News and opinion about wildland fire
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized2 Comments on Red Flag Warnings, September 19, 2016 
The National Weather Service has posted Red Flag Warnings or Fire Weather Watches for areas in California, Nevada and Wyoming.
The Red Flag map was current as of 9:30 a.m. MDT on Monday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts and maps. For the most current data visit this NWS site. However, that site has not been properly displaying warning areas in recent days. This one may work better.
A water tender working on the Soberanes Fire south of Monterey, California last month had a very close call. While driving on a dirt road the right-rear tires slipped off the edge of the road as the soft dirt gave way. Luckily it did not continue sliding or roll down the steep slope.
A dozer and a Rapid Extraction Module responded, and after stabilizing the large truck, the dozer began to pull it out using a tow strap and for backup, a chain, both connected at the same time. As the strap stretched, some of the stress was transferred to the chain. Since the driver, who was in the truck to steer and maintain control after it was pulled out, had not yet let the clutch out, the chain quickly snapped. But they eventually extracted the truck using the tow strap.
The video below shows it being pulled out.
The Rapid Extraction Module probably didn’t anticipate they’d be assisting with THAT type of extraction. An article on Wildfire Today from September of 2015 has more information about what they normally do.
More details about this recent incident are in the Rapid Lessons Sharing report.
This is a good idea, to assemble a group of engine captains to familiarize them all with a new group of engines and water tenders.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized9 Comments on Senator wants to require more steps before beginning a prescribed fire Senator John Thune has been critical of federal firefighters previously.
A U.S. Senator has proposed an amendment to introduced legislation that would require additional procedures before federal agencies could conduct a prescribed fire. Senator John Thune from South Dakota wants to require consultation with local and state fire officials before the project begins. One of his reasons is that he contends local and state officials know more than the federal professional prescribed fire managers.
“Local officials are going to know a little bit more about what the conditions are in the area”, Senator Thune said in a newsletter distributed by his office on September 15.
This requirement has been offered as an amendment to a Republican backed bill introduced by Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas June 22, 2016, titled S.3085 – Emergency Wildfire and Forest Management Act of 2016. Senator Thune contends that the amendment was adopted by unanimous consent during a Senate Agriculture Committee markup, but no official action after the introduction is showing up at bill-tracking websites. After three months the bill has no cosponsors, and GovTrack.us predicts a 2 percent chance of it being enacted.
The primary purpose of the bill is to eliminate some environment restrictions for planned “forest management activities”. The list of these activities is long and vague enough to cover a very wide range of land treatments, including timber harvesting.
Senator Thune advocated his consultation procedure before when he introduced a stand-alone bill in 2015. It had one cosponsor and never advanced beyond being introduced. Apparently the powerful Senator did not work hard to promote his idea, or perhaps he only wanted some publicity.
Senator Thune has generated publicity before in matters regarding prescribed fire. In 2015 he distributed to the media a strongly-worded very critical letter he sent to the Secretary of the Interior after the Cold Brook prescribed fire in Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota escaped, burning an additional 5,420 acres of prairie. It never spread beyond the park boundaries.
Four days after the escape and months before the official report came out, the Senator was apparently very satisfied that he knew exactly the cause, writing to the Secretary, “The Cold Brook Fire could easily have been prevented”, and “the intense smoke will likely damage the lungs of young calves in the vicinity resulting in high risk of pneumonia and death loss.”
Ready. Fire. Aim.
The escaped fire was in grass and ground fuels beneath scattered trees that had been treated with prescribed fire before, and there was no significant crowning. It was basically over after one afternoon, but that didn’t stop Senator Thune from prognosticating about the lung condition of calves outside the park.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized4 Comments on Revisions to the National Fire Danger Rating System 
The National Fire Danger Rating System tracks weather events through their effects on live and dead fuels and adjusts them accordingly based on forecasted weather. The most visible product of the system, which is used by most large land management agencies in the United States, is the predicted fire danger, often expressed as adjectives ranging from Low to Extreme.
The NFDRS was first released for general use in 1972 and was subsequently revised in 1978 and 1988. Work on another revision began in 2000 and is nearing completion. Reportedly this next version is much simpler and more automated than its predecessors and it represents a vast improvement in fire potential assessment capabilities.
Three major changes will be:
Jon Wallace, a member of the team rolling out and implementing the new system described the transition in an email today:
“The system is expected to be back from contracting and thus complete on November 1st of 2016. After the first of the year we’re going to begin training of Subject Matter Expert groups located within each geographic area, and when that training is complete we will open the system up for all users. We had to wait to conduct this training until the system was fully functional.
“As you can imagine, there is going to be a learning curve for the user community and these Subject Matter Expert groups are going to help us get through that curve within their respective geographic area.
“All members of the user community will be able to see the new NFDRS2016, as well as the 1978 and 1988 NFDRS models during the spring of 2017. This will allow them to work with the subject matter expert groups to set up NFDRS parameters prior to the Summer of 2017 fire season. They will then be able to compare the outputs of the new system to what they are used to seeing in the older versions of NFDRS.
“This side by side comparison will be available to users through the 2018 fire season, at which time we will re-evaluate the need to continue support of the old systems.”
A preliminary report report released by the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction looked at how the 1,500,000-acre Fort McMurray Fire ignited some of the 2,400 structures in the Alberta city in May of this year.
Below are excerpts from the document.
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After evaluating the fire environment and clearances between homes and the forest edge, the investigator discounted direct contact from flames or radiant heat of the forest fire as being significant sources of home ignition at Fort McMurray. Instead, it was concluded that wind-driven embers were the most probable cause for the majority of early home ignitions in the zone where the fire made its transition from forest into urban neighbourhoods. Once established, the fire would have spread from structure to structure as an urban conflagration, accounting for the majority of home losses.
In all neighbourhoods studied, homes whose owners had adopted FireSmart guidelines survived much more frequently than homes where they had not, despite the extraordinarily harsh conditions.
Recommended FireSmart guidelines work. They are effective in reducing the probability of home ignition and wildfire losses. Home survival does not appear to be random or a matter of luck.
Home survival depends on conditions in the home ignition zone, for which owners are responsible.
While low total hazard rating is important, a single critical weakness can lead to home loss.
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