The blaze burned more than 221,000 acres south of Lake Tahoe, CA
Caldor Fire, looking northeast from Armstrong lookout, August 29, 2021. AlertWildfire.
A father and son are now under arrest, accused of reckless arson in connection with the Caldor Fire that burned more than 221,000 acres south of Lake Tahoe in California.
David Scott Smith, 66, and Travis Shane Smith, 32, are accused of violating section 452 of the California Penal Code, commonly referred to as “reckless arson,” which causes inhabited properties to burn and results in great bodily injury to multiple victims. This type of charge can be filed against someone who unintentionally starts a fire. Both David and Travis are being held on a $1 million bail, the district attorney’s office said. They are expected to appear in court December 10.
Most of the community of Grizzly Flats burned in the Caldor Fire and forced the entire city of South Lake Tahoe to evacuate. CAL FIRE reported that the blaze destroyed 782 homes, 18 businesses, and 203 minor structures; another 81 structures were damaged but remained mostly intact. A map shows the status of structures in the area.
The El Dorado County District Attorney’s Office worked with the U.S. Forest Service, CAL FIRE, the California Department of Justice, and the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Crime Lab to investigate the cause of the fire.
Could allow for day and night water dropping and resupplying firefighters
First flight of the Kaman TITAN Unmanned Aerial Vehicle helicopter. Kaman image.
Since Kaman designed, built, and flew in 1957 the first-ever unmanned helicopter, the company’s interest in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) has carried over into the 21st century. This year the company introduced two more UAVs, a medium and a heavy lift helicopter.
Between 2001 and 2014 two Kaman K-MAX helicopters converted to UAVs capable of autonomous or remote controlled cargo delivery transported thousands of loads of supplies and equipment to soldiers in Afghanistan. They carried more than 1.5 million pounds of cargo, sometimes through areas that would be considered unacceptably risky for human pilots. Typically operating at night, these unmanned missions replaced the equivalent of 900 convoy vehicles and eliminated 46,000 hours of exposure time to IED’s, direct fire, and other threats to our troops on dangerous roads.
Concept for Kaman KARGO Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. Kaman image.
Kaman is making a new K-MAX TITAN system which will be available on new production K-MAX helicopters or to retrofit existing K-MAX ships. The system made its initial flight April 21, 2021 of what the company calls the world’s first heavy lift unmanned helicopter for the commercial market. The aircraft can lift up to 6,000 pounds which translates to about 700 gallons of water in an external bucket.
“Kaman leads the way with innovative solutions for our customers that are reliable, affordable and sustainable. K-MAX TITAN is no exception, whether the mission calls for firefighting, humanitarian assistance, or distributed logistics,” stated Darlene Smith, President, Air Vehicles and Precision Products Divisions.
Kaman also has a contract with the U.S. Marine Corps to upgrade the autonomous capabilities of their two USMC K-MAX helicopters.
The other Kaman UAV introduced this year is the KARGO UAV. Built with the U.S. Armed Forces future operating concepts in mind, the KARGO UAV offers a rugged design for easy transport and deployment. The system’s compact form-factor fits in a standard shipping container and is designed to be unloaded and operated by as few as two people.
“The Kaman KARGO UAV is the only system of its class that is purpose-built to provide deployed Marines, Sailors, Airmen, Soldiers, and Coast Guard autonomous resupply in the lethal, fluid combat environment that future military operations will entail or for regular logistics missions. Our deployed service men and woman have persistent logistics challenges that we are answering with this reliable, maintainable and affordable solution,” said Ian Walsh, CEO of Kaman Corporation.
The company says the vehicle also has multiple commercial applications.
Designed to provide cost-effective cargo hauling in its conformal pod or external sling load configuration, the KARGO UAV will self-deploy with no payload up to 602 miles with a maximum lifting capacity of 800 pounds. It should be able to haul approximately 90 gallons of water in an external bucket.
In September, 2021, flight development testing of a scaled KARGO UAV demonstrator was completed to prove out the air vehicle design, and flight-testing of a full-scale autonomous vehicle is planned for 2022. The KARGO UAV leverages commercial off-the-shelf components as well as thousands of hours of automated and autonomous flight data from Kaman’s K-MAX TITAN program, to reduce schedule and technical risk.
Kaman worked with Near Earth Autonomy as a partner to provide obstacle avoidance and other technologies such as precision landing, sense and avoid, and navigation in a GPS-denied environment.
In 2015 near Boise, Idaho Kaman and Lockheed demonstrated for wildland fire officials how a remotely piloted K-MAX UAV could drop water on a simulated fire and carry sling loads of cargo.
Our take:
We have written quite a bit recently about new UAVs, because there is a great deal of iteration and activity in the field. Some of the aircraft are already flying and others are still in the concept stage. Not all of them will take to the air or be used in a meaningful way. However, the interest in UAVs combined with limited numbers of firefighters, advances in technology, and increasing wildland fire acres produces an environment ripe for being exploited by nimble forward-thinking companies.
It appears likely that in the near future UAV helicopters will assist wildland firefighters not only by dropping water on fires but by resupplying them in remote areas with food, drinking water, hose, water tanks, and portable pumps — day or night. Already they are used for mapping, real time intelligence, and aerial ignition.
The limiting factor is government funding, and how quickly the old guard fire hierarchy can adapt their thinking to pilotless aircraft and flying at night.
Torching Christmas tree in Manhattan, Courtesy Citizen App/WABC
A 49-year old man was taken into custody accused of setting ablaze the 50-foot Christmas tree outside Fox New’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan early Wednesday morning.
From WABC:
Police say the 49-year-old suspect climbed up “the metal superstructure” — the tree is an artificial sculpture that is shaped to look like a tree — lit papers he brought with him on fire, and shoved the papers into the tree structure.
He then climbed down and watched from the street level as it burned, and he was spotted by building security who pointed the man out to police officers posted in nearby Rockefeller Center.
Reportedly the fire spread to some smaller decorated trees nearby, but without photographic verification, we can’t describe it as a crown fire.
The International Association of Wildland Fire will be hosting an Ignite Talk designed for mission critical teams of 4 to 12 people who must make decisions and take action quickly. It will be held online December 8 at 3 p.m. MST. Here is the link to register in advance.
More information:
WORKFORCE RESILIENCE IGNITE TALK
YOU are part of Mission Critical Teams: Reflection, Reset, and Residue in Wildland Fire Management
December 8th at 3:00 pm MST
Mission critical teams are small (4-12 agents) integrated groups of indigenously trained and educated experts who leverage tools and technology to resolve rapidly emergent complex adaptive problems in an immersive but constrained (300 seconds or less) temporal environments where the consequence of failure can be a catastrophic loss. These teams are able to consistently innovate as fast, or faster, than the evolving problem sets by moving their focus from trying to predict future problem sets to building the capacity of the team to resolve whatever problem set emerges.
Reflection: MCTs are made up of experts like you who hold the requisite skill and solutions but may lack the language to pass that knowledge on to the rest of the team, such as knowing how to ride a bike, but being unable to explain it to someone else. Leaders in Wildland Fire need to find the language to pass on their experience and navigate between critical and routine environments.
Reset: Wildland fire is about having one experience after another, throughout your career. The question is how do we make meaning of those experiences in such a way that they fuel us, rather than distract us from the next experience. Part of this is about taking the time to find purposeful meaning with After Action Reviews which actually influence the story that team members will tell about themselves, and their team, after an event.
Residue: You are not broken. You are not a victim. You are not a survivor. You have chosen the hard path—a path full of extreme experiences, both good and bad, which leave memories. These memories, in turn, leave a residue within you, which if processed can serve as the fuel that moves us to wisdom and joy. If unprocessed, however, it will begin to build up, to harden, until you can no longer move or breathe, until all you know is pain and sorrow. MCTI rejects the idea that Operators, in Medicine, Fire, Law Enforcement and Military, must sacrifice their lives and souls, in exchange for living a life of service.
Presented by Dr. Preston B. Cline
Co-founder and Director of Research and Education at the Mission Critical Team Institute; Senior Fellow, Center for Leadership and Change Management, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Visiting Scholar in the Wharton Neuroscience Initiative (WiN), The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Preston spent 30 years in the field of Adventure Education leading expeditions on all seven continents. These journeys became the catalyst for a lifelong academic investigation on how humans learn to interact with uncertainty. Along the way, Preston has received a B.S. from Rutgers University, focusing on professional youth work, a Masters of Education from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education on risk and uncertainty, and a Doctorate in Education from the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education on the training and education of Mission Critical Teams: Small (4-12 agents), integrated groups of indigenously trained and educated experts that leverage tools and technology to resolve complex adaptive problems in an immersive, but constrained (five minutes or less), temporal environments, where the consequence of failure can be catastrophic. In 2018, after 10 years serving as the Director of the Wharton Leadership Ventures, at the Wharton School, Preston founded the Mission Critical Team Institute, which is an applied research institute focused on the development of an international collaborative inquiry community made up of Instructor Cadres within Military Special Operations, Emergency Medicine, Tactical Law Enforcement, Aerospace, and Urban and Wilderness Fire Fighting Organizations within Australia, Canada, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and the United States. When he is not working with Cadre, he resides in Annapolis with his extraordinary spouse Amy.
Trainee firefighters with the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program. Image from LA Times video.
Brandon Smith and Royal Ramey gained firefighting experience while incarcerated at a California facility for wildland fire crews. After being released they eventually obtained jobs fighting fires with government agencies but it took them two years. When they ran into their old inmate crew while assigned to a fire they were inspired to turn what they had learned into a training program designed for people with backgrounds similar to their own.
They founded the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program (FFRP) and have helped hundreds of men and women get jobs. The organization provides help to those formerly incarcerated in California’s Conservation Camps, but accepts participants from all experiences and backgrounds.
“We navigated a maze and we want to help others, so they don’t go through what we did,” said Mr. Smith, now FFRP’s executive director. He cites the positive impact of a recent state law allowing inmate firefighters to become eligible for firefighting jobs by having their records expunged after completing their sentences.
FFRP also provides wildfire prevention and hazard mitigation services. Since 2017, they have grown to operate four trained crews in Southern California, including Los Angeles, San Bernardino, and Ventura Counties.
Firefighter Close Calls regularly sends out news about incidents that affect firefighters. Yesterday’s message described three that were rather bizarre.
Two firefighters in North Carolina were responding to a fire in their own vehicles at 2:30 a.m. when one of them ran off the road and crashed. Both were charged with Driving While Intoxicated. They were both already scheduled to appear in court in January to face multiple unrelated counts of arson, and now will also have court appearances in January to face the DWI charges. One of them is in line to become Chief of his department in January.
A fire apparatus in North Carolina rolled over while returning from a parade.
A Paramedic holding onto a utility vehicle while riding a bicycle to an emergency call was pulled under the vehicle and killed in the Line of Duty.
Here are the details from Firefighter Close Calls:
Two North Carolina Firefighters have been charged with DWI following a crash responding to a fire. Orrum Township VFD Assistant Chief Kenneth Aaron Caulder Jr. and Fairmont RFD Deputy Chief Melquan Williams have been charged with DWI and had their driver’s licenses revoked for 30 days following a crash on Saturday, Williams was to become chief of the department in January.
Reports are that the two men were responding to a structure fire when the crash occurred. Williams was following Caulder’s vehicle. Both men were driving their personal vehicles.
Caulder crashed his Jeep on N.C. 41 around 0231 hours when the vehicle crossed the centerline, “ran off the road to the right and struck a ditch.” He refused to take a breathalyzer test.
Caulder and his female passenger, who were not wearing seat belts, were ejected. Both were transported by Robeson County EMS to UNC Health Southeastern for treatment of minor injuries. Cops said Williams had a strong odor of alcohol and later blew a .14.
In July 2018, Caulder and Williams were among 10 other Firefighters with Fairmont Rural and Orrum Township VFD’s charged with arson. Charges came after an investigation by the Robeson County Sheriff’s Office; State Bureau of Investigation; Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and the N.C. Forest Service.
Caulder was charged with six counts of felony arson, burning a church, uninhabited house, store, two counts of felony setting fire to grass, brush, woods, and seven counts of felony conspiracy. He will appear in court for arson charges on Jan. 14 and on Jan. 20for the DWI charge.
Williams lost his job as a Maxton police officer in 2018 following the arson investigation, of which received charges of one count each of felony arson, burning a church, uninhabited house, store, and felony conspiracy. He will appear in court Jan. 7 for arson charges and Jan. 20 for DWI.
==RESPONDING FIRE APPARATUS ROLLS IN PA AND IN NORTH CAROLINA
==PENNSYLVANIA
Four Chester County (near Philly) Firefighters were injured after the fire apparatus they were in was involved in a crash, causing it to overturn. On Friday afternoon, Dec. 3, Sadsburyville Fire Co. was dispatched to Sadsbury Township for a report of an electrical fire inside a house. The engine was traveling south on Old Wilmington Road in the direction of the initial incident. The fire engine then became involved in a rollover crash.
Fortunately the 4 Firefighters inside the fire truck were wearing seat belts. The Firefighters were able to self-extricate from the vehicle and were tended to by EMS responders on the scene. All injuries were minor.
==NORTH CAROLINA:
A Hubert VFD fire apparatus returning from a parade rolled over this morning. The Captain was reportedly having chest pains just prior to the incident. KTIYP’s.
==LITTLE ROCK PARAMEDIC LODD UPDATE
A Paramedic was holding onto the roll cage of a utility vehicle while riding a bicycle to an emergency call at the Little Rock Marathon on Nov. 21 when he was pulled under the vehicle and killed in the Line of Duty.
EMS Major Dean Douglas, 50, died in the Line of Duty last Friday at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences from severe head trauma caused by the crash.
About 1000 hours Nov. 21, two hours after the marathon started, Douglas and two other EMS members were dispatched to a call about a marathon runner needing medical assistance. Neothe EMS members in the UV were injured.
Major Douglas’ last act of heroism was donating his organs. A father of three, owned D2 Comics and More in Jacksonville, and was a volunteer Fire Captain with the Gravel Ridge Fire Department. He also was a Navy veteran who served in Operation Desert Storm.
Take Care. Be Careful. Pass It On.
BillyG
The Secret List 12/4/2021-1545 Hours
