Screenshot of a map of firefighter burnovers. The size of the circle is proportional to the number of personnel involved. JFSP, November, 2020.
The Joint Fire Science Program (JFSP) has produced a story map highlighting some of the organization’s success stories, in particular their research in entrapment avoidance, safety zones, and escape routes.
The screenshot above is from an interesting interactive map in the presentation showing the locations where wildland firefighters were burned over by fires. The size of the circle is proportional to the number of personnel involved in each incident, but not every burnover resulted in fatalities. A click on the circle brings up a few details about the incident.
The JFSP was established by Congress in 1998 and is jointly funded by the Department of the Interior and the U.S. Forest Service. The Joint Fire Science Plan written then, (linked to on their website) says the organization “will address issues critical to the success of the fuels management and fire use program.”
In FY 2017, 16 of the 22 JFSP approved and funded research projects were various ways of studying vegetation. Back then we wrote:
It would be refreshing to see more funds put toward projects that would enhance the science, safety, and effectiveness of firefighting.
Since then the emphasis has shifted a little — in a good way. In FY 2020 their research grants were for projects on one of two topics:
Effectiveness of fuel breaks and fuel break systems.
Reducing damages and losses to valued resources from wildfire.
And in FY 2021: (they expect total funding to be $1.5 to $3.5 million):
Sources and distribution of human-caused ignitions and their relation to wildfire impacts.
Reducing damages and losses to valued resources from wildfire.
Wildfire Today continues to advocate for the the JFSP to place a major emphasis on developing science that can be directly used by wildland fire personnel to enhance their safety, firefighting efficiency, and reduce the undesirable and sometimes catastrophic effects of uncontrolled wildfires on citizens, infrastructure, and property. If the JFSP Plan needs to be revised to accomplish this, then let’s get it done.
Yellowstone National Park Visitor Center. NPS photo.
Federal funding is expected to become available to begin addressing the historically underfunded, multi-billion-dollar deferred maintenance backlog at our national parks and public lands. The Great American Outdoors Act signed in August transfers revenues to our public lands from oil and gas royalty money derived from drilling on federal property. This money is deposited into two funds: the National Parks and Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund and the Land and Water Conservation Fund.
The potential for $9.5 billion to be deposited into the Public Land Legacy Restoration Fund over the next five years will help cover about half of the current deferred maintenance backlog. The money will be distributed to public land management agencies proportionally to the amount of backlog faced by each agency (70 percent for the National Park Service, 15 percent for the U.S. Forest Service, 5 percent for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 5 percent for the Bureau of Land Management, and 5 percent for the Bureau of Indian Education).
The Department of the Interior has released a list of the projects that will be funded in the fiscal year that began October, 2020. Many of the projects involve replacing, rehabilitating, or repairing buildings, water systems, sewer systems, and campgrounds for the NPS, BLM, FWS, and BIE.
We found on the list a number of projects related to wildland fire. They are all for the BLM or the National Interagency Fire Center.
BLM, California Telecommunication Network; repair critical telecommunications structures and equipment to provide reliable fire and law enforcement communications and protect the safety of the public and staff.
BLM, Grand Junction Air Center, Colorado; repair leaking containment pond integral to regional wildland fire aviation operations.
National Interagency Fire Center, Boise, Idaho;
Replace two aging uninterruptable power system (UPS) units that serve a mission critical data center; repair failing subgrade, and heating systems.
405-Hangar; replacement of the outdated fire detection notification system and repair the HVAC system.
Repair an aging storm water collection system that is inadequate to manage storm water in accordance with clean water act requirements.
BLM, North Central District, Montana; Grub Dam rehabilitation to provide a consistent source of water for habitat and wildland fire.
BLM, Winnemucca District, Nevada; replace dilapidated Orovada Crew Quarters at a fire station in McDermitt, NV with a new Fire Station Quarters in Orovada, NV.
BLM, Nevada Telecommunications Network, Nevada; repair radio infrastructure across Nevada to provide a communication system that is safe and reliable to support BLM’s fire suppression, law enforcement, and emergency responses.
BLM, Burns District, Oregon; the Warm Springs-Stinkingwater project will repair 18 miles of damaged road to provide safe access public wildlife viewing and hunting, wildland firefighting operations, and cattle grazing allotments.
BLM, Burns District, Oregon. Replace an aging and deteriorating radio tower to protect public safety and ensure reliable radio service for interagency fire, law enforcement, and employee communications.
BLM, Prineville District, Oregon; the Prineville District Sunflower Creek culvert replacement will resolve outstanding safety issues and improve wildland fire response on South Fork John Day Road.
BLM, Burns District, Oregon; the Burns Junction Fire Station Repair and Renovation project will renovate the bathrooms, sleeping quarters, kitchen, and laundry facilities of the Fire Station.
The Department of the Interior also released their projects to receive the Land and Water Conservation Fund money this fiscal year. The Act guarantees the Fund will receive $900 million annually.
The Forest Service has a list of deferred maintenance projects for FY 2021 and 2022 that are under consideration, subject to final budget appropriations.
Devastation from the Almeda Drive Fire in the area of Phoenix and Talent in southern Oregon. Screenshot from video shot by Jackson County on September 8, 2020.
The traditional way — and the easiest way — to compare wildfire seasons is the number of acres burned. That figure is fairly straightforward and reliable, at least for data within the last 35 years; before 1984 the data is questionable.
But blackened acres does not tell the whole story about the effects of fires on humans. A 50,000-acre fire in a northwestern California wilderness area has fewer direct impacts on the population than, for instance, the 3,200-acre Almeda Fire that destroyed 2,357 residences in Southern Oregon a few months ago.
Top most destructive wildfires in the United States. Headwaters Economics.
Headwaters Economics has built a user friendly interactive data base of the number of structures, by state, destroyed by wildfires from 2005 to 2020. It presumably includes all structures, including back yard sheds, other outbuildings, commercial buildings, and residences.
Here are three screenshots, examples for the entire U.S., Colorado, and Montana.
Top most destructive wildfires in Montana. Headwaters Economics.Top most destructive wildfires in Colorado. Headwaters Economics.
The best way to prevent homes from being destroyed in a wildfire is not clear cutting or prescribed burning a forest, it is the homeowner reducing flammable material in the Home Ignition Zone. This includes spacing the crowns of trees at least 18 feet apart that are within 30 feet of the home, 12 feet apart at 30 to 60 feet, and 6 feet apart at 60 to 100 feet. The envelope of the structure itself must be fire resistant, including the roof, vents, siding, doors, windows, foundation, fences, eaves, and decks. A FEMA publication (13 MB) has excellent detailed recommendations. Headwaters Economics found that the cost of building a fire-resistant home is about the same as a standard home. When implemented, Chapter 7A of the California Building Code, regulates these features.
Uncontrollable extreme wildfires are inevitable; however, by reducing home ignition potential within the Home Ignition Zone we can create ignition resistant homes and communities. Thus, community wildfire risk should be defined as a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem. Unfortunately, protecting communities from wildfire by reducing home ignition potential runs counter to established orthodoxy.
For Throwback Thursday we are revisiting an article published February 28, 2008 about an issue that is still before us today.
At a three-day conference organized by FireSafe Montana, Wally Bennett, a Type 1 Incident Commander, told the group that climate change and fewer air tankers and hand crews are making the job of wildland firefighters more difficult.
“Coming summers will bring more and bigger wildfires to the Northern Rockies. But it also will bring fewer firefighters, less equipment for them to use, and more and more homes to protect in flammable landscapes.
That’s the message spelled out Tuesday by climate and firefighting experts at a conference at the Bozeman Holiday Inn.
“We’ve got a lot less of the toys we need to do the job we’re doing out there,” said Wally Bennett, a veteran commander of a Type I incident command team, the type of force that tackles large and complex blazes.
Bennett was one of the speakers at the three-day conference organized by FireSafe Montana, a fledgling nonprofit group that is trying to motivate landowners, county governments, developers and other entities to do more to protect private land before wildfire reaches it.
Several years ago, Bennett said, firefighting teams had 32 large retardant planes available to them. Last year, they had 16.
The number of 20-person hand teams has declined from roughly 750 to about 450 over the same time period, he said, and that number is likely to fall further.
“There’s not enough to go around,” he said.
That’s partly because a rookie firefighter can earn about the same pay flipping burgers at McDonald’s.
Meanwhile, a warming climate is bringing earlier snowmelt along with hotter, drier summers, said Faith Anne Heisch, a climate researcher who works with Steve Running, the University of Montana professor who was part of the Nobel-prize winning International Panel on Climate Change.”
It will be phased in during the 2021 fire season as stocks of existing retardant are used
Tanker 911, a DC-10, drops on the Sheep Herder Hill Fire near Casper on Monday. Photo by Alan Rogers, Casper Star-Tribune. Used with permission. (click to enlarge)
FIRE-TROL and PHOS-CHEK fire retardants have been produced for almost 60 years by a company whose name and ownership have changed five times since 1997 — starting with Monsanto in 1963, then Solutia, Astaris, ICL, and finally in 2018, Perimeter Solutions.
Today a new generation of fire retardant in the PHOS-CHEK line was introduced by Perimeter Solutions — LCE20-Fx. It is the result of two years of work by the Perimeter Solutions R&D team in Rancho Cucamonga, CA. Apparently very little time was spent choosing a name.
It was tested during the 2020 fire season, applying the required 200,000 gallons before it was approved by the Forest Service and added to the qualified products list on November 5, 2020.
“We will begin deploying this commercially next fire season at probably eight or nine bases, which we will convert from LC-95A to this new LCE20-Fx product,” said Edward Goldberg, Chief Executive Officer of Perimeter Solutions.
The new formulation has shown improvements in three key areas: coverage, visibility, and toxicity.
Coverage
The retardant is produced as a liquid concentrate and delivered to application sites as a low-viscosity liquid. Before being loading onto an air tanker, it is diluted and mixed with water using an in-line proportioner as it is transferred to delivery systems. According to the company, the elastic nature of the gum thickener in LCE20-Fx reduces drift, dispersion, and evaporation, while increasing coverage, wrap around, and canopy penetration, making it more effective in targeting ground vegetation.
Visibility
The reason fire retardants are red is so aerial firefighters can see exactly what areas of a fire have been treated. This reduces repeated drops in the same area and makes it possible for additional drops to tag on to and extend the treated areas along the edge of a fire.
“We’re utilizing Fx, the ultra high visibility pigment in our products, which helps the pilots see where they need to tie in the next line so that the fire doesn’t get through the gap,” said Melissa Kim, Director of Research and Development for Perimeter. “It just continues on with our line of Fx products. We started with iron oxide, then we moved to a fugitive, and then we improved on that fuchsia color. This product will fade over time, but it does have a high, extremely high, visibility to the point where we’ve had comments come back saying that it’s even more visible than our iron oxide products. So that was a big big deal for us.”
The reports about the visibility came after the new formulation was used this year at two air tanker bases in Nevada — Battle Mountain for most of the season, and Stead/Reno at the end of the season.
They will also be producing an uncolored version without any red or fuchsia pigment which could be applied from the ground by utilities or homeowners for long term prevention and protection.
Toxicity
The millions of gallons of red fire retardant that air tankers drop every year are usually made from ammonium phosphate or its derivatives. It has been called “long term fire retardant” because even after it dries, the chemical can interfere with the combustion process and may still retard the spread of a vegetation fire. However research and experience in the field has shown some formulations can be toxic to fish. Federal interagency policy prohibits the aerial delivery of retardant within 300 feet of certain waterways. It also cannot be used in certain designated terrestrial areas, or in some National Parks without special permission. The restrictions still apply to the new formulation of retardant introduced today.
Maps are available which identify threatened, endangered, candidate, proposed, and sensitive species (TECPS) avoidance areas. There appears to be significant variability within the Forest Service on interpreting the guidelines and mapping the areas.
Retardant avoidance areas, Forest Service lands in Northwest California.Retardant avoidance areas on the Descanso District, Cleveland National Forest, Southern California.
The retardant products used by the U.S. Forest Service are tested for fish toxicity to determine the concentration in milligrams per liter (mg/L) that result in the death of 50 percent of the aquatic test specimens, young rainbow trout, within 96 hours. The higher the number, the less toxic it is. The Forest Service specifications for retardant require that the aquatic toxicity be greater than 200 mg/L. The previous versions of PHOS-CHEK, LC-95A, had toxicity levels of 225 to 399 mg/L. The new LCE20-Fx is 983.
Weight
The weight of the mixed LCE20-Fx retardant is slightly less than the previous generation, reducing the weight of a gallon from 9.01 pounds to 8.87 pounds, a savings of 0.14 pound per gallon. This reduces the weight of the 9,400 gallons on a DC-10 by 1,316 pounds, and of the 3,000 gallons on a BAe-146 by 420 pounds.
Transportable retardant plant
The Forest Service refers to them as “portable retardant bases”, but transportable is probably a more accurate term. Since these types of bases became an issue in discussions about the closure and dismantling of the tanker base at West Yellowstone, Montana, I asked Mr. Goldberg about their transportable equipment. He explained that the company has 12, each of which can be set up in as little as two hours once on site. They are not always in the same place and can be prepositioned depending on fire activity.
Portable retardant plant, Sacramento, CA, March 20, 2014.
For Throwback Thursday, an issue that was a serious problem in 2008 has gotten much worse since we published this article on Wildfire Today February 14, 2008.
The Associated Press is picking up on the pay and retention issues the U.S. Forest Service and other agencies are facing in California. The USFS is losing a great many experienced firefighters to CalFire and other fire departments in the state who pay much higher salaries than the federal agencies.
From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
“WASHINGTON – A top federal official acknowledged Tuesday that the U.S. Forest Service is losing federal firefighters in California to state and county departments that pay more.
But Agriculture Department Undersecretary Mark Rey, who directs U.S. forest policy, told concerned lawmakers he’s still evaluating how much of a problem that is. “On the one hand you hate to lose trained people. On the other hand they’re still fighting fires under a unified command system,” Rey told a hearing of the House Appropriations Interior subcommittee. “They’re going to be on the fire line along with the federal firefighters.”
Lawmakers convinced there is a problem ordered the Forest Service to come up with a plan by Feb. 1 to increase recruitment and retention for Southern California forests. That deadline has passed but the agency is working on it, officials said.”
