Potential COVID-19 Outbreak in Fire Camp: Modeling Scenarios and Interventions

The global COVID-19 pandemic will pose unique challenges to the management of wildlandfire in 2020. Fire camps may provide an ideal setting for the transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virusthat causes COVID-19. However, intervention strategies can help minimize disease spread andreduce the risk to the firefighting community. We developed a COVID-19 epidemic model tohighlight the risks posed by the disease during wildland fire incidents. Our model accounts forthe transient nature of the population on a wildland fire incident, which poses unique risks to themanagement of communicable diseases in fire camps. We used the model to assess the impact of twotypes of interventions: the screening of a firefighter arriving on an incident, and social distancingmeasures. Our results suggest that both interventions are important to mitigate the risks posed by theSARS-CoV-2 virus. However, screening is relatively more eective on short incidents, whereas socialdistancing is relatively more eective during extended campaigns. We conclude with a discussion ofmodel limitations and potential extensions to the model.