News and opinion about wildland fire
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized5 Comments on Red Flag Warnings in six states Sunday Possible dry lightning in New Mexico and Arizona
Red flag warnings are in effect Sunday for locations in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In New Mexico most of the warnings will last until Monday evening.
The forecast calls for winds gusting at more than 40 mph with single-digit relative humidity.
In addition, the NOAA Storm Prediction Center warns that isolated thunderstorms with little or no rain could occur in portions of New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Wildfire16 Comments on Multiple fires near Grapevine north of Los Angeles 
Friday afternoon and early Saturday morning firefighters responded to multiple fires near Interstate 5 in the Grapevine area north of Los Angeles. The Grape Fire on Friday was mapped at 19 acres, according to @barkflight. Then at about 4 a.m. Saturday firefighters responded to the Plant Fire close to the freeway. @CAFireScanner noted that Engine 345 reported there were three separate fires on the west side of I-5 that would likely burn together, and then merge with the earlier Grape Fire.
At 7:33 a.m. PDT the Grapevine 2 AlertWildfire camera showed very little activity on the Plant Fire.
Judging from the video below the fire was very active in the predawn hours.
#grapevine #fire pic.twitter.com/HG49ImFCsN
— Autumn Faye (@AutumnFaye7) June 11, 2022
A photo of a condor was grabbed by the AlertWildfire camera.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized9 Comments on Why are we still using the Haines Index? We look at an alternative
When Don Haines developed what became his namesake index, he never intended it to be used operationally. As a meteorologist for the US Forest Service, at one point he was given two tasks — determine how weather conditions led to the escape of the 1980 Crane Lake prescribed burn in Michigan, and create a fire weather tool to prevent future tragedies. The escaped prescribed burn became the Mack Lake Fire which killed one person, destroyed 44 structures, and burned 20,000 acres.
In 1988 the result of his work was published in National Weather Digest, titled “A lower atmospheric severity index for wildland fire.” He retired shortly after, but made it clear he intended his work to be the beginning, not the finished product, of the development of a fire weather index after refinement and feedback from subject matter specialists.
It became known as the Haines Index, described by NOAA as “Based on the stability and moisture content of the lower atmosphere that measures the potential for existing fires to become large fires.”
It is widely used and often included in fire briefings and weather forecasts. It is based on two components, the temperature difference between two prescribed pressure levels; and the moisture component, the dew point depression at a prescribed pressure level. Some may think of it as a measure of atmospheric stability, but as you will see below, that may not be appropriate. With an unstable atmosphere there is less resistance to the vertical movement of air, which can make it easier for a convection column of rapidly rising air and smoke to form over an intensely burning fire, affecting the rate of spread. Add a strong wind, high mixing level, low humidity, low fuel moisture, and steep slopes and a fire can be over the hill before you can get the wind gauge out of your pocket.
“Fire science is not rocket science—it’s way more complicated.” Robert Essenhigh, Professor Emeritus, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Ohio State University.
In “The Haines Index — it’s time to replace it” published in 2018 in the International Journal of Wildland Fire, Dr. Brian Potter, a Research Meteorologist with the US Forest Service wrote:
Subsequent studies have sought to evaluate the Index, with results that do not support its use in the original form. Yet it is used operationally across the United States, and elsewhere. Mills and McCaw (2010) produced a modified Index, following the sort of refinement Haines stated was necessary. In its present form, the Haines Index cannot be considered a scientifically designed, complete or verified metric that provides any information on fire behaviour or fire danger.
Dr. Potter also wrote a more detailed analysis of the Haines Index published the same year in MDPI Atmosphere, “Quantitative Evaluation of the Haines Index’s Ability to Predict Fire Growth Events.”
On June 3 Darren Clabo, the State Fire Meteorologist for South Dakota, posted two seven-minute videos on YouTube, Part 1 and Part 2 of “Don’t Use the Haines Index.”
“The idea for these videos grew out of conversations with many of my colleagues across the country, with notable head nods to Dr. Brian Potter and Larry Van Bussum,” Mr. Clabo told Wildfire Today. “Dr. Potter has been working to rid the field of the Haines Index for two decades now and these videos are just an extension of that work.”
Hot-Dry-Windy Index
A possible alternative to the Haines Index which was introduced in 2019 is the Hot-Dry-Windy Index. It is described as being very simple and only considers the atmospheric factors of heat, moisture, and wind. To be more precise, it is a multiplication of the maximum wind speed and maximum vapor pressure deficit (VPD) in the lowest 50 or so millibars in the atmosphere.
In 2019 McKenzie G. Kulseth, a graduate student at Michigan State University, wrote her thesis about the HDW Index, titled “An evaluation of the Hot-Dry-Windy Index using historical fire events and meteorological analysis datasets.” She concluded:
The results of this study suggest that the original HDW formulation is capable of identifying the largest fire spread day for between 56.5 to 78.3% of the twenty-three wildland fire events used in this study.
On a website bearing the logos of the U.S. Forest Service, Michigan State University, and St. Cloud State University, you can click on the map to display the HDW for any 0.5-degree long/lat grid spacing area in the contiguous United States. Then the displayed chart shows the index for the preceding 10 days and the forecast for the next 7 days, compared to a 30-year average for each day. For the current and following days you will see results of the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS), which is a weather forecast model made up of 21 separate forecasts, one control (in red) and twenty perturbations. The reasoning for showing 21 different forecasts is to quantify the amount of uncertainty in a forecast by generating an ensemble of multiple forecasts, each minutely different, or perturbed, from the original observations.
The HDW only only uses weather information – fuels and topography are not considered by HDW at all. If the fuels are wet or have a high live or dead moisture content it will not be reflected in the data.
We asked Mr. Clabo, since he ruled out the use of the Haines Index, what should firefighters use, the HDWI?
“We need to first ask the question, what are we looking for?” he said. “If you are interested in a first-glance product for situational awareness, I think the Hot-Dry-Windy Index is a fantastic tool. If you are trying to diagnose the potential for plume-dominated fire growth, I think you need to critically assess your fuel moisture/fuel loading and terrain first and then look to see if the atmospheric conditions are favorable for pyrocumulus or pyrocumulonimbus development. If you are trying to assess whether or not large fire growth is likely, it might be better for you to look at maximum wind speeds.”
Our take
The lack of a fuel component limits the use of the HDW. If, for instance, it was used on a daily basis in mass media, it would not be practical to explain, for example, “Even though it shows we’re at the 95th percentile today, it rained yesterday so ignore the scary-looking chart.”
However, it could be useful among fire and weather professionals who monitor the daily fire danger and weather, can factor in current fuel moisture data, and understand how to interpret the analysis.
Chief Randy Moore said the agency has 10,184 firefighters on board
Updated at 9:04 EDT June 10, 2022
In Washington today Senators questioned Chief of the US Forest Service Randy Moore about a number of issues during a hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Some the key topics included firefighter pay, fuel treatments, prescribed fire, escaped prescribed fire, hiring and retention, the number of firefighters in the agency, and firefighting aircraft. We’ll touch on some of them here, in the order they appeared in the hearing. An archived video of the entire hearing is available at the Committee’s website. Embedded below are clips created by the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.
48:29 — Senator Ron Wyden (OR) said, “The shortage of permanent wildland fire positions, if not addressed, is on it’s way to becoming a four-alarmer…What’s the most important response? Better pay, decent benefits for these firefighters so they can pay their rent and buy groceries. That is not the case today according to firefighters talking to me.”
Chief Moore replied, “You know Senator, if I had the ability to set the pay for my firefighters I would certainly do that. I am left with trying to implement direction that is given through legislation…We are going to use every tool in that legislation to pay our firefighters more because they are very deserving of it. It’s dirty, nasty, hard work and they do deserve better pay, they deserve better benefits, they deserve better care in terms of mental and physical health conditions out there.”
48:29 — Senator Wyden got a commitment from the Chief to respond within two weeks to the issues he listed in a June 7, 2022 letter sent to the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture about how the funds in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Legislation (BIL) are being allocated and dispersed to the field, strategy for filling vacant positions, how to retain employees, progress on establishing the new Wildland Firefighter job series, and how to reduce the number of unfilled orders fires place for firefighting crews and engines.
1:02:09 — Senator Martin Heinrich (NM) asked questions about the escaped prescribed fires that led to the currently burning Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire.
1:15:50 — Senator Angus King (ME) gave an impassioned plea to implement the pay raises that were signed into law by President Biden eight months ago as part of the BIL.
“Eisenhower retook Europe in 11 months”, Senator King said. “You can’t do a pay raise in seven months? Come on!”
Senator John Barrasso (WY) also called for a pay raise.
1:18:45 — Senator Cortez Masto asked about what may be a temporary pay raise required by the legislation which would increase the salary of wildland firefighters by $20,000, or 50 percent of their base salary, whichever is less. Chief Moore said it will occur in “a couple of weeks”, and later said, “by the end of this month…That’s the goal. That’s what we’re shooting for.” Senator Masto was persistent, seeking facts and clarity, asking follow up questions, and getting details.
1:21:45 — Chief Moore discussed fuel treatments and emphasized that the treated areas must be large in order to effectively slow the spread of a very large fire. As far as accomplishing that, he said, “… Based on the fires we are having now, we do not have enough firefighters to really successfully stop fires the way they are behaving because they are behaving in a catastrophic manner.
1:27:10 — Senator Martin Heinrich (NM) questioned the trend toward closing fire lookout towers staffed by humans, and replacing them with technology. The Chief did not take the bait or respond directly.
1:55:50 — Senator Maria Cantwell threw Chief Moore what could have been a softball question. “Where we are with our [firefighting] air capacity,” she said. “We previously had this discussion with the Forest Service wanting them to have more ready resources. The Forest Service I think at that time didn’t want to be in the fleet management business and said we’d rather contract. How are you viewing those air resources now that we know that we have so many more fire starts…We want to know that we have that early phase retardant or water…How is the Forest Service managing that given the huge increase in fire starts?”
Chief Moore responded: “You may know now that we have access to about 27 VLATS, Very large air tankers, also the large air tankers and so far we are not running across a need for additional tankers in this particular case at this particular time. We also — I don’t know why these decisions were made in the past about the aircraft but we do know that they are expensive to maintain if Forest Service had ownership of them. But you know there are pros and cons about that so I won’t really go into that, I’m not familiar with what went into that many years ago. In terms of our aircraft, we certainly need aircraft to help us with fire suppression. We also know that there are limitations with aircraft as well because aircraft don’t put out fires. It’s boots on the ground is where the fires are really put out.”
His predecessor in April 2021 squandered a softball opportunity to tell the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies that the Forest Service needed more funding in two very important inadequately budgeted areas, fuels treatment and aerial firefighting. Today Chief Moore squandered a similar opportunity, giving an incoherent response when basically asked, “Do you have enough firefighting aircraft?”
The facts are, there are 2 Very Large Air Tankers (VLAT) and 16 Large Air Tankers (LAT) on exclusive use (EU) contracts, working for 160 days. To say “We have access to 27” VLATs and/or LATs is intentionally misleading. The Forest Service assumes that the additional tankers on Call When Needed (CWN) contracts that may or may not ever be used, are always available at private companies, with flight crews and mechanics that are available and ready to quickly activate if the phone rings. And, it assumes that those companies are still in business and the very expensive aircraft which may have been idle for months are fully maintained and airworthy.
There are only a total of four VLATs in the Western Hemisphere that could be used on fires in the United States, all DC-10s. Two are on 160-day Forest Service EU contracts and the other two were recently activated on 120-day “surge” contracts. It is also usually possible to activate up to eight military C-130s temporarily converted to air tankers by carrying a Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS). But after hearing some chatter, we are checking to see if those will be available this year.
Two studies conducted for the Forest Service made recommendations for the number of air tankers that are needed on exclusive use contracts. One said 35 and the other said 41.
2:00:30 — The very last topic covered was what we have called the Holy Grail of wildland firefighting safety; knowing the real time location of the fire and firefighters. Senator Manchin pointed out that “15 months past the deadline in the statute the Forest Service has not equipped firefighters with the safety gear despite the technology having been commercially available on the shelf for many, many years, and despite Congress having appropriated $15 million for this, so maybe you have an explanation for that.”
Chief Moore said “No one believes in this more than I do”, but he said his staff told him it was not funded. The Senator said he understood it was funded. The two sides agreed to get together and figure it out.
The John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act required that by March 12, 2021 the five federal land management agencies “…develop consistent protocols and plans for the use on wildland fires of unmanned aircraft system technologies, including for the development of real-time maps of the location of wildland fires.”
While this technology has been demonstrated, real time mapping appears to be far from being used routinely.
The Dingell Act also mandated that the five federal land management agencies “jointly develop and operate a tracking system to remotely locate the positions of fire resources for use by wildland firefighters, including, at a minimum, any fire resources assigned to Federal type 1 wildland fire incident management teams”, due by the same date.
The US Bureau of Land Management has installed hardware for Location Based Services (LBS) which are now operational on more than 700 wildland fire engines, crew transports, and support vehicles. Vehicle position and utilization data are visually displayed via a web-based portal or mobile device application.
Fifteen months after it was required by Congress the US Forest Service has made very little progress on this mandate.
Whether or not the technology was specifically funded, it should be considered that the lack of situational awareness had led to dozens of fatalities on wildland fires and must be addressed.
We asked Kelly Martin, President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, for their impression of today’s hearing:
Federal Wildland Firefighter Pay has been a priority for our elected officials since the BIL was passed last October. We are still waiting. We are hopeful this increase in pay will be delivered to firefighters in the next two weeks.
The article was updated to include the question and answer about the requirement for the five federal land management agencies to provide technology for the real time location of the fire and firefighters.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized17 Comments on Forest Service Chief to testify before Congress June 9 He may be asked questions about implementing the firefighter pay raises signed into law 8 months ago
Forest Service Chief Randy Moore is scheduled to testify Thursday June 9 at 10 a.m. EDT before the full Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. It will be live streamed, and a link will likely appear on the Committee’s website.
The primary purpose of the hearing is to examine the President’s budget request for the U.S. Forest Service for Fiscal Year 2023 which begins in October.
There is no doubt that some of the Senators will use the opportunity to question Chief Moore about the progress, or lack thereof, to implement the firefighter pay raises signed into law by President Biden eight months ago as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
Senators on the committee who usually appear to be engaged on these topics, often asking pointed questions of Forest Service personnel, include Ron Wyden (OR), Maria Cantwell (WA), Angus King (ME), and Lisa Murkowski (AK). I watch many hearings about fire management issues. I don’t take attendance, but have no memory of ever seeing some of the committee members show up, such as Bernard Sanders (VT), Mark Kelly (AZ), or Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS). I may have just missed them on days when they made important contributions.
The Chief’s written testimony for Thursday’s hearing is already posted. Below is an excerpt in which he mentions fire funding.
The Forest Service’s 223-page Budget Justification for FY 2023 goes into more detail.
Chief Moore already went through this exercise before the House Committee on Appropriations on April 27, 2022 and the Senate Committee on Appropriations May 4, 2022.
Approximately 35 percent of entry- to mid-level positions on engine crews are filled in California
As the Western states enter the traditional wildland fire season there is a report that only 65 to 70 percent of US Forest Service firefighting positions in California are filled. An article written by Brianna Sacks of BuzzFeed News stated that about 1,200 full-time positions are unfilled in the state. Approximately 35 percent of entry- to mid-level positions on engine crews are filled, as are about half of the similar positions on hotshot crews.
An excerpt from the article:
With the open positions, some units are left unable to operate their engines at all. A recent internal document tallying engine staffing across California also obtained by BuzzFeed News shows that about half of 260 Forest Service engines are either understaffed, so they can’t run seven days a week, or not staffed at all. That’s resulted in about 35 engines being “on blocks,” or inoperable.
Hotshot crews that can’t meet the rigid interagency standards for staffing and training will not be able to respond to a fire as a hotshot crew, and will be reduced to becoming a less qualified Type 2 crew, or forming “modules” of smaller numbers of personnel. Some of them may export their personnel to fill in on engines so that THOSE resources can respond.
Over the last two years, at least, the five federal land management agencies that hire large numbers of wildland firefighters have been experiencing increasing difficulties recruiting and retaining personnel. Reasons cited by current and former firefighters include very low pay, long hours, too much time away from home, too little time with families, limited opportunities for career growth, and the temporary and sometimes life-altering physical injuries experienced by these tactical athletes.
It takes five to seven years for a wildland firefighter to soak up enough experience and training to reach a lower to mid-level leadership position, and 15 years or more to begin to serve in the higher ranking positions day to day and while assigned to fires. With people at all levels resigning, the federal agencies are losing not only corporate knowledge but the hard-earned proficiency of safely and efficiently suppressing small and large wildfires while supervising dozens or hundreds of emergency workers performing one of the more dangerous jobs on the planet. A resigning senior firefighter with 15 years of experience “slides” in his brain can’t be replaced overnight with a person off the street.
Implementing the pay raises that were signed into law by President Biden eight months ago as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act would be a huge step in the right direction. The agencies knew several months before the legislation was signed in November that it was most likely going to happen, so they have had nearly a year to plan for and implement this requirement. It is not optional. It’s the law. And while the USFS and DOI fiddle, the United States will burn, more engines will be “on blocks”, and some hotshot crews will disappear at least on paper.
Any visible progress has been slow. Today on the Forest Service website Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry Jaelith Hall-Rivera, who has become the public point person for implementing the pay raises, issued what she described as an update:
In the next few weeks, we will make announcements about the firefighter occupational series and the increased payment that is funded in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law…We understand your frustration and thank each and every one of you for your patience. Implementation has taken longer than any of us could have expected but getting it right is important.
There have been few signs of “patience.”
Meanwhile, the National Federation of Federal Employees is very concerned about what they have learned about proposed changes.
Another @NFFE_Union letter to DC leadership. Looks like they’ve seen some notes from @USOPM and are not happy about the current effort to reform Wildland Firefighter Pay & Classification. They even provide 19 pages of feedback, calling for a career ladder to GS12, similar to @CBP pic.twitter.com/aWd1DV87XX
— Grassroots Wildland Firefighters (@GrassrootsWFF) June 7, 2022
If the exodus is not reversed, the ability of the federal agencies to fight fires and treat fuels is at stake — during a time when there is a goal of quadrupling the number of acres treated by prescribed fire and mechanized methods. Who is going to onboard new employees, plan the projects, meet with stakeholders, obtain environmental clearances, issue contracts, run the chain saws, and carry the drip torches? And who is going to fill the slots on the shrinking Incident Management Teams?
All while escalating wildfire activity demands MORE skilled and qualified fire personnel, not fewer.
