i wonder, if you are as well trained as they were are you more likely to put yourself in bad positions thinking you can overcome them?
That's been a consideration - the "gung ho" syndrome.
The Storm King tragedy was a failure of command and communication. The weather service tried to get the high wind forecast to the firefighters but apparently the message got lost along the way. Then there was the issue of putting people on that mountain below the fire under those conditions when there were no immediate values at risk other than a few bushes.
Way down below in the canyon, a bunch of residents were watching the fire high above and there was some pressure on the leadership (I dunno if they even used ICS back then?) to "do something."
The LCES combination is
supposed to prevent this sort of thing. In theory, you are
never supposed to be where you cannot retreat to a safety zone. If course, this all depends on current and expected conditions, as to how big of a safety zone is needed and how far away it can be.
Southwest incident team leader Clay Templin said the crew and its commanders were following safety protocols, and it appears the fire's erratic nature simply overwhelmed them.
I don't believe that's true at all. If they were following safety protocols, then they would have had a reasonable escape route to a safety zone.
