![]() ![]() To help better prepare those up and coming leaders, the Crew puts on various courses and classes. In doing so, we develop capable, effective and confident leaders. By putting crewmembers in leadership roles while on assignment, this gets them out of their comfort zone, as we mentor and train them for their next step in their careers. To develop effective leaders, the Crew facilitates multiple Tactical Decision Games (TDG’s) to build our crewmember’s decision-making skills by building mental slides that they can reference in real life scenarios. Kern Valley IHC puts a huge emphasis on training our crewmembers and in the development of new courses, training methods and techniques to create effective leaders and to answer the basic question of “How do we get more chains on the ground?” The initial approach, lessons, values, and work processes simply continue to be improved and refined to meet new challenges. There is only one contiguous version of the Kern Valley Hotshots. The Kern Valley Hotshots have had a total of 5 crew superintendents. The crew would come to be designated as Crew 1, the Kern Valley Interagency Hotshot Crew. Through informal peer recognition by the R5 hotshot crew superintendents present, the crew was a hotshot crew. At this time there was no formal process for certifying hotshot crews. Anthony regards this fire as the seminal point when the crew became a hotshot crew. During the Wheeler Ridge fire near Ojai the crew was able to turn the corner on a key piece of line enabling containment of the 180,000-acre fire. The 1985 fire season was busy, and several large fires burned in Southern California. ![]() The crewmembers stayed in small two-person travel trailers situated uphill from the station. The station was powered by generators and lacked phone service. “The Peak” as it was known consisted of three large trailers and a mess hall. In 1985 the crew moved to the Chimney Peak Fire Station, Anthony became a BLM permanent employee, and all the crewmembers were now strictly BLM. The crew was initially a collection of BLM and Forest Service firefighters known as Crew 6 who worked out of the Blackrock Work Center on the Sequoia National Forest. In the spring of 1983, a 26 year old Anthony Escobar reported for duty. Rick’s quest to find the right person for the job took him to the nearby Los Padres National Forest. He began with the selection of a Superintendent. He started the process of putting together a crew. Rick viewed having a hotshot crew on the district as a solution. Much of the credit for the formation of the Kern Valley Interagency Hotshot Crew lies with former Bakersfield District FMO Rick Haffenfeld.
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