When I saw mention of “Branch 11” I thought someone had misread Branch II as Branch 11. Nope! This fire actually has that number of divisions. The feds would have split this fire into 2-3 “zones” with a Type I team for each zone and put an Area Command team as IC. Cal Fire disagrees with this and thus has this number of divisions and says that the ICS was not designed to have two command teams on one fire. The feds say that is true, but more than 5-6 branches exceeds the desired span of control of 5. As this is going to occur more frequently in the future, perhaps we need to rename a group of about 5 branches and have multiple zones under one IMT. As for the title of the position in charge of a “zone,” I think “Zone Patron” has a ring to it, but that sounds silly. So what is left? Zone Chief (would cause confusion with operations, plans, logistic, etc.). Zone Senior Director (too wordy?) or Zone President (implies a democracy), maybe Zone Manager (managers are normally subordinate to directors), Zone Assistant IC (implies that there would be Zone IC’s) or Zone Vice IC?
I downloaded the missing persons list and noted it has about 100-110 persons on it. I hope all are found, but I don’t think that will be the outcome, unfortunately. Most seem to be at least 60+ years in age. I don’t think that is a cause, but reflects the existing demographic of that area.