City spent over $20,000 defending against Congressman Rehberg’s suit about a wildfire

The Billings Gazette is reporting that the city of Billings, Montana spent $20,761 in defending against the lawsuit filed by Representative Denny Rehberg, R-Montana. The congressman sought a monetary award from the city to compensate him and his wife for a 2008 wildfire that burned undeveloped property owned by the couple. He alleged that the fire department was negligent in allowing the fire to flare up 2 days after it was contained.

The city hired a lawyer and after much back and forth between attorneys on both sides, the city refused offers to settle. Congressman Rehberg, who is running for the Senate seat occupied by Senator John Tester, dropped the suit in November, 2011.

The newspaper reports that the city was billed for 151.8 hours of the attorney’s time, for a total of $20,638.50, plus $123.10 in costs.

An attorney for Representative Rehberg contacted at least two retired wildland firefighters  inquiring if they would be interested in working as expert witnesses for the lawsuit, but they refused.

We have written previously about Representative Rehberg’s lawsuit.

Forest Service Chief testifies about wildfire budget and air tankers

Chief Tom Tidwell
Chief of the USFS Tom Tidwell testifies before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resource, March 3, 2012.

The Chief of the U.S. Forest Service told a congressional committee on Tuesday that he expects the wildfire suppression budget to be “tight” this year and that he plans to rely more on the military’s eight MAFFS air tankers than the agency did last year.

In front of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, Chief Tom Tidwell read a prepared statement about the FY 2013 USFS budget and then answered questions from members of the committee.

While the proposed budget fully funds the 10-year average cost of wildland fire suppression operations for FY 2013, Chief Tidwell said that based on current and predicted conditions, this year “it’s going to be tight for us to have adequate funding for fire suppression”.

Two senators, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Lisa Murkowsk of Alaska, gave their opinions and asked detailed questions about the availability of air tankers. Senator Wyden said that the USFS should speed up the adoption of new technology, and gave an example of a very large air tanker in his state that has seven times the capacity of standard large air tankers. He was obviously referring to Evergreen’s 747, Tanker 979, which holds 20,000 gallons. The USFS has not been interested in offering exclusive use contracts for any very large air tankers (VLAT) and has only made call when needed contracts available. Evergreen has said they cannot continue to make the 747 available on a CWN basis with a very uncertain income stream. Another VLAT vendor, 10 Tanker Air Carrier, did accept the CWN contract and is struggling to manage their two DC-10s with no guarantee of income.

Senator Wyden told Chief Tidwell that he wants Mr. Tidwell within 30 days to respond to him and a bipartisan group of Senators explaining what the USFS will do to consider “new technology” and the use of VLATs.

Chief Tidwell said this year the agency will contract for two scooper air tankers (presumably CL-215s or CL-415’s) for the first time. He said the recent request for proposals for “next generation” air tankers will produce three additional air tankers this year and four more in 2013. Adding the two scoopers and three next-gen air tankers would bring the total from 11 last year to 16 this year. This compares to the 19 at the beginning of 2011, the 11 at the end of 2011, and the 44 in 2002. Chief Tidwell said that under the air tanker strategy announced recently by the USFS, he expects there will be 18 to 28 large air tankers eventually under contract.

He said there will be 30 large Type 1 helicopters on national contracts this year compared to 34 last year, but not all of those last year were Type 1, so this year there will be a net increase in the number of gallons that can be carried.

Chief Tidwell also testified that he expects to rely more this year than last year on the Mobile Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS) C-130 air tankers operated by the Air National Guard and the Air Force reserve.  But Senator Murkowski confronted him with the fact that “the military does not desire to take on additional responsibilities with the C-130s”. She said “We need to be very cognizant of the stresses we are putting on the [Air National Guard and Air Force Reserve] system.”

Chief Tidwell responded:

The Department of Defense is not interested in expanding their mission to assist in this, but also at the same time they are going to continue to work with us to provide these air national guard unit planes when we need them after everything else is fully committed. It is part of our strategy to help bridge. If we have an active fire season we are going to have to rely on those eight MAFFS planes.

A video of the 110-minute hearing can be found on the Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s web site.

MAFFS training in California

MAFFS training 5-1-2010
File photo from MAFFS training near Greenville, South Carolina May 1, 2010. Photo by Airman 1st Class Nicholas Carzis

The two Modular Airborne Fire Fighting Systems (MAFFS) air tankers based at the Channel Islands Air National Guard in Port Hueneme, California are participating in training this week for wildfire assignments. The portable MAFFS units can be inserted into the cargo holds of military C-130J aircraft within a few hours to be used when the privately-owned air tankers that are under contract to the federal government are committed on fires or otherwise not available. The training began on Monday and will conclude on Thursday.

Three other bases in the United States have two aircraft each that are designated as MAFFS-deployable, stationed in Colorado, Wyoming, and South Carolina. Usually the aircraft from multiple bases assemble in one area for their annual training and recertification, but this year the California aircraft and crews will not be joined by MAFFS aircraft from other states. Last year the Colorado and Wyoming units met in Idaho for the training, and in 2010 all four bases sent their aircraft to South Carolina. Major Kimberly Holman told us that a cost reduction initiative was the reason for the localized training.

MAFFS II
MAFFS II, built by Aero Union and sold to the USFS. It can be transferred from the green trailer into the cargo hold of a C-130J aircraft. Photo by Aero Union

This year in California, more than 100 personnel from he 146th Airlift Wing and the U.S. Forest Service will come together to accomplish the weeklong training sponsored by the USFS and the Air National Guard. The certification event will include classroom sessions and flight training for military flight crews, civilian lead plane pilots, and various support personnel. Water drops will be executed in the nearby Angeles National Forest and in Kern County. Rural residents in those areas may see low-flying C-130 aircraft and Forest Service lead planes throughout the week.

The Times-News has some other photos of the aircraft and personnel.

Lessons learned from 3 wildfire incidents

The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center has posted reports from three recent incidents: an escaped prescribed fire that burned private land, an injury caused by an air tanker drop, and wheels that loosened and fell off an engine, hitting a passenger car. We commend the folks involved in these incidents, sharing their experiences so that others may learn.

Here are summaries of the three reports:

Escaped fire from pile burning on Black Hills National Forest

Escaped prescribed fire Black Hills National Forest

On January 13, 2012 during pile burning operations on the Black Hills National Forest 10 miles west of Rapid City, South Dakota, 9-15 mph winds gusting at 23-37 mph contributed to the fire escaping from the piles and burning onto private land. After driving to a USFS facility to obtain fire tools, the three firefighters on scene fought the fire for two hours before notifying the zone fire management officer.

Here is the executive summary from the report:

On January 13, 2012, fire personnel from Northern Hills Ranger District of the Black Hills National Forest ignited approximately 150 hand piles within the Forest Health Unit 1 fuel break. As the three-person burn team completed ignition around noon, the relative humidity dropped rapidly while brisk westerly winds developed. The combined effect of the pre-heating from the burning piles and the drying wind quickly evaporated the two inches of snow covering the heavy fuels immediately upslope from the burning piles. As the fire began to spread by means of spotting from log-to-log, the burn team worked diligently to contain the spots. Buffeted by wind gusts in excess of 35 mph during the afternoon and evening, the fire burned approximately 3.5 acres of private property.

During the escape, the affected landowner became dissatisfied by a perceived lack of regard shown by the Forest Service and shared his frustrations via telephone with the Acting District Ranger who, in turn, advised the off-duty Zone FMO that the fire had burned onto private property. Additional resources arrived on scene. The Forest Health Prescribed Fire was declared a wildfire, and became known as the Picnic Fire. Command transferred from the RXB3 to an ICT4, and the Picnic Fire was declared contained the following day. No structures or improvements were damaged by the fire.

Wheels come off BLM engine and hit passenger car

BLM Engine 2423 and tow truck

The crew of a Bureau of Land Management engine removed, painted, and re-installed the wheels of their engine in preparation for a 4th of July parade. The following day they experienced a problem.

BLM Engine 2423 and automobile

Here is an excerpt from the Introduction section of the report:

On Wednesday June 29, 2011, E-423, a Type-4 wildland fire engine was travelling south on US-395 returning to the Burns Interagency Fire Station in Hines, Oregon after visiting a recently controlled fire incident. In route to the station, the rear driver’s side dual lug nuts loosened and fell off causing the wheels to separate from the vehicle. One of the free wheels from the engine traveled into the opposing lane of traffic and struck a passing motorist causing damage to the frontend of the passenger side of the vehicle. E-423 came to rest on the left rear hub and sustained damage to the brake/hub assembly and surface damage to the rear body box. No serious injuries were sustained as a result of the incident.

Firefighter injured by air tanker drop

This is the complete narrative section of the report:

On January 13, 2012, units from CAL FIRE Riverside Unit/Riverside County Fire Department were dispatched to a vegetation fire in the Cherry Valley area near Oak Glen Rd. and Apple Tree Ln. The fire occurred mid-slope on a very steep hillside. The engine company had been assigned to determine if there was a good location to access the fire and start a hose lay. A Helitack Fire Captain was acting as a lookout and notified all personnel operating in the area that airtankers were about to make air drops. Communication was established both face to face and over the radio. A Fire Apparatus Engineer assigned to an engine was approximately 50’-60’ downhill from the ridgeline near the flank of the fire. The FAE acknowledged the notification of incoming air drops. An air tanker then came over the ridge and began its drop run . The FAE saw the air tanker at the last second and discarded his tool but was unable to get into the proper safety position for the drop. He was struck by the drop causing him to roll approximately 50’-60’ feet down the steep slope.

The FAE was immediately attended to by onscene personnel. The FAE was able to walk to the ridge with assistance and then transported by Copter 301 to a helispot where a private ambulance was waiting. The ambulance transported the FAE to a local trauma center for evaluation. The FAE was evaluated and released within a few hours with minor injuries.

 

Texas: Anatomy of last year’s Bastrop County fire

A Geographic Information Systems specialist, Karen Ridenour, has been researching the history of the wildfire that became the most disastrous wildfire in Texas history. Several decisions made on that September 4 day helped to mitigate the potential impacts on the residents in the path of the fire, which still burned 34,000 acres and destroyed 1,600 homes.

An article at the Statesman contains some of the facts about the fire that have been collected by Ms. Ridenour:

…The first decision was made before the fire even began on Sunday, Sept. 4. Mike Fisher, Bastrop County’s emergency management coordinator, already knew that the conditions were perfect for wildfires: drought-baked vegetation, low humidity and a steady north wind caused in part by Tropical Storm Lee, which had made landfall on the Louisiana coast that morning.

By early afternoon, fires were burning across the state. Local fire departments would end up responding to 227 fires that day, and for 57 of them, the locals called the Texas Forest Service for assistance, Ridenour said. The agency assisted with nine fires in Central Texas.

Fisher had been monitoring radio traffic about the fires in Travis and Fayette counties, and he decided to activate his county’s emergency operations center. By 2 p.m., County Judge Ronnie McDonald, Sheriff Terry Pickering, Fire Chief Henry Perry and public information officer Gayle Wilhelm had joined Fisher at the operations center in the Grady Tuck Building on Loop 150.

At 2:16 p.m., emergency center staffer Steve Long called the 911 dispatcher to put everyone on alert. “We suggested if they were understaffed, they better start calling people in,” Fisher said.

Four minutes later, at 2:20 p.m., the first 911 call came in from a homeowner on Charolais Drive, just west of Texas 21 in the Circle D neighborhood. A dead pine had snapped and fallen on a power line. The homeowner reported flames near her backyard.

[…]

“This fire didn’t seem to travel in a line,” said Scott Sutcliffe, the assistant chief for the Heart of the Pines Volunteer Fire Department. “It was just popping up everywhere. It was raining embers.”

The embers created hundreds of spot fires, which would then merge and become a new fire front, Sutcliffe said.

“How do you fight something that’s moving that fluidly?” Sutcliffe said. “You really can’t. You run, try to get in front of it again, because you don’t want to be caught in the middle.”

Sean Rissel, a Forest Service resource specialist, would later get permission from homeowners to collect seven trampolines that had survived the fire.

A square meter of one trampoline from McAllister Road was peppered with 250 burn holes, Rissel said.

The wind blew embers for miles; residents reported finding chunks of blackened pine bark the size of softballs in Rosanky, 15 miles south of the Colorado River. As the fire grew, smoke and heat and energy billowed into the sky and created horizontal roll vortices: slowly turning cylinders that roiled above the fire. Ridenour said they are a sign of “very extreme fire behavior.” Aerial maps would later show what looked like long stripes of blackened forest within the fire scar — a sign, Ridenour said, that the vortices became so massive that they crashed back to earth along the fire’s flanks.

“When it crashes,” Ridenour said, “it nukes everything.”

Report issued about escaped prescribed fire in Western Australia

A report recently released about an escaped prescribed fire in Western Australia said some employees of the Department of Environment and Conservation are overworked and are performing above their skill levels. The prescribed fire in Leeuwin-Naturaliste National Park escaped on November 23, 2011 and pushed by strong winds, destroyed 40 structures and burned over 8,400 acres. Residents who had refused to evacuate later had to take refuge from the fire on a beach. They were rescued by jet ski and ferried to a search and rescue boat offshore.

Here are some excerpts from an article at www.watoday.com.au

…The damning report by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Keelty, released [February 23], found DEC made a series of omissions and mistakes during the planning and implementation of a prescribed burn that led to devastating consequences.

More than 40 properties were destroyed or damaged when the burn became out of control and raged across 3400 hectares.

Rather than pointing the blame on any individual, Mr Keelty said the errors that led to the bushfire were made by people making decisions beyond their expertise and using the available resources.

“Many officers are required to make decisions affecting the lives and livelihood of the community which, on the face of it, do not match their pay scale,” the report says.

The union representing most DEC employees, the Community and Public Sector Union, claims the poor resources at DEC have forced some employees to work in excessive of 36 hours without a break and many others to regularly work 20 hours.

When they finished their ordinary day job with the department they were then on-call in case of a bushfire outside of hours.

“They’ll go home and be on-call to manage a fire incident, whether it’s small or big,” state secretary Toni Walkington said.

“They’ll spend whatever amount of hours that it takes and then they’ll report back the next day and do their parks and services job. So they don’t get breaks and that’s because DEC isn’t funded to have more people in those fire roles.”

Ms Walkington said their jobs also were made more difficult because of a lack of technology, including no electronic operational processes, meaning staff still had to do paperwork by hand.

They were also reluctant to put themselves on the on-call roster or take responsibility for fires because some employees had been publicly named and identified during the Margaret River inquiry.

“The spotlight is on them and criticisms have been made,” Ms Walkington said.

August-Margaret River Shire Mayor Ray Colyer said DEC employees now feared walking the street in their work uniforms following community outrage over the department’s failure to contain the prescribed burn.

 

Thanks go out to Dick