The Associated Press and the Prescott Daily Courier are reporting that the Arizona version of the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration will disclose their version of an investigation into the deaths of 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots on Wednesday. The firefighters were entrapped and killed while suppressing the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona on June 30. Their requirements are that the report must be complete no later than six months after their investigation was announced, which would make it due no later than the first part of January, 2014.
The Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health will formally present their findings to the Industrial Commission of Arizona, their parent agency, at a 1 p.m. public meeting Wednesday, December 4, in the 1st Floor Auditorium, 800 West Washington, Phoenix, Arizona.
Both media organizations said the agency will recommend citations and penalties against state organizations. An agenda that has been released for the meeting said “Discussion & Action of OSHA Proposed Citations & Penalties. Arizona State Forestry Division, State of Arizona”, but does not mention the Yarnell Hill Fire.
The judgments and decisions of the incident management organizations managing this fire were reasonable. Firefighters performed within their scope of duty, as defined by their respective organizations. The Team found no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol.
Joe Lowe at the opening of his gallery in 2007. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Joe Lowe, the former Director of South Dakota’s Wildland Fire Division, has announced that he is running as a Democratic candidate for Governor. Before he managed the State’s wildland fire program for 10 years, he worked for the Orange County Fire Department in California and had served as the mayor of the City of Mission Viejo, California, which today has a population of 95,000.
In the summer of 2000 the 7,000-acre Flagpole fire and the 83,000-acre Jasper Fire were the largest fires to occur in the Black Hills in a number of years. Governor Bill Janklow, always a hands-on governor, was bewildered and flabbergasted by the fires and in many ways interfered with the Incident Commanders (your’s truly included) which at times created serious safety problems. On the Jasper Fire the Type 1 Incident Commander placed a resource order for U.S. Marshals who stood by at the Incident Command Post ready to put a halt to any actions by state employees that put firefighters in danger, such as setting backfires and running dozers out ahead of the fire without coordinating with the Incident Commander or the Incident Management Team.
The next year Governor Janklow created the Division of Wildland Fire Suppression and hired Mr. Lowe to run the agency. His experience, management skills, and the fact that the Governor trusted him, established a welcome buffer between the Governor and the other wildfire organizations in the state. After serving 16 years as Governor, and later as a U.S. Representative, Mr. Janklow passed away in 2012. His political career ended after he was put in jail for blasting through a stop sign at over 60 miles per hour where he hit and killed a motorcyclist.
During his 10 years as the state Fire Chief, Mr. Lowe, working with his interagency partners, helped establish the Northern Great Plains Interagency Dispatch Center, the Great Plains Interstate Fire Compact, the State Handcrew Program, and the State Aerial Firefighting Program. He was Incident Commander of the Rocky Mountain Type 2 Incident Management Team C.
We asked Mr. Lowe (with our tongue planted in cheek), if elected as Governor, would he assume the practices of his “mentor”, Governor Janklow, and be very hands on, attempting to run wildfires in spite of the best efforts of the Incident Commanders. He assured us, while laughing, that while he would not always be stuck in his office if there was a major emergency in the state, he would allow the Incident Management Teams to do the jobs they were hired to do.
He said if elected, he would work to ensure that the state fire agency is adequately funded on a parity with other states, he would concentrate on forest health, continue the excellent interagency cooperation we have seen in the last decade in the Black Hills, and would emphasize prompt, aggressive initial attack on new fires.
One of the reasons he is running, he told us, is because of what he saw in the state during and after the very severe recent winter storm. Even though several counties in western South Dakota had their emergency operations centers working at maximum capacity, and there had been a Presidential Declaration, the state never opened their emergency operations center to help organize and assist the overwhelmed local and county organizations. The heavy snow, pushed by very strong winds combined with low temperatures, had a paralyzing effect in many areas and killed thousands of heads of livestock, which had a profound practical and economic effect in the state. He feels that there is much room for improvement in all-hazard management.
Running as a Democrat, and so far the only announced Democratic candidate, he faces an uphill battle in a Republican state during the November, 2014 election. Incumbent Republican Governor Dennis Daugaard is expected to seek another term. But, Democrats can win state-wide elections in South Dakota. Current Senator Tim Johnson and former Representative Stephanie Herseth are Democrats.
After the county Sheriff has repeatedly publicly criticized how the Fire Chief handled the first two hour of the destructive Black Forest Fire in Colorado Springs, an independent investigator has been called in.
A man whose body was found during a brush fire in Arvin, California in August was murdered, before the suspect tried covering up the crime with a fire.
Protecting archaeological sites from wildfire and extreme weather using a wireless sensor network.
The Predictive Services section at the National Interagency Fire Center has issued their Wildland Fire Potential Outlook for December, 2013 through March, 2014. If their prediction is correct there is nothing extraordinary ahead, except for reduced wildfire potential over much of the south. Here is their summary:
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The December 2013, January 2014 and February through March 2014, significant wildland fire potential forecasts included in this outlook represent the cumulative forecasts of the eleven Geographic Area Predictive Services Units and the National Predictive Services Unit.
December
Below normal fire potential will continue from southern Texas to the Ohio Valley and the southern Appalachians. Short-term increases in fire activity are possible along the lower Atlantic Coast.
There are no areas of above normal significant wildland fire potential for December.
January
The Southeast will continue to see below normal significant wildland fire potential from East Texas to the Ohio Valley and the southern Appalachians.
There are short-term fire concerns for Florida.
There are no areas of above normal fire potential for December.
February through March
Below normal fire potential will develop from the central Gulf to the Mid-Atlantic states.
No areas of above normal significant wildland fire potential are expected for February or March.
The Bureau of Indian Affairs released today what appears to be a professionally-produced 13-minute video about reducing the wildfire risk around structures and the use of prescribed fire, emphasizing its “prehistorical” use.
The person who led the 54-person team that investigated the June 30 deaths of 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots talked to a reporter for the Florida Current about the results of their investigation and how they track firefighters in his agency.
Previously, Florida State Forester Jim Karels’ team wrote in their report about the Yarnell Hill Fire which was released in September:
The judgments and decisions of the incident management organizations managing this fire were reasonable. Firefighters performed within their scope of duty, as defined by their respective organizations. The Team found no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol.
The Yarnell Hill Fire report also said:
… [it] does not identify causes in the traditional sense of pointing out errors, mistakes, and violations…
Many of us criticized the report for whitewashing the tragedy and failing firefighters who deserve to increase their knowledge of how to avoid similar disasters in the future. A lessons learned opportunity was missed.
It will be interesting to see if the report about the fire that is being written by the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health provides better information about what happened, why, and how to avoid similar deaths.
Below is an excerpt from the article in the Florida Current:
Karels, though, said a second section of the report asks questions about the decision-making process that will help develop lessons to be learned. He said the fact that all 19 firefighters died together while making decisions on their own and separately made the investigation different from other investigations.
“It would be real easy to say, ‘This is exactly what happened and these are why decisions were made and this is something to blame,'” Karels said. “But all 19 are gone. So we reconstructed an event based on the best knowledge we had.”
He said lessons learned from the fire include the need for more prescribed burning and mitigation nationwide to reduce the potential for deadly wildfires.
In the interview Mr. Karels also talked about tracking the location of firefighters, since no one on the Yarnell Hill Fire knew where the Granite Mountain Hotshots were at the time of the fatal entrapment or previously that they were hiking through unburned vegetation near the fire which changed direction and burned over their location due to a passing thunderstorm.
He said [the] “Blue Ribbon Fire” led to recommendations on improving communication, asset tracking and providing enough helicopters to battle fires.
[Agriculture Commissioner Adam] Putnam is requesting $5 million for new vehicles in fiscal year 2014-15 in addition to $4 million received last year for upgrading technology and equipment…
The Hamilton County fire and the Arizona fire both led to recommendations to improve the tracking of firefighters and equipment during a rapidly expanding fire, Karels said.
After the 2011 fire, Florida began installing a tracking system on computers in supervisory vehicles that map firefighters and machinery with the locations of the fire and terrain, Karels said.
Where do we go from here?
We have written previously about how the inability of fire supervisors to always be situationally aware of the location of firefighters has contributed to at least 24 deaths in recent years — 19 on the Yarnell Hill Fire and 5 on the Esperanza fire.
On the 2006 Esperanza Fire in southern California, Branch II and the Captain of Engine 57 had an understanding that the Engine crew would not remain at the Octagon house, where they eventually died (see page 9 of the USDA OIG report). The crew was supposed to go to an area identified as a safety zone and not try to defend the house, according to information provided by Branch II. For some reason the crew decided to defend the house, setting up hose lays and a portable pump. The fire entrapped them at that location, killing all five members of the crew.
If Branch II, an Operations Section Chief, or a Safety Officer had access to real time information about the location of their resources on the fire, it is likely that the engine crew would have been directed to go to the safety zone as instructed earlier by Branch II.
Granite Mountain Hotshots hike to the Yarnell Hill fire on June 30. Photo by Joy Collura.
The person that was supervising the 19 firefighters that died on the Yarnell Hill Fire was the Operations Section Chief. In the report on page 22, he tells the crew, Granite Mountain Hotshots, to “hunker and be safe”, which usually means find a nearby safe spot and stay there. On page 27 Operations tells the airborne Aerial Supervision Module about the crew, “They’re in a good place. They’re safe…”
The Blue Ridge Hotshots thought Granite Mountain was walking north to a ranch house safety zone north of their location. OPS thought the crew was safely in the black. He did not know the 19 firefighters were walking in the unburned area toward a ranch south of their location. If Ops or a Safety Officer with access to the location of all fire resources had known the crew’s location as they first began their fatal trek, it is likely the entrapment could have been prevented.
The Holy Grail of Firefighter Safety, as I envision it, would enable radios carried by firefighters and in their vehicles to transmit their location in real time which would then show up on a remote display (on anything from a cell phone or a 7″ tablet, up to a laptop computer) that would be monitored by a Safety Officer, Branch Director, Ops Chief, or Division Supervisor. The display would also show the real time location of the fire. Knowing either of these in real time would enhance the safety of firefighters. Knowing both is the Holy Grail.
Cell phone-based location systems will not work on many fires due to incomplete coverage. What might work are temporary cell sites or dedicated repeaters on aircraft or mountain tops, or a geosynchronous satellite that is always overhead and could receive data from almost everywhere except in the deepest, steep canyons or heaviest tree canopy. The same satellite could host the proposed system that would survey the entire western United States every two minutes or less, mapping fires and detecting new fires as small as 10 feet in diameter.
If Congress and the American people were presented with this proposal, even though it would cost hundreds of millions of dollars, they just might vote to save firefighters’ lives.
Luddites who oppose technology and want everything to remain the same will never be in favor of this concept. I understand that, and recognize that everyone is entitled to their own opinion
The Associated Press and the Prescott Daily Courier are reporting that the Arizona version of the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration will disclose their version of an investigation into the deaths of 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots on Wednesday. The firefighters were entrapped and killed while suppressing the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona on June 30. Their requirements are that the report must be complete no later than six months after their investigation was announced, which would make it due no later than the first part of January, 2014.
