Big Cypress has released their second in a series of three films about prescribed fire in the south Florida Park, titled, Burn Boss: A History of Fire and People in Big Cypress.
Here is their description:
The job of the Burn Boss is difficult. Perhaps the toughest in all of professional conservation. To be the Boss of Fire, you must be willing to take responsibility for one of nature’s most powerful forces: Fire.
Jennifer Brown and Into Nature Films worked shoulder-to-shoulder with Big Cypress National Preserve to tell the history of the National Park Service’s most accomplished fire program. With beautiful cinematography, fascinating interviews, and tantalizing story, this film highlights the colorful people and places in the wild heart of south Florida, narrated and written by Rick Anderson, a descendent of Florida pioneers. Rick has dedicated his life to the use of fire for the land.
Last month the first film in the series was released, “Fire Swamp”, that explains the relationship between fire and the swamp.
Map showing heat (the red dots) and smoke in Bolivia and Brazil detected by a satellite August 14, 2019. Click to enlarge.
Smoke from hundreds of fires in the Amazon Basin combined with clouds Monday afternoon to plunge a major South American city into darkness.
Numerous fires in Bolivia and the Amazon Basin in Brazil have been creating smoke in recent days that got pushed hundreds of miles by a cold front to Sao Paulo, turning the sky dark.
Below is an excerpt from an article in the Washington Post:
“The smoke [Monday] didn’t come from fires in the state of Sao Paulo, but from very dense and wide fires that have been happening for several days in [the state of] Rondonia and Bolivia,” Josélia Pegorim, a meteorologist with Climatempo, said in an interview with Globo. “The cold front changed direction and its winds transported the smoke to Sao Paulo.”
The news highlighted the number of forest fires in Brazil, which rose by more than 80 percent this year, according to data released this week by the National Institute for Space Research (INPE).
“This central Brazil and south of the Amazon Rainforest region has been undergoing a prolonged drought,” Alberto Setzer, a researcher at INPE, said in an interview with local media outlets. “And there are some places where there has not fallen a drop of rain for three months.”
Most of the Amazon was once considered fireproof, but as climate change and deforestation remake the world, wildfires are increasing in frequency and intensity, recent research has shown.
In the Amazon region, according to NASA, fires are rare for much of the year because wet weather prevents them from starting and spreading. However, in July and August, activity typically increases due to the arrival of the dry season. Many people use fire to maintain farmland and pastures or to clear land for other purposes. Typically, activity peaks in early September and mostly stops by November.
The map above, showing heat and smoke in Brazil and Bolivia on August 14, is the best we could find. More recent satellite imagery has either clouds, or smoke so dense over very large areas that smoke from individual fires couldn’t be distinguished from smoke covering very large areas.
A smoke plume from the McKinley Fire burning along the Parks Highway is seen from the highway on Sunday, August 18. Photo by Maureen Clark/Alaska Division of Forestry.
(UPDATED at 8:43 a.m. PDT August 20, 2019)
From the Incident Management Team
Calmer winds Monday helped slow the spread of the McKinley Fire as firefighters continued their efforts to protect buildings and infrastructure. An evacuation order for the area along the Parks Highway from Mileposts 82 to 91 remains in effect.
The Alaska Type 2 Interagency Incident Management Team assumed management of the fire Monday evening. The addition of a dozen engines from Fairbanks and two crews from the Lower 48 in the next 24 hours are expected give a good boost to the firefighting effort. With the additional resources, fire managers will be adding a night shift to patrol the subdivisions in the fire area.
The McKinley Fire, which began Saturday near Milepost 91 of the Parks Highway is estimated at 3,012 acres. Fueled by north winds gusting to 35 miles per hour, it quickly moved south on Sunday, burning along both sides of the Parks Highway corridor for 7 miles. An estimated 50 structures were destroyed by the fire.
The Alaska Department of Public Safety, State Fire Marshal and Alaska State Troopers are working with the Alaska Division of Forestry and Matanuska Susitna Borough to get a better estimate of structures burned and determine how many were residences. The State Fire Marshal’s Office and Alaska State Troopers are working to account for persons in the evacuation area. If you know of persons who may be unaccounted for please contact the Matanuska-Susitna Borough call center at 907-861-8326.
(Originally published at 2:44 p.m PDT August 19, 2019)
The McKinley Fire along the Parks Highway in Alaska burned at least 50 structures Sunday afternoon as firefighters and other emergency responders worked furiously to evacuate and rescue residents threatened by the fire.
The fire is 19 miles south of Talkeetna near Milepost 88 on the highway. (see map below)
Alaska Division of Forestry and Matanuska-Susitna Borough personnel are still working to account for residents who chose not to evacuate their homes or go to an evacuation shelter. Forestry, borough and Red Cross officials are working to determine how many structures were lost but specific details about structures that burned are not currently available.
Driven by strong north winds, the fire jumped from the east side of the Parks Highway to the west side at around 6 p.m. Sunday, prompting immediate evacuations on both sides of the highway from Mileposts 82 to 91.
The Parks Highway was closed at milepost 71.25 on the south and the Upper Susitna Senior Center on Helena Avenue at approximately milepost 98.5 on the north. The highway remained closed as of 11 p.m. There was no timetable for when the road will be reopened at the time of this report.
Map showing the approximate location of the McKinley Fire south of Talkeetna, Alaska at 4:52 a.m. local time August 19, 2019. Map by Wildfire Today.
The latest size estimate on the fire was approximately 1,800 acres as of 10 p.m. Sunday.
Evacuation shelters have been established north and south of the Highway closure. The shelter on the south end is located at the Menard Sports Complex in Wasilla and the shelter on the north end is at the Upper Susitna Senior Center at approximately Mile 98.5.
The fire started Saturday afternoon when the wind blew a tree onto a power line near Milepost 91. The fire grew to about 150 acres overnight and burned up to the highway but remained east of the highway. That changed late Sunday afternoon when strong winds and warm, dry conditions resulted in extreme fire behavior that prevented suppression efforts and forced firefighters to focus their efforts on evacuating residents and protecting structures.
A Type 2 Incident Management Team from Alaska will be assuming command of the McKinley Fire on Tuesday. Two more incident management teams from the Lower 48 are en route to take over management of the Deshka Landing and Swan Lake Fires.
With the increase in wildfire activity in South-central Alaska the past two days, Forestry is also bringing up multiple other resources from the Lower 48 to assist with containment of fires. Ten hotshot crews are traveling to Alaska and should arrive Monday afternoon. Those crews will be split among the three fires listed above. Two large air tankers and four water-scooping aircraft are also en route.
A portion of the McKinley Fire, Sunday, August 18, 2019 after the fire burned through the area. Photo by Maureen Clark/Alaska Division of Forestry.
Most of the information above provided by Alaska Division of Forestry.
And how that is related to the Big Blowup and the fires of 1910
Chrome plated pulaski presented to a retiring firefighter.
On this day 109 years ago the fires of 1910 were burning across northern Idaho, Western Montana, and parts of Washington and Oregon. But on the following two days, August 20 and 21, winds fanned the flames into large conflagrations that raced across large expanses of the landscape, creating what became known as the Big Blowup.
Ranger Edward Pulaski. USFS photo.
During one of the fire fights U.S. Forest Service Ranger Edward C. “Ed” Pulaski told the 45 firefighters he was supervising to take refuge from an approaching wildfire in the 80-foot long Nicholson mine. When they began to panic in the smoky tunnel as the fire closed in, he drew his revolver, saying, “The next man who tries to leave the tunnel I will shoot”.
Ranger Pulaski’s name may have become lost in the dustbin of history, except for his penchant of tinkering with fire tools in his workshop. He became associated with what is now known as the pulaski tool that firefighters have used for over a century.
But perhaps he was given more credit than he deserved.
In 1986 the U.S. Forest Service publication Fire Management Notes published the article below about how the pulaski was actually developed.
The True Story of the Pulaski Fire Tool
James B. Davis Research forester, USDA Forest Service, Forest Fire and Atmospheric Sciences Research, Washington, DC
The nickel-plated pulaski looks as good as new in its glass-fronted Collins Tool Company display case at the Smithsonian Museum of Arts and Industry in Washington, DC. Surrounded by equally shiny cutting tools of all description, the pulaski was first put on display at the Nation’s Centennial Exhibit in Philadelphia in 1876.
Conventional wisdom holds that the pulaski fire tool was invented by Edward C. “Big Ed” Pulaski in the second decade of the 20th century. Ed Pulaski, a descendant of American Revolution hero Casimir Pulaski, was a hero of the Great Idaho Fire of 1910, leading his crew to safety when they became imperiled. He was also one of a group of ranger tinkerers who struggled to solve the equipment problems of the budding forestry profession. However, the pulaski tool on display at the Smithsonian must have been made when Big Ed was no more than 6 years old!
In the early days of forestry in this country, fire tools were whatever happened to be available. The earliest methods of firefighting were confined mostly to “knocking down” or “beating out” the flames, and the tools used in the job were simple and primitive. The beating out, when such an approach was possible, was often accomplished with a coat, slicker, wet sack, or even a saddle blanket. A commonly used tool was a pine bough cut on arrival at the fire edge (4).
Soon farming and logging tools, available at general and hardware stores, came into use. These included the shovel, ax, hoe, and rake-all basic hand tools developed over centuries of manual labor. Even after firefighting became an important function of forestry agencies, these tools were accepted as they were, wherever they could be picked up, and little thought was given to size, weight, and balance. There appears to be no record of the use of the Collins Tool Company pulaski for fire control. Most likely, it was sold to farmers for land clearing and may have been forgotten by the late 1800’s (2).
With the advent of the USDA Forest Service and State forestry organizations, a generation of “ranger inventors” and tinkerers began to emerge. It became apparent that careful selection and modification was essential for efficient work and labor conservation. In the early days when almost everybody and everything had to travel by horseback transportation was a particular problem. For years foresters worked on the idea of combination tools. Most of the attempts were built in home workshops, and most “went with the wind.” Two important survivors, now in general use, are the Mcleod tool, a sturdy combination of rake and hoe, and the combination of ax and mattock. The McLeod was probably the first fire tool to be developed. It was designed in 1905 by Ranger Malcolm McLeod of the Sierra National Forest.
Who first invented the ax-hoe combination and used it for firefighting is a matter of minor dispute. Earle P. Dudly claims to have had a pulaski-like tool made by having a lightweight mining pick modified by a local blacksmith. He says he used the tool for firefighting in the USDA Forest Service’s Northern Rocky Mountain Region in 1907. Dudly was well acquainted with Ed Pulaski, and the two had discussed fire tools.
Another account of the origin of the pulaski is that William G. Weigle, supervisor of the Coeur d’ Alene National Forest, thought of the idea-but not for firefighting (5). Rangers Ed Pulaski and Joe Halm worked under him (all three became heroes of the Great Idaho Fire) at Wallace, then headquarters for the Coeur d’Alene National Forest. At that time, plans were being made for some experimental reforestation, including the planting, pine seedlings. As Supervisor Weigle planned the job, he decided a new tool was needed to help with the planting as well as other forestry work. He decided on a combination of ax, mattock, and shovel. One day in late 1910 or 1911, Weigle sent Rangers Joe Halm and Ed Holcomb to Pulaski’s home blacksmith shop to tum out a combination tool that might replace the mattock that was then in common use for tree planting. Halm, with Holcomb helping, cut one blade off a double-bitted ax, then welded a mattock hoe on at right angles to the former blade position. He then drilled a hole in an old shovel and attached it to the ax-mattock piece by means of a wing bolt, placing it so the user could sink the shovel into the earth by applying foot pressure to the mattock blade.
The rather awkward device was not a success as a planting tool. Probably the whole idea would have been abandoned had not Ranger Pulaski been fascinated with the possibilities of the tool. He kept using it, experimenting with it, and improving it. He soon discovered that the bolted-on shovel was awkward and unsatisfactory. He abandoned the shovel part and also lengthened and reshaped the ax and mattock blades. It is too bad Pulaski did not know about the Collins Tool pulaski — it would have saved him a lot of time. Nevertheless, by 1913 Pulaski had succeeded in making a well-balanced tool with a sharp ax on one side and a mattock or grubbing blade on the other.
Pulaski use now spread throughout the Rocky Mountain region. However, it was used not for tree planting but for fire control. By 1920 the demand was so great that a commercial tool company was asked to handle production.
Although the pulaski went into widespread use in the Rockies in the 1920’s, it saw little or no use in other areas. Prior to 1931 the USDA Forest Service had no good internal method for handling equipment development and promotion. Most new equipment ideas were introduced and discussed at the regular Western Forestry and Conservation Association meetings (3, 7).
By the mid i930’s, with the advent of the CCC, fire tools began to proliferate, and the USDA Forest Service sought to standardize tools rather than develop new ones. It was at an equipment standardization conference at Spokane in 1936 that the pulaski tool was proposed for national distribution. The conference instructed the USDA Forest Service’s Region I to develop and further test a prototype suitable for servicewide use (6, 8).
Since “Big Ed’s” day the pulaski, as well as other fire tools, has undergone continual improvement. Pulaski development is an ongoing effort at the USDA Forest Service’s Missoula Equipment Development Center. Careful engineering study, design, and testing have resulted in standards of shape, weight, balance, and quality (fig. I).
Although Ed Pulaski may not have invented the first fire tool put into general use or even first thought of the tool that bears his name, he did develop, improve, and popularize the pulaski. The General Services Administration now puts out bids for more than 35,000 new pulaskis each year — a long way from the prototype so laboriously made in Ranger Pulaski’s home blacksmith shop (1).
—–
Literature Cited
1. Daffern, Jerry. Fire suppression equipment from GSA. Fire Management. 36(2):3–4-; 1975. 2. Gisbom, H.T. Forest fire-a mother of invention. American Forests and Forest Life. 32(389);265-268; 1926. 3. Goodwin, David P. The evolution of firefighting equipment. American Forests. 45(4);205-207; 1939. 4. Graves, Henry S. Protecting the forest from fire. Forest Service Bulletin. 82; 1910. 48 p. 5. Huh, Ruby E. How the pulaski became a popular tool. The Regional Forest Ranger-Part Four. Article on file: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Washington Office, History Section. 6. Lowden, Merle S. Equipment development and fire research. Fire Control Notes. 19(4);127-129; 1958. 7. Osborne, W.B., Jr. Fire protection equipment accomplishments and needs. Journal of Forestry. 29(8): 1195-1201; 1931. 8. Pyne, Stephen J. Fire in America. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; 1982. 654 p.
It was not part of the 1986 article, but here is a map showing the location of some of the large fires of 1910.
The map shows some of the fires of 1910 in Idaho and Montana. USFS.
This video uploaded to YouTube on July 3, 2019 describes how the Doe Canyon Fire in Southwest Colorado was managed to enhance forest health.
It is interesting how the U.S. Forest Service has been recently using the term “good fire”. They probably think it means more to the public than some of the descriptions heard in the past, such as “fire managed for resource benefit”.
The agency is also increasingly using professional quality videos, like the National Park Service has done for years in South Florida, to educate the public about how they manage fire dependent ecosystems.
John Beinhauer of the Nevada Division of Forestry sent us this information about wildland fire crews assisting at an accident site earlier this week:
“On Tuesday, August 13, 2019, the Elko Interagency Dispatch Center received a request for assistance from the Elko County Fire Protection District for Federal resources to help with a traffic accident/rescue in difficult terrain near Angel Lake outside of Wells, Nevada.
“Task Force Alpha, on assignment at the Wells BLM Station, was dispatched along with a mine rescue crew from the Nevada Gold Mines – Long Canyon Mine. A single vehicle had rolled off the switchback road coming to rest approximately 400 yards from the roadway in steep terrain. Fire Crews assisted local personnel with patient extraction and transport to the waiting ambulance for transfer to the EMS helicopter.”
