The fire doubled in size between Wednesday night and Thursday night.
Strong winds on Thursday spread the Brian Head Fire much farther to the south and east, adding another 16,800 acres, bringing the total to 27,700. The Utah Department of Natural Resources said 13 homes and 8 outbuildings have been destroyed in the communities near Brian Head, Utah as the fire spread down Clear Creek.
Southern Utah University is opening their dorms to displaced residents of the fire ravaged town of Brian Head. The University will have room for up to 60 people. Those interested can call George Colton, Red Cross Site Director, at (435) 879-9033.
3-D map of the Brian Head Fire as of 1 a.m. MDT June 23, 2017.
Highway 143 is closed from the cemetery in Parowan to milepost 50 outside of Panguitch.
The weather for Friday and Saturday should bring temperatures around 70, relative humidity in the low teens, and winds out of the northwest to northeast at 5 to 10 mph with gusts in the high teens. There will be virtually no humidity recovery at night; it will be no higher than the 20’s for the next two nights. For Sunday through Friday the nighttime humidity will be below 40 percent and in the teens during the day. This could allow the fire to remain active 24 hours a day. Monday through Wednesday will bring 20 mph winds, which could be problematic for firefighters.
Brian Head Fire, from video uploaded to Inciweb June 21, 2017.
Earlier today we wrote about the three-day, three-fire, three-state road trip where a group of us boarded a very comfortable bus, or coach, and toured the sites of three large fires that occurred last fall in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.
Here are some photos, taken by Bill Gabbert. If you click on a photo, you’ll see larger versions. The captions are in the top-left.
Above: Fire Management Officer Jeff Schardt talks about managing the Rough Ridge Fire.
I had never heard of a organized multi-day road trip that involved visiting several large fires that burned in previous years, so when the Consortium of Appalachian Fire Managers and Scientists (CAFMS) distributed notices about one I was very interested. Their plans were to spend about a half day each at three fires in three states over a three-day period. The fires occurred last fall in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. Since they were pretty far apart the remaining half days were devoted to traveling in a bus (or coach) to the sites. At each location we would meet with local subject matter experts that would explain how the fires were managed, the effects on the natural resources, and the social issues.
So I signed up.
The expedition was primarily organized by two folks from the CAFMS, the director Helen Mohr, and Jenifer Bunty, their Public Information Coordinator.
Ms. Mohr is a researcher that has been working with the USFS’ Southern Research Station until recently when she was selected as Director for the CAFSM, and said she now spends most of her time with that organization.
Ms. Bunty has bachelor’s degrees in biology and Russian, obtained a master’s in biology, has conducted research in the Russian Far East, and has worked for the Southern Blue Ridge Fire Learning Network. She is now working remotely for the CAFSM from China (yes, that China), but commuted to the Southeast for this road trip.
There were approximately 12 to 15 people that were on the journey for all three days, but at each stop others joined to talk about or learn about that particular fire. At the Rough Ridge Fire two or three dozen students from Clemson University’s forestry summer camp joined us.
Day 1 of the Road Trip, June 6, the Party Rock Fire
This fire started November 5, 2016 and blackened about 7,100 acres mostly in Chimney Rock State Park at Lake Lure in western North Carolina.
We met the first day at 8 a.m. in Flat Rock, North Carolina where we boarded the coach for a 30-minute trip to Lake Lure and heard presentations by the officials from Chimney Rock State Park and the mayors of Lake Lure and Chimney Rock Village. They discussed the effects on their populations, the evacuations, and the suppression of the fire.
Then after viewing the fire in the distance from a viewpoint, the group began a strenuous hike to a point called Party Rock, up a very steep washed out abandoned logging road — 2.4 miles round trip with a 1,500-foot elevation gain. After lunch and various discussions about fire effects, five hours later we reboarded the thankfully air conditioned coach.
The group takes a break for lunch at Party Rock, on the Party Rock Fire.
In another two hours we were at a motel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
More information about the Party Rock Fire can be found at Wildfire Today and Inciweb. (Update Oct. 9, 2018: it is no longer available on Inciweb)
Day 2 of the Road Trip, June 7, the Chimney Tops 2 Fire
The Chimney Tops 2 Fire started in southeast Tennessee November 23, 2016 inside Smoky Mountains National Park and six days burned into Gatlinburg killing 14 people, forcing 14,000 to evacuate, destroying or damaging 2,400 structures, and blackening 17,000 acres.
A short drive that morning took us to a turnout on US Highway 441 where the Park’s Fire Management Officer Greg Salansky told us about the first six days of the Chimney Tops 2 Fire. Later at different locations we heard a talk by Fire Ecologist Rob Klein about fire effects on vegetation, and Jessica Giacomini and Cory Blair presented information about the effects on animals.
Fire Management Officer Greg Salansky tells the group about the first days of the Chimney Tops 2 Fire.
Ms. Giacomini said of the 50 black bears in the park that have radio collars, 20 of them were in the fire area at the time. All of those survived, but two that were not collared died; one was found dead and the other had to be euthanized due to its serious injuries. She said the collared bears hunkered down and remained in the fire area as it burned. This will provide a very rare opportunity, she said, to find out what bears do before, during, and after a wildfire.
That day the group viewed the burned area from several different vantage points, hiked the Cove Mountain Trail, and heard from Emily Snider of UNC and Joe O’Brien of the USFS about various fire intensities, the effects on Table Mountain Pine, and delayed mortality of the overstory.
The day ended with a 2.5 hour coach ride to Dalton, Georgia.
Day 3 of the Road Trip, June 8, the Rough Ridge Fire
The Rough Ridge Fire started on October 16, 2016 in the Cohutta Wilderness of northern Georgia and burned almost 28,000 acres in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest.
A 30-minute coach ride took us from Dalton, Georgia to the Conasauga Ranger Station in Chatsworth where we heard from District Fire Management Officer Jeff Schardt.
This was the location where we were joined by two to three dozen forestry students from Clemson. After the initial presentation at the District Office, we all got back into our coach and the vans the students traveled in, and the convoy visited several sites in the footprint of the fire.
Areas treated with prescribed fire over the years were taken advantage of in several locations around the perimeter, and the group saw some of the effects of those projects. The reduction in fuel lowered the fire intensity and served as logical points at which to stop the fire.
Karen Larson, Recreation Program Manager on the District, told the group about issues related to managing a fire in a federal wilderness area, and how the decisions were made initially about suppression tactics.
District Biologist Ruth Stokes covered the impacts on animals. She said bats are migratory and had already left for their hibernation sites in caves. The fire may have destroyed some den trees that bears like, but the fire probably created quite a few more.
Ms. Stokes said that some fish were killed along several miles of the Conasauga River on the northwestern fire perimeter. The exact cause is not certain, but they think it may have been a result of ash deposition in the water. That area, she said, was heavily impacted by smoke. Fire retardant dropped by aircraft was not used in that area.
At all three fire sites we were told that access was extremely difficult and that issue had a very significant effect on the selection of suppression alternatives and the ultimate size and duration of the fires.
This is the first multi-day, multi-fire organized road trip that I am aware of. Depending on your interests, if there are ever any more you might find it as interesting as I did. Unfortunately, when someone asked Ms. Mohr, the director of CAFMS, if she would organize more in the future, her very quick answer was, “No”.
I found the 3-day road trip very interesting and worthwhile, and hope the CAFMS and other groups conduct more.
A much shorter trip on the other side of the country occurred today, planned by Utah State University and billed as the “Second Annual Wildland Fire Tour”, a six-hour event south of Tooele, Utah. The topic was mechanical treatments such as mastication. There was no indication that they would tour a prescribed or wildland fire. It was live-streamed; I watched a few minutes of it but it looked like it was filmed with a cell phone and the wind noise on the mic made it very difficult to hear the speaker. The group was using a nifty portable PA system that appeared to have a hand-held wireless mic. I could not tell if the speaker/amp, about the size of a carry-on suitcase, was battery powered or if there was a power cord that I could not see.
The lessons learned from this research clearly indicate that the best protection against a heat injury is reducing work rate.
Aggressive hydration strategies are over-preached and may provide a false sense of protection. It should be emphasized that the autopsy report as described in the fatality report indicated no signs of dehydration or electrolyte imbalance.
With that in mind, below is the article we wrote in 2016 after reports were released on two very serious injuries that occurred during the first two days of training for new firefighters.
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Safely training the tactical athlete
After reading the Facilitated Learning Analysis (FLA) about the Rhabdomyolysis (Rhabdo) injury that occurred May 2, 2016 in South Dakota on the first day of the fire season after running for more than nine miles before doing uphill sprints, I started thinking about, not so much WHAT happened, but how to prevent similar serious injuries.
Both of these exercise-induced conditions can be life-threatening; 33 percent percent of patients diagnosed with Rhabdo develop a quick onset of kidney failure, and 8% of all cases are fatal.
When therapy is delayed, the mortality rate may be as high as 80%; however, with early diagnosis and immediate cooling, the mortality rate can be reduced to 10%.
These two very serious incidents in a two week period that occurred at the beginning of the fire season should be a wakeup call for agencies employing wildland firefighters.
I am not a medical or exercise specialist, but neither were any of the four members of the South Dakota Rhabdo FLA team. It was comprised of a District Fire Management Officer, a Natural Resources Specialist, an Assistant Superintendent on a Hotshot crew, and an Assistant Fire Engine Operator.
A person might expect that for an exercise-induced injury that is fatal in eight percent of the cases, a medical expert and an exercise physiologist would be members of the team. The FLA concentrated on recognizing symptoms of Rhabdo, which is good. Firefighters need to be be informed, again, about what to look for. But the necessity of treating the symptoms could be avoided if the condition was prevented in the first place.
Prevention was not addressed in the document, except to mention availability of water. Dehydration isn’t the leading cause of Rhabdo, which is caused by exertion, but it can be a contributing factor.
With two life-threatening medical conditions on firefighting crews in a two-week period that occurred during mandatory exercise on day one and two of training, medical and exercise professionals perhaps could have evaluated what caused the injuries, and suggested how to design and implement a physical fitness program that would lessen the chances of killing firefighters on their first or second day on the job. But the LEARNING opportunity of the FLA was squandered.
The wildland fire agencies are not alone in hiring people off the streets and throwing them into a very physically demanding job. The military does this every day, as do high school athletic programs. There is probably a large body of research that has determined how to turn a person into an athlete without putting their lives in danger.
While the three firefighters and the natural resources specialist I’m sure meant well and did the best they could to write the FLA within the limits of their training and experience, the firefighting agencies need to get serious about a professional level exercise training program. After all, they are employing TACTICAL ATHLETES.
This issue is serious enough that the NWCG (since there is no National Wildland Firefighting Agency) should hire an exercise physiologist who can design, implement, and monitor a program for turning people off the street into tactical firefighting athletes.
“Aggressive hydration strategies are over-preached and may provide a false sense of protection”, Dr. Brent Ruby said.
Above: Firefighter on the Shep Canyon fire in South Dakota, September 6, 2011. Photo: Bill Gabbert/Wildfire Today.
As we officially enter Summer this week in the northern hemisphere, it’s a good time to revisit an article we wrote in 2011 about heat-related injuries.
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After reading our excerpt and later the full document from the the Serious Accident Investigation Factual Report for the hyperthermia fatality of Caleb Hamm on the CR 337 fire in Texas, we heard from Dr. Brent Ruby, who has completed studies on this exact issue, even having studied wildland firefighters while they were working on fires. In one of his studies he was monitoring a wildland firefighter outfitted with a core temperature monitor, an ambient temperature sensor, and a special Camelback hydration system that monitored his water intake. This firefighter experienced a heat-related illness, heat exhaustion, and had to be evacuated off the fireline by a helicopter. That was a terrible thing to happen to a firefighter, and I’m sure the researchers thought the same thing, but it was probably a once in a lifetime cornucopia of incredibly useful data. Dr. Ruby sent us this message, reprinted here with his permission:
I was bothered by the findings of the CR337 fatality report from the investigation team. There are issues within this case that are very similar to a published heat exhaustion case study we published recently (Wilderness and Environmental Medicine 22, 122-125, 2011, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21664560). In this report, we document drinking behavior, activity patterns, skin and core temperatures in a subject that suffered heat exhaustion and required evacuation. The lessons learned from this research clearly indicate that the best protection against a heat injury is reducing work rate. [*the abstract from the study is below]
Aggressive hydration strategies are over-preached and may provide a false sense of protection. It should be emphasized that the autopsy report as described in the fatality report indicated no signs of dehydration or electrolyte imbalance. I have tried to push these concepts to crews and safety officers when I get a chance to speak to them at meetings. I was bothered by this fatality knowing that it is seemingly directly linked to some of our research findings. I have tried to emphasize this to anyone that will listen in the world of wildfire.
You can certainly review our website to gain a better understanding of the publications we have done from research with the WLFF http://www.umt.edu/wpem. We have a great deal of physiological data, hydration, energy demands of the job, importance of supplemental feedings, etc. from all our work over the years. This peer reviewed research provides objective, scientific evidence that can be used to to change or influence policy to enhance safety on the line.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Regards, Brent Ruby
Brent C. Ruby, Ph.D., FACSM
Director, Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism, The University of Montana
High work output combined with high ambient temperatures caused heat exhaustion in a wildland firefighter despite high fluid intake.
Cuddy JS, Ruby BC.
Montana Center for Work Physiology and Exercise Metabolism, The University of Montana, Missoula, MT 59812-1825, USA.
The purpose of this case study is to examine the physiological/behavioral factors leading up to heat exhaustion in a male wildland firefighter during wildland fire suppression. The participant (24 years old, 173 cm, 70 kg, and 3 years firefighting experience) experienced heat exhaustion following 7 hours of high ambient temperatures and arduous work on the fire line during the month of August. At the time of the heat-related incident (HRI), core temperature was 40.1 °C (104.2 °F) and skin temperature was 34.4 °C (93.9 °F). His work output averaged 1067 counts·min(-1) (arbitrary units for measuring activity) for the 7 hours prior to the HRI, a very high rate of work over an extended time period during wildfire suppression.
In the 2.5 hours leading up to the heat incident, he was exposed to a mean ambient temperature of 44.6 °C (112.3 °F), with a maximum temperature of 59.7 °C (139.5 °F). He consumed an average of 840 mL·h(-1) in the 7 hours leading up to the incident and took an average of 24 ± 11 drinks·h(-1) (total of 170 drinks). The combined effects of a high work rate and high ambient temperatures resulted in an elevated core temperature and a higher volume and frequency of drinking than typically seen in this population, ultimately ending in heat exhaustion and removal from the fire line.
The data demonstrate that heat-related incidents can occur even with aggressive fluid intake during wildland fire suppression.
Unfortunately, even though Dr. Ruby’s research is funded by taxpayers through the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Defense, taxpayers are blocked from seeing the full results unless they pay a fee to the privately owned company that published the paper. We have written before about the results of taxpayer-funded wildfire-related research being held hostage by private companies. Dr. Ruby told Wildfire Today that he will send a copy of his paper to individuals that write to him at brent dot ruby at mso dot umt dot edu
The combined information about the fatality of Caleb Hamm on the CR 337 fire and Dr. Ruby’s study on wildland firefighters, is shocking. From the abstract, again:
The data demonstrate that heat-related incidents can occur even with aggressive fluid intake during wildland fire suppression.
Working on a wildfire on a hot day can lead to heat exhaustion and hyperthermia, and can be fatal EVEN IF a person drinks plenty of water and is not dehydrated.
Symptoms and prevention
We asked Dr. Ruby for more information:
Exertional hyperthermia occurs when the metabolic heat production from hard work overwhelms the bodies ability to off load it to the environment. This unloading can be blocked by clothing and/or slowed due to high radiant heat from the sun or an adjacent fire.
The basic symptoms of heat exhaustion are commonplace and can include profuse sweating, weakness, nausea, sometimes vomiting, lightheadedness, headache and sometimes mild muscle cramps.
The best approach [to prevent heat exhaustion and hyperthermia] is to know thyself and thy physical limits. Establishing a pace schedule that allows temperature to come back down in between periods of work that result in a rise in temperature. The factors of importance are pace, fitness level for the task at hand, hydration behaviors and simultaneously electrolyte concentrations in the blood.
It is important for wildland firefighters to drink plenty of water, but this will not, by itself, totally eliminate all chances of heat-related illness.
Be careful out there.
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UPDATE October 27, 2011:
Dr. Ruby sent us the following list of other publications on similar topics that are in peer reviewed journals. I assume that most of them are not available to the public (don’t get me started on that again!) unless you pay the ransom fees at the private companies, or send a message to Dr. Ruby: brent dot ruby at mso dot umt dot edu
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UPDATE October 28, 2011:
The U.S. National Library of Medicine has an excellent article about heatstroke, which can follow heat cramps and heat exhaustion and is life-threatening. The article includes causes, symptoms, first aid, what not to do, when to call 911, and prevention (including “avoid exercise or strenuous physical activity outside during hot or humid weather”. Good luck with that one, firefighters.)
The National Weather Service has issued Red Flag Warnings for areas in California and Utah.
Below is the NWS forecast for the areas affected in California:
And for Utah:
The map was current as of 8 a.m. MDT on Wednesday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts.
