_____ personnel provide support to line personnel and internal or external customers.

• A. Line
• B. Staff
• C. Authority
• D. Decentralized

Answer: (B)

Line personnel are the crews who directly perform the firefighting, rescue, and incident response tasks. Staff personnel exist to support those line crews and serve internal or external customers with specialized expertise and services, such as training, safety oversight, planning, logistics, human resources, and public information. This supportive role helps ensure that operations run smoothly and that both internal teams and the public receive the necessary services and guidance. The other terms don’t describe a type of personnel: line refers to those who do the frontline work, authority relates to command structure, and decentralized describes how an organization is organized, not a personnel category.