IMETs do what they do so that when they are deployed to a wildfire in order to give the wildland firefighters the best incident specific weather forecasts possible. I was wondering about the annual refresher training that IMETs receive, so I corresponded with the staff of the NWS IMET office on Facebook asking them about their annual refresher training. IMETs save lives!
Q1. Random Ramblings: Is annual refresher training in person or on the web or both?
NWS IMET office: The annual IMET refresher training is a combination of virtual, in-person, and continuing education webinars.
Q2. Random Ramblings: I understand that IMETs get 20 to 40 hours of annual refresher training to keep their skills sharp, can you give me some examples?
NWS IMET Office: We have several avenues of training. First, we have our virtual workshop, which is a 1 day webinar-type workshop where IMETs go through things like updates to software and hardware that is used in the field, updates on administrative items we have to do in order to get out the door and get paid (paperwork, travel, etc.), updates on the GOES satellite and its capabilities, updates on our upper air system and how to send that data back to the NWS from the field so it can be used by other forecasters, and information on Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM), which is basically how people react to stressful situations.
Then we have our in-person workshop held every March. Here we bring in all the new IMET Trainees as well as 1/3 of our veteran IMET Cadre and we run them through training and scenarios for a week. We touch on the same items as above, but in addition we practice briefings over handheld radios, working with the RAWS equipment (portable ground observation systems), giving media briefings, etc. We also chose a topic to focus on each year. This year was focused on what a burnout operation is (where firefighters do a controlled burn to get rid of the fuel between a break - fireline, handline, dozerline - and the fire so that when the main fire gets to the area that has burned it doesn't have any fuel to burn and the fire diminishes or goes out). Every year it is required that all firefighters go through an annual safety refresher that includes practice deploying a fire shelter. We hold a class at our workshop so that those IMETs that attend in-person get the safety refresher done at the workshop. Those that don't attend in person take the annual safety refresher training near their home unit. We also have numerous "continuing education" webinars on all sorts of topics to keep us sharp on the latest in science and technology as it pertains to wildfire and fire weather.
Q3. Random Ramblings: To clarify, the annual refresher safety training includes fire shelter deployment, fire behavior and fire safety?
NWS IMET Office: Yes, the annual safety refresher is actually taught by the fire agencies (Dept of Interior or the US Forest Service) and we attend those. All sorts of fire safety issues are addressed such as fire behavior, burnover situations, aircraft safety, etc.
Q4: Random Ramblings: IMETs are already at least journeymen (general forecasters) so they probably get training as needed for new technology and software (models, radar, software and our new GOES 16 and 17 satellites. Might this annual refresher training cover changes to technology, equipment, software, etc. used in the field?
NWS IMET Office: Yes, a lot of what we do in refresher training is learn about the latest in capabilities of satellite, radar, observing systems, etc. Our software is continually being updated and we ensure that our IMETs can use the latest version of the software that is on their system. It is akin to being a pilot or other specialist, we train often on the equipment and the information it is telling us so that we stay proficient and ready to go any time.
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