I will focus on type I and type II crews, engine crews, smokejumpers, contract crews, and single resources, as described in the Fireline Handbook (National Wildfire Coordinating Group 1998).

Type I Crews (Hotshots)—The National Interagency Mobilization Guide (National Interagency Fire Center 1999) describes type I crews as the primary firefighting force. Each crew must meet the minimum standards specified in the Interagency Hotshot Crew Operations Guide (Anon. 2001) These standards specify working and training requirements, experience levels, and the assignment of permanent supervisors. Because of these requirements, crewmembers are able to establish deep understandings of each other as people, work out their own internal division of labor, and learn how to fight fire together as a tightly knit crew. In most instances, one would expect high cohesion in hotshot crews.

Type II Crews—The guide describes type II crews as “any crew, which does not meet experience, financing, training, and travel requirements of a type I (IHC) crew.” Type II crews are the same size as type I crews, usually 18 to 20 firefighters. A temporarily assigned crew boss often leads them. Smaller field crews from different districts are combined to make up an 18 to 20 person type II crew. These types of crews are assembled on an ad hoc basis. The smaller crews brought together to form the type II crew often have not trained or worked together on previous fires or projects. When they are assembled, many of the members may not know one another. Based on this social arrangement, one would not expect strong intracrew cohesion, including bonds to the assigned crew boss. There may be strong intracrew cohesion within the separate district crews. However, until the different crews have worked together for a while as a type II crew, their overall intracrew cohesion is probably low. Further study is needed to determine what it takes for type II crews formed from different crews to develop intracrew cohesion.

Smokejumpers—In the National Interagency Mobilization Guide, smokejumpers are described as a national resource. Their primary mission is initial attack. Everyone I've talked to said it would be wrong to think that smokejumpers work in cohesive crews. Different jumpers are assigned for each initial attack. Because they work together in this fashion, smokejumpers don't have continuous and stable working relationships from one fire to the next, as do hotshots. Smokejumpers feel they belong to an elite firefighting unit with a unique work culture, complete with the symbolic trappings of uniform, rituals, and lore. Membership in this community creates special bonds. However, these bonds are not to a single crew. Further study would be needed to answer the question: What are the communication problems that smokejumpers face, and how do they manage these problems when they are required to quickly create intracrew cohesion when starting initial attacks?

Engine Crews—The appendix in the Fireline Handbook (National Wildfire Coordinating Group 1998) describes the makeup of engine crews. The number of people in an engine crew varies according to the size of the fire engine pump and tank capacity. Most Forest Service engine crews have about three members, with one person assigned as the captain, or engine boss. These small crews that work together throughout a fire season may have the potential to reach the intracrew cohesion levels found in hotshots. However, cohesion among engine crewmembers also needs to be studied.

Single Resources—Another category of people available to assist in fire suppression is identified as single resources. Some examples of single resources are dozer operators, aircraft pilots, and engine crews. Future studies of these different types of single resources should focus on successful work practices used when these resources attempt to blend in to the intercohesive firefighting crews, especially during wildfire transitions.

Contract Crews—The use of contract firefighting crews is relatively new in the wildland firefighting community. I have not talked to anyone about the social organization or cohesion levels in these kinds of crews. Contract crew cohesion and how these crews integrate with other types of firefighting crews remains to be studied.

Recommendations From the Human Factors Workshop—A 5-day human factors workshop was held in Missoula, MT, during June 1995. Experts in psychology, sociology, formal organizations, fire safety, and wildland firefighting were brought together. On the last day of the workshop, 21 recommendations were formulated. Two recommendations focused on improving cohesion in fire crews:

• Develop methods to speed up crew cohesion and work practices before fireline assignments.
  
  
• Organize more national, regional, and local rendezvous where there is more mixing of type I, type II, engine, and helitack crews, fire management officers, incident management teams, and dispatchers so they can share knowledge asnd discuss problems.

Recommendations From the TriData Study—In 1998 the TriData Corp. completed a major study on the fire safety culture. A report from the study, Phase III—Implementing Cultural Changes for Safety, made two specific recommendations about improving fire crew cohesion:

• Unit cohesion should be fostered and attention given to developing good crew dynamics.
• Foster better crew cohesion, especially among type II crews.

Management Evaluation Report of the Thirtymile Fire—The incident review board wrote about the problem of people who were unfamiliar with each other working together:

• There were a number of issues that limited the development of crew cohesion for the Northwest Regular No. 6 crew. These included: collateral duties of command, fatigue, incident complexity, lack of opportunity to work together, and management effectiveness.

These reports from workshops, studies, and fire fatality investigations all recommended working to increase the cohesion of wildland fire crews.