The staging area at the South Fork prescribed fire in Custer State Park, April, 2014.
We’re trying something new this weekend. Borrowing an idea from The War Zone, this post can serve as the beginning of an open thread where our readers can talk about what happened this week that we have or have not gotten into yet. This is literally an off-topic thread.
The usual rules about commenting apply. And in light of some recent topics, remember, no personal attacks.
So let’s enjoy a wide-ranging debate! (Oh, and send us pics of staging areas. Date, location, and photographer’s name would be nice , but not required.)
Linnea Gebauer, prize winner in CSPAN documentary competition.
C-SPAN announced that earlier this month that Linnea Gebauer, a 12th grade student at Klamath Union High School in Klamath Falls, Oregon, is a second prize winner in C-SPAN’s national 2022 StudentCam competition. Ms. Gebauer will receive $1,500 for the documentary, “Fire Season,” about the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy. The competition, now in its 18th year, invited all middle and high school students to enter by producing a short documentary. C-SPAN, in cooperation with its cable television partners, asked students to explore a federal policy or program and address the theme: “How does the federal government impact your life?”
In response, more than 3,000 students across the country participated in the contest. C-SPAN received over 1,400 entries from 41 states, Washington, D.C., Morocco and South Korea.
In February we reported that Ms. Gebauer had entered the competition and included her video in the article. We wrote, “It is obvious that Linnea put a great deal of time and effort into research, planning, interviewing subject matter experts, and editing the dozens of clips into the finished product. Excellent job, Linnea!”
Here again is her video:
Several government officials recorded congratulatory videos for Ms. Gebauer, including National Park Service Division Chief for Fire and Aviation Management Bill Kaage and Oregon Governor Kate Brown.
3-D Map of the Crooks Fire, looking north. The red line was the perimeter at 3 a.m. MDT April 28, 2022. The white line was the perimeter two days before.
The northwest side of the Crooks Fire 8 miles south of Prescott, Arizona was very active Wednesday. In the last two days the section of the fire near Golden Eagle Road/Forest Road 97B has spread one mile to the west. Strong winds out of the south with 10 percent relative humidity contributed to the rapid spread. Wind gusts of 30 mph drove the fire west of Lookout Mountain toward Dosoris Canyon, pushing smoke into Prescott and surrounding communities. Crews were successful in holding the 52 Spur Road to keep the fire west of the affected communities. Most of the east side saw little or no movement Wednesday.
According to the Incident Management Team the fire has burned 9,014 acres.
Map of the Crooks Fire. The red line was the perimeter at 3 a.m. MDT April 28, 2022. The white line was the perimeter two days before.
On Thursday dozers and hand crews will work to strengthen the containment lines along Forest Service Road (FSR) 82. Favorable terrain may allow firefighters to access the fire’s edge west of Lookout Mountain, with the assistance of aircraft. Structure protection remains a key tactical objective and crews continue to perform defensive operations throughout the area.
Resources assigned as of Wednesday evening included 20 hand crews, 41 fire engines, and 14 helicopters for a total of 855 personnel.
The weather forecast for Thursday at 7,200 feet elevation calls for 21 mph gusting out of the south and southwest at 30 mph with relative humidity in the mid-teens. The elevation at the fire ranges from 5,000 to 7,000 feet. Friday the winds will decrease to 15 mph with 22 mph gusts from the west with 10 percent relative humidity.
Firefighters set up sprinklers to protect structures in the Mt. Tritle area. USFS photo, April 27, 2022.
A truck with a movie projector visited rural communities to teach people about the evils of wildfire. PBS.
A PBS program, “The future of Fire,” takes us from the 1920s when trucks visited rural communities in the Southeast and used a projector to show a movie on the side of barns about the evils of fire, to today when modeling tools help fire managers make better decisions about using and managing fire.
"Her vision is that she'd be able to sit on her front porch and just watch the fire go by and be completely unconcerned because the conditions around her home were such that she would be confident that she had done her work and her neighbors had done their work and it was safe to actually have fire play an active role in restoring the landscape. And that we don't look at all smoke as bad, that we be really working toward seeing smoke and have that be a positive experience, that it's like, oh, the forest is under renewal right now."
Anne Bradley, Forest Program Director, The Nature Conservancy, paraphrasing someone she knows who lives in the forest.
McBride Fire in southern New Mexico. From Melissa Gibbs KRQE video April 12, 2022.
When the US Forest Service Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry testified before members of Congress on April 5 that a firefighter hiring event “went very well”, the event had not started yet.
Jaelith Hall-Rivera, US Forest Service Deputy Chief of State and Private Forestry, testified April 5 before a House Committee.
“We just completed an additional fire hire event in California at the end of March and those numbers are still coming in,” Ms. Jaelith Hall-Rivera said. “I do think we are on pace. By all accounts that hiring event went very well. Importantly what we are seeing is a very high acceptance rate in our permanent and seasonal permanent firefighting positions, which is what we want.”
In an article published today, Brianna Sacks of BuzzFeed News reported that the hiring event actually began April 11, six days after Ms. Hall-Rivera’s testimony, and is scheduled to go through April 29.
Ms. Hall-Rivera’s statement was in response to a series of questions from Rep. Katie Porter from California. You can watch this exchange in the video of the hearing we posted April 5 as part of a summary of the testimony before the House Subcommittee on National Parks, Forests, and Public Lands. Rep. Porter’s excellent questions begin at 138:35.
Below are excerpts from the BuzzFeed article:
A Forest Service spokesperson told BuzzFeed News that the deputy chief made an “error” because she “didn’t have all the information in front of her.”
“There are several hiring events throughout the year, and I think she was thinking of a different one in a different region,” the spokesperson said, but he did not provide specifics as to which one that might have been. The spokesperson also did not have hiring numbers that might back up Hall-Rivera’s assurances.
Interviews with firefighters in Colorado, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and California, as well as internal communications, hiring data, org charts, and surveys from the nonprofit Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, also tell a different story.
For example, in a Feb. 15 meeting hosted and attended by senior Washington officials, fire directors from across the US shared their issues with hiring, according to meeting notes obtained by BuzzFeed News. In New Mexico, where fires are currently raging, leaders said multiple hotshot crews would not be fully staffed. In the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, leaders said there is a “lack of candidates” and they are “unable to staff seven days in many places.” There is a “continued decline of folks to do the work.”
As California, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Colorado gear up for fire season, interviews with three Forest Service employees familiar with hiring say the situation is grim. Without a serious staffing push, engines will sit idle, helicopters won’t be able to fly daily, crews won’t be able to start the season on time, and those who have worked multiple seasons in the field aren’t sure how much more they can stretch themselves without falling apart, they said. The Thomson Reuters Foundation, which also recently investigated systemic staffing issues, highlighted retention issues due to pay and housing.
In parts of Montana and Idaho, which had 700 seasonal workers last year, only 460 have returned for this fire season, a source familiar with the numbers said. And after last year’s Fire Hire, California had filled only 56 of 781 open positions, according to data obtained by BuzzFeed News. As of April 8, two days before this year’s hiring push, California had more than 1,560 vacancies, according to a review of the state’s openings.
More and more articles like this are being published documenting the hiring and retention difficulties that face the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management.
From Thomson Reuter Foundation News, April 25, 2022:
An engine captain involved in temporary hiring in northern California indicated that almost all Forest Service forests in the area expected to have less than 65% of full staffing for firefighters this year, some below 50%, according to a federal firefighting source who spoke on condition of anonymity.
“Fundamentally, people don’t want to take jobs because they can’t find a place to stay,” [Kelly] Martin [of the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters] said.
One female wildland firefighter – who lives out of her camper in California to save on rent – said proposals to increase base pay would not make up for the lack of an attractive career path for more experienced firefighters.
“Just raising the wages for those coming into fire is not going to be enough to keep people around,” she said, asking not to be named.
Less winter snow than usual, and dry, windy weather contributed to the growth
Kwethluk Fire, southwest Alaska, April 21, 2022. Alaska DNR DOF.
At Wildfire Today we don’t often write about fires in Alaska. In some years they have a great many fires but it varies enormously from year to year. Since 2010 the number of acres burned annually has ranged from a low of 181,169 in 2020 to a high of 5,111,404 in 2015. Many of the blazes are not suppressed and they don’t often affect a significant amount of private property or structures.
But it stirred my interest when I saw a headline about a current fire that is supposedly the largest April wildfire in Alaska in a quarter century. It is the 10,302-acre Kwethluk Fire in southwest Alaska 30 miles southeast of Bethel. An April 26 article in the Anchorage Daily News reported that climate scientist Rich Thoman said, “It’s not like dry Aprils are unusual; this is the dry season. But typically you would expect there would still be enough snow around that, even if a fire got going, that it would, within yards, run into snow.”
The area had less snow than usual this winter and it melted and exposed the tundra early. Wind, sun, and less precipitation than usual have dried out the fuel.
Map, Kwethluk Fire, southwest Alaska, April 24, 2022.
The Alaska Division of Forestry reported April 26 that the spread of the Kwethluk Fire had stopped.
Below are excerpts from an April 26 update by the DOF about the fire:
“Burning in tundra, grasses and brush since Saturday April 16th, the wind driven wildfire has been finding sun dried fuels in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge. DOF’s mapping specialist Matt Snyder flew a mapping and reconnaissance of the fire today noting in his field report this afternoon: “the fire is showing no smoke or activity. An infrared (IR) scan showed no heat. The fire will remain in monitor status so that further aerial observations can be made.”
“Originally scheduled for yesterday but delayed due to heavy cloud cover, today’s flight under clear sky shows the lack of smoke production from what was a 10% active perimeter when last observed on Friday’s flight. The natural barriers halting further spread include mountains, winter snowpack, icy creeks and rivers. Precipitation and increased humidities have also slowed fire spread. Persistently able to throw spotfires over frozen creeks and drainages for most of the last 10 days, the Kwethluk Fire remains two miles from the nearest native allotment.
Kwethluk Fire, southwest Alaska, April 26, 2022. Alaska DNR DOF.
“Values at risk include native allotments one mile to the northeast, 2.3 miles to the southeast, 3.3 miles to the west, and the Kwethluk Fish Weir approximately 5 miles to the west southwest. An additional surveillance flight will take place this week as needed and fire managers will continue to monitor both satellite heat sensors, FAA Weather Aviation cameras, and good Samaritan reports from Kwethluk, Bethel and Napakiak.
“It is common to have wildfires at this time of year in Alaska. As our daylight lengthens, the snowpack recedes and exposes the tundra grasses, mosses and shrubs to the drying effects of the wind and the sun. These conditions, coupled with sparse precipitation, work to dry out the tundra plants and make them available as fuel for combustion. Western Alaskan wildfires burning at this time of year tend to be wind driven and fast moving but also short-lived. These fires cannot burn deeply below the surface due to the shallow frost layer and tend to readily extinguish themselves as they encounter drainages and sloughs, differing vegetation, existing areas of snow, or changes in weather.”
Below is a flyover of the Kwethluk Fire narrated by DOF Specialist Matt Snyder recorded April 18, 2022. At the time it was 4,048 acres.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Gerald.
More information about the fire from the Alaska Division of Forestry.
