Hangar 11 at Hickam Field, December 7, 1941. Courtesy Library of Congress.
Billy G. of FirefighterCloseCalls.com, “Home of the Secret List,” reminded his followers of the significance of December 7 — Pearl Harbor Day:
For those younger readers of The Secret List, today, “Pearl Harbor Day” remembers the attack on Pearl Harbor, which was a surprise military strike conducted by the Imperial Japanese Navy against the United States at our naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on the morning of December 7, 1941.
That day 188 U.S. aircraft were destroyed, 2,402 personnel were killed, and 1,282 were wounded. We remember them all from “The Greatest Generation” who served along with all those who continue to serve today including the Honolulu FD and Hawaii’s Federal FD Firefighters.
REMEMBERING THE FIREFIGHTERS KILLED & INJURED IN THE LINE OF DUTY AT PEARL HARBOR:
As the Hickam Field firefighting apparatus was knocked out, Honolulu Fire companies responded to assist with the fires. At 0826 a Japanese aerial bomb was dropped on crews from HFD Engine Companies 1, 4, and 6. Three firefighters, Captain John Carreira, Captain Thomas S. Macy, and Hoseman Harry T.L. Pang were killed in the Line of Duty.
An additional six were wounded from shrapnel. They were Honolulu Fire Lieutenant Fred Kealoha, Hoseman Moses Kalilikane, Hoseman John A. Gilman, Hoseman Solomon H. Naauao, Hoseman Patrick J. McCabe, and Hoseman George Correa.
In 1944 they all were awarded the Order of the Purple Heart. They are the only civilian Firefighters to have ever received this award.
MORE on Pearl Harbor as we remember all those lost on December 7, 1941:
Screenshot from the time lapse video of the convection column on the Apple Fire in Southern California shot by Leroy Leggitt August 1, 2020.
This video created by Jules Bennett is an overview of the wildfire environment we currently face in the United States.
“It’s a 6 minute informational video that explains why wildfires across the western U.S. are becoming increasingly destructive,” Mr. Bennett wrote to us. “It’s based on credible secondary research that I conducted over the course of a few weeks and tries to simplify the concept so that the public can become more aware of why it’s happening, and potential solutions to think about.”
DroneSeed will be allowed to operates drones beyond visual line of sight
Updated December 7, 2020 | 8:20 p.m. PST
A apparatus for dropping seed vessels is attached to a drone after being reloaded with tree seeds. Bloomberg image.
DroneSeed, a company that uses fleets of drones to reforest areas burned in wildfires, received approval in October from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for its heavy-lift drones to operate Beyond Visual Line of Sight (BVLOS) and to expand its use of heavy-lift drone swarms to California, Colorado, Montana, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico. They previously had FAA authorization to operate in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
The FAA’s action allows DroneSeed to begin reforesting once a fire is contained and airspace is clear. Their aircraft drop seeds that are encapsulated in vessels consisting of four to six seeds, fertilizer, natural pest deterrents, and fibrous material which absorbs water and increases survivability.
The company has designed a system around a swarm of drones that can drop tree seeds in places where they have a decent chance of survival. First they survey the area with a drone using lidar and a multispectral camera to map the terrain and the vegetation. The next step is to use artificial intelligence to sort through the mapping data to find areas where a dropped seed is most likely to germinate, in order to avoid, for example, rock, roads, and unburned locations. After the aircraft are launched, the five aircraft operate autonomously as they fly grid patterns.
DroneSeed. CNN image
A swarm of five drones can reseed 25 to 50 acres each day, said Grant Canary, CEO of DroneSeed. While on a seed-dropping mission each drone can stay in the air for 8 to 18 minutes, then returns to the helibase where it is reloaded with seed vessels and the battery is replaced. Mr. Canary said it takes about 6 minutes to replace the battery and the 57-pound seed vessel container.
DroneSeed makes their aircraft, they are not off-the-shelf consumer level drones. Batteries power the electric motors that drive the propellers. When at a work site, the workers bring five batteries for each aircraft which are recharged with a proprietary charging system run off a generator.
The company has about 40 employees, 10 of whom may be manufacturing seed vessels for ongoing or upcoming reseeding projects.
The company is already reforesting some of the areas burned this year in the one million-acre August Complex of fires in Northern California, and the 173,000-acre Holiday Farm Fire in Oregon.
While most aircraft hired by land management agencies are paid by the flight hour and daily availability rates, DroneSeed charges by the acre.
After sites are selected, seed vessels are manufactured, in many cases containing native Douglas Fir or Ponderosa Pine seeds harvested from the general part of the country where they will be later dispersed.
Currently DroneSeed is the only company in the United States approved to operate with heavy-lift drone swarms, according to the company.
The video below describes the reseeding system beginning at 0:32 and ending at 3:52.
By mid-September, there was no one left to call. The West, with its thousands of federal, state, and local fire engines and crews, had been tapped out.
Wildfires across the West had consumed the labor of all available wildland firefighters, and though there were fewer fires burning, those fires were larger and more difficult to contain. They consumed 13 million acres — an area almost the size of West Virginia.
In the midst of the 2020 wildfire season, John Phipps, the Forest Service’s deputy chief, told Congress that this “was an extraordinary year and it broke the system. The system was not designed to handle this.”
Draining the national wildland firefighting pool was why my fire crew and I had to work longer and harder than usual on the Idaho-Oregon border. We were fighting the Woodhead fire, which had peaked at 85,000 acres and threatened to burn the developed areas around the towns of Cambridge and Council, Idaho.
With only three crews to try to contain a fire that required probably ten crews, it meant day and night shifts for 14 days. Each crew found itself with miles of fire line to construct and hold. With not enough person-power, we were always trying to do more with less, and it was no comfort to know that what we faced was not unique.
Across the nation, the large fires meant working in hazardous conditions that called for far more workers than were available. For those of us on the line, it came down to little sleep and a heavy workload, combined with insufficient calories and emotional and physical exhaustion.
Fighting wildfires week after week takes a toll on the body. Smoke contains carcinogens, and firefighters spend days exerting themselves immersed in air thick with ash. We all figure that the long-term health effects cannot be good.
One of my co-workers confessed that he goes to sleep “with pain in my knees and hands,” and added, “I wake up with pain in my lungs and head.” Over a six-to-eight month fire season, minor injuries can become chronic pain.
Wildland firefighters are also vulnerable to suicide due to job-related stress and the lack of resources outside of the fire season. Long assignments put a strain on firefighters’ families and can damage relationships. A 2018 psychological study, conducted by Florida State University, reported that 55% of wildland firefighters experienced “clinically significant suicidal symptoms,” compared to 32% for structural firefighters.
Wildland firefighters who work for federal agencies, such as the Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management, are classified as “Range” Technicians” or “Forestry Technicians” — a title more suitable for golf course workers than people wearing heavy packs and working a fire line.
Calling them “technicians” negates the skills, knowledge and experience necessary to work with wildfire. Most firefighters sign contracts as seasonal “1039s,” agreeing to work 1,039 base hours for $12-$16 an hour. This is one hour short of being defined as a temporary worker who is eligible for benefits such as retirement and year-round health care.
Overtime work is what allows “technicians” to pay the bills, but once they reach 1,039 base hours some firefighters are laid off even while the fire season continues and their regions continue to burn.
There is a remedy in sight: the Wildland Firefighter Recognition Act, which formally identifies wildland firefighters as exactly that, tossing out the technician term and recognizing the “unusual physical hardship of the position.”
Montana Republican Sen. Steve Daines introduced the bill last year, and recently, California Republican Rep. Doug LaMalfa introduced the bill in the House. Co-sponsored by California Democratic Rep. Mark DeSaulnier, the bill currently sits with the House Oversight and Reform Committee. This is a nonpartisan bill that deserves support from every Westerner.
We all know fires will continue to burn throughout the West, but right now many of the men and women who fight those fires on our behalf are suffering from burnout. Addressing wildfires as a national priority starts with recognition of the profession fighting them.
From Writers on the Range.
Harrison Raine has been a wildland firefighter since 2016.
The number of fires is decreasing, but fires are growing larger
Average wildfire size in the United States, except Alaska, 1985-2020.
While all the wildfire statistics for 2020 are not yet available, the data through December 2, 2020 shows that the United States is on track to shatter the record for the average size of wildfires. Looking at the last 35 years, the average size of fires this year was the highest ever, 168 acres. This number has been growing rapidly year to year (see the chart above). The second highest was 145 acres in 2018, and third highest was 132 in 2017.
From 1985 through 1993 the average size was 27 acres — 16 percent of the average size in 2020, 168 acres.
Total wildfire acres US except Alaska, 1985-2020Number of wildfires US except Alaska, 1985-2020
From looking at the data, here are some highlights:
During the last 35 years, the number of acres burned this year in the lower 49 states was the 5th highest.
The number of fires has been declining. This year was the fourth lowest number in the last 35 years. The first, second and third lowest were 2013, 1989, and 2019 respectively.
Fewer, but larger fires — why?
The number of fires may be declining because we are better at preventing them. NFPA data shows the number of highway vehicle fires has declined from 456,000 in 1980 to 182,000 in 2018. The highway vehicles fires per billion miles driven has decreased over that same period from 299 to 56. In addition, we may have better spark arrestors on equipment, and, fewer people are smoking and those that do, smoke less.
Higher temperatures most likely has led to lower live and dead fuel moistures, more preheating of vegetation, extreme weather, more rapid fire spread, and increased resistance to control of fires. And when there is more fire on the landscape, the same number of forestry technicians year after year can’t suddenly increase their firefighting output by 300 percent.
All of the wildfire data in our charts here excludes Alaska. I treat that state separately because:
They don’t fully suppress most fires in Alaska, or sometimes just try to herd them away from communities. Fires can grow huge which really skews the numbers for the nation.
Alaska’s burned acres can vary widely from year to year. For example, so far this year they have only burned 181,234 acres; the other 49 states burned 8,708,060. In 2015 5,111,404 acres burned in Alaska.
I also do not show on charts the numbers before 1985 because the data available from NIFC shows wide shifts between 1982 and 1984. It appears that a different record-keeping system was introduced at that time.
Sentintel-2 satellite imagery of the bushfire in Namadgi National Park south of Canberra, Australia. February 4, 2020.
As we reported in February, a helicopter operated by Australia’s Army inadvertently started a bushfire January 27, 2020 in Namadgi National Park south of Canberra, in the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). It was caused by heat from the landing light on an MRH-90 Helicopter as it set down in the remote Orroral Valley for a crew break.
In the coming days, the Orroral Valley Fire grew very large, covered about 80 percent of the National Park, and crossed over into New South Wales where it burned homes. Wildfire Today’s very unofficial estimate based on satellite imagery is that the blaze burned over 250,000 acres.
New information uncovered by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) reveals that the crew did not report the specific location of the fire until they landed 45 minutes later at Canberra Airport.
File photo of Royal Australian Navy NHI MRH-90 Helicopter. Photo by Duan Zhu.
From ABC:
When the blaze threatened to consume the aircraft, the crew took to the skies — only to watch as their helicopter downdraught fanned the flames into what would become a formidable firestorm.
But internal Defence reports on the incident, released to the ABC under Freedom of Information laws, show the helicopter’s pilot did not radio the coordinates in the timeit took to return to Fairbairn air baseat Canberra Airport.
That lack of information sowed confusion as ACT fire crews were dispatched to different parts of the park in a desperate scramble to locate and extinguish the blaze.
In documents obtained by the ABC under Freedom of Information laws, Defence made it clear the top priority for the helicopter crew was safety, given the aircraft had been damaged in the fire.
Today, in a statement from the Defence Minister’s office, Ms Reynolds defended the aircrew returning to Fairbairn air base at Canberra Airport before relaying the fire’s location to authorities.
She said the airport was the “nearest safe landing area with access to emergency services” for the fire-damaged aircraft.
“Defence advises that the crew were focussed on the immediate safety of the passengers and the flight emergency situation,” the statement from Ms Reynold’s office said.
“Defence advises that during the flight, the crew relayed the in-flight emergency situation to Canberra Air Traffic Control and their commanders.
“Immediately following an emergency landing at Canberra Airport, the aircrew passed the location of the fire to ACT Emergency Services Agency.”
The ACT’s Emergency Services Authority has said the Australian Defence Force’s actions were appropriate.
But others, including former ACT emergency services commissioner Peter Dunn, said the 45-minute delay robbed ACT emergency services of the crucial first hour to stop the fire from growing beyond control.
Today current ACT Emergency Services Commissioner Georgeina Whelan again defended the Army helicopter crew, saying they were following safety protocols.
But Ms Whelan acknowledged the 45-minute delay in firefighters being provided the location of the bushfire was “disappointing”.
“It is very disappointing and I know the entire Canberra community, as was I, we would love to have had information within seconds of that occurring,” she told ABC Radio Canberra.
“What we do know is the aircraft and the pilot focused on the safety of their team and got them back to the ACT airport very safely and we deployed our assets within a very short timeframe.
“It is very unfortunate, it was a really challenging season for all of us.
Sentintel-2 satellite imagery of the bushfire in Namadgi National Park south of Canberra, Australia. January 30, 2020.
