A crew truck from Firestorm Wildland Fire Suppression was involved in the one-vehicle accident.
At approximately 7:45 a.m. PDT, August 11, 2017, a Firestorm Wildland Fire Suppression Inc. contracted fire crew transport truck assigned to the Parker 2 Fire was involved in a single vehicle accident on Highway 299 near Cedarville, California. Eight firefighters were injured. Five were transported to local medical facilities by ambulance; three were transported by air ambulance. Seven of the firefighters have been treated and released, and one firefighter is still undergoing medical evaluation.
The truck rolled over after the driver tried to avoid hitting a vehicle that had stopped due to deer being in the road.
The Parker 2 Fire has burned almost 8,000 acres on the Modoc National Forest east of Alturas, California.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Rick. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
Above: Map showing heat detected on wildfires in the northwest one-quarter of the U.S. by a satellite, August 10-11, 2017. NASA.
(Originally published at 12:34 p.m. MDT August 11, 2017)
Over 15,000 firefighters are assigned to 83 active wildfires in the United States which have burned a total of about 942,000 acres. In addition to fire overhead and incident command post personnel, they are staffing 369 hand crews, 678 fire engines, and 141 helicopters. So far this year over 6 million acres have burned in the country.
As you can see below, the air quality compromised by smoke is not getting any better. Again, four cities in Idaho and Washington are four of the top five locations in the country with forecasts for the worst air today.
Above: map showing the distribution of wildfire smoke at 5:34 p.m. MDT August 10, 2017. NOAA.
(Originally published at 6:09 p.m. MDT August 10, 2017)
Judging from these maps, the air quality in southern British Columbia and the U.S. Northwest looks particularly rotten today. (“Rotten” is not a term I’ve seen NOAA use to describe air quality, but it seems appropriate here.)
Locations in Washington and Idaho had the distinction of taking four of the top five positions on the forecast for the “highest 5”, AKA worst air, in the United States today.
Air quality in the United States and southern Canada August 10, 2017.Satellite photo showing smoke from wildfires in British Columbia and the U.S. Northwest during the afternoon of August 10, 2017. The red dots represent heat from wildfires.
During an August 3 hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources the main topic was “the use of technology to reduce wildland fire risk to communities and enhance firefighting safety and effectiveness”.
Near the end of the hearing Senator Maria Cantwell, the ranking member, asked Bryan Rice, the Department of Interior’s Director of the Office of Wildland Fire, about using devices that can track the location of firefighters in order to reduce their risk of entrapments. She used the example of an award that was presented to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife employee who successfully used hardware designed for tracking hunting dogs to track his firefighters, which helped one person to be directed to a safe area after becoming disoriented on a prescribed fire. She said why not combine the use of drones, which had been discussed previously, with tracking devices. I’m not sure exactly what she meant, but regardless she has a good point. Drones could serve at least two purposes — provide real time video of the location of the fire, and relay location data from firefighters.
Left to right: Bryan Rice and Senator Maria Cantwell.
Mr. Rice’s answer included the phrase, “we’re looking at it”, which did not satisfy Senator Cantwell. She expanded on her thoughts and made it very clear that this is an important area to address, mentioning several examples of tragedy fires, including the South Canyon, Thirty-mile, and Yarnell Hill fires.
The Senator said to Mr. Rice, “Don’t hold us back from getting solutions in the marketplace this summer if we can”.
You can see how this went down in the video below. (The video was replaced with a better version August 15, 2017.)
Our regular visitors at Wildfire Today know that we have ranted many times about what we call the Holy Grail of Wildland Firefighter Safety — knowing the real time location of the fire and firefighters — as early as October, 2013. Not knowing these two pieces of information has led to dozens of fatalities. Two fires that come to mind in the last decade or so are the Esperanza and Yarnell Hill Fires, in which 24 firefighters were killed.
If you can go to Cabelas and buy a kit that will track up to 10 hunting dogs, why, Senator Cantwell asked, can’t we do that for firefighters?
The Senator knows that dog collars are not the long-term answer, of course, and they may or may not work over distances in rough terrain, but it’s an example of off the shelf technology that is available this afternoon. Several private companies claim to have more robust systems that can do this for wildland firefighters.
Above: Firefighters on the Liberty Fire in Montana, which is being managed using a less than full suppression strategy. Photo by Kari Greer.
(Originally published at 4:05 p.m. MDT August 10, 2017)
When we saw today that additional evacuations were required on the Sunrise Fire six miles south of Superior, Montana, a fire that is not being fully suppressed, we wondered how many fires are in that same less than full suppression category.
The table at the top of the national Incident Management Situation Report for August 10 (which uses data submitted the evening before) lists the number of uncontained large fires, but an asterisk leads to a note saying, “*Uncontained large fires include only fires being managed under a full suppression strategy.” The report today lists 24 large uncontained fires. After going through the 12-page document we found 13 other large fires that are not being fully suppressed, which is 35 percent of the 37 total large fires.
Unless you study the deciphering document about how to read the report, it is not obvious that any fires are not being fully suppressed. The column heading “Ctn/Comp” is the key. “Ctn” indicates the fire is being fully suppressed or contained, while “Comp” fires are not. Those codes are related to the column to the left which has a number referring to the percent contained (Ctn), or, the percent of the incident objectives that are complete (Comp) such as monitor, confine, or point zone protection on less than full suppression fires.
Example of the Situation Report from August 10, 2017. This is an excerpt showing some of the fires in the Northwest Area (Washington and Oregon). Click to enlarge.
Today’s report lists seven fires in the Northern Rockies Geographic area that are less than full suppression, the Northwest Area has five, and there is one in Northern California.
These 13 fires have burned approximately 99,000 acres, have 4,336 personnel assigned, and have cost about $79 million to date. The number of personnel is 28 percent of the total on all active uncontained fires, and the acres burned is 10 percent of the total.
The average “completion” for the 13 let burn less than full suppression fires is 19 percent. Most of them have estimated completion dates of late September to sometime in October.
Land managers who implement this strategy will tell you they want to restore fire to the landscape in an area where it has been unnaturally excluded, thereby enhancing the environment for plants and animals — and people if it occurs near a wildland/urban interface. Reducing the vegetation, or fuels, can make it easier to suppress the next fire in the same area, perhaps resulting in fewer structures being destroyed. On fires like this they may completely stop the spread where it could damage private property, while only observing it or in some cases encouraging it to burn in more remote locations. The Incident Management Team on the Sunrise Fire included this in their status update on Thursday:
Over the next few days the team will work to slow the growth of the fire to allow for more effective and safe engagement by strategically introducing fire to unburned areas; lessening the likelihood for high-intensity and fast moving fire.
On the other hand, allowing a fire to spread over a period of months can have consequences, including producing smoke that contributes, along with full suppression fires, to an atmosphere that is unhealthy to breathe and puts more carbon into the air, millions of taxpayer dollars being spent, long-time exposure of firefighters to the hazards of firefighting, personnel being committed to long-term fires causing shortages on suppression fires, the inconvenience and expense of evacuated residents, and the possibility of fires uncontrollably burning private property and structures.
There is no easy answer. Scientists expect that the wildfire problem will get worse over our lifetimes and beyond. Continuing to do the same thing, that is, putting out most fires, is not going to produce different or better results. The population is growing and moving more into the wildland-urban interface while most local governments and insurance companies do little to regulate or mitigate this migration into the woods. Managers of parks and forests increasingly find themselves having to commit firefighters to protecting structures within or just outside their boundaries, while other sections of the fire spread with little resistance from depleted numbers of firefighters, equipment, and aircraft.
Above: 3-D map of the Sunrise Fire 6 miles south of Superior, Montana. The red line was the perimeter at 11:56 pm. MDT August 8. The red dots represent heat detected by a satellite at 4:32 a.m. MDT August 10.
(Originally published at 12:02 p.m. MDT August 10, 2017.)
Cougar Gulch has been added to the list of areas under evacuation orders on the Sunrise Fire which has been burning since July 16 six miles south of Superior Montana. Quartz Creek and Verde Creek were previously evacuated.
Tuesday night the fire was mapped at 15,203 acres, but has added approximately 1,000 acres since then primarily on the north and northwest sides, and a small amount on the south side. It has grown to within less than a mile of Trout Creek Road on the west side.
The red line on this map of the Sunrise Fire was the perimeter at 11:56 MDT August 8. The red dots represent heat detected by a satellite at 4:32 a.m. MDT August 10, 2017.
The Lolo National Forest is not completely suppressing the fire. Instead, they are stopping portions of it when they think it becomes necessary to protect private property. Thursday morning they released a statement that read in part:
Over the next few days the team will work to slow the growth of the fire to allow for more effective and safe engagement by strategically introducing fire to unburned areas; lessening the likelihood for high-intensity and fast moving fire.
On Wednesday burnout operations continued in the Quartz Creek and Verde Creek areas with hand and aerial ignition. The northern edge of the fire now extends into the head of Cougar Gulch.
Thursday’s plans are to continue burnout operations on the north side of Quartz Creek drainage to reduce fuel loading around structures. Firing will continue in Verde Creek.
Smoke rising from the Verde Creek area on the Sunrise Fire. Inciweb. Undated and uncredited.
At approximately 7:45 a.m. PDT, August 11, 2017, a Firestorm Wildland Fire Suppression Inc. contracted fire crew transport truck assigned to the Parker 2 Fire was involved in a single vehicle accident on Highway 299 near Cedarville, California. Eight firefighters were injured. Five were transported to local medical facilities by ambulance; three were transported by air ambulance. Seven of the firefighters have been treated and released, and one firefighter is still undergoing medical evaluation.
