Recommendations
1. The Team recommends that the State of Arizona review and possibly update its
approach to mitigating wildfire threat to Arizona life and property. This could be
modeled after communities such as Prescott, AZ; Santa Fe, NM; or communities in other
states. This process could be a cooperative effort to reduce hazardous fuels and improve
overall suppression efforts for communities that are at a high risk from wildfire.
2. The Team recommends that the State of Arizona review the statewide wildfire
communications plan and program, as well as similar programs and plans in other states,
for possible improvements.
3. The Team recommends that the State of Arizona work cooperatively with its fire
cooperators to develop a wildland fire staff ride for the Yarnell Hill Fire incident. The
staff ride is a process of conveying the lessons learned from this incident for future fire
leaders.
4. The Team recommends that the State of Arizona request the National Wildfire
Coordination Group (NWCG) to review current technology that could increase resource
tracking, communications, real time weather, etc. For example, this may include GPS
units and weather applications.
5. The Team recommends that the State of Arizona request the NWCG and/or Wildland
Fire Leadership Council (WFLC) to charter a team of interagency wildland fire and
human factors experts to conduct further analysis of this event and the wildland fire
communications environment.
6. The Team recommends that the State of Arizona request the NWCG to develop guidance
to identify at what point is it necessary to separate the ASM and Air Attack roles to carry
out required responsibilities for each platform.
7. The Team recommends that the State of Arizona request the WFLC/NWCG to develop a
brief technical tip for fire supervisors/agency administrators on the effective use of
VLATs. These are new, emerging fire suppression tools that the ground-based fire
supervisors may be utilizing regularly in the future.

Hindsight Bias
The term “hindsight bias” refers to the tendency people have to view past events as more predictable than they really were before the events took place. After an event occurs, people often believe they could have predicted the outcome of the event before it actually happened.

Sesgo de retrospección: Tendencia de la gente a considerar los eventos pasados como más predecibles de lo que realmente fueron.