One Sunday afternoon in July 1989, numerous lightning strikes were hitting the Payette National Forest in Idaho.

Firefighter Sue Douglas was on standby when a call came. A fire had been spotted. She and her partner jumped into their pickup and drove to the fire location. The team worked all night to control the fire, slept for two hours, and continued working until all the glowing embers had been extinguished. Most so-called initial attacks are on small fires, and putting them out involves hard work. "Today [2001], we stop 98 percent of our wild land fires during initial attack,"30 said Mike Dombeck, chief of the USDA Forest Service.

The First Response

Douglas's experience is typical of how firefighters organize their resources to respond to fires. The dispatcher closest to the Payette National Forest had received a call from an observer reporting a fire in the area under Douglas's jurisdiction...