Type 1 Management Team to Take Over Sawtooth Fire

The Sawtooth fire will shift from a Type 2 management team to a Type 1 management team in the next few days. According to Sawtooth fire information officer Betsy Ballard, a Type 1 management team was called for in the early days of Sawtooth blaze because of the fire's close proximity to the urban interface. However, "at the time a Type 1 Team was called in a Type 1 team was not available."

Interview with Sawtooth fire informations officer Betsy Ballard:

There are only 17 Type 1 management teams nationwide, two of which reside in Montana. With the west's historic fires, all of the type one management teams have been busy and it wasn't until Wednesday that a team was able to train to take over.

The change in management also coincides with the current type 2 management's allotted 21 days of hands-0n fire patrols.

The shift in management will not only bring new eyes to fire, it will bring a lot more of them. Ballard explains the difference by noting that "the team here might have 35 overhead people and a type 1 team might have 50. which would mean they might have more operations chiefs so they can manage more different operations of the fire." Essentially, Ballard says that the teams are different because of the "complexity of operations they can manage."

The following chart shows where Type 1 and Type 2 teams are currently stationed, keep in mind that more than one team can be assigned to a single blaze.