years as far as our capability to manage large incidents, which are typically constrained by an individual agency’s available resources,” Beck said. “The notion that we have individuals from several agencies that can come together to help any one agency is really the purpose of this team.”

According to Beck, the local incident management team is comprised of individuals from city fire, Missoula Rural Fire, The Sheriff’s Office, The Office of Emergency Management, DNRC, and some folks from the U.S. Forest Service.