2/24/16 S - 520 begins in Tucson

The NIMOs attending a session in the large assembly room.

NAFRI's Bill Miller talks
about changes to 520. The size
of the sim book has not changed!

NIMO is heavily involved in putting on S-520 each year in Tucson.  Today is the review of the simulation in which all students participate.  Big book! Lots of inputs! Participants are working toward their Type 1 certification for working on the most complex incidents. Lots of changes coming to 520 so stay tuned.

Rowdy Muir and Curtis Heaton taking to students
about how to develop a Common Operating Picture.

Honor Guard Attends Harbour Retirement

NIMO is proud to have one of its own, Technical Specialist and Honor Guard Captain Eric Martinez, attend FS Fire Director Tom Harbour's retirement.

Here, Eric makea a presentation from the Honor Guard, honoring his career

The case holds a National flag that was flown at all of the duty stations Mr. Harbour worked at throughout his career, Grey Towers and at all fire stations on the San Bernardino (also the start place of the Honor Guard). 

The certificate reads: For your extraordinary support and assistance in the development of the USDA Forest Service Honor Guard. Your leadership, dedication and commitment to our employees, their families, and the communities we serve; will provide direction for years to come.

2/17/16 Wildfires Near Me - a new tool for real time fire information

This is Kris Eriksen, NIMO PIO.  I wanted to pass along some information from a NIFC webinar I was involved in today; many of you may not have seen it as it was aimed at PAO's and PIO's. I have been working with Ben Butler and his group at NIFC for almost 2 years on a fire information app called Wildfires Near Me, which was announced on the NIFC 2016 NEW PIO TECH TOOLS webinar!  We're pretty excited about it and hope it will be very useful to the public.

The app is based on a similar tool I was introduced to while on the 2014 Bushfire Study Tour of Australia and New Zealand and it focuses on a largely untapped niche - information about new and emerging fires.

It's a tool that takes official fire information downloaded directly from dispatch immediately upon being reported, and merges it with twitter discussions filtered to only tweets about new and emerging fires. It incorporates social media allowing users to tweet or post to facebook without having to leave the app and includes the ability to create a personalized stream of information or alerts about fires near specific locations via texts or emails.

If you'd like to play with the Wildfires Near me tool on the web, go here:  http://www.wildfiresnearme.wfmrda.com/

2/3/16 How to Request NIMO Help On A Project

Most of the NIMOs have been asked at one time or another, how a person, District, Forest or IMT can get NIMO to come help them. We get requests for exercises, simulations, Risk Management training, help with functional training, help with SRA’s, type 3 training and just about any else you can think of.

And while we are Forest Service centric, we do help other county, state and federal agencies when appropriate and when time allows.

If you would like to request NIMO’s help, please go to the PROJECT REQUEST tab on this blog for information on how to make a request: