History
Prior to the 1930s, wildland firefighting crews were organized on an "as-needed" basis, hiring firefighters without any formal experience or training. The Civilian Conservation Corps, which operated from 1933 until 1942, was a work relief program that employed young men primarily in natural resource conservation projects. However, CCC members were also utilized for fire suppression operations, marking the first time that standing crews had been established for this purpose.
At least one of the first crews carrying the name "hotshots" grew out of a former CCC camp in the San Bernardino National Forest in Southern California. Conflicting sources report the first hotshot crews as starting in 1946 (Del Rosa and Los Padres Hotshots) or 1947 (Del Rosa and El Cariso Hotshots). In 1961, the Interregional Fire Suppression (IRFS) program was developed, establishing six 30-man crews across the Western U.S. These IRFS crews were stationed near airports for quick transportation to high-priority fires. Due to their effectiveness and value in fire management, the program expanded to 19 IRFS crews by 1974.
In 1980, the term "Interagency Hotshot Crew" was adopted by all IRFS crews. In the mid-1990s, an Interagency Hotshot Crew Operations Guide was developed to standardize the training, responsibilities, and recognition process of IHCs. The number of IHCs has grown to 107 as of 2009, with crews sponsored by diverse federal, state, tribal, and local agencies.
Read more about this topic: Interagency Hotshot Crew
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All things are moral. That soul, which within us is a sentiment, outside of us is a law. We feel its inspiration; out there in history we can see its fatal strength.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Books of natural history aim commonly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God’s property, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors always dwell.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)