Prior to joining EMSI’s cadre in 2005, Buck served over 35 years as a firefighter and Chief Fire Officer for the U.S. Forest Service. During his career in the Forest Service, Buck’s vast knowledge and experience in incident management resulted in his assignment to several critical ICS roles. He has served on a multitude of Incident Management Teams and Area Command Teams since 1983, filling roles in Planning, Operations and Command positions on over 40 Type 1 and 2 major incident responses throughout the U.S. He has also served on National Area Command teams as an Area Command Planning Chief and as Acting Area Commander on multiple major deployments coordinating activities on over 40 separate major incidents. He worked for several years on the NFPA Technical Committee for Fire Occupational Safety and as a member of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) Training Working Team and Incident Operations Working Team. Additionally, Buck was selected to serve as a member of FEMA’s Catastrophic Disaster Response Group.

Buck has extensive international experience in fire management and incident response. As part of a bi-lateral U.S.-Botswana team, Buck served as team leader and was critical to the development of a systematic wildland fire protection program for Botswana. In another example, Buck was specifically requested by the U.S. State Department in 2002 to lead an expert team to help Portugal evaluate their national response to their worst fire disaster in history. He also represented the Forest Service at the 2003 Global Wildland Fire Summit in Sydney, Australia, and, as a member of the International Fire Liaison Committee, co-authored a successful proposal to designate the Incident Command System as an international standard. His numerous senior leadership assignments to significant disasters include experiences in major wildland and structure fires, floods, the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the 2004 Florida hurricanes.

Since joining EMSI in 2005, Buck has taught and coached ICS and incident management to thousands of responders, in the classroom and on exercises and responses, from government and industry response teams around the world. During the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, Buck spent months advising and coaching government and industry responders on incident management at the Incident Command Posts in Houma, as well as the Area Command in New Orleans, LA.

Buck continues using his experience to coordinate and deliver high quality incident management training for EMSI. As a nationally accredited All Hazard Incident Management Team instructor and EMSI senior instructor, Buck trains responders in several position specific courses, as well as serving as an Incident Command System coach for several national level exercises for the Coast Guard and the Department of Energy. Focusing on the future of ICS, he has led several national and international training cadres to develop incident management leaders.