BLM announces the first Veteran Interagency Hotshot Crew

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The Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) Oregon/Washington office announced today the Lakeview Veterans Fire Crew has achieved certification as the Lakeview Veterans Interagency Hotshot Crew (IHC). Of the 112 IHCs throughout the nation, Lakeview Veterans is the tenth BLM-funded hotshot crew, and the only one focused on recruiting and developing veterans.

Interagency Hotshot Crews are the most highly trained and experienced type of hand crews and they must meet and maintain stringent requirements to achieve the IHC status. Their primary mission is to provide a safe, professional, mobile response to all phases of fire management and incident operations. IHCs are staffed, conditioned, equipped and qualified to meet a variety of strategic and tactical wildland fire assignments, and they are typically relied upon for the most challenging fire assigments. When not committed to fire assignments, IHCs provide a workforce to accomplish a variety of resource management objectives while maintaining availability for incident mobilization.

In 2016, Lakeview Crew 7 and the Lakeview BLM fire organization requested that the Lakeview Veterans Crew begin the process to be certified as an IHC. Over the subsequent two years, the Lakeview Veterans Crew took steps to meet the IHC requirements before being formally certified at the national level.

“We’re proud of the Lakeview crew and the continued efforts to develop a workforce of Veterans. We recognize the diligence and tenacity required to meet Hotshot crew standards, which demonstrates the exemplary quality and performance ingrained in this crew,” says Jeffrey Fedrizzi, BLM Deputy Director, Fire

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