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Federal wildland firefighter classification without compensation – wait, what??

BillJune 16, 2022June 17, 2022UncategorizedGrassroots Wildland Firefighters, pay52 Comments

firefighters Dixie Fire — Firefighters near the site of a venting propane tank on the Dixie Fire. August 4, 2021. Jay Walter photo.

By Kelly Martin, President of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters

I’ll be the first to admit that I am not a personnel specialist nor am I am classification expert. When I worked on the inside as a federal government employee, I witnessed first-hand my inability to effectively recruit, promote and retain top talent. I felt frustrated as a Fire Management Officer to see applications disqualified because of our conservative approach to human resource management. 301 versus 401 job series; two different Departments creating Interagency Fire Program Management Standards; lack of career ladders and developmental position descriptions; five different agencies interpreting personnel regulations; GSA policy which forces agencies to raise employee housing rents to be comparable with surrounding communities; and known higher morbidity and mortality among wildland firefighters. I’m sure the reading audience here will add to this list. There are many systemic problems with recruitment, promotion and retention that cannot be fixed by creating a new job series classification for federal wildland firefighters and implementing hourly wage increases, but it’s a start to a long game that people have been dedicated to for decades.

To say that Grassroots Wildland Firefighters started this effort to correct years of misclassification and addressing oppressive wages falls short of recognizing the many hundreds of people who have come before us. As I read old reports and research, I can say there have been some very dedicated and persistent federal employees who tried to correct a growing concern about recruitment and retention who are now watching their original efforts come alive again. They are there silently and some vocally stepping forward to advocate on their own behalf for much needed reforms. All of us past, present, and future federal wildland firefighters feel like we have finally elevated our collective voice to our DC agency leaders who are willing to listen, sympathetic national media outlets, and most importantly the people we have elected to represent us in Congress who are interested in becoming more educated about federal wildland firefighters

We are on the eve of announcements from Office of Personnel Management through our five federal wildland fire agencies regarding Wildland Firefighter Classification and Compensation. Grassroots Wildland Firefighters holds a hard line that any new classification shall include a job series that addresses all primary and secondary firefighters from “hire to retire”. What gets announced from OPM is anyone’s guess. Not exactly sure why this classification process has to be so secret and opaque.

First let me start with what we can anticipate will be addressed as it pertains to Classification. We will not likely remain in the GS-0462 Forestry Technician series as federal wildland firefighters, although you can choose to stay in that series. In the late 60’s and early 70’s there was a series for entry level firefighters called Fire Control Aids as GS-0456-3,4 and 5’s. Maybe it went higher than a GS-5 but I can’t seem to find any documentation of such. Many people older than me who spent a career in federal wildland fire explained that there were no career ladders for wildland firefighters above the GS-5. Enter 0462 Forestry Aids and Forestry Technicians. In the 1970’s Regional and National leadership could see a career path for this new and emerging field of wildland fire management. Problem was there was very little career advancement beyond a GS-9 technician. Some of you reading this will remember the shift to a GS-0460 to get people in higher leadership positions but they needed a college degree in Natural Resources. The GS-0301 and GS-0401 series for upper management positions is still in use today but was to be discontinued when OPM completed the new position description for Federal Wildland Firefighters. I remain hopeful we will all be in one series.

So where does this leave us today? We may see a re-tread of the GS-0456 series – the original Fire Control Aid of the 60’s and 70’s; we could see the GS-0081 series, a mostly Department of Defense structural firefighter series which would subsume wildland firefighters, or we could see a whole brand-new series devoted specifically to federal wildland firefighters. Whatever gets announced will surely be welcomed by thousands of federal wildland firefighters, or maybe it will fall short of our expectations. We do know there is no link between this new classification series and an increase in pay. The new series will be the same pay as our current General Schedule pay rate; no change.

Now for compensation. We know that an increase in pay is not the answer to all our proposed reforms, but compensation will certainly begin to address the oppressive wages we have been living and dying with for decades, to say nothing of our inability to secure affordable housing.

As you know the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has a provision in the law to increase wildland firefighter compensation. Our original hope was to increase firefighter pay by 50% or $20k for all primary and secondary firefighters regardless of GS level. The intent of the law, as broadly defined, would provide an hourly pay raise by 50%. So a GS-3 making $13.78 in 2022, under the law, would essentially become $20.67 an hour for base pay and roughly $31.00 overtime rate. Given the risk, exposure and consequences for these women and men on the frontlines as we speak, they are the ones most vulnerable to accidents, injuries, lifetime disability, and potential line-of-duty death. Hard to affirm if this compensation seems reasonable for federal wildland firefighters in an effort to better recruit and retain top talented individuals, but certainly better than we have now.

This is a once in a generation (or several generations) to get this right for the federal wildland firefighters who are on the firelines today watching us, expecting us to act deliberately for classification and compensation reforms, providing physical and mental health resources, and affirming presumptive diseases and cancers. We are far from the finish line but we are making an impact due in large part to all of you who have and continue to support and put sweat equity into Grassroots Wildland Firefighters.

A sincere heartfelt thank you to all of you and to Wildfire Today for amplifying our collective voices!

Shortage of radio technicians may have compromised safety on Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire

Bill GabbertJune 15, 2022June 15, 2022UncategorizedCalf Canyon Fire, communication, Hermits Peak Fire, New Mexico, safety31 Comments

More than 1,000 fire personnel were affected by inadequate communication with the Incident Command Post

technician sets up a portable radio repeater — File photo. A Radio Technician sets up a portable radio repeater on the Sprague Fire in Glacier National Park in Montana, September 16, 2017. NIFC photo.

The difficulties in hiring and retaining wildland firefighters which has resulted in one-third of the Forest Service firefighter positions in California being unfilled, may not be restricted to just those who directly battle the flames. The old axiom, “amateurs think strategy, generals think logistics,” does not only apply to the military. If firefighters can’t be supplied with food, water, vehicle maintenance, hose, tools, fuel, and communications they will not be successful in a long campaign.

The concept of firefighters ensuring that before they engage, they must have adequate Lookouts, Communications, Escape routes, and Safety zones (LCES) was developed by Paul Gleason. It is shorthand for combining a list of Standard Orders fire personnel must follow to protect themselves from fireline hazards such as being entrapped in the fire. According to a report on SAFENET, there was a four-day period from May 15 until May 19 when the Communications leg of LCES was not covered adequately on the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire in Northern New Mexico.

The National Situation report for May 15 shows that in the United States that day there were 10 large uncontained fires, with all of the fires in the country being staffed by a total of 4,708 personnel. When the fire season nears its peak this summer there could be five times that many people assigned to fires. But in the middle of May there was a shortage of radio technicians and radio operators which made it impossible to set up an adequate radio communications system when it was needed on the north zone of the fire following a reorganization.

I was told by mentors as I came up through the ranks that firefighting is not an emergency — not to firefighters. It’s what we do. So when the situation gets suddenly more complex and decisions must be made and executed quickly, think calmly, act decisively, and communicate clearly. At least one of these suddenly complex situations occurred on the fire. A person needed medical treatment and extraction by air. It is referred to in the SAFENET as an incident within an incident. They are usually managed separately by an offshoot organization, and they always require efficient, robust, dependable, instant communication.

The text below is taken word for word from the SAFENET. The only change we made was to translate the acronyms.

Narrative

When Southwest Team 1 took command of the North Zone of the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire communications were unable to be linked with Incident Command Post (ICP). The zoning of the incident required the current radio communications system to be split. The North Zone remained on the current system with the South Zone moving to their own system. During this transition there were no radio techs to switch the repeater link for the North Zone and install the repeater to cover ICP. For a duration of 4 days, the link with communications at the ICP was ineffective. This was highlighted on 5/17 with a red medical that required extraction by air. During the Incident Within an Incident (IWI) communication were not able to function from ICP to the field and back. As the fire progressed, the repeater that was required for ICP was also needed to cover field personnel. Approximately, 300 personnel in the field had limited communications, with the only link established through a human repeater. During high fire behavior periods, several resources were forced to abandon tactics and leave the line because communications could not be established. The contributing factor, is the lack of radio techs available nationally. Orders were placed for radio techs days before transition and after transition. Orders for one week were returned unable to fill (UTF). Furthermore, radio operators were also unavailable. Orders were also placed for CAT personnel which was also UTF. The lack of communications personnel resulted in decrease support for the field and inability to coordinate IWI response and transport through ICP and the communications unit. About 1,200 firefighters were affected by the lack of communications with ICP.

The lack of communication personnel is limiting the “C” in “Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, Safety Zones” (LCES) and needs to be resolved at the national level. The trend of unable to fill communications personnel has progressively gotten worse over the last few years and will most likely result in incidents without communications in the future.

Immediate Action Taken

Field personnel had communications on the most fireline through the existing repeater system. Approximately, 25% of fireline personnel had no communications coverage which was unsatisfactorily resolved with a human repeater during the 4 days without a radio tech. Field Operations was utilized to coordinate response and transport for IWIs placing their self in a location with cell service and radio service. A radio tech was sent from the South Zone once their system was installed and working. That individual then moved to the North Zone on Day 4 to begin configuring the North Zone communication system. On 5/20, 4 days after transition, the North Zone communication system was operating providing coverage for ICP and the incident.

Other mitigations for correcting the problem took considerable time to no avail and included contacting commercial vendors, national guard and state compact agreements. The solutions did not pan out. Currently, land management agency fire organizations have no capacity for implementing a communications system on an incident without reliance on personnel outside of the fire organization.

LA Times writes about trauma, low pay, and morale among Forest Service firefighters

Bill GabbertJune 14, 2022Uncategorizedpay35 Comments

Fire crews on the Route Fire entrapped — Fire crews on the Route Fire in Southern California, 4:40 p.m. Sept. 11, 2021, about five minutes before they were nearly entrapped. Photo by one of the firefighters.

I have never seen anything like this. Over the past few months numerous politicians have been motivated and nationally recognizable media outlets have assigned reporters to dig through the opaque barriers established by the US Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, and the National Park Service to expose the worsening working conditions of wildland firefighters. Even though Congress passed a law requiring improvements in several areas, the bureaucratic morass of inaction driven by the indecisiveness of leaders has led many of them to abandon all hope, and quit.

Reasons cited by current and former firefighters include very low pay, long hours, too much time away from home, too little time with families, limited opportunities for career growth, costs of housing, inadequate mental health support, and the temporary and sometimes life-altering physical injuries experienced by these tactical athletes. This has led to severe difficulties in hiring and retaining firefighters, resulting a large number of vacant positions at all levels.

One of the latest well-researched pieces about the decline of working conditions for federal firefighters was published today, written by Alex Wigglesworth, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times. It is titled, “Hellish fires, low pay, trauma: California’s Forest Service firefighters face a morale crisis.”

In addition to documenting and elaborating on the issues above, their research found:

“Only 62% of federal firefighter positions [in California] are filled, according to a source within the agency. Before 2020, nearly all firefighter positions across the nation would typically be filled at this time of year.”
“Roughly a third of all Forest Service fire engines in California are on five-day staffing, meaning there aren’t enough crew members to operate them seven days a week.”
“Another 13% of engines are “down staffed” — essentially parked due to lack of firefighters.”

The reporter mentioned Chris Mariano who was a GS-6 Squad Boss on the Truckee Hotshots in Northern California until April 7, 2022 when he resigned. Wildfire Today published a letter he wrote at the time. He said drafting it was difficult — the best part of his life was working as a hotshot on the Tahoe National Forest:

“I prospered — I was all in,” he wrote. “I wanted nothing more than to be a hotshot, to be a leader, to care for the land and to be of service. While the sense of purpose and camaraderie remain, I now feel hypocritical to recruit or encourage crew members to work for an agency that is failing to support its fire management programs and thus the public.”

“The agency is failing its firefighters on so many levels. Classification, pay, work life balance, mental health, presumptive disease coverage, and injury/fatality support. There are efforts to correct some of these issues but for many it is too little too late…We are losing people at a terrifying rate at a time when wildfires burn longer, hotter, more frequently, and with devastating severity.”

New fire shelter prototypes tested

BillJune 14, 2022Uncategorizedfire shelter, research11 Comments

Four new designs remain within survival limits longer

fire shelter design testing — Layout of field equipment. TC, thermocouple trees; shelters in random plot location, and anemometer. Photo was from Mount Palomar Test 1.

By Laura Oleniacz, North Carolina State University

North Carolina State University researchers found that four new designs for shelters to protect firefighters trapped in wildfires could increase the survival time inside the shelters compared with the current industry standard. In lab simulations of wildfire burn-overs — where a wildfire sweeps over a group of trapped firefighters or equipment — temperatures inside the shelters remained within survival limits for longer, and the shelters took longer to break open.

Researchers hope their findings from the lab, as well as from field tests conducted across North America, could spur the development of new, better shelters. In addition, they hope the findings will inform new standards for shelter design and testing.

“For the wildland firefighter, deploying a shelter is the last thing they want to do — it’s the final resort, the last line of defense,” said study co-author Roger Barker, the Burlington Distinguished Professor of Textile Technology at NC State and the director of the Textile Protection and Comfort Center (TPACC). “While there’s no such thing as ‘fire-proof,’ what we’re trying to do is to buy more time. We were able to demonstrate our shelters could increase the time to failure — time that could be critical for survival.”

One problem with the industry standard shelter is that the aluminum outer layer will melt in contact with direct flame.

“In light of the failure mechanisms of shelters that we observed during wildland fires, we thought we could develop better shelters that provide enhanced protection by incorporating an inner heat-blocking barrier and additional thermal insulation into the construction,” said the study’s lead author Joseph Roise, professor of forestry and environmental resources at NC State. “We know we can make a better shelter.”

With that goal in mind, the researchers designed two leading prototypes and two lighter versions weighing less than 5 pounds. They added insulating materials, and experimented with different seam designs to keep them from falling apart.

In the TPACC lab, researchers tested the designs against the industry standard in a test chamber called the PyroDome Turbulent Flame Fire Shelter Test System. They blasted the shelters with direct flame from propane burners for 60 seconds, and measured how long it took the temperature at the floor of the shelters to reach 302 degrees Fahrenheit, the temperature threshold for survival. They also set up cameras inside PyroDome to see when the inner layer of the shelters would break open.

All of the prototypes had improved survival metrics compared to the standard, which reached the survival limit in less than 40 seconds. Meanwhile, the temperature in one of their designs was nowhere near the survival limit temperature at 60 seconds.

The researchers also tested the shelters’ performance in variety of conditions in controlled burns in Canada, California, North Carolina and South Dakota. However, they found the field tests were not reliable enough to draw statistically significant conclusions because of wind, fuel and fire conditions.

“We went all over North America to find different fire conditions that would give different types of fire exposures,” Barker said. “What we found is there is so much variability in the field test, confirming how useful it was for us to have PyroDome.”

The two tests in southern California had the best burn conditions, and researchers saw one of their prototypes performed well in a burn-over. In a test in South Dakota, researchers witnessed shelter failures when grass roots caught fire to spread under the walls inside the shelter. That underscored the importance of fully clearing the area around the shelter, and even scraping down underneath them to remove all organic material.

“If you have a sample of two, you can’t make any statistical comparisons,” Roise said. “But we did see that after the test in California, one of our best-performing prototypes got the full brunt of the fire. It was totally burned on the outside, but the inside was undamaged.”

The new findings could give manufacturers and people developing these shelters a new target to shoot for in terms of both how to test them and minimal performance requirements, according to Barker.

The study, “Field and full-scale laboratory testing of prototype wildland fire shelters,” was published online in the International Journal of Wildland Fire. In addition to Barker and Roise, other authors include John Williams, a former research assistant in forestry and environmental resources at NC State, and John Morton-Aslanis, a research assistant in TPACC. The study was funded by the DHS FEMA Assistance to Firefighters Grant Program.

(All of the images are from the IJWF study)

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Gerald.

Red Flag Warnings in six states Sunday

Bill GabbertJune 12, 2022June 12, 2022UncategorizedRed Flag Warning, weather5 Comments

Possible dry lightning in New Mexico and Arizona

Red flag warnings are in effect Sunday for locations in Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona. In New Mexico most of the warnings will last until Monday evening.

The forecast calls for winds gusting at more than 40 mph with single-digit relative humidity.

In addition, the NOAA Storm Prediction Center warns that isolated thunderstorms with little or no rain could occur in portions of New Mexico, Colorado, and Arizona.

Red Flag Warnings June 12, 2022 fire wildfire — Red Flag Warnings June 12, 2022.

Why are we still using the Haines Index?

Bill GabbertJune 10, 2022July 10, 2022UncategorizedHaines Index, Hot-Dry-Windy, weather9 Comments

We look at an alternative

South Moccasin Fire in Montana, October, 2021. Photo by Lauren Kokinda, BLM.

When Don Haines developed what became his namesake index, he never intended it to be used operationally. As a meteorologist for the US Forest Service, at one point he was given two tasks — determine how weather conditions led to the escape of the 1980 Crane Lake prescribed burn in Michigan, and create a fire weather tool to prevent future tragedies. The escaped prescribed burn became the Mack Lake Fire which killed one person, destroyed 44 structures, and burned 20,000 acres.

In 1988 the result of his work was published in National Weather Digest, titled “A lower atmospheric severity index for wildland fire.” He retired shortly after, but made it clear he intended his work to be the beginning, not the finished product, of the development of a fire weather index after refinement and feedback from subject matter specialists.

It became known as the Haines Index, described by NOAA as “Based on the stability and moisture content of the lower atmosphere that measures the potential for existing fires to become large fires.”

Example of the Haines Index being cited in a spot weather forecast for the Riverview Fire In the Pike National Forest southwest of Denver, Colorado, issued June 5, 2022 by the National Weather Service.

It is widely used and often included in fire briefings and weather forecasts. It is based on two components, the temperature difference between two prescribed pressure levels; and the moisture component, the dew point depression at a prescribed pressure level. Some may think of it as a measure of atmospheric stability, but as you will see below, that may not be appropriate. With an unstable atmosphere there is less resistance to the vertical movement of air, which can make it easier for a convection column of rapidly rising air and smoke to form over an intensely burning fire, affecting the rate of spread. Add a strong wind, high mixing level, low humidity, low fuel moisture, and steep slopes and a fire can be over the hill before you can get the wind gauge out of your pocket.

“Fire science is not rocket science—it’s way more complicated.”
Robert Essenhigh, Professor Emeritus, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Ohio State University.

In “The Haines Index — it’s time to replace it” published in 2018 in the International Journal of Wildland Fire, Dr. Brian Potter, a Research Meteorologist with the US Forest Service wrote:

Subsequent studies have sought to evaluate the Index, with results that do not support its use in the original form. Yet it is used operationally across the United States, and elsewhere. Mills and McCaw (2010) produced a modified Index, following the sort of refinement Haines stated was necessary. In its present form, the Haines Index cannot be considered a scientifically designed, complete or verified metric that provides any information on fire behaviour or fire danger.

Dr. Potter also wrote a more detailed analysis of the Haines Index published the same year in MDPI Atmosphere, “Quantitative Evaluation of the Haines Index’s Ability to Predict Fire Growth Events.”

On June 3 Darren Clabo, the State Fire Meteorologist for South Dakota, posted two seven-minute videos on YouTube, Part 1 and Part 2 of “Don’t Use the Haines Index.”

“The idea for these videos grew out of conversations with many of my colleagues across the country, with notable head nods to Dr. Brian Potter and Larry Van Bussum,” Mr. Clabo told Wildfire Today. “Dr. Potter has been working to rid the field of the Haines Index for two decades now and these videos are just an extension of that work.”

Hot-Dry-Windy Index

A possible alternative to the Haines Index which was introduced in 2019 is the Hot-Dry-Windy Index. It is described as being very simple and only considers the atmospheric factors of heat, moisture, and wind. To be more precise, it is a multiplication of the maximum wind speed and maximum vapor pressure deficit (VPD) in the lowest 50 or so millibars in the atmosphere.

In 2019 McKenzie G. Kulseth, a graduate student at Michigan State University, wrote her thesis about the HDW Index, titled “An evaluation of the Hot-Dry-Windy Index using historical fire events and meteorological analysis datasets.” She concluded:

The results of this study suggest that the original HDW formulation is capable of identifying the largest fire spread day for between 56.5 to 78.3% of the twenty-three wildland fire events used in this study.

On a website bearing the logos of the U.S. Forest Service, Michigan State University, and St. Cloud State University, you can click on the map to display the HDW for any 0.5-degree long/lat grid spacing area in the contiguous United States. Then the displayed chart shows the index for the preceding 10 days and the forecast for the next 7 days, compared to a 30-year average for each day. For the current and following days you will see results of the Global Ensemble Forecast System (GEFS), which is a weather forecast model made up of 21 separate forecasts, one control (in red) and twenty perturbations. The reasoning for showing 21 different forecasts is to quantify the amount of uncertainty in a forecast by generating an ensemble of multiple forecasts, each minutely different, or perturbed, from the original observations.

The HDW only only uses weather information – fuels and topography are not considered by HDW at all. If the fuels are wet or have a high live or dead moisture content it will not be reflected in the data.

We asked Mr. Clabo, since he ruled out the use of the Haines Index, what should firefighters use, the HDWI?

“We need to first ask the question, what are we looking for?” he said. “If you are interested in a first-glance product for situational awareness, I think the Hot-Dry-Windy Index is a fantastic tool. If you are trying to diagnose the potential for plume-dominated fire growth, I think you need to critically assess your fuel moisture/fuel loading and terrain first and then look to see if the atmospheric conditions are favorable for pyrocumulus or pyrocumulonimbus development. If you are trying to assess whether or not large fire growth is likely, it might be better for you to look at maximum wind speeds.”

Our take

The lack of a fuel component limits the use of the HDW. If, for instance, it was used on a daily basis in mass media, it would not be practical to explain, for example, “Even though it shows we’re at the 95th percentile today, it rained yesterday so ignore the scary-looking chart.”

However, it could be useful among fire and weather professionals who monitor the daily fire danger and weather, can factor in current fuel moisture data, and understand how to interpret the analysis.

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