The Beach Fire along the Colorado River near Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Photo by San Bernardino County FD.
(UPDATED at 7:12 a.m. PDT April 1, 2019)
The Bureau of Land Management reported Sunday evening that the fire had burned 80 acres and most of the resources were being released. However, some would remain on scene overnight others will staff it today, Monday.
(Originally published at 4:53 p.m. PDT March 31, 2019)
Firefighters are working on the Beach Fire burning on the banks of the Colorado River at Body Beach in Lake Havasu City, AZ. At about 3:45 p.m. PDT fire officials said the northeast wind had picked up and it was moving the fire, which was 40 acres at that time, south along the shoreline on land managed by the Bureau of Reclamation. County and Bureau of Land Management structures were being threatened.
BLM, San Bernardino County Fire, and other departments were on scene.
These photos were shot from a San Bernardino County FD fire boat.
The Beach Fire along the Colorado River near Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Photo by San Bernardino County FD.The Beach Fire along the Colorado River near Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Photo by San Bernardino County FD.The Beach Fire along the Colorado River near Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Photo by San Bernardino County FD.The Beach Fire along the Colorado River near Lake Havasu City, Arizona. Photo by San Bernardino County FD.
The arrow on the map points to the Spring Hill Fire in New Jersey. Satellite image at 9:07 p.m. EDT March 30, 2019. Wildfire Today / NASA
(Updated at 3:04 p.m. EDT March 31, 2019)
The wildfire burning in New Jersey in the Penn State Forest in Burlington County near the Ocean County border has grown to about 10,000 acres, fire officials said at 2:45 p.m on Sunday. Firefighters have been conducting burnout operations out ahead of the fire to remove the fuel and slow down the blaze.
Route 72 is still closed.
(Updated at 1:25 a.m. EDT, March 31, 2019)
Officials in New Jersey said Sunday morning that the Spring Hill Fire in the Pinelands had grown to about 8,000 acres. Route 72 west of Route 539 in Barnegat remains closed while firefighters are working in the area.
(Updated at 8:53 a.m. EDT March 31, 2019)
A fire that started at 1:45 Saturday afternoon in the New Jersey Pinelands had burned approximately 5,000 acres by 10 p.m. Pushed by strong winds out of the south-southwest at 10 mph gusting up to 25 mph it ran to the north and northeast forcing authorities to close Route 72 west of Barnegat. The fire started in the Penn State Forest in Burlington County near the Ocean County border when the relative humidity was 33 percent.
Satellite imagery showed that the fire was still very active throughout the night into early Sunday morning, especially at 4:22 a.m. EST. Later, clouds moved in and obscured the view.
The red and gray dots represent the location of the wildfire in New Jersey as seen from a satellite at 4:22 a.m. EDT March 31, 2019.
It started in an area in which there are few structures.
The weather forecast calls for a 60 to 70 percent chance of showers Saturday night and Sunday.
The video below was shot by the Ocean County Sheriff’s Office on March 30.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Capt. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
Taken in Downtown TR from forest fire in New Jersey. So far over 5000 acres are gone. pic.twitter.com/cOTorBzmOq
— The Notorious Brandon (@brandonthadon_) March 31, 2019
The firefighter that died in the Texas helicopter crash on March 27 has been identified by the U.S. Forest Service as Daniel Laird, a Captain on the Tahoe Helitack crew in California. He leaves behind a wife and young daughter.
One source tells us that the other passenger was also a USFS firefighter who was sitting in the front seat when the aircraft went down, but reportedly walked away and was treated and released from a hospital.
Daniel J. Laird. Tahoe National Forest photo.
The pilot was also transported to a hospital in stable condition, according to the information reported yesterday by Sergeant Erik Burse with the Texas Department of Public Safety.
Below is a letter from the USFS Regional Forester in California:
“You may have already heard from Secretary Perdue and Chief Christiansen that we lost one of our own, Daniel Laird, yesterday, in a helicopter accident while conducting a prescribed burn with our Region 8 partners on the Sam Houston National Forest in Texas. Daniel was 41 years old and leaves behind his wife Heather and daughter Evain.
“Daniel started as a seasonal firefighter on the Tahoe [National Forest] and worked his way up to Helitack Captain. His passion was in aviation, but he was also known for his ability to lead a strike team of engines or a task force of hand crews and heavy equipment. He was a true leader in every sense. He was dedicated to being an instructor and a believer in the apprentice program, where he helped grow people just like himself. Daniel was originally from Graeagle, CA, and committed his working life to the Forest Service. He was extremely knowledgeable about his craft and loved his job. He had an infectious smile, natural physical talent, and his greatest love of all was his family.
“Our Forest Service family is hurting over this tremendous loss. It is an emotional time and Daniel’s loss can impact even the strongest among us. We grieve with Daniel’s immediate family, friends, and community. Please keep them all in your thoughts and prayers. The Region is providing support to the Tahoe and all who need it as they digest this sad news. I will pass more details on arrangements once they become available.
“Please continue to look out for one another and take care of one another.”
Randy Moore
Regional Forester
USFS R5
(UPDATED at 9 a.m. CDT March 28, 2019)
The deceased firefighter was a U.S. Forest Service employee who, along with the other firefighter and the pilot, were on an aerial ignition mission. Their equipment was dropping plastic spheres that burst into flame after hitting the ground, helping to ignite the prescribed fire. No names have been released.
(Originally published at 7:20 p.m. CDT March 27, 2019)
One firefighter was killed in the crash of a helicopter today while working on a prescribed fire in the Sam Houston National Forest about 30 miles southeast of College Station, Texas south of Highway 149.
Sergeant Erik Burse with the Texas Department of Public Safety said the Eurocopter AS350 went down at about 2 p.m. with three people on board, a pilot and two firefighters. One of the firefighters was deceased on scene. The pilot and a second firefighter were transported to a hospital in stable condition.
Map showing heat in the Sam Houston National Forest detected by a satellite at 2:38 p.m. CDT March 27, 2019. There is a possibility the heat could have been produced by a prescribed fire.
Our sincere condolences go out to the family, friends, and coworkers of the firefighter, and we hope for a speedy recovery of the injured personnel.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Perry. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
The next step is to collect input from firefighters and stakeholders on an approach to the Registry including potential enrollment methods
A firefighter works a blaze in Northern California during the fires in Wine Country in 2017. Photo courtesy of CAL FIRE.
(UPDATED at 10 a.m. MDT March 28, 2019)
The Request for Information about the new National Firefighter Registry described below was published today. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), an agency within the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is requesting input about three possible enrollment strategies. Specifically, NIOSH is asking for input on how to maximize participation for the Registry. The comment period will close on May 28th, 2019.
The process for leaving a comment is convoluted. They ask you to click on this link and then you have to search for the appropriate issue. I searched for “National Firefighter Registry” which brought up 208 results. When I checked today it was the first one.
When found, you have to click in the search results on “Comment Now”(over on the right) Maybe THIS will take you directly to the comment form.
Keep in mind that any information (e.g., personal or contact) you provide on the comment form may be publicly disclosed and searchable on the Internet and in a paper docket. But you don’t have to leave your name or email address.
(Originally published at 2:41 p.m. MDT March 27, 2019)
The legislation called it a Firefighter Cancer Registry, but it appears that the name has changed to National Firefighter Registry — a vague term which does not provide a clue about the purpose.
Kenny Fent is the Team Lead for what will become the National Firefighter Registry Program. Mr. Fent is a Research Industrial Hygienist with the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. He told us that soon the agency will post a Request for Information (RFI) to the Federal Register regarding the Registry. During a 60-day period they will seek input on an approach to the Registry including potential enrollment methods. All stakeholders, including firefighters, will be encouraged to review the document and respond with comments.
Once the Registry design is finalized, CDC/NIOSH will begin enrollment. Where possible, CDC/NIOSH will collect work history and exposure records to explore the relationship between exposures and cancer. They will also link with state cancer registries to confirm diagnoses. Findings will be shared through scientific publications and communications to stakeholders and the public.
Previous studies, including a study completed by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) in 2014, have highlighted firefighters’ increased risk for certain cancers compared to the general population. However, few previous studies have collected data about wildland firefighters, volunteer firefighters, or sufficient numbers of female and minority firefighters in order to draw conclusions regarding their risk of cancer.
In one study that collected data from wildland firefighters in the field, a group of researchers concluded that firefighters’ exposure to smoke can increase the risk of mortality from lung cancer, ischemic heart disease, and cardiovascular disease by 22 to 39 percent. The project only looked at the wildland fire environment, and was not a long term study of firefighters’ health.
The ultimate goal of the Registry is to better understand the link between workplace exposures and cancer among firefighters. The Registry will include all U.S. firefighters, not just those with a cancer diagnosis. The Registry also has the potential to provide a better understanding of cancer risk among subgroups such as women, minorities, and volunteers, and among sub-specialties of the fire service like instructors, wildland firefighters, and arson investigators.
From the Registry information, CDC/NIOSH will estimate an overall rate of cancer for firefighters. They might find certain groups of firefighters are at a higher risk of cancer than others based on level of exposure, geography, gender, or other factors. They may also find that certain protective measures are associated with a reduced risk for cancer, which could provide additional evidence and support for specific control interventions.
The Registry will be completely voluntary, and no one can force a person to join.
All active and retired as well as volunteer, paid-on-call, and career firefighters will be encouraged to join the Registry, regardless of their current health status.
CDC/NIOSH promises that they will always maintain participants’ privacy and will never share personal information with an outside organization including fire departments, unions, or other researchers without permission of the individual.
It would be refreshing to see more funds put toward projects that would enhance the science, safety, and effectiveness of firefighting.
Judging from the descriptions of the current funding opportunities it appears that the JFSP is moving away from awarding 72 percent of the awards to vegetation studies.
It could be argued that fire suppression skill is not the most critical characteristic of an Incident Commander (IC) on a large fire. Complex emergency incidents involve large numbers of employees working long hours under arduous conditions for an extended period of days while meeting critical deadlines and attempting to achieve difficult objectives under the watchful eyes of local residents, politicians, and the media. Sure, it is very beneficial for an IC to know the basics of how to plan and execute a “big box” strategy of containing a wildfire, but if they do not have advanced levels of emotional and social intelligence they may not be successful in the overall management of the incident. They could stop the fire, but at what cost to Incident Management Team cohesion, interpersonal relationships, property, safety, reputation of the agency within the local community, and the desire of personnel to continue to be a member of the team.
Emotional intelligence is informally defined as the ability to manage your own and other’s emotions. Social intelligence has been described as the ability to manage other’s emotions and build and maintain healthy relationships with others. These concepts have been written about for decades.
Using funding from the U.S. Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Research Station, four researchers attempted to determine which emotional and social intelligence (ESI) skills were possessed by the most effective ICs. Their findings are in a paper published in 2017, “Emotional and Social Intelligence Competencies of Incident Team Commanders Fighting Wildfires“, by Richard E. Boyatzis, Kiko Thiel, Kylie Rochford, and Anne Black.
To begin, they contacted by email all of the Type 1 and Type 2 ICs and Operations Section Chiefs that were active and eligible at the time, asking them to go to a web site and “write in the name of any Incident Commander whom you think is an outstanding leader. You can write in as many or as few names as you feel appropriate.” The 17 ICs that were nominated by multiple people were then labeled “outstanding performers” by the researchers. Then, an additional sample of 17 “average performers” was randomly selected from those who were not nominated as outstanding by anyone. Difficulties in contacting the ICs and their willingness to respond to e-mails and phone calls resulted in a sample of eight outstanding and seven average ICs being interviewed.
The 15 ICs were asked, “Tell me about a time, recently, in which you felt effective as an Incident Commander.” The interviewer attempted to extract as behaviorally detailed a description of the event as possible. After one “effective” incident was obtained, the interviewer asked about an event in which they felt ineffective. This sequence was repeated, yielding a total of four critical incidents per interview. All interviews were recorded and transcribed.
The 60 incidents in the 15 interviews were coded for ESI competencies with criteria that has been used for decades: emotional self-awareness, emotional self-control, adaptability, achievement orientation, positive outlook, empathy, organizational awareness, coach and mentor, inspirational leadership, influence, conflict management, teamwork (social intelligence competencies); and systems thinking and pattern recognition (cognitive competencies).
While it might seem like a sample size of 15 ICs is small, the results showed striking and statistically significant differences between the Outstanding and Average ICs in some categories.
From the study
Five competencies distinguished the Outstanding ICs:
Emotional self-control
Adaptability
Empathy
Coach and mentor, and
Inspirational leadership
Five other competencies appeared often enough in both outstanding and average performing groups to be considered necessary for average performance but not sufficient alone for outstanding performance:
Achievement orientation
Organizational awareness
Influence
Conflict management, and
Teamwork
Below are some excerpts from the study.
Emergent Themes
The inductive portion of the study seeking to address the Research Question 2 (i.e., which was Are there other perspectives or capabilities that differentiate the more effective ICs from less effective ones?) revealed two emergent themes: appreciation of interpersonal dynamics and humanizing versus dehumanizing ways of thinking about others. The outstanding ICs showed an appreciation of the interpersonal dynamics of incident teams by using time in advance of wildfire season to build trust among possible team members. They also used this time to build relationships and educate agency staff and administrators. This theme was coded in five of the eight outstanding ICs compared with only one of the seven average ICs. The presence of this theme was indicated talking explicitly about using of time before wildfire season to build understanding, expertise, and trust within the teams. In one case, the IC created simplified handouts for all team members involved in an incident to highlight the key people involved, their role, experience, and contact details. This was used for their own teams but also widely distributed to those from other agencies, local administrators, and community members.
The second emergent theme—humanizing versus dehumanizing ways of thinking about others—was evidenced by the use (or lack of use) of humanizing language. Examples of humanizing language included references to “family, kids, community.” For example, one IC said, “I’ve got kids out there on the ground . . . ” Another said, “there are families in the line that we have to protect . . . ” Examples of dehumanizing language included language that it turned people into categories, with words like, “stakeholders, employees.” One IC said, “Our personnel are key resources . . . ” After coding the number of humanizing versus dehumanizing words used across the four incidents, we subtracted the dehumanizing word count from the humanizing word count. Seven of the eight outstanding ICs had a positive score, compared with only one of the seven average ICs (six of the seven average ICs had a negative score, while none of the outstanding ICs had a negative score).
