News and opinion about wildland fire
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Medical issues dominate the reports received by the LLC The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center distilled this information from the 24-hour reports, 72-hour reports, and facilitated learning analysis documents they have received so far this year, about halfway through the 2013 wildfire season. The word “incidents” refers to the above reports which have been forwarded to the Center.
Most of the funerals are over for the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots that were killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire June 30. From information provided by the incident management team that organized the services, the firefighters are listed below.
The incident management team has posted hundreds of photos of the memorial service, the procession, and the planning for the events.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized3 Comments on CBC: Canadian firefighters do not carry fire shelters 
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation quotes the chair of the fire equipment working group for the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre as saying fire shelters have not been used by wildland firefighters in Canada since 2005.
Below is an excerpt from a CBC article:
In Canada, fire shelters are no longer used at all. Marc Mousseau, chair of the fire equipment working group for the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, said they were never widely deployed, and B.C. became the last province to stop deploying them in 2005.
Lucy Tower, manager of B.C.’s fire equipment depot, told CBCNews.ca Tuesday that the decision was made because the province’s firefighters are never put in a situation where they would need to deploy a fire shelter. Much of the terrain where wildfires occur in Canada is also densely forested.
That type of terrain is unsuitable for using the shelters, said John Flinn, equipment coordinator for the New Brunswick provincial fire warehouse.
“You have to have some place open … where you can get away from adjacent fuels,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. “There’s no place in the Maritimes you can do that, really.”
In general, Canadian wildfire fighters are equipped with the view that firefighters should avoid putting themselves in harm’s way to begin with.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Video of the memorial service for the 19 Granite Mountain Hotshots If you did not get a chance to see it live, or would just like to see it again, below is a video recording of the two and a half hour June 9 memorial service for the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots who were killed June 30. The video is made available by Azfamily.com.
Wildfire in solar panel field
A vegetation fire in Intel’s solar panel field in Folsom, California created an unusual situation for firefighters, who for safety reasons declined to fight the fire among the electricity-generating panels, but attacked it from the edge of the facility. FOX40 has a video report.
Massachusetts firefighters deployed to Canada
The Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation is sending 15 state and municipal wildland firefighters along with six others from Maine to fight forest fires in the Canadian province of Quebec. The 21 firefighters will assist in suppressing some of the fires that have burned over a million acres in the province.
Grass fire causes delays at airport in Chicago
A grass fire near an FAA Tracon Facility in Elgin, Illinois Saturday caused delays at O’Hare International Airport. The fire caused a drop in water pressure in the building which triggered fire alarms. Operations were switched to an Aurora facility, according to a spokeswoman for the FAA.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized3 Comments on A view of the Yarnell Hill tragedy from another hotshot Members of the wildland fire community contemplating the tragic deaths of the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots are being affected in similar but usually different ways — we see the event through a prism, everyone with a slightly different vantage point.
Jenna Penielle Lyons, a young firefighter like many of the Granite Mountain 19, is in her third year, with two of those being on a hotshot crew. In a very well written piece titled To the Hotshots Who Died, from Your Sister, she sheds some light on what it was like to be working on a fire as a member of the Snake River Hotshots and hear the news about the 19.
Below is an excerpt; you can read the entire article at elephantjournal.com:
…After the Granite Mountain Hotshots died, I looked at my job differently. I wondered how it happened—how the wind and fire could have changed so quickly and unexpectedly. The entire Hotshot community was thrown for a loop when that incident happened. The day of the memorial, we sat at 11,000 feet and listened to the C-SPAN live feed of the service. I watched 19 men sit in complete silence for two hours, obviously contemplating the tragedy at depth. Whatever happened at Yarnell Hill, those men died doing what they loved.
You can check out Ms. Lyons work and follow her adventures at www.thelyonsroarliterature.wordpress.com, which she describes like this: “The Lyon’s Roar: A blog about a little girl creating art, living from the earth and imagination, and fighting fire in the great states of Montana and Idaho.”
