Author: Bill

We routinely write about wildland fires here, but there are some lessons to be learned that would apply to wildland fire in the long awaited report on last June’s fire in Charleston, SC that claimed the lives of nine firefighters at the Sofa Super Store. It contains some startling information:

• Fighting a well-established fire in a large furniture store with booster lines.
• The fire department routinely did not use any large diameter hose. The largest hose on the pumpers was 2 1/2″.
• There was inadequate water supply at the fire.
• A lack of command and control at the fire scene.
• A lack of accountability of firefighters at the fire scene.
• The trapped firefighters’ mayday radio calls were not heard by anyone at the fire.
• Improper ventilation at the fire may have contributed to the fatalities.
• Truck companies in the fire department had ceased being used for ventilation on fires, perform rescues, or conduct salvage or overhaul. They had become “taxis”, transporting extra firefighters to fires.
• “The Charleston Fire Department was inadequately staffed, inadequately trained, insufficiently equipped, and organizationally unprepared to conduct an operation of this complexity.”
• “The fire chief became directly involved in supervising tactical operations in the vicinity of the loading dock and the warehouse during the critical phase of the incident. This should not be the role of the Incident Commander.”
• The policy of the fire department was to not refill SCBA air tanks unless they were less than 2/3 full. This had the effect of the low pressure alarms going off after only 6-7 minutes of use.

On Wednesday, Fire Chief Rusty Thomas announced that he is retiring, effective June 27.

More information, including a photo, is at Firegeezer. Charleston.net has a lengthy story about the report.

The pilot of an F/A-18 Super Hornet meant for his laser guided bomb to land on a Florida bombing range on Tuesday, but he missed it by a mile–exactly–starting a fire in a national forest. Today U.S. Forest Service firefighters are mopping up the 250-acre fire started by the bomb outside the Pinecastle target range about 60 miles northwest of Orlando.

While inert bombs occasionally land outside the bombing range, a Navy spokesman said this is the first time a live bomb has missed the range. Thankfully no one was hurt when the 500-pound bomb exploded.

I thought a laser-guided bomb could be guided through a window in an outhouse…..but missing the entire bombing range?

Other military aircraft have started vegetation fires in the last 12 months:

On March 25, 2008 Wildfire Today reported on a B-1 bomber that caught fire while in flight near Ellsworth Air Force Base near Rapid City and apparently started several vegetation fires from falling debris before landing safely at Ellsworth.

Wildfire Today told you about how on May 15, 2007, a New Jersey Air National Guard F-16 ejected a flare during a low-level pass on a training flight, starting a fire which grew to 17,000 acres. The fire destroyed four homes in two senior citizen housing developments, and damaged 37 others. Some 6,000 people were evacuated. Ocean County agencies will receive $320,000 from the Air Force as reimbursements for their costs during the fire. The Air Force has already paid nearly $2 million in private property claims and other losses, but many claims are still unsettled.

The Big Horn fire on the Angeles National Forest did not spread very much today. The run it made on the west side yesterday afternoon added an additional 110 acres, which brings the total size to 420 acres. More information, including maps, is on the InciWeb site.

The Big Horn fire near Big Bear, California, was not very active today until this afternoon, when it made a sizable uphill run on the west side. Before that the size was 310 acres and they were reporting 10% containment. Judging from their map, updated at 4:50 local time today, it probably increased by at least 100 acres up to the time that map was made.

If the 396 people managed by Carlton Joseph’s Type 2 Incident Management Team don’t make much progress later today or tonight, they are going to be seriously challenged Thursday and Friday by what will be very strong winds and possibly record heat of around 100 degrees in the valleys.

I first read about this on Firegeezer and Firefighter blog, but HERE is a story about Dubai using a Corvette as a fast response fire apparatus. The theory is that it can get to a fire quickly and size it up or put it out, perhaps saving property and lives. Here is an excerpt from the story:

Brigadier Rashid Thani Al Matroushi, Director of Dubai Civil Defence, said the civil defence will soon start using a customised Corvette car to attend to fires quickly, to prevent them spreading.

He said the car is a small, light and fast car which can beat traffic and contains highly-effective firefighting and prevention systems in addition to rescue equipment in cases where people are trapped in cars.

Equipment in the car includes a portable fire extinguisher, hydraulic equipment, firefighting equipment and first aid equipment.

Brigadier Al Matroushi who suggested the idea of developing a sports car and followed up its development daily, said one of the reasons behind a fire getting worse was the distance between civil defence centres and accident locations. The large size of civil defence vehicles makes it difficult to arrive quickly at the scene, therefore the need arose to develop a fast car.

Captain Sulaiman Abdulkareem, Director of Civil Defence Technical Affairs, said the developing of the car took two months by four members.