Washington firefighter shocked by powerline after all-clear given by power company
A firefighter in Washington state was shocked by a downed powerline after the line was checked and declared safe by power company employees.
Ty N. Schoenwald, 22, a Washington State University student and volunteer firefighter in Benton County received a severe electric shock through indirect contact with the poweline that was on the ground. Benton Public Utility District personnel had checked the line before firefighters took suppression action and gave clearance for firefighters to enter the area to fight a vegetation fire that was most likely started by the power line.
Mr. Schoenwald had to be revived by CPR and a defibrillator. The accident occurred on Wednesday and he could be released from the hospital as early as today, Thursday.
Snowy River Fire Complex, Australia
SnowyRiver fire (Image credit: NASA Earth Observatory/Jesse Allen and Robert Simmon)
The infrared image above shows the Snowy River Complex Fire northeast of Melbourne in Australia, which has burned about 130,000 hectares (321,000 acres). The Complex is a result of two fires in the Deddick Valley and Goongerah areas that are being managed as one.
Austin may install fire detection cameras
A year ago Wildfire Today told you that West Lake Hills, a city near Austin, Texas, was going to install a camera system to detect wildfires. That device is up and running and passed its first test in November. Now the city of Austin is considering building a network of the automatic fire detection devices.
The video below from myfoxaustin provides the details:
UPDATE February 14, 2014: Alfred Stanley, President of FireWatch Texas, contacted us, saying a better, more accurate report on what the two cities are doing is at KEYE TV. The video can’t be embedded, but you can see it here.
A company explores placing cell sites on balloons
Airborne 4G LTE tested by Oceus Network
Oceus Network has successfully tested a 4G LTE base station attached to weather balloons in Colorado. Oceus used balloons from Space Data to send the equipment up to 70,000 feet where theoretically it could communicate within a 62 mile radius. Space Data has been sending balloons into the sky for years to provide data communications in remote areas. The equipment ascends into the upper atmosphere and then is recovered when it returns to Earth by parachute.
Oceus is exploring not just free-floating high atmosphere balloons, but using lower altitude platforms such as helicopters, fixed wing aircraft, Unmanned Aircraft Systems, or tethered balloons. Some of their research is in response to an FCC initiative to explore communication methods for first responders following natural disasters that occur in remote areas or when conventional infrastructure is damaged.
This system, when perfected, could supply cell service to wildland firefighters in remote areas who not only need voice communications, but need ever increasing data connections for accessing the internet to run systems such as the Nextgeneration Incident Command System.
(This contest has been cancelled due to information we received about a U.S. Forest Service policy discouraging posting videos taken while on the job to web sites or social media.)
“BLMNIFC” posted the above video yesterday, titled “2013 Fire Season Summary – 2014 Refresher”. Apparently no one wanted to take credit for producing the film, because oddly, there are no credits, other than those in the written description on YouTube for one song and two photos. This reminds us of last year’s version posted January 18, 2013, which was also credit-starved but in a different way. That video was removed from YouTube and later replaced with a completely different concept on March 14, 2013.
We captured a screen grab (below) from this latest version in case it also disappears. It is an image taken from the end of a strange 25-second introduction.
Funeral arrangements for Pilot Jake Harrell will be held Saturday, February 15th at the First Assembly of God Church in North Little Rock at 4501 Burrow Road. Services will be held at 10:00 a.m. Visitation will take place at the same location, Friday from 5:00 p.m. until 7:00 p.m.
To honor the life of service and memory of Mr. Harrell, a Brayden Harrell Scholarship Fund has been established for Jake and Jaime’s son. This fund is open at all Simmons First National Bank and Metropolitan Bank locations. Individuals should reference the fund by name to contribute.
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(UPDATED at 2:34 p.m. CST, February 12, 2014)
The Arkansas Forestry Commission reported that the Civil Air Patrol fixed wing aircraft crew that discovered the missing plane was part of the 95th Composite Squadron based in Texarkana. The sighting was confirmed by a State Police helicopter. A road, well over a mile long, is being built to the site.
Below is information released by the AFC:
“Recovery Mission Underway for AFC Pilot, Jake Harrell
Mena, Ark. – The plane carrying missing AFC pilot, Jake Harrell, was discovered yesterday at 4:05 p.m. by a Civil Air Patrol single-engine plane. This sighting was confirmed by a State Police helicopter. Moments later, a National Guard helicopter also confirmed the sighting and lowered a Guardsman. This Guardsman confirmed that deceased remains were inside the aircraft. We are 99% sure that this individual is our friend and brother, Jake Harrell – who has been missing since Friday, January 31st.
Ground crews were able to secure the scene late last night; however, a road is still under construction –crews are using dozers and chainsaws to clear the way – to create an actual path to the crash site. Officials are hopeful that this road will be complete and the body recovered by late this evening.
At least 255 emergency management agencies in California and a few other areas have been experimenting with and in some cases using a new tool that provides enhanced situational awareness for incident managers. Called Next-Generation Incident Command System (NICS), the developers describe it as “a mobile web-based command and control environment for dynamically escalating incidents from first alarm to extreme-scale that facilitates collaboration across [multiple] levels of preparedness, planning, response, and recovery for all-risk/all-hazard events.” It is a combination of tools, technologies, and an innovative concept of operations for emergency response.
NICS is called “technology for the tired, dirty and hungry — dirt simple to learn and dirt simple to use”. It was conceived, envisioned, and functionally specified by experienced first responders, many from the California emergency response community, and developed by skilled scientists and engineers at MIT Lincoln Laboratory, a government facility on Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts. The software and electronic data are being hosted at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, thanks to a monetary appropriation from the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, but NICS can be hosted anywhere and with a minimum of gear — even on a well equipped laptop.
The development of the project has been funded by the federal Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate, but that source is scheduled to end October 31, 2014. The two people primarily involved in outreach to the emergency response community, and who are working on finding funding for the next 5-year increment, are retired Chief Bob Toups and Dr. Jack Thorpe.
NICS is “technology neutral.” It can be used on computers as well as tablets and hand-held devices. It is compatible with Windows, iOS, Linux, Android, and the web browsers Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and later versions of Internet Explorer.
NICS graphic.
Maps can be created by firefighters on scene in a matter of minutes, which are then immediately viewable by anyone who has access to that incident on a computer or hand-held device with internet connectivity. The maps can show an incident perimeter, staging areas, evacuation zones, road blocks, division breaks, and symbology commonly used on incident maps.
The information can be accessed not only by firefighters on site and in command centers, but by law enforcement officials responsible for evacuation and anyone else on a need to know basis.
One of the limitations of the system is that it communicates via the internet. If firefighters in a remote location do not have internet access from their cell phone or computer, or via a satellite connection, they can’t send or receive the information. However, this should not be a problem for higher level managers in offices who also have a need to create and share information about the incident. And, mobile cell sites, commonly called a Cell on Wheels, or COW, are increasingly available and should be deployed automatically to large incidents that have poor cell coverage.
The best way to get a feeling of how the system works and what it can do is to view the very well done 9-minute video which is embedded below. A .pdf presentation document about NICS can be found HERE.
NICS has been in development since 2007 and in 2010 was first utilized by agencies in southern California. Last year it was used on 102 incidents in the state. It was also in use during the 2013 Boston Marathon assisting in managing the event and tracking the 26,000 runners, and continued to be utilized after the bombing.
NICS can display the near real time location of emergency resources using Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) and/or Position Location Information (PLI) technologies. Tracking can be either cellar or satellite-based. Currently some agencies that use Delorme InReach satellite-based tracking devices can see where their resources and personnel are located. Several other tracking devices are compatible with the system as well. Mr. Toups and Mr. Thorpe told us that if an appropriate software backend was written, other tracking devices could be integrated also. It is possible that the 6,000 tracking devices recently purchased by the U.S. Forest Service could be used within NICS.
NICS incidents in California in 2013. NICS graphic. (click to enlarge)
While NICS will not solve every problem a firefighter or other emergency responder has, it can add a significant level of situational awareness for personnel on the sharp end of the spear as well as those in remote offices who have to make decisions related to the incident. One chief put it this way: “We are able to compress the time of developing our situational awareness from 12 hours to 12 minutes.”
Being aware of the near real time location of firefighters is half of what we call the Holy Grail of Firefighter Safety. The other half is knowing the real time location of a wildfire. Some near real time fire mapping is currently being done with NICS in California — if that ever routinely becomes part of NICS and is commonly available nationwide, it will reduce fatalities.
Mr. Toups and Mr. Thorpe call the development of NICS about 20 percent complete. They have plans to continue to make improvements and to add features. Most of the additions will be from the emergency response community: Everyone is encouraged to develop apps that can plug-and-play into the basic NICS architecture, just like other apps developed for smart phones and tablets.
To date NICS is primarily being used by state and local agencies in California. The federal wildland fire agencies are not using the system.
The person that gets credit for choosing the name, Next-Generation Incident Command System, is Jose A. Vazquez, a Special Assistant for First Responder Technologies with the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate — the organization that supplied four years of funding to develop the system.
Our only criticism is that unfortunate choice — the name, Next Generation Incident Command System. It implies that ICS is being thrown out and replaced. But NICS is a communications tool, infrastructure that works within the ICS or the National Incident Command System, and will not replace, but will enhance, ICS. Most products named next-generation, such as the next-generation air tankers, are intended to immediately or eventually replace older versions.
NICS is provided at no cost to all emergency response organizations. It is an open community, open standards, shared project. No vendor has any claim to its intellectual property. It belongs to the community. For more information contact Bob Toups, cdfbob at gmail.com, or Jack Thorpe, jack at thorpe.net.
There are many bushfires burning in Victoria and New South Wales. I am currently rebuilding my computer after wiping it and re-installing everything, so in the interests of time, below are some images sent by some folks down under recently. You should be able to get a sense of what some of the fires are like.
My State is on fire. 🙁 Over 70 fires burning. My thoughts go out to all affected and on the frontline #Victoria pic.twitter.com/iq2toHe1Wa
