Air Spray Aviation Services, which operates Lockheed L-188 Electra “Longliner” air tankers and Turbo Commander 690 “Bird Dog” aircraft in Canada, has established a new United States headquarters at Chico, California. They announced yesterday that they have acquired a BAe-146 airliner which they will convert into an air tanker.
Currently Neptune Aviation operates two BAe-146 air tankers which were converted by the Prince Edward Island based Tronos Aviation. Minden Air Corporation has been working on converting a BAe-146 for at least a couple of years but their version has not yet dropped on a fire. Minden has a contract with the US Forest Service to supply two of them, one in 2012 and the second in 2013. Aero Flight has a contract to provide two Avro Rj85s in 2013, an aircraft that is a variant of the BAe-146.
The BAe-146 is considered a “next generation” air tanker by the US Forest Service. It is jet powered, can cruise at 498 mph, and the Tronos version has a maximum capacity of 3,000 gallons of retardant.
A Facilitated Learning Analysis for the entrapment of an engine crew tells the harrowing story of five firefighters who had a very close call on the Flat Fire on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in northern California July 14, 2012. Their survival may have been due in part to the fire above them burning through the trunk line on their hose lay, causing a leak which sprayed water on the fire creating an opening for the crew to escape back to the engine. Until then, at least one of the crew members thought he was going to die.
The crew of Engine 1 was attempting to suppress a 1/4-acre slopover below a road by installing a progressive hose lay. Initially the fire behavior was minimal, with one-foot flame lengths. They had completed 300 feet of the hose lay when the main fire made a run up to their location.
The entire FLA can be found here, but below is an excerpt:
…The Engine 1 Engine Operator (ENOP) takes substantial heat from the fire run and takes shelter in the engine, then gets out and begins defensive engine protection with a 1.5 inch hose. This run hits the fireline and ignites additional spot fires east of the B spur to the south and east of the position of the Engine 1 crew and the original slopover. Flame lengths and rate of spread on these fires increase dramatically. The amounts of smoke and noise on the B spur increase also with the increased fire behavior making communication over short distances nearly impossible. The Engine 1 Engine Boss (ENGB) calls Division Supervisor (DIVS) Z (T) and states that they are abandoning the hoselay. This transmission is heard by Engine 2 and the engine Strike Team Leader and Strike Team Leader trainee (who are driving up French Creek Road towards DP-2). DIVS Z (T) responds saying that he had been trying to contact the ENGB to advise them to withdraw from their position because of increasing fire behavior, but was unable due to the high level of radio traffic. Radio traffic on Division Tac only pauses briefly and then resumes to being almost continuous.
The Engine 1 ENGB and the crew begin to rapidly withdraw back up the slope towards the engine as the fire closes around them. The ground is wet and slippery with foam from the initial suppression efforts and the slope is about 30 percent. The ENGB considers escaping downhill and rejects this option because it would mean leaving the ENOP in a hazardous position. As the crew moves uphill towards the engine, fire downhill of them continues to close, compromising a downhill escape route.
The ENOP considers cutting the hoselay and escaping in the engine and rejects this option because it would mean cutting off the water supply to the crew’s hoselay, leaving them without protection. The ENOP continues defensive engine protection.
The fire makes another run up from Pelletreau Creekand the fire to the east of the B spur closes to block the escape route of the Engine 1 crew while the crew is about 30 feet from the road, creating an entrapment.
Visiting the site after the incident, a member of the crew stated, “I thought that I was going to die, right here.” After a moment, the fire ahead of the entrapped crew burns through the trunk line on the hoselay spraying water on the fire and creating an opening for the crew to escape back to the engine.
As the crew reaches the B spur, there is a large pine torching next to Engine 1 and the front left tire is burning along with vegetation next to it, making their position at the engine untenable.
The ENGB transmits over Division Tac that the channel be cleared for emergency traffic, and then calls DIVS Z (T) on Division Tac requesting additional resources and states Engine 1 is on fire and that he is abandoning the engine. All five crewmembers from Engine 1 walk north up the B spur about 150 or 200 feet until they reach cooler air and less smoke. DIVS Z (T) calls the Engine 1 ENGB and confirms that the Engine 1 crew is accounted for and there are no injuries. Three crew members from Engine 1 then move west to the black and onto the dozer line. Hearing the declaration of“emergency traffic” from Engine 1, DIVS Z returns to the engine, which is still running but is abandoned. At this point, the fire behavior has moderated dramatically. He backs the engine off the burning vegetation into the road and then continues to DP-2. The Interagency Hot Shot Crew (IHC) Superintendent drives down from DP-2 and sees the ENGB and ENOP on the B spur. He takes the ENOP back to the engine (and the ENGB follows on foot) and together they extinguish the burning tire with a fire extinguisher from Engine 1 and the pump on the superintendent’s vehicle, check the engine for additional fire and damage, and then move the engine onto the dozer line.
Quite a bit of the country is under a red flag warning today, including portions of California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Minnesota. Other than California, this may be one of the last red flag warnings for these states, as precipitation and cooler weather will be moving into some of these areas.
Last Friday, September 28, a firefighter’s life may have been saved when he was extracted from an approaching fire by climbing into a helicopter’s water bucket.
At least that is what was reported in a SAFECOM that was filed on September 30, 2012. We talked with Tom Lavagnino, the Information Officer on the Type 3 Incident Management Team that on September 29 transitioned onto the fire where this reportedly occurred, replacing a Type 2 team. He said that neither he nor the Incident Commander knew much about it; most of what they know came from reading the SAFECOM. He said during their transition they did not receive any detailed information about the reported incident. However a team of aviation and safety officials are en route to the fire to conduct a Facilitated Learning Analysis. They, of course, will be interviewing the pilot and the person that was reported to have been extracted in the bucket.
For now we are assuming that this is not a joke or an urban legend, like the scuba divers that were supposed to have been grabbed up in helicopter buckets, or scooped into the tank of an air tanker as it skims across the ocean.
The SAFECOM is fairly long, so I’ll summarize the first section. Then you can read the rest below, the part that sounds like it came out of one of the worst movies ever made about wildland fire, Firestorm, starring Howie Long, who should have stuck to his day job as a defensive end in the National Football League, later becoming an analyst for FOX Sports.
We are very glad the person on the ground was rescued, and since it sounds like it was the only option available to keep him from being burned to death, we applaud the actions of the pilot, thinking WAY outside the box, possibly saving a life.
According to the SAFECOM, it happened on the Pole Creek Fire on the Deschutes National Forest in Oregon. The helicopter pilot was flying a Bell 205A1 and was dropping water to slow down the spread of the fire under the direction of a ground contact working alone in that area. The pilot was in constant contact with him, both visually and by radio. At first the person on the ground had a safety zone, the black burned area, since the fire behavior was slow with occasional torching of standing trees in an area that had a significant amount of bug-killed timber. But then the fire’s intensity picked up dramatically and the fire started reburning the black, vigorously consuming the fuels that had not burned previously, eliminating the safety zone. The pilot wrote: “The downed trees that had not burned were now igniting, and this heat was intense enough that it was actually torching heavily and burning the standing bug killed trees that were already in the black.”
The ground contact kept moving away from the fire but the fire was closing in. The pilot, who was making 5-minute turnaround water drops, frequently gave the ground contact advice about what the fire was doing and where it was, as the fire activity increased.
“…I then asked my ground contact where he was and was surprised to find that he was still to the west of the torching area. This surprised me since I thought he had already passed the fire to the east, where I felt he should be. I immediately contacted him and circled back to find him. He gave me a mirror flash and I saw that he was within 500 feet of the face of the raging fire. This torching and the black column being generated was hidden from him by the smoke he was in, as well as the standing timber surrounding him.He had a spot finger to the SW, which was within 200 feet of his position, and another finger to the NE.
I urged him to start moving quickly north away from the fire, which he did, and when I circled again the fire was 50 percent closer to his position. The fire was moving in waves of heat toward his position: the air between them was actually shimmering! A 200-300 yard wide wall of trees would instantly ignite, and this in turn was igniting the next row of trees in front of it. My ground contact was centered in this wall, with the fingers on either side. I felt that he was in grave danger.
A photo that was submitted with the SAFECOM.
The fire was moving MUCH faster than he was: there was no way out to the SE or to the NW because he was in the center of a crescent between the two fingers of fire. The fire was moving to him so quickly and it was beginning to even affect the fingers behavior, which started to burn much more intensely. I was very, very concerned that he was in the center of energy. I tried to relay this concern, but he was sure that he was secure since he was in the black. I knew that the black was not going to be the help he needed. I felt that he was going to need to deploy his fire shelter and that I was going to be doing water drop on his position.
I started to pull away to get water but realized that the fire would have been upon him before I was able to make a trip to the lake and back. In front of him, to the north, there was a small opening in the trees and I was able to determine that I could hover into it without damage to the helicopter. I lowered the helicopter until the bucket was on the ground. I hovered and watch the speed he was moving and the speed of the fire coming towards us.
The fire was moving very quickly so I strongly suggested that he climb into the bucket so that I could haul him out. I felt that there were very few options and vigorously urged him. I honestly felt that we had only seconds or a minute before the fire was to the spot. I am sure he could feel the fire, because I could certainly feel the heat. He climbed into the bucket and wrapped his arms around the wires as I slowly lifted the bucket vertical. We were in radio contact during this time.
Once I was sure he was secure in the bucket I flew to the North, perhaps 1/4 mile to an open area where I felt he could walk to safety. I carefully lowered the bucket to the ground and he got out and walked to the trail.
I looked back at the spot where we had lifted out of and it was fully torched. I do not believe there were any other good options. The ground he was on was a carpet of dead bug killed trees, the fire was very intense and I`m not sure that even with a fire shelter deployed that the outcome would have been good. I am glad he had the courage to climb into the bucket and relieved that no harm has come to my ground contract.”
Five geographic areas have released updated fuels and fire behavior advisories: Northwest, Northern Rockies, Rocky Mountain, Western Great Basin, and northern California.
Wildfire potential
The Predictive Services section at the National Interagency Fire Center has issued their National Wildland Fire Potential Outlook for October, 2012 through January, 2013. If it is correct, Minnesota, the northwest, and portions of California and Iowa will be active in October. After that, it’s southern California.
For October above normal significant fire potential is predicted across the northwestern quarter of the U.S. including portions of Washington, Oregon, Idaho and California. Above normal significant fire potential also exists across portions of the upper Midwest. The mountains and foothills of central and Southern California will also experience above normal significant fire potential. Portions of the Hawaiian Islands continue to see elevated significant fire potential as well.
The southeastern U.S. will continue to see periodic precipitation events and reduced significant fire potential.
The rest of the country will have normal significant fire potential.
As the fall leaf drop season develops the potential exists for a return to above normal significant fire potential across portions of the Appalachian Mountains.
Also during mid-October through early November Southern California will likely experience periodic off shore flow events leading to elevated significant fire potential.
St.Vincent Island prescribed fire USFWS photo by Brian Pippin
Today we have photos of prescribed fires in opposite corners of the United States, all are from U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service projects. The photo above is a prescribed fire on St. Vincent Island in north Florida (map). The entire 12,000-acre island is a USF&WS refuge. Brian Pippin took this photo from a helicopter during the the 1,150-acre burn.
The photos below show prescribed fires in Williamette Valley near Eugene, Oregon. More photos from similar projects can be found on their Facebook page.
Williamette Valley prescribed fire near Eugene, OR. USFWS photo
