Incident Records Management Information Brief

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What is it?

Agency records retention policies that pre-date changes in resource management practices have led to destruction of some wildland fire records. Many of these records have long-term value for planning and implementing fire management actions under the revised Federal Fire Management Policy. A partnership between the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and Federal fire agencies will improve the management of wildland fire records.

What kinds of records are included?

The project objective is to provide long-term accessibility to records that document the role of fire across the landscape. Therefore, the project will develop retention policies for:

• Wildfire Incident Records
• Wildland Fire Use Records
• Prescribed Fire Records

What's being done?

 An interagency team has revised the outdated record retention policies. The National Archivist has approved new rules making some wildland fire records “permanent” (to be retained in the National Archives in perpetuity). Agencies are moving to inventory their legacy (older) fire records so they can identify both paper and electronic fire records with long-term value that should be preserved in the National Archives for research.

Standardized filing protocols for organizing records at the incident have been developed in collaboration with the National IC Committee. These standardized filing protocols will facilitate the transition of Incident Management Teams, will simplify management of records by the home unit, and will identify permanently valuable fire documents.

What's the benefit of the project to Fire Managers?

The project addresses management of both future wildfire incident records and “legacy” records that may currently be taking up valuable office space or stored in insecure and inaccessible storage environments. Working with NARA and the Federal Records Center's (FRC) storage facilities, fire managers will benefit by:

• Increased “intellectual control” of fire data on which to base proposed actions
• Increased ability to respond to litigation, scientific, political and public data requests
• Reduced volumes of fire documentation stored in insecure environments such as warehouses, attics, engine bays, etc.

For more information, contact:

Richard Boyden, Director, Records Management Program, NARA Pacific Region, 1000 Commodore Drive, San Bruno, CA 94066, (650) 238-3461 or <richard.boyden@nara.gov>