National Interagency Fire Center
The National Interagency Fire Center, or NIFC, located in Boise, Idaho is the nation's wildland fire support center. National fire management programs from federal agencies represented at NIFC include the Bureau of Land Management, the USDA Forest Service, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the National Park Service, and the Fish and Wildlife Service. These agencies manage wildland fire on nearly 700 million acres of federal public land, or one-fifth of the total land area in the United States.
The federal fire programs located at NIFC along with their partners including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration/National Weather Service, the U.S. Fire Administration/Federal Emergency Management Agency, the National Association of State Foresters, and the Department of Defense, work together to coordinate national fire planning and operations at NIFC. Using interagency cooperation, the NIFC organization provides leadership, training, and policy oversight to manage the nation's wildland fire program.
NIFC’s highly successful interagency concept extends across the nation and internationally maintaining firefighting arrangements with Australia, Canada, Mexico, and New Zealand. NIFC also provides support for many kinds of national all-hazard emergencies from volcanic eruptions in Hawaii to flood and hurricane relief in the Eastern states and Puerto Rico.
Although the focus of NIFC is wildland fire suppression, fire programs include other types of fire management such as hazardous fuels treatments, integrated fire and land-use planning, information resource management, and more. Fire management is designed to achieve not only suppression goals, but to accomplish a broad spectrum of natural resource objectives in an efficient, cost-effective manner.
