Three firefighters entrapped and injured on the Likely Fire

Three firefighters on a crew in California suffered first and second degree burns on the Likely Fire northwest of Likely, California (map) on September 5. They were members of the CAL FIRE Devils Garden Crew 4 constructing fireline when a wind shift caused numerous spot fires. The firefighters attempted to retreat into a previously burned area when their escape route was blocked by a barbed wire fence. They received burns on their faces and were transported by a ground ambulance to a hospital where they were treated and released.

A Joint Accident Investigation Team comprised of BLM and CAL FIRE subject matter experts will be investigating the incident.

According to the criteria published by Ameriburn.org all facial burns should be treated at a burn unit, so we hope the firefighters received appropriate medical treatment and were not simply treated and released at the Modoc Medical Center in Alturas as stated in the 24-hour report.

Two vehicle accidents on two of Idaho’s megafires.

Mustang Complex Rollover
Rollover on the Mustang Complex

There have been at least two vehicle accidents involving firefighters working on two of the Idaho megafires we reported on Thursday. Both of them involved single vehicles which through driver error left the road surface and went down an embankment. There were no reports of extremely serious injuries, however the driver on the Mustang Complex was transported to a hospital.

On that fire a Strike Team Leader was following his strike team of engines on a very dusty dirt road and lost visibility in the dust. His vehicle left the road and rolled over, ending up against a tree. From the Facilitated Learning Analysis:

…He doesn’t remember much else after a brief moment of panic. He recalls being pulled out of his pickup with people telling him he had rolled his vehicle and then he can remember being in the ambulance as he was transported to the hospital.

 

Trinity Ridge Fire vehicle accident
Trinity Ridge Fire vehicle accident

On the Trinity Ridge Fire a Line Safety Officer suddenly became very sleepy, possibly as a result of taking some over the counter medication for “the crud” before going to sleep the night before. He planned to pull into a campground just ahead to rest or sleep, but didn’t make it that far. His vehicle left the road and went down the embankment a few feet and impacted some trees. More information is in the Facilitated Learning Analysis.

We wish both of these firefighters a speedy recovery.

National MAC Group: accountability for safety

The National Multi Agency Coordination Group (“Big MAC”) sent this message to the wildland firefighting world on Saturday:

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National Interagency Fire Center

3833 S. Development Avenue

Boise, Idaho  83705

August 18, 2012

To:                   Geographic Area Coordinating Group Chairs

From:               National Multi Agency Coordinating Group

Subject:           Safety Message

During the past week we have experienced a fatality, an entrapment, and several close calls on wildfires.   In an effort to draw attention to wildland firefighter safety, NMAC is requesting that all geographic areas redouble efforts to emphasize safety practices.

Firefighter safety is and continues to be our first priority.  The commitment to and accountability for safety is a joint responsibility of all firefighters, leaders, managers, and administrators.   Individuals must be responsible for their own performance and accountability.

Suggested areas of emphasis are:

  • Aggressive risk management is our primary means of maintaining safe wildland fire operations.  Consistently evaluate fireline tactics and do not hesitate to adjust tactics as environmental and human factor conditions change — Review Risk Management Process in IRPG, Page 1.
  • Situational Awareness (SA) is a key component of risk management and must be maintained at all times.  Conduct SA briefings to brainstorm and consider specific ways in which you can increase awareness of the hazards you face.  Evaluate the hazards involved with your activities and mitigate for these hazards to reduce exposure to an acceptable level of risk for firefighters and others.  Achieve and maintain good SA both individually, within your crew, and between different types of resources.
  • LCES must be maintained on every mission, including scouting and patrol assignments.
  • Rapid, unexpected changes in fire behavior kill wildland firefighters. Always identify the worst case scenario and be prepared for it by maintaining focused SA, setting realistic trigger points, and withdrawing when prudent.  Do not hesitate to use your fire shelter when you feel the need exists.
  • Exercise extreme caution when working in timber canopy areas — assume every tree has some level of hazard associated with it.  Review “PRINCIPLES OF HAZARD TREE RISK MANAGEMENT” at: http://www.nwcg.gov/teams/shwt/httf/training_education/s212/ht-risk-mgmt.pdf 
  • Do not allow for a false sense of security in finer fuel types—many fatalities and entrapments have occurred in areas of fine and sparse fuels.  Terrain and wind can produce extreme fire behavior in this fuel type.
  • Carefully consider your Medivac Plan.  Ensure all personnel are familiar with the Dutch Creek Protocols, and ensure plans are realistic with adequate resources available to support them in a timely manner.
  • Dehydration, Hyperthermia, and Fatigue – constantly monitor firefighter’s water and electrolyte intake to avoid dehydration episodes.  Dehydration and long work hours, coupled with poor air quality and high temperatures all impact fatigue — monitor and provide rest opportunities for firefighters and support personnel.  Hydration alone may not be enough to prevent hyperthermia.  Monitor core body temperature and provide breaks in the shade or in an air conditioned vehicle when needed
  • Driving standards and limitations must be applied and enforced.  Drivers should not be exceeding 10 hours behind the wheel driving time (state CDL limitations may be more stringent).  This applies to all drivers including agency employees, ADs, and contractors.  Every effort should be made to avoid driving between 2200 and 0500 hours.
  • Communication is vital – resources must be briefed upon arriving at the fire.  Communications during all phases of operations must be maintained.  Incoming crews must be briefed prior to becoming available for fire assignment.
  • As the fire season remains active, be mindful of chronic fatigue issues and consider additional days off between assignments for fire personnel.

I ask that every fire manager take time to emphasize firefighter safety and appropriate risk management.  We appreciate all the efforts of every firefighter and support personnel.  Let’s do everything in our power to return everyone home safely this fire season.

/s/ John Segar

Chair, NMAC

Safety issues noted one day before Steep Corner Fire fatality

Anne Veseth, a 20-year-old firefighter from Moscow, Idaho, was killed August 12 while working on the Steep Corner Fire near Orofino, Idaho. The U.S. Forest Service firefighter was struck when one tree fell and crashed into another tree, causing it to fall in a domino effect.

On August 11, the day before Veseth was killed, the Flathead Hotshots arrived at the Clearwater-Potlatch Timber Protection Association (CPTPA) station to work on the Steep Corner Fire. They were briefed, received a radio clone, and showed up at the fire about 2 p.m., where they located the CPTPA incident commander. He briefed them on tactical duties, according to the SAFENET report filed three days later, but “had to be prompted for specifics on everything else.” The hotshot report said there was no direct link to Grangeville dispatch, no information on EMS or weather, and no medical plan besides “call the county.”

The report listed a slew of other heads-up flags on the incident, including no mention of hazards and no direction other than “jump in the middle and work south.” The IC was wearing jeans, and the hotshots immediately noticed several other CPTPA personnel without PPE or shelters.

The Flathead superintendent told the IC that they’d go scout the fire before committing the crew, and the IC told him to head down the burned line through the middle of the fire. The hotshot foreman then briefed the crew, and they established their own LCES and posted the first lookout of the day on the fire. The scouting superintendent radioed back that no one should be sent down the burned line — which was still hot — through the middle of the fire because of snag hazards and previously cut log decks.
Continue reading “Safety issues noted one day before Steep Corner Fire fatality”

Identifying the risk-taking firefighter

When we’re talking about firefighter safety and preventing injuries, fatalities, or escaped prescribed fires, we often fall back on the hundreds of rules, regulations, standards, orders, lists, watch-outs, manuals, red books, 40-page Incident Action Plans or Prescribed Fire Plans….. the list is endless. While I would never say those resources are worthless, perhaps a deeper root cause of accidents on the fireline are the ingrained human behavior traits welded into our DNA or learned through years of exposure to a workplace culture. Some people are hard-wired to accept a level of risk others would not, or they may think their innate intelligence will enable them to outsmart a fire, or be able to successfully handle any unexpected emergency that is presented to them.

The most successful firefighters are not those who religiously follow every written rule to the letter, but those who recognize, accurately, their own skills and limitations. They take advantage of what they can do well, and mitigate the traits that could lead to an undesirable outcome. But not everyone is self-aware to that level.

The most dangerous firefighters are those who do not know what they don’t know. When they were teenagers, they thought they were 10 feet tall, bulletproof, and knew everything. Now after fighting fire a little here and there, and taking some stupid risks without getting seriously injured or at times not even knowing they were taking risks, they think it can continue. This can put themselves, and if they are a supervisor, those around them in precarious situations.

Bill Belichick
Bill Belichick

Bill Belichick, head coach of the New England Patriots, is often described as one of the best, or the best, football coaches of all time. He does many things well, of course, but one of his most interesting traits is accurately recognizing the skills and limitations of his players, and then modifying and customizing the game plan, putting his men in situations where they are likely to succeed. For example, the New York Jets allowed Danny Woodhead, the undrafted little 5-foot 8-inch running back, to languish on the sidelines. After the Jets released him Mr. Belichick hired him and now successfully uses him in specific plays and situations that take advantage of his skills. Mr. Woodhead was one of the stars in last season’s Superbowl.

Is it possible to learn something from Mr. Belichick and apply it to firefighting? What if we could identify the person who does not know what he or she does not know, or the over-the-top risk taker, and use them in positions where they can succeed without putting themselves or others at risk? Instead of using them in fireline positions, maybe they could succeed as a Ground Support Unit Leader. Or maybe they should not be promoted into a position where they would put firefighters at risk.

Neil LaRubbio recently wrote an article titled “Dead man working”. Here is an excerpt:

…From 1980 to 2010, an average of 17 firefighters died nationally each year, the majority in Western forests, six more on average than during the previous 30 years. Yet, no fire manager would say that safety awareness has become lax. No matter the agency’s culture, getting these roughnecks to act right in desperate situations can be the most maddening variable of all.

[…]

What kind of worker is most likely to choose risk over reason? Researchers at the University of Montana’s Department of Health and Human Performance have come to some conclusions. They found that 20 percent of wildland firefighters demonstrate symptoms of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, compared to a national average of 9 percent. The researchers discovered similar statistics in miners, suggesting that people with ADHD gravitate toward high-risk jobs. Research like this may help industry mold environments that accommodate the risky ways in which some people unconsciously approach dangerous work. For example, according to the University of Montana study, individuals with ADHD show higher rates of substance abuse, which may explain the unsparing quantities of alcohol my fire crew in Montana consumed, or the fairytale levels of meth that are said to circulate among oil field, short-haul truckers.

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A related article from May, 2010: “Stupid people are confident, while the intelligent are doubtful“.

Unlearned lessons in Nebraska

When we report on serious accidents or fatalities on wildfires, we always try to obtain a copy of the official investigation report from the jurisdiction involved. But for the incidents on federal land at least, and on other lands in most of the western states, the responsible organizations almost always make the report available freely and conveniently, usually on the internet.

The primary reason to distribute accident reports as widely as possible is to reduce the chance of similar accidents. We call these “lessons learned”. There are entire organizations and web sites devoted to this concept, such as the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, the U.S. Army’s Center for Army Lessons Learned, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Lessons Learned Information Sharing site. We put together the document titled Infamous Wildland Fires Around the World, which is a partial list, by date of the year, of some of the more famous, or infamous, multiple fatality wildland fires around the world over the last 150 years. We hope that firefighters will remember these accidents and the lessons learned from them.

But it is much more likely that mistakes made on fires in Nebraska will be repeated.

When we searched for an official report about the triple fatality on the April 28, 2011 prescribed fire near Trenton, Nebraska, we came up with nothing. We linked to a pretty good newspaper report, and asked if our readers were aware of an official report on the incident. One them told us that there was a multi-step process that involved many exchanges via snail mail to get a copy of a fire accident report in Nebraska. And it usually takes about a month, they said.

We called Jim Heine, the Assistant Fire Marshal in Nebraska and asked him how to obtain a copy of a report. He said it was a “simple one-step process”. But it turns out that there are five six steps.

  1. Complete an application form to request the report. The form can be downloaded from the Fire Marshal’s web site, printed, and completed by hand.
  2. Send it to the Fire Marshal’s office by fax or by snail mail.
  3. The agency’s legal counsel reviews the request. If it is approved….
  4. The Fire Marshal’s office sends you an invoice.
  5. You send the Fire Marshal’s office the payment for the report (a typical fee is $3.50).
  6. The Fire Marshal’s office snail mails you the report.

We asked Mr. Heine why the reports were not available on the internet. He said “If you had a family member who died on a fire would you want the report to be public?”

We have heard of many family members who had loved ones that died on a fire who are vehement that the circumstances and lessons learned become public. They would like to prevent other families from losing a loved one and going through the same pain and suffering. Two recent examples that come to mind are the CR 337 fire in Texas last year and the Carson Helicopter crash in 2008 on the Iron Complex fire near Weaverville, California.

Lynette Hamm’s son, Caleb Hamm, passed away on the CR 337 fire in Texas last July. When told about Nebraska’s policy on accident reports, she said:

I can only surmise Mr. Heine has never lost a loved one before. If so, I believe he would want to get to the bottom of it, however it happened, and have those findings available for future training. If the firefighting community really wants to learn from past mistakes/accidents, wouldn’t we want those reports to be made available to everyone in the hopes of preventing another occurrence? I would think so.

Nina Charlson’s son, Scott Charlson, died along with eight other firefighters and air crew members in a helicopter crash on the Iron Complex (or Iron 44) fire in 2008. Ms. Charlson has been very active in following up on the investigations of the accident. When she and family members of other firefighters attended a National Transportation Safety Board forum in November, she released a statement that included the following:

…We cannot bring our loved ones back but if we can stand up for safety changes for future passengers – that is what we want to do.

When told about Nebraska’s policy, she replied in part:

I think it is reasonable that if the victims families did not want to have details made public (maybe their firefighter made a stupid mistake) they could request it – but still firefighters should have the information for future safety measures.

The purpose for any future actions of the Iron 44 families part is definitely for the purpose of safety.