A decade ago, the late Bill Gabbert began writing here about the “Holy Grail of Wildland Fire Safety” – the tools, best practices and system for advanced firefighter and fire tracking – and he returned to it often.
As their letter to the President observes, “Whereas we have a national commitment ensuring that our warfighters are not sent into harm’s way without the best of American science and technology at their disposal, no similar organizational framework exists to protect and empower wildland firefighters.”
Their five recommendations lead off with this problem and an urgent push:
“Recommendation 1: Given the vulnerabilities and shortfalls in wildland firefighter communications, connectivity, and technology interoperability, immediately assess, adapt, and field currently available technologies.”
To support this, their next recommendation calls for cabinet-directed executive authority to “Reverse the current trend of rapidly growing wildfire suppression costs by establishing a joint-agency executive office (hereafter Joint Office) that can accelerate enterprise-level development and deployment of new technologies that enhance situational awareness and initial attack capabilities.”
The recommendation continues that “This Joint Office would serve to advance coordination, streamline authorities, and drive progress in enabling technology adoption across the numerous federal agencies with equities for wildland firefighting science and technology (S&T) within NIFC [National Interagency Fire Center]. It is imperative that the Joint Office leader have Cabinet-delegated decision-making authorities as well as the mandate and budget needed to develop and execute a unified technology roadmap.”
Recommendations 3, 4 and 5 would be led by the proposed Joint Office and serve to unify and expedite the “full operational sequence of wildland firefighting” with current and new technology, with inputs from NIFC, the land management agencies of DOI and USDA, and NOAA, NASA, and the Department of Defense.
While the goals are straightforward the implementation is complex, as indicated in this graphic from the report.
At the NIFC website, a search for the word “safety” produced 641 results. Hits for “technology” totaled 206, “intelligence” 121. “Location-based” yielded 24 results, though most were variations of “allocation.” The most concrete reference is to the 2023 Red Book, where there’s a reference to “Location Systems,” on page 42 of the BLM section:
“The LBS [Location-Based System] Program combines current Global Positioning System (GPS) technologies with BLM fire and aviation preparedness to provide a situational awareness tool by tracking equipment. LBS is incorporated into dispatch and other operating procedures to enhance situational awareness and accountability of WCF 600-class fire equipment. This program meets the intent of S.47 – John D. Dingell, Jr. Conservation, Management, and Recreation Act, SEC. 1114. (d) 12 Location Systems for Wildland Firefighters.”
With wholehearted respect for the BLM’s LBS program and the efforts to date, the federal location systems in their entirety seem a far (and hard to track) distance from meeting the intent of the 2019 Dingell act.
This week’s PCAST recommendations seeks to correct the “vulnerabilities and pitfalls” of our current processes and accelerate the urgency toward this decade-long search for the “Holy Grail” of location systems. It’s a race we need to win.
(UPDATE February 14, 2023: To clarify — the rationale for releasing a report on Aerial Equipment first was a component of the guiding legislation that specified, in the “Duties of Commission,” that a “Report on Aerial Wildland Firefighting Equipment Strategy and Inventory Assessment” would be submitted per a prioritized schedule – an initial surplus inventory within 45 days of the commission’s first meeting, and a report to Congress 90 days after the inventory. See the statute at https://www.usda.gov/sites/default/files/documents/title-two-wildfire-mitigation.pdf. Thanks to a commission member for the helpful reminder to always confirm with the guiding legislation.)
To choose aviation for the first report from the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission might be seen as harvesting the lowest hanging fruit, or cornering the largest elephant in the room. In actuality, the guiding legislation created specific timelines that prioritized fire aviation as a key and initial priority. Whatever the colloquial phrase, the Commission’s swift creation of the Aerial Equipment Strategy Report offers a challenging and potentially quite fruitful focus.
The report, released on February 13, 2023, frames the status of fire and aviation today in eight findings, which in turn aims us to 19 recommendations. Both the framing and the aiming may raise familiar notes — but in this case there is a universal urgency that reflects the accelerating fire challenge as well as the timeframe for the Commission, which has a year from their first meeting on September 14-15, 2022 to submit recommendations to Congress.
The Commission’s mandate and 50-person membership resulted from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) (https://www.whitehouse.gov/build/), which features a focused timeline and inclusion of a wide range of wildland fire experts and stakeholders – more than half representing non-federal entities (and more than 2/3rds, if you include alternates). The BIL included $8.7 billion for wildfire management under the umbrella of resilience, with the greatest proportion of funding tagged to “the Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service ($3.37 billion) and the Department of the Interior ($1.46 billion) for wildfire risk reduction.”
As the report notes, the time for this strategy is overdue when considering the commission’s legislative charge to develop “a strategy for meeting aerial equipment needs through the year 2030” (a mere seven years from now) – which may be why the recommendations aim a trajectory into future decades for aviation and fire management in general.
The Commission’s first report operates within a framework that places aviation as a component of an overall strategy for a changing fire environment:
“In developing these recommendations, the Commission also sought to address several key themes: the need to develop an overarching, forward-looking aviation strategy that drives procurement, rather than letting aviation approaches become constrained by current practices; the need to invest in both technology and people to build an aviation fleet that meets long-term demand; and the need to take an inclusive approach to the range of functions aerial resources can serve and the range of entities that must be included in development of a truly national – rather than federal – aviation strategy.”
The topics, as organized by the commission, are grouped by aviation strategy, military-sharing opportunities and challenges, contracting, staffing, aviation use for beneficial fire (beyond suppression), and uncrewed aerial systems.
This first report of recommendations merits a full read – but in support of its urgency, consider this summary of Findings and Recommendations as a streamlined tally sheet for tracking the tasks ahead.
FINDING
RECOMMENDATION
Aviation Strategy
1) Fire Year
2) Aviation not sole solution
3) National strategy to define needs
R 1: Regional Standards of Cover.
R 2: Include contractor perspectives.
R 3: Consider national strategy for all ownership models of aviation.
R 4: Compare costs of Dept .of Defense (DoD), government and private aviation assets.
Contracting and Appropriations
4) Budgets favor short-term over long-term
R 5: Improve effectiveness, efficiency of contracting.
R 6: Contracts meet national strategy.
R 7: Funding for increased fire seasons.
Staffing
5) Lack of qualified personnel a bottleneck
R 8: Congressional funding for aviation training, staffing at all levels.
R 9: Explore private contractors as NWCG staff.
R 10: Explore technology to increase effectiveness, reduce staff.
Military Interoperability
R 11: Uniform training for DoD and land management for interoperability.
R 12: National aviation strategy to consider needs outside continental U.S.
R 13: Continue DoD for surge after other aviation assets utilized.
Military Surplus
6) Surplus adoption has risks, costs
7) Benefit to surplus parts
R 14: DoD surplus for all wildland fire community.
R 15: Wildland fire community to develop annual list of surplus needs.
R 16: Evaluate purpose-built or modified aircraft for wildland fire.
AerialResourcesandBeneficialFire
8) Beneficial fire use limited by aviation capacity
R 17: Aviation resources for risk mitigation, prescribed fire.
UncrewedAerialSystems
R 18: Improve UAS technology in wildland fire.
R 19: Develop national UAS strategy for wildland fire.
Topics still open for comments include …
Comments due by February 22: Science, Data, and Technology
Public Health and Infrastructure
Comments accepted March 1-22: Appropriations
Workforce
Satellite analyses and Twitter reports indicate a rapid growth of disastrous wildfires in south-central Chile yesterday (February 3) and overnight.
In the past 24 hours, satellite-based estimates based on NASA FIRMS data indicate that the largest fire spread 80 kilometers (50 miles) west and northwest, impacting an area of nearly 100,000 hectares (230,000 acres). The fires appear to have spread from Renaico northwest toward the Pacific Coast city of Lota, while burning past Santa Juana and likely crossing north over the Biobío River.
In this NASA FIRMS map, the oldest yellow heat signatures are 24 hours or earlier, the most recent are red.
24-hour fire growth along a 80 km/50 mile line of the largest fire in the Santa Juana are of Chile on Feb. 4, 2023. NASA FIRMS.
A larger map shows 24-hour fire detections for the affected regions of Biobío and La Araucanía. (And a reminder, as the FIRMS mapping tool, these heat signatures may overestimate fire size and activity, in part due to smoke columns and other factors.)
Overview of active fires in south-central Chile for the past 24 hours. Feb. 4, 2023. NASA FIRMS.
The fires detected by satellites are being confirmed via social media updates. As @HotshotWake reported via Twitter …
This has been some on the worst destruction I’ve seen from wildfires in an urban interface. The first video is of fire activity last night and the second of the aftermath in Purèn, Chile. Whole towns consumed. @lNFOSCHILE #bomberos#wildfire#chile#fire#southamericapic.twitter.com/hwhqdraW2o
The Associated Press reported that the death toll as of February 4 has risen to 22 with more than 500 injured. The state of catastrophe has expanded to include the La Araucanía region, which is south of Ñuble and Biobío regions that were already in a catastrophe declaration.
A Bolivian pilot and a Chilean mechanic died when their helicopter crashed while firefighting in the commune of Galvarino, in the region of La Araucanía, 700 kilometers south of Santiago, Chile.
In statements reported on February 4 in MercoPress, Mauricio Tapiaby, deputy director of the Chiliean National Service for Disaster Prevention and Response noted that the pilot had “many years of experience in aeronautics and firefighting” and that 11 others, including a firefighter, had died on February 3 in a “swarm” of at least 50 uncontrolled fires. Tapia reported that 22 had suffered burns and 95 houses destroyed.
A Constitutional State of Emergency has been declared for the central-south regions of Biobío and Ñuble.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric activated Armed Forces and Carabineros for prevention patrols. “It is much easier to prevent a fire than to fight it,” he said, while adding that fire control activities were progressing with an estimated 75 aircraft and 2300 firefighters.
Temperatures of 40 degrees C (100 F) are being recorded, with moderating temperatures by next week but gusty afternoon winds continuing, and the recent Fire Weather Index in the 75th percentile.
Resource Watch: Large Fires and Fire Weather Index for central-south Chile, 2023-01-28 through 02-03.
Still from Groundhog Day (1993), with Bill Murray (weatherman Phil) and Phil the groundhog.
The IMDB description of the 1993 film Groundhog Day offers this hope for escaping the whirlpool: “A narcissistic, self-centered weatherman finds himself in a time loop on Groundhog Day, and the day keeps repeating until he gets it right.”
Thirty years of film history later, in our wildfire world we may seem stuck like weatherman Phil, repeating the day (and our fire processes) until we get it right. Yet a range of recent releases may hint of some key transitions.
The legislation introduced on the last day of January 2023 builds from the same-named act of 2021 (should they have just waited for Groundhog Day?), which didn’t progress in 2021, but the emergency frame and elements have reappeared in this new bill. The legislation has bipartisan support, with Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines joining three Democrats – sponsor Feinstein and cosponsoring senators Alex Padilla of California and Ron Wyden of Oregon.
While the bill is framed as a response to the wildfire and climate emergency, many of the proposals reflect the rise of “cohesive strategy” as a core vision for fire initiatives. As Wyden said, “To address the threat of catastrophic wildfires in the West an all-of-the-above approach is needed. This means making essential upgrades to keep the lights on when disaster strikes and giving communities the firefighting workforce and latest technology required to get fires under control. Our bill also prioritizes mitigation work now to prevent wildfires from turning into the megafires that destroy lives and property. The climate crisis is here, and the West needs more support.”
Feinstein affirms the all-hands-on-deck approach. “Every level of government and the private sector must be involved in this fight, and this bill will go a long way toward helping us prepare for a hotter, drier future.”
What a region-specific and bottom-to-top bill might actually produce, if a lot of committee meetings, votes, and budget-wrangling welds it into law, may include both specified and unspecified funds to accomplish key fireshed transitions. The news release offers a synthesis – with proposed commitments to landscape-scale forest restoration, community-level resilience, and added emphasis and new initiatives on applied sensing technology and workforce development.
A change of note: the Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) is to be consulted on one or more Prescribed Fire Training Centers in any state entirely located west of the 100th meridian. This will offer a key expansion and a fire-regime diversification of the essential work by the single national center in Florida, but equally noteworthy is that JFSP still exists and may play a key role in this initiative – since not so long ago folks had to argue to keep JFSP funded.
What may be missing are elements of national workforce change and a lack of “moonshot” glitter in both the funding and unspecified tech initiatives. But what’s here promises to expand recent initiatives to more stakeholders. If adopted, we might see at least one prescribed fire training center identified within a year and funding for wildfire and forest-restoration training centers West-wide (with grants to states, academic institutions, and professional organizations that may speed the rollout). Additionally, up to 20 landscapes of 100,000 acres will use $250 million “to increase the pace and scale of forest restoration and wildfire resilience projects.” That’s $125 an acre for some 2 million acres, which promises a lot of work, commensurate with “the true cost of fire” (reported by Bill Gabbert in 2020), which quotes Prof. Ernesto Alvarado: “I think we should concentrate more on the human losses.” These funds will align with $50 million for community grants and a $13,000 per low-income household for wildfire-hardening retrofits.
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The challenges to the wildfire workforce are increasing due in no small part to fire regime shifts that prompted the Wildfire Emergency Act, yet the pace of federal administrative change may not be ramping as fast as the fires. Which is where our political change is at now – fed by the concerns from public and legislators and the push by firefighter advocates like the Grassroots Wildland Firefighters (GRWFF) and the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFF).
This is the background to two recent letters seeking to amp up and wisen up the changes. One, sent January 18 from a bipartisan group of seven western senators to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), seeks clarification and correction to federal housing guidelines that undercut firefighter recruitment and retention. Such as: if your roommate leaves (not something you can usually manage), you pay their part of the rent. support to correct housing inequities. As well as changes to bunkhouse and remote-housing formulas for determining rent. In their request for a briefing on OMB Circular A-45R, the senators observe that “Federal wildland firefighters have a difficult and dangerous job, and it is the federal government’s responsibility to support them in this work.”
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The second letter, from GRWFF and NFFF to the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), takes a broader focus and goes farther — but essentially, even existentially – into the deep regarding the November 2022 GAO report, “Wildland Fire: Barriers to Recruitment and Retention of Federal Wildland Firefighters,” that identified some but not all of the barriers and reforms identified by groups like the GRWFF and NFFF.
There’s much in the letter that will shape the dialogues this coming year (which we’ll be following), but as good a place to start now is the direct request to the GAO toward the letter’s close:
“Grassroots Wildland Firefighters and NFFE deeply appreciate the GAO’s initial report. Considering its blind spots, however, we respectfully request a second investigation into these barriers, and a second report, one that incorporates the input of a significant number of current and former wildland firefighters – and prioritizes the wisdom of those who occupy marginalized identities.”
Among many questions and suggestions regarding pay, housing, equity, work-life balance, retirement (covering most of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, many of which aren’t supported currently), the letter highlights that “the elephant in the room is safety and health – what our firefighters risk every day. Although federal wildland firefighters are at higher risks of cancers, cardiovascular diseases, PTSD and traumatic injuries, these go undiscussed in the GAO’s report. The federal government does not recognize a correlation between environmental exposures such as wildfire smoke and the incidence of cancers or cardiovascular diseases. More than two dozen firefighters died in the line of duty in 2022 fighting wildfires. These risks are unaccounted for when determining pay for firefighters. Prospective recruits and veteran firefighters balk at the low pay for a job that may injure or kill them and will take years off their lives. Although federal wildland firefighters can spend over 1,000 hours every fire season exposed to these hazards, no formal education program exists on either the dangerous consequences or mitigation strategies for employees.”
For the record, Punxsutawney Phil reportedly saw his shadow today and his managers are predicting six more weeks of winter. To my knowledge, few fire managers base their spring prescribed fire plans on whether Phil sees his shadow. Yet we in the fire profession can claim a key functional connection: this rodent-centric celebration has roots in such say-goodbye-to-winter traditions as Candlemas (and its hedgehog) and the Irish/Celtic celebration of St. (née goddess) Brigid, all of which are celebrated with bonfires and candles. So light a fire to the passing of winter, but do note that yesterday’s Fire Outlook predicts a mellower beginning to fire season, which may at least mean we’re not as likely to see the shadows of recent active early fire seasons.
To interpret a wildland fire outlook can be a bit like posting a scenic photo to Instagram. You share the images and phases that capture the moment, with hopes that these will intrigue us into deeper connections to the months ahead.
AND THE RAIN AND SNOW FELL … From the latest National Significant Wildland Fire Outlook (for February through May 2013, with hints to the future), one image may lay claim to this month’s Instagram shot. The Total Precipitation Anomaly for January 2023 features a piercing finger of deep-green and blue anomalies from the central California coast eastward to upper Wisconsin – this being the precip falling from “multiple moderate to strong atmospheric rivers,” leading to moisture from 150 to more than 400 percent of normal.
January 2023 Precipitation Anomaly. https://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/outlooks/precip30day.png.
What this means for fire potential long-term is to be determined. Though this was a wide and significant flow, it was not a universal flood. Wide areas are likely to remain in drought yet many regions, including northern California to Oregon and east into Idaho and Montana, are likely to improve, as depicted by the tan (improvement) and green (out of drought) shading in the U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook through April.
U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook through April. https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/expert_assessment/season_drought.png.
WHAT TO EXPECT: The result of this precip is a fire potential outlook that is nearly Normal by May of 2023, with a slot of Above Normal red from west Texas to central New Mexico and a blob in the Georgia-Florida pinelands.
Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook for May 2023. https://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/outlooks/month4_outlook.png
WHAT NORMAL LOOKS LIKE … in a typical season, for March into May, fires (including prescribed fires) may be relatively active on the land, particularly in the Southeast and southern Great Plans into the Trans-Pecos and Rio Grande, as illustrated in this map of normal fire activity for April.
Our tracking with “normal” will be influenced by global transitions as we’re likely leaving a record-long period of La Niña conditions. As the Outlook observes: “The Climate Prediction Center (CPC) is forecasting an 82% chance of neutral El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions returning in spring. Other teleconnection patterns, such as the Madden-Julian Oscillation, Pacific Decadal Oscillation, Pacific-North American Pattern, and Arctic Oscillation are likely to influence weather and climate during the outlook period.” But we’re not through with the cool-ocean pattern yet: “La Niña is forecast to remain the dominant influence through February.”
So expect some variability to be foretold, as fuels grow into green-up and cure into summer.
As their letter to the President observes, “Whereas we have a national commitment ensuring that our warfighters are not sent into harm’s way without the best of American science and technology at their disposal, no similar organizational framework exists to protect and empower wildland firefighters.”
