A video from the U.S. Air Force’s Air Combat Command.
Now that spring has arrived and nice weather is on the horizon, it’s easy to forget nature’s potential for destruction…
Wildfires… They can be ignited naturally from things like lightning but over 80% are caused by man. Many manmade wildfires are started by cigarettes, camp fires, and arson. Last year there were more than 63 thousand wildfires, burning over 3.5 million acres of land. They can occur anywhere but forested areas and areas with extended dry periods are the most susceptible.
So make sure you’re as prepared as possible. Know the risk’s and have a disaster plan. Plant fire resistant plants around you home and make sure it’s clear of dead matter like leaves and twigs. If advised to evacuate, do so immediately. Smoke inhalation is very dangerous so stay low and seek medical attention if needed.
Remember to prepare today to avoid disaster tomorrow.
The Predictive Services section at the National Interagency Fire Center has issued their Wildland Fire Potential Outlook for May through August. The data represents the cumulative forecasts of the eleven Geographic Area Predictive Services Units and the National Predictive Services Unit.
If their predictions are accurate, portions of California, and later in the period Washington, Oregon, and Idaho, will have higher potential for wildfires.
Here are the highlights from their outlook.
May
Above normal wildland fire potential will develop across portions of California and will continue for most of Hawaii.
Above normal wildland fire potential will persist across southern Alaska.
Wildland fire potential across the north central portion of the U.S. will return to normal in May.
Below normal wildland fire potential will develop from New Mexico and Colorado through Georgia delaying fire season onset in these areas.
June
Above normal wildland fire potential will expand across California, into southwestern Arizona, and the Pacific Northwest as fire season develops in earnest.
Wildland fire potential in Alaska will return to normal.
Portions of the southeastern U.S. will continue to see below normal wildland fire potential.
July and August
Above normal wildland fire potential will persist across the Pacific Coast states and expand into the northern Great Basin and northern Rocky Mountains during the summer months.
Monsoonal moisture will likely develop during this period returning southwestern Arizona to normal wildland fire potential.
And as a bonus, here is the Drought Monitor, released April 30, 2015:
After being indicted by a Federal Grand Jury in August, 2014, the unexpected deaths of two witnesses caused the federal government this week to move to dismiss the charges against 32-year-old Keith Matthew Emerald for starting the 2013 Rim Fire that burned 257,000 acres in the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park in California.
The government’s motion to dismiss the charges characterized one witness as critical to the case and stated that he had been expected to provide trial testimony regarding his discussions with Mr. Emerald shortly after he had been rescued from the vicinity of the Rim Fire’s origin. That witness died in a workplace accident in February. The second witness was the helicopter pilot who first responded to the Rim Fire. That witness had been expected to testify about the initial response to the Rim Fire and the rescue of the defendant very close to the Rim Fire’s point of origin. That witness died in March of cardiac arrest.
These witnesses’ prior statements now are considered hearsay and cannot be used as evidence at trial.
In its motion to dismiss the charges, the government stated that it had reassessed the case in light of the loss of this anticipated trial testimony and determined that without that testimony it was unlikely to prove the charges in the case beyond a reasonable doubt to the unanimous satisfaction of a trial jury. Accordingly, it was in the interests of justice to dismiss the case.
According to court documents, Mr. Emerald was rescued by a CAL FIRE helicopter from the extremely remote Clavey River Canyon area of the Stanislaus National Forest near the origin of the Rim Fire about an hour after the fire was reported. He was carrying bow hunting equipment with him and advised authorities that he had been on a solo hunting trip.
The CAL FIRE crew turned Mr. Emerald over to a U.S. Forest Service Fire Prevention Technician, who was not a law enforcement officer. He was later given a ride out of the forest by a government employee, but no one asked him for any identification. Investigators believe they were able to overcome that oversight. Later they applied for a search warrant for Mr. Emerald’s house and his vehicle, expecting to possibly find evidence in his computer, cell phone, backpack he was carrying that day, or elsewhere on the premises.
During the extensive investigation and multiple interviews with Mr. Emerald, he told investigators several different versions of how the fire started, including:
Illegal pot growers;
He inadvertently started a rock slide, causing rocks to collide, creating sparks, which started the fire;
He said he started a campfire and burned some trash in it. The burning trash blew into vegetation, starting the fire which escaped.
Mr. Emerald later recanted the campfire story.
Investigators ruled out all possible fire causes other than “incendiary/intentional fire start by human”, the court documents revealed.
The most significant unanswered question about the 19 fatalities on the 2013 Yarnell Hill Fire is, why did the Granite Mountain Hotshots leave the safety of a previously burned area and walk through unburned brush toward a ranch. Undoubtedly some of the firefighters that were working on the fire heard radio transmissions during which the order to relocate was discussed, but due to lawyering-up and the refusal of the U.S. Forest Service to allow their firefighters to provide information, other firefighters may never know why or by whom that fateful decision was made.
It is possible that a simple device costing less than $200 could have recorded the fireground radio transmissions and this issue could have been settled within hours of the accident. And a lesson may have been learned, preventing other firefighters from making the same mistake.
Cockpit voice recorders in an aircraft capture conversations and radio transmissions, dash cameras in law enforcement vehicles record audio and video, and recently there have been recommendations that every police officer wear a body camera.
One of the recommendations from investigators following the death of Dallas firefighter Stanley Wilson, and earlier than that, Dallas Lt. Todd Krodle, was that on-scene radio transmissions be recorded.
Firefighter Wilson’s widow, Jenny, said she had one simple wish: that fireground radio transmissions be recorded. After the Dallas FD balked at spending the money, FirefighterCloseCalls looked into recording devices. Here is an excerpt from their article:
…Stop the bullsh*t—a system that records repeated or simplex radio transmissions won’t break the City-or most any other jurisdiction. It can be done through a central location or battalion chief buggies can be equipped with them…simple fireground recorders. And you don’t even need to form a committee.
As an example, I searched and found www.FireVideo.net and for much less than $200.00 each, you can have a dash (or rear of command buggy) recorder with audio and video for every buggy-it can record over 10 hours and it automatically turns on.
So let’s just say the “big D” has 9 battalions and a few other senior chiefs/safety officers etc per shift. So, for about $2000.00 total, EVERY on-duty DFR buggy has a working, state of the art recorder. That’s less than it will cost to buy lunch at the next city council meeting. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. That was easy.
Either way, it’s 2015 and it’s ridiculous to not be able to go back and listen to fireground channels-after fires that went well or ones such as this one where Captain Wilson was tragically killed.
Look, if we can go on the Internet and watch Freddie firefighter with his helmet cam stretch a booster line to a raging mulch bed on fire, fireground channels can be recorded right at the buggy. It may cost some a little money, but that’s the price of putting a sign in front of a building and calling it the “FIRE DEPT”.
Recording fireground radio transmissions on a wildland fire is very different from recording those at a structure fire, but that does not mean it is impossible, or that we should throw up our hands and say it can’t be done. Low power direct transmissions from hand held radios do not travel much beyond line of sight, but if there were a few recording devices in vehicles scattered around a fire there is a chance that a key conversation could be recorded that might later lead toward a lesson learned.
It would not be a perfect system. Not every channel would be recorded, and some would be missed. But for less than $200 per Battalion Chief’s vehicle, a National Forest, a state agency, or a county fire department with a heavy wildland responsibility should experiment with a few devices.
The Yarnell Hill Fire burns into Yarnell, Arizona in 2013. Photo by Joy Collura.
A Maricopa County Superior Court judge on Wednesday dismissed two lawsuits filed against the state of Arizona by residents of Yarnell whose homes burned in the 2013 fire that killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.
The judge decided that the state did not have a duty to protect the property when it undertook management of the fire. The homeowners plan to appeal.
The 8,400-acre fire destroyed 127 residences in the Yarnell area.
Cold Brook Fire April 13, 2015, looking northwest shortly after the prescribed fire crossed Highway 385. Photo by Benjamin Carstens (click to enlarge)
The same U.S. Senator who earlier made some guesses about what caused the Cold Brook prescribed fire in Wind Cave National Park to escape control in South Dakota, burning an additional 5,420 acres, has introduced a bill that would require “collaboration with state government and local fire officials before a prescribed burn could be started on federal land when fire danger is at certain levels in the area of the prescribed burn”.
The text of Senate Bill 1100 introduced by Senator John Thune is not yet available; the passage above was included in a newsletter distributed by his office on April 29.
Our position is that it is very appropriate for the legislative Branch to provide oversight of actions taken by the Executive Branch of government. However, that oversight should NOT be a knee-jerk reaction based on the quick assumptions and guesses of a Senator about what caused a particular outcome. Wait until the facts are in, THEN provide reasoned advice based on science.
An example of a Senator’s ready-fire-aim approach to fix a perceived problem is Senator Maria Cantwell’s and Representative Doc Hastings’ hastily conceived Public Law 107-203 in 2002 following the Thirtymile Fire that killed four firefighters. That bill resulted in the firefighters’ crew boss being charged with 11 felonies, including four counts of manslaughter. The law destroyed the process of obtaining information about the cause and prevention of serious accidents on the fireline. We hope that Senator Thune is not following in Senator Cantwell’s ill-conceived footsteps.
Politicians should take a breath, and resist the overwhelming temptation to criticize the administration of the other party before the facts are known.
Below is a press release from the office of Senator Thune:
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“Thune Introduces Bill to Prevent Reckless Prescribed Burns on Federal Lands
U.S. Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) last night introduced a bill that would require collaboration between federal and local officials before initiating a prescribed burn on federal lands when fire danger is high. Thune’s bill follows two prescribed burns in South Dakota in the past two years that have burned out-of-control, one set by the Forest Service (FS) in northwestern South Dakota known as the Pautre Fire and most recently one set by the National Park Service (NPS) on April 13, 2015, known as the Cold Brook Fire at Wind Cave National Park.
“Over the past two years, the federal government has twice exercised a complete disregard for imminent fire danger by starting prescribed burns under unsafe conditions in South Dakota,” said Thune. “The Pautre Fire caused extensive property losses and both fires required multiple firefighting units, equipment, and personnel to fight the out-of-control fires. It is reasonable to require federal agencies to collaborate with state governments and local fire officials before setting prescribed burns under these conditions, and that is exactly what my bill would do.”
Both prescribed burns in South Dakota were started under extremely dry conditions. Thune’s bill looks to address numerous issues that came about as a result of these fires. Under Thune’s bill, the Cold Brook Fire would not have been set due to the restrictions on prescribed burns during dry conditions unless state and local officials had consented. Additionally, if this bill had been enacted at the time of the Pautre Fire, individuals impacted by out-of-control burns would be reimbursed for their damages in a timely manner. Pautre fire victims still have not been reimbursed by the FS, nor has the FS accepted fault.
Thune’s bill, the Prescribed Burn Approval Act of 2015, would require the head of a federal agency to first collaborate and obtain approval from state government and local fire officials if the Grassland Fire Danger Index indicates a high, very high, or extreme fire danger or the FS has declared very high or extreme fire danger. Thune’s bill also stipulates that should a federal agency proceed with a prescribed burn that damages private property, it is liable for any damage to private property caused by the burn, with damages to be paid within 120 days of receipt of a substantiated claim.
They can be ignited naturally from things like lightning but over 80% are caused by man. Many manmade wildfires are started by cigarettes, camp fires, and arson. Last year there were more than 63 thousand wildfires, burning over 3.5 million acres of land. They can occur anywhere but forested areas and areas with extended dry periods are the most susceptible.
