wildland fire crews: safety, equipment and types of crews

The most important thing is safety, and to that end there is an acronym, LCES, that every wildland firefighter is familiar with:

Lookouts
Communications
Escape routes
Safety zone

In addition, every wildland firefighter knows the 10 standard order and the 18 situations that cry watchout. I wrote about this here.

As for the equipment that they carry and the protective clothing that they wear, go to this webpage from what I think was an episode on Nova (PBS in America) called the Fire Wars. Here you will see a picture and a description of each piece of clothing, protective equipment, and some of the equipment that wildland firefighters carry in their packs.

The U.S. government hires men and women to fill different kinds of firejobs. A list of these firejobs, along with a brief description of each may be found here (seasonal), and for information on permanent jobs go here. For more on hand crews including a brief discussion on the five different levels of hand crews, see this webpage. Information about hotshots, also known as type 1 IHC crews may be found here.

Finally, if you are interested in a brief discussion of what is involved in applying for federal and/or state/local wildland fire crews, see this webpage from the National Wildfire Coordinatiing Group . For example, the Idaho Department of Lands, Fire Management Division has a nice webpage that can be found here with a link to a job page, CAL FIRE's career page is here with links to other related pages, and last but by no means least, for information about wildland firefighting jobs with the NJ Forest Fire Service go here.