#36 - Secret Ingredient To Learning

At The Portage

Let’s go back to that moment at the portage, about noon on Monday, 12 September 2011: Four firefighters (two two-person teams) heard a roar in the distance and had to decide what to do. They considered disregarding it—it couldn’t be the fire after all.

(Surprise … it was the fire.)

They decided to get in their canoes, paddle for their safety zone as hard as they could, and get as far from the shore as possible, as fast as possible.

Good move. They didn’t know this yet, but the fire was blowing up with unprecedented power. They were directly in its path, and their margins were quite thin. So, their choice to go hard for their safety zone when they did—that probably saved their lives.

How did they get this key decision right?

Don’t take it for granted that their moves were obvious or predetermined. Actually, just two days earlier, they handled similar risks differently.

On Saturday, 9 September 2011, when the fire was picking up, firefighters pushed their luck, delayed heading for their safety zone, and went back in one more time real quick to finish tasks in places they already escaped from.

Actions like those would have worked out fine, under normal conditions in that area. But under Saturday’s conditions, there were close calls. Then, under Monday’s even more extreme conditions, those same actions could have been fatal.

So, the fact that firefighters acted differently on Monday versus Saturday shows that they learned and adapted. And this learning was important, because it likely saved their lives.

That answers our first question: Why did they make the good decisions they did on Monday? Answer: Because they learned from their close calls two days earlier.

Side note for the terminology nerds: I’m not trying to pin down a definition of “learning” just yet. For now, I’m modestly asserting: If there was a change in performance, then learning occurred.

Why They Learned

Alright, but that leads us to a new question: What did they actually do to make learning happen?

To find this answer, let’s zoom in on that moment at the portage, and dive deep into their decision-making as they started paddling hard for their safety zone. We want to know: What made the difference in the actions they took?

Like good investigators, if we want to understand a specific decision, we put it in context. To do that, we need to look at what led up to it.

So let’s rewind to about 1130 Monday morning:

After a slow morning, Alex and Avery meet Les and Lynn at the Hudson-Insula Portage (at the southwest corner of Lake Insula) around 1130. They talk about Saturday’s close call, and decide they’ll talk to supervisors and turn something in to document it when they get back to town.

While they talk about Saturday, the smoke and wind increase, and there’s a sound in the distance to the southwest. Could be the fire, but they don’t believe it—the fire is miles away; they’re at least a day or two from it. The radio traffic this morning was about activity on the west and south ends of the fire, nothing in their direction. The wind is gusting to about 15 mph. Maybe that’s what they hear—just the wind in the trees? Then it fades.

Les and Lynn head over to the Hudson side of the portage to get their canoe — if they have to leave in a hurry at some point today, they’ll need it on Insula.

Alex goes to the high spot on the portage for a better vantage point. This high spot is the best chance to hit the repeater; it’s almost impossible east of here.

He tries to radio Air Attack to get information on the fire, but can’t reach him.

The noise, smoke and wind build, and Alex’s doubts begin to disappear. He reaches Quinn (Division Trainee on the nearest staffed division, several miles to the west), and asks if there are any aircraft available to get eyes on them. Alex says, “We can’t see the fire, but we can hear it.” Quinn says he’s unsure how far the fire has moved, he’ll work on getting aircraft up and will get back to them.

Les and Lynn tell Alex they’ve decided to paddle west to break camp before bringing their canoe over to Insula. He tells them, “That’s no longer an option; you need to get that boat and run.” 

They rush to the Insula landing, and launch at 1216, heading [east] to “bigger waters, and to get away from the smoke.” Alex radios Quinn to say he senses the fire’s making a run to the east, and they’re “about to get slammed.” Quinn tells him, “Get somewhere safe.” …

Alex wonders if they should go back in and check a campsite for public, but Les says there’s no time.

(Pagami Report, pp. 6, 7)

So it turns out, before they decided to race for their safety zone, these firefighters were talking about the close calls they lived through on Saturday. No doubt they talked about how the fire outran their expectations, how it almost cut them off, how they didn’t get good updates during the blow up because they didn’t have good communication with Incident Command at that time. As they talked, the fire was building in the distance (again). The warning signs were ambiguous (again). Radio communication with Incident Command was unreliable (again). But this time, they took the warning signs more seriously and responded more decisively.

I believe, what primed them to make the decisions they did on Monday, was the act of talking about their close calls from Saturday.

Living Through It Was Not Enough

You might think that the cause of their learning was simply that they lived through the close calls on Saturday. It’s a reasonable idea. After all, these four firefighters had all experienced the close calls two days before. But look closer — just experiencing the close calls was not enough to make their actions Monday so drastically different.

On Monday morning they still wavered, still debated. They still underestimated the fire. Les and Lynn considered going back to get their overnight gear, but Alex said no. Alex considered going in to check just one more campsite, and Les said no. This shows that just experiencing Saturday’s close calls was not enough. No, the important part was that the four of them were talking to each other about the close calls.¹

That’s what made the biggest difference in their action that day.

That’s what led to their learning—and ultimately to their survival: Communication.

Up Next:

But these two canoe teams were not the only ones who survived the blow up on Lake Insula. Another team (Jess and Jamie), would deploy a fire shelter in the lake. Yet another team (Ryan and Robin) would escape via emergency extraction by float plane. So let’s dive deeper into their stories, and see what was behind their success and survival. We will do that in the next post.

Photo Credit: Aaron Thomas, Unsplash

1. The reasoning here is: Their margins were tight. If they had taken a different action or waited much longer, there could have been a different outcome. So what we are interested in is not only what factors affected their decision-making, but what factor/s were powerful enough to get them to take the actions they did, when they did.

Experiencing the close calls must have affected their decision-making. But I don’t believe they would have made the moves they did, when they did, if it were not for the fact they were actually talking about the close calls.

So that’s the argument for why communication was the most important factor.

The next post will provide a test of this argument. We will go into examples of firefighters who only talked about the close calls, and did not experience them.