Wildfire Today

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Wildfire Today

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FAA wants to evict Northern Great Plains Dispatch

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags

Northern Great Plains Interagency Dispatch CenterThe Federal Aviation Administration has been saying for a couple of years that they want to evict the Northern Great Plains Interagency Dispatch Center from their facility at the Rapid City Regional Airport in South Dakota. In 2002 the state and federal fire agencies in the greater Black Hills area, including portions of South Dakota, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Wyoming, joined forces to consolidate dispatch services. They received permission to gut and remodel an old unused building at the airport, spending about $1.8 million, mostly from state funds.

It is now used by the interagency fire dispatch center, state highway patrol, and several other state and federal agencies. Interagency fire training classes are held in the large expanded dispatch/training room in the winter. There is a great deal of unused land surrounding the airport. There is no need to force the interagency dispatch center to abandon their recently remodeled facility so another airplane hanger can be placed on the site.

Here is a portion of the story by Dan Daly in the Rapid City Journal:

Work continues on a new hangar in what used to be the parking lot of the old Rapid City Regional Airport terminal. Nearby, the Northern Great Plains Interagency Fire Dispatch Center, inside the old terminal, seems almost surrounded by concrete aircraft aprons.
There’s still room for automobiles in the remaining parking lot, and the dispatch center is still operating in the old terminal.

But how long it can stay? That remains the subject of ongoing talks between the airport board, Rapid City Mayor Alan Hanks, Gov. Mike Rounds’ office and the Federal Aviation Administration.

Hanks said he’s been trying to persuade the FAA to let the dispatch center stay at the airport. The center has been instrumental in getting fire crews and other resources to fires early, preventing them from becoming widespread wildfires, he said.

“In my mind, it’s extremely important that we maintain that dispatch center to provide fire protection, not only for the Rapid City area but for the entire Black Hills,” Hanks said.

Hanks, Rounds and the airport board want the dispatch center to stay, but since 2006 the FAA has been pressing Rapid City Regional Airport to terminate the center’s lease. The center has been renting its space without a lease since last year.

According to the FAA, the center — staffed by the South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression Division and other state and federal fire agencies – doesn’t fit the FAA’s requirement that airports lease space primarily for aeronautical uses.

The state of South Dakota disagrees, said Jason Glodt, a senior policy adviser to Gov. Mike Rounds. He said the requirement is vague, and the dispatch center’s firefighting work does involve aviation uses. He said the state leases single-engine air tankers that are staged at Rapid City Regional Airport during the fire season. The state could end up buying its own tankers in the future.

While pressing that argument, Glodt said, the governor’s office is also asking the FAA for more time. “It’s our understanding we’ll have at least until 2010,” Glodt said.

Redding Smokejumpers Mistaken for Invaders

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

SmokejumpersShortly after 9/11, the Redding, California Smokejumpers, using a location for the first time for practice jumps, were mistaken for an invading army by a local woman who considered getting a rifle.

From the Redding Record Searchlinght:

“Smokejumpers preparing for the coming fire season could be dropping into the Swasey Drive Recreation Area as early as next week.

The U.S. Forest Service’s Region 5 Smokejumpers, whose base is in Redding, will be using parts of the 1,200-acre area managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for training through the summer, said Bob Bente, the smokejumpers’ training foreman.

The spot west of town will be one of five around the north state used for training.

“It’s a new area,” he said.

Terrain in the recreation area, which is popular among mountain bikers and hikers, is similar to what smokejumpers — firefighters who get to backcountry blazes by parachute — might encounter on calls, said Francis Berg, assistant field manager in the BLM’s Redding office.

“Yet it’s close to town so they can get out there pretty quickly,” he said.

Bente said he wanted to give the public a head’s up that the chutists will be coming down. The parachutes should be visible from Placer Road near Swasey Drive, with the first jumps possibly Tuesday or Wednesday, he said.

Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the smokejumpers used a new jump spot south of town, he said. The sight of people parachuting from a plane caused a stir among nearby residents, including one woman who thought it could be an invasion.

“She actually contemplated getting a rifle,” Bente said.”

Roof Sprinkler for Structure Protection

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags

roof sprinklerWhen structures are threatened by wildland fires, sprinklers are sometimes placed on roofs, but installing them means climbing on the roof. A company in Florida has developed a sprinkler that can be placed on the peak of the roof while you stand on a ladder at the side of the structure. The trick is attaching 5-foot sections of PVC pipe to the sprinkler which are then used to push the roller-mounted unit up the roof. Then a garden hose is attached to the PVC pipe. It looks like this could be a worthwhile addition to structure protection kits.

The cost for one complete unit is around $300, depending on what state it will be shipped to.

Be warned, that when you go to the site, a damn video starts playing automatically. I hate that. You can stop the video by clicking on “close video”.

Wally Bennett: "We’ve got a lot less of the toys we need to do the job"

Author BillPosted on Categories Uncategorized

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.

From the Bozeman Daily Chronicle:

“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.”

The NewWest.net site also has a lengthy article on the conference.

Mark Rey; Not Going To Jail

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags

The U.S. District Court Judge cleared Mark Rey of the contempt charges yesterday. From the Missoulian:

“U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey walked out of federal court a free man Wednesday in Missoula, wearing not an orange inmate’s jumpsuit but the gray business suit with American flag lapel pin he had donned for his contempt hearing.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy cleared Rey, the Bush administration’s top forest official, and the Forest Service of contempt and withdrew his threat to jail Rey or ground all fire retardant air tankers until the agency evaluated the environmental impact of the chemical slurry.

Molloy did not rule on the merits of the Forest Service’s environmental analysis, and the watchdog group whose lawsuit prompted the showdown said it planned to take new legal action to challenge the agency’s finding that aerial retardant causes little harm to fish and other aquatic creatures.
“We accomplished what we wanted to do, which was to make the Forest Service follow the law,” said Andy Stahl, director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, based in Eugene, Ore.

In his testimony, Rey apologized for the Forest Service’s tardiness in following the judge’s order to complete an environmental analysis of the potential harm from ammonium phosphate, the primary ingredient in retardant dropped on wildfires.”