Above: Honoring “unsung heroes” at the Department of Agriculture. USDA photo.
Yesterday the office of Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, distributed by Twitter the photo above, saying:
It’s #PublicServiceRecognitionWeek, an occasion to acknowledge the fine work our @USDA career employees do every week of the year. Happy to speak at a ceremony to honor our “Unsung Heroes.” They’re the ones who help fulfill our mission to Do Right and Feed Everyone.
One of the honorees was a firefighter on the Los Padres National Forest in California, Division Chief Peter Harris. On December 11, 2017 he was shot in the neck and ear while driving a USFS vehicle in Monterey County, California.
Here is how the USFS, @R5_Fire_News, in a series of five tweets on May 10 described the incident:
On Dec 11, 2017 @LosPadresNF Div Chief Peter Harris was shot in the head &back while driving back to his station after a fire response. Harris radioed law enforcement & a medi-vac helicopter for himself. Covered in blood, but not knowing the extent of his own injuries, Harris determined it may take as long as 30 min for help to arrive in such a remote area of the forest. Instead of driving from harm, Harris used his vehicle to block the road & prevent the public from entering the area of the shooter. Today, @USDA @SecretarySonny honored Division Chief Harris & others as part of the @USDA “Unsung Hero” awards in Washington, DC.
Several Senators and Representatives expressed concern that there would not be enough air tankers available this year.
Interim Chief of the Forest Service, Vicki Christiansen, briefs members of Congress about the 2018 wildfire season. Screenshot from the video below.
On Thursday the Departments of Interior and Agriculture briefed members of Congress about the outlook for wildfires in 2018.
There was a lot of talk about being more aggressive about attacking fires, firefighting aircraft, forest health, dead trees, logging, and reducing fuels in forests.
In response to a question by Washington Senator Maria Cantwell about expanding the use of drones on fires, the Secretaries of the two Departments announced that they would sign an agreement to more easily share resources and technology between the two Departments, including drones.
Washington Senator Maria Cantwell asks a question about expanding the use of drones on wildfires. Screenshot from the video below.
During her prepared remarks, Interim Chief of the Forest Service Vicki Christiansen said the Forest Service had “hundreds of aircraft ready to respond” to fires. The fact is, in addition to helicopters, in 2017 there were 20 large air tankers on exclusive use (EU) contracts. This year there are 13, with another 11 on call when needed (CWN) agreements plus one HC-130H Coast Guard aircraft outfitted with a temporary MAFFS tank. The Forest Service wants to get rid of the Coast Guard HC-130H currently being used and the other six that Congress directed them and the Air Force to convert to air tankers.
Randy Eardley, spokesperson for the Bureau of Land Management, told us today that no EU contracts for Single Engine Air Tankers have been awarded yet this year, but there is an existing CWN contract for SEATs which will be used. It is unlikely that an EU contract will be awarded, for the second year in a row. Before 2017 there were typically 33 SEATs on EU contracts every year. Approximately 10 have been working on a CWN basis in Texas and the Southwest during the last month or two.
A few of the politicians at the briefing criticized the reduction in the number of air tankers. At 16:00 in the video, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden expressed his concern.
Last week we were hearing in rural Oregon that there wouldn’t be enough air tankers on exclusive use contracts at the Forest Service…. What is the Service doing to ensure that the all call when needed air tankers are going to be there in terms of these fires.
Ms. Christiansen responded to the Senator:
Senator Wyden, I can assure you we will have the same number of large air tankers, 25, available to us on contract or agency operated. That’s in addition to the specialty that the Department of Interior provides in Single Engine Air Tankers and then we all have a selection of rotary helicopter resources. So we are confident in our ability to field the large air tankers and the other aviation assets. As I said before, we are always evaluating the mix of exclusive use and call when needed. Call when needed can be available within 30 minutes but often certainly within a couple of hours. And our predictive services I have great confidence in that we will bring those call when needed resources on as we anticipate the need expanding. It all happens out of our Interagency Fire Center in Boise.
Call when needed contracts for large air tankers specify that the aircraft should be able to be activated within 48 hours. And it is not as simple as a dispatcher making a phone call to the vendor, it must be handled by a contracting officer. But after being activated, they can remain in that status for an extended period of time, even if it is raining, and be subject to the same dispatch standards as exclusive use aircraft.
The quality of the video and audio below is very poor, but at least 90 percent of the audio is comprehensible.
The article was revised to clarify that while it is unlikely that an exclusive use contract will be awarded this year for SEATs, an existing call when needed contract can be used.
The National Weather Service has issued Red Flag Warnings or Fire Weather Watches for areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Hampshire, and Maine.
The map was current at 6:20 a.m. MDT on Friday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts.
The NWS is not predicting Red Flag Conditions in Utah. On Thursday officials on the Fish Lake National Forest in southern Utah conducted a 150-acre prescribed fire (see below).
Ignitions on #SouthMonroeRx went well today. #FishlakeNF reports an estimated 150 acres burned. No ignitions planned for tomorrow (5/11). Personnel will be onsite tomorrow to monitor the project throughout the day. pic.twitter.com/VIaCSjf3Ey
The Mississippi Forestry Commission (@MSForestryComm) put this photo on Twitter today, honoring their delivery of “quality forest management services and assistance to private forest landowners for 92 years”.
Anyone want to take a stab at the date it was taken? I’m guessing the truck is from the mid-60’s. There is a number on the side that looks like “2700”. I don’t know if that’s a model, or a vehicle number assigned by the MFC.
The eruption of the volcano on the Big Island in Hawaii is certainly tragic for the owners of the 26 homes that have been destroyed and the 1,700 residents of Leilani Estates that have been forced to evacuate. We are not going to try to cover the incident like we would a large vegetation fire — primarily because it is very difficult to obtain the kind of information we would normally collect about a fire. We have made some inquiries with a couple of agencies but distributing information to the media could be pretty far down their list of priorities. They no doubt have their hands full.
But we have found a bit of information about what is going on there. Approximately 104 acres are directly affected by vents, fissures, or 2,000F-degree lava. The activity paused for a bit Monday, but Tuesday morning two additional fissures developed, bringing the total to 14 and requiring the total evacuation of Lanipuna.
Previous eruptions on the island have ignited vegetation fires, but while we have seen some trees and shrubs burning in videos, it seems to mostly be when they are directly contacted by the molten lava.
A friend of ours has been in Hawaii for at least a week and most of the numerous photos he has posted on Facebook have shown cloudy skies. The weather Monday and Tuesday at Hilo included rain with humidities in the 90’s, so until that changes there might not be much of a wildfire threat.
If any of our readers have confirmed information about resources assigned or an Incident Command System being used, let us know in the comments.
In the Leilani Estates Subdivision, fissure 7 was active for several hours on May 5 with large bubble bursts and spatter. A short lava flow moved northeast and crossed Hookupu St. USGS photo.
In 2012 when I first heard of Jennifer Brown she was working in the Interpretation Division in Everglades National Park and her term appointment was about to end. She had just produced for the National Park Service an excellent film about prescribed fire titled “River of Fire”. Now with many other videos about fire under her belt with her company Into Nature Films, she has produced another — “Fire: In the Florida Scrub”. As with some of her other projects, she partnered with the former Fire Management Officer at Everglades National Park, Rick Anderson.
Here is the official description of the film:
Fire is one of the earth’s dominant forces. ‘Surviving Fire: In the Florida Scrub’ features three decades of discovery by Dr. Eric Menges. After watching this powerful short film, you will never look at Florida plants the same away again. This film pays tribute to the special people who dedicate their lives to improving fire management. Join Eric Menges for a 16 minute exploration into the elegant and unexpected ways plants survive fire. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and produced by Into Nature Films in collaboration with Archbold Biological Station.
Like the other “Into Nature Films”, this one is beautifully photographed and very clearly tells the story. It’s impressive how they had video footage to illustrate almost every point brought up in the narration.
