What is a GACC?
A Geographic Area Coordination Center: one of the regional hubs that coordinate fire resources across the country.
The country is divided into geographic areas for fire coordination: Northern Rockies (NR), Northwest (NW), California (CA), Great Basin (GB), Southwest (SW), Rocky Mountain (RM), Southern Area (SA), Eastern Area (EA), and Alaska (AK). Each has a coordination center that moves resources inside its area and trades with the others when demand spills over.
Team names carry the codes: NR Team 6 is a Northern Rockies team, SA 2 is Southern Area. A team working far from home is itself a signal: the system is reaching.
For contractors
Know your GACC and its neighbors. Orders flow through dispatch inside the area first, and a distant team on a local fire usually means local resources are spoken for, with demand landing on whoever is positioned nearby.
In the briefing
Team designations in the briefing keep their region codes, so you can see at a glance when a fire is pulling from outside its area.
Related terms
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