Firefighters work to save a Messmate in Victoria, Australia. Photo by Forest Fire Management Victoria.
The presumptive disease program passed last year by Victoria’s Parliament went into effect September 14, 2022.
It extends the program to wildland firefighters and includes “surge firefighters” who are government employees normally in other roles, but who perform firefighting duties during the fire season as part of their agency’s surge capacity as needed.
The presumptive disease program ensures that if a firefighter is diagnosed with any of the 12 listed cancers, they will not have to prove that it was caused by their employment, and it will be considered an on the job injury.
The cancers covered are brain, bladder, kidney, non-Hodgkins lymphoma, leukemia, breast, testicular, multiple myeloma, prostate, ureter, colorectal, and esophageal.
The compensation applies to forest firefighters who:
have been diagnosed since 1 June 2016 with one of the 12 specified types of cancer;
have served in active firefighting roles for a specified number of years, depending on the cancer type;
are diagnosed during their service or within 10 years after they’ve finished their service.
A partial year of service is counted as a full year of service to recognize seasonal workers. Previous service as a volunteer or career firefighter and equivalent interstate service count toward the qualifying period.
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. Sept. 29, 2022.
During a hearing today before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee a number of issues important to federal wildland firefighters were discussed. The two witnesses from the agencies were John Crockett, Associate Deputy Chief, State and Private Forestry, Forest Service, and Jeff Rupert, Director of the Office of Wildland Fire for the Department of the Interior.
We don’t have time to get into the details, but here are the points at which some key topics were covered in the video above, which shows the entire hearing:
45:19. Three-day break in service which can result in a firefighter (FF) losing eligibility for FF retirement.
49:50. Forest Service counting the same acres of fuel treatments multiple times.
54:47. FF mental health.
1:00:00. Protecting Giant Sequoias from fire during their 3,000-year life span.
1:06:30. How many firefighting aircraft do the agencies have?
1:22:20. FF pay, and a long term solution.
1:27:50 and again at 1:37:30. A possible new requirement for air tankers to have pressurized cabins.
1:33:45. Why have the agencies not accomplished more acres of fuel treatments?
The Grassroots Wildland Firefighters clipped portions of the hearing, as you’ll see in the short videos below.
Senator Murkowski asks the USFS and DOI about long-term pay for Federal Wildland Firefighters:
Senator Heinrich asks the DOI what they are doing for Firefighter Mental Health:
Forest Service and DOI Respond to Three-Day Break In Service Issue for Wildland Firefighters:
The Camp Fire, November 8, 2018. NASA (Joshua Stevens) – NASA Landsat 8.
When most people think of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) what comes to mind is the assistance the agency provides before and after hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. Part of their mission and the ways in which the assistance is supplied has been specified by the 1988 Stafford Act and before that, the Disaster Relief Act of 1974.
FEMA’s current procedures and requirements don’t always work for post-wildfire recovery needs, and a bill passed unanimously by the Senate Wednesday will help close some of those gaps. The FEMA Improvement, Reform, and Efficiency (FIRE) Act, S.3092, would help ensure that FEMA’s disaster preparedness and response efforts fully address the unique nature of wildfires and their impacts on communities.
If the bill is passed by the House of Representatives and signed by the President, FEMA would be able to pre-deploy resources during red flag warnings – periods of high fire danger, when catastrophic wildfires are most likely to start – just like they already do in advance of hurricane warnings.
The bill would also help ensure relocation assistance is accessible for public infrastructure in fire prone areas. It would improve FEMA’s response to wildfire-specific damage, such as repairing and mitigating contamination from damaged infrastructure.
If passed, it would have FEMA provide culturally-competent crisis counselors and case managers to ensure that underserved and disadvantaged communities receive equitable treatment when accessing federal disaster assistance. Tribal governments would be able to access financial assistance to upgrade their emergency operation centers, putting them on an equal standing with state and local governments.
The Secretaries of Agriculture and Interior virtually attended the first meeting in Utah
First meeting of Wildland fire Mitigation & Management Commission, Sept. 14-15, 2022.
After the first meeting of the new 50-person Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission in Utah, September 14-15, a few details were released about the meeting. Two of the three co-chairs attended virtually on both days, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. Federal Emergency Management Administration Administrator Deanne Criswell was unable to attend and was represented by the Deputy Administrator Erik A. Hooks in person.
The group “Worked through operating protocols and developed a strategy for topical workgroups to address the full suite of issues the Commission is charged with as prescribed in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law,” said Larry Moore, Communications Coordinator of the Office of Communications, US Department of Agriculture. “The meeting also included a presentation by subject matter experts on the National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy, which the commission is tasked with reviewing to make any recommendations to improve its effectiveness.”
The commission plans to meet monthly — usually virtually — over the course of the next year.
One of the deliverables required by the legislation within 45 days of the first meeting is an “inventory of surplus cargo and passenger aircraft and excess common-use aircraft parts that may be used for wildland firefighting purposes.” Mr. Moore said that information will be developed by the Department of Defense.
The Commission’s first report is due 90 days after the DOD aircraft report is received, and is required to “outline a strategy to meet aerial firefighting equipment needs through 2030 in the most cost-effective manner.” This is very tall order since the Aerial Firefighting Use and Effectiveness study spent about $13 million over nine years studying the use of firefighting aircraft and little meaningful information was released.
“AFUE was initially intended to eventually help answer questions about the size and composition of aviation assets needed by the USFS,” Tom Harbour, former USFS Director of Fire and Aviation told Fire Aviation last year.
The final public version of the report did not address those issues. Some may think the Forest Service is afraid to make the tough decisions, so they are being farmed out to an unpaid group of 50 outside the agency, most with little fire aviation expertise.
If the commission had access to the unreleased drafts of the AFUE report, which we have been told actually had worthwhile information, those would be incredibly helpful.
A third deliverable, due September 15, 2023, is for the Commission to “describe recommendations to prevent, mitigate, suppress, and manage wildland fires.”
Fire weather outlook Sept. 28, 2022. NOAA Storm Prediction Center.
The counter-clockwise rotation of winds around Hurricane Ian has brought north winds and low humidity to portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the panhandle of Florida. The combination of a strong surface high to the north and the strong pressure gradient around the hurricane will drive moderately strong northerly winds across much of the Southeast on Wednesday.
The forecast is for humidity in the teens and 20s with wind gusts of 20 to 35 mph Wednesday afternoon.
Wind forecast for 2 p.m. CDT Sept. 28, 2022. Windy.com. The colors represent wind speed in knots. See legend at lower-right.
In the wind forecast above for 2 p.m. CDT Wednesday, Hurricane Ian is predicted to make landfall near Cape Coral, Florida.
The National Weather Service’s Red Flag Warning map was a little more conservative than the Storm Prediction Center’s designations of elevated and critical fire weather.
Red Flag Warnings at 8:45 a.m. Sept. 28, 2022. NWS.
The Storm Prediction Center’s forecast for Thursday is for elevated fire weather only in southern Alabama and the Florida panhandle.
Caldor Fire map showing the location of Grizzly Flats. The white line was the perimeter at 8:20 p.m. August 18, 2021. The red areas represent heat detected by an aircraft at 6:44 p.m. PDT Aug. 19, 2021. The fire continued spreading east, coming very close to South Lake Tahoe.
National Public Radio is publishing a series of at least two short audio stories about treating fuels to reduce the chance of large fires spreading into populated areas.
The first episode, only four minutes long, examined what the US Forest Service promised the residents of Grizzly Flats the agency would do to treat the fuels close to the community. But last year the Caldor Fire destroyed about two-thirds of the town’s structures as it burned to the edge of South Lake Tahoe.
Randy Moore, Chief of the US Forest Service, was asked in the episode if the Forest Service had any responsibility for the outcome in Grizzly Flats.
“Well, I mean, I don’t know what kind of question that is,” he replied. “I mean, you know, do anybody bear any responsibility for not having the budget to do the work that we need to do?”
In the next episode, a local Southern California Burn Boss explains some of the challenges she faces in scheduling a prescribed fire.
The reporter says the San Bernardino National Forest refused to disclose its budget after months of “multiple asks and a Freedom of Information Act request.” The Burn Boss, however, gives a hint.
They also talked with a local resident who evacuated from the Radford Fire near Big Bear earlier this month.
Update Sept. 28, 2022. Cap Radio, which may have collaborated with NPR on the above segments, has a detailed article published August 16 about the proposed fuel reduction project the US Forest Service proposed to lessen the risk to the Grizzly Flats community. It walks us through the ambitious project from conception to completing only 14 percent of the planned work before the Caldor Fire wiped out the town. One of many stumbling blocks were complaints from Chad Hanson, co-founder of the John Muir Project, a nonprofit that aims to protect biodiversity in national forests and fiercely opposes tree removal. One of Hanson’s primary concerns was the California spotted owl, which is designated as a “sensitive species” by the Forest Service.
Our take.
We’re not sure how often this has occurred in Washington over the last 20 years, but Chief Moore’s predecessor in April 2021 squandered a softball opportunity to tell the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies that the Forest Service needed more funding in two very important inadequately budgeted areas, fuels treatment and aerial firefighting. In a June 9, 2022 Congressional hearing Chief Moore squandered a similar opportunity, giving an incoherent response when basically asked, “Do you have enough firefighting aircraft?”
