Wildfire Today

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Wildfire Today

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Animation of the spread of Fort McMurray Fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

This animation depicts the spread of the huge wildfire at Fort McMurray, Alberta, which is officially named the Horse River Fire. It has been burning for almost a month and has blackened 578,621 hectares. Or, if you are wondering how many square inches it has burned, it is almost 9 trillion.

Size Ft McMurray Fire 5-27-2016

The map below shows the perimeter of the fire and the fire danger in the Fort McMurray area, ranging from High to Extreme.

fire danger Fort McMurray area
Fire danger Fort McMurray area, Alberta.

There is a good chance for thundershowers in the area Friday through Sunday.

Six students receive scholarships honoring victims of Yarnell Hill Fire

Author BillPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

Intended for one recipient, unexpected donated funds allowed six students to receive scholarships.

Photo above: left to right starting at the top: Tri-City College Prep Winners: Hannah Leber, MaKaylee Call and Shelbyrae Myers. Bagdad High School Winners: Alexandra Provencio and Marissa Rottnek. Prescott High School winner: Morgan Feingold.

(Guest post written by Katie Knoll)

PRESCOTT, ARIZ. (May 24, 2016) – Six Yavapai-area high school students each received $2,000 Grant McKee Service and Leadership Scholarships during May’s North Star Youth Partnership’s Celebration of Community breakfast.  The annual breakfast recognizes North Star’s teen leaders, programs, community partners, and volunteers. Originally intended as a single $2,000 scholarship, additional unexpected funds from the Taylor Family Foundation and the American Legion in Prescott allowed for each of the six finalists to win a scholarship.

“Seeing the shock and joy on the girls’ faces was priceless, and it was so much fun to have an ‘Oprah moment’ as everyone got a scholarship!” says Diane DeLong, North Star’s Senior Program Manager.

Grant Quinn McKee was one of the 19 firefighters who perished in the Yarnell fire in 2013, and he will forever be remembered for his service to the community, his leadership skills, and his desire to make the world a better place.  At Prescott High School, McKee was a member of North Star Youth Partnership’s Peer Assistance and Leadership (PAL) Program.  This scholarship, in its third year, honors McKee’s memory along with his cousin Robert Caldwell, a fellow Hot Shot and leader who also perished in the fire.

To qualify for the scholarship, students were required to be members of a PAL school program, which help teens learn skills to make a positive difference in their schools, community, and their own life.  PAL trains teens in communication and facilitation skills, active listening, decision-making, and problem solving, and PAL also exposes youth to service projects that impact their schools and communities.

The scholarship winners are Shelbyrae Myers, MaKaylee Call, and Hannah Leber, each of Tri-City College Prep; Morgan Feingold of Prescott High School; and Alexandra Provencio and Marissa Rottnek of Bagdad High School.  Each young woman wowed the scholarship review panel with her scholastic achievements, extracurricular activities, and community service.

Applications for the 2017 Grant McKee and Robert Caldwell Service and Leadership Scholarship will be accepted through North Star beginning January 2017.

For more information about North Star Youth Partnership and the Peer Assistance and Leadership (PAL) program or the Grant McKee/Robert Caldwell Service and Leadership Scholarship, please contact Diane DeLong, Senior Program Manager, at ddelong@cc-az.org.

Founded in 1933, Catholic Charities provides care for the vulnerable of all faiths in Phoenix and northern Arizona through programs in foster care, early start education, housing, veteran services, refugee relocation and poverty reduction. Learn more by visiting www.catholiccharitiesaz.org. Social connections include www.facebook.com/CatholicCharitiesAZ and twitter.com/CCArizona.

Congress takes another tentative step toward developing a wildland fire bill

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 1 Comment on Congress takes another tentative step toward developing a wildland fire bill

The Senators hope the public will give them input on the proposal.

Five U.S. Senators are supporting a concept for a bill, or as they call it, a “discussion draft”, that would affect wildland firefighting. The document is being floated as a trial balloon to solicit input. If the draft ever becomes a proposed bill, it will no doubt look different in its final form, with some provisions added and others removed.

“In an effort to move the discussion forward, we are asking for feedback on a diverse set of ideas to tackle the challenges of catastrophic wildfires,” said Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the panel’s top Democrat. “While not perfect, we are working to drive the discussion toward consensus and a 21st century management strategy.”

Fire Funding

Named the “Wildfire Budgeting, Response, and Forest Management Act of 2016”, it would begin by fixing the inadequate funding of suppressing wildfires, ending the cumbersome practice of having to borrow funds from non-fire accounts to pay for suppression costs. This issue has been cussed and discussed ad infinitum for years with broad bipartisan support, but Congress has failed to take any meaningful action on the problem.

The Holy Grail

One issue that we have written about many times and called the “Holy Grail of Firefighter Safety”, is addressed. Our concept is to provide two pieces of real time information to the management team or supervisors on a wildfire: the location of the fire and the location of firefighters.

The discussion draft addresses the fire’s location by requiring that Federal and State wildland firefighting agencies develop, by March 1, 2018, “protocols and plans for the use of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) … to detect spot fires, assess fire behavior, develop tactical and strategic firefighting plans, position crews, and enhance firefighters’ safety”. And it mentions an “ortho rectified map”. Sadly, it does not specifically require that a system be implemented that will provide the information in real or near-real time, but if you’re going to hit every item on that list, it pretty much has to be real time data, or close to it.

The other half of the Holy Grail, the location of firefighters, is also covered. By March 1, 2018 the Departments of Interior and Agriculture “shall jointly develop and operate a tracking system to remotely locate the positions of fire crews assigned to Federal Type 1 Wildland Fire Incident Management Teams”. Their locations would be depicted on an ortho rectified map developed by the UAS.

Unified system for carding firefighting aircraft

There would be a single system, by March 1, 2018, “for providing credentials to all Federal and State-certified aircraft, personnel (including pilots and maintenance personnel), and firefighting support equipment for fires on Federal land and for firefighting operations conducted by, or in cooperation with, Federal agencies”. Until that system is up and running, all Federal and State wildland firefighting agencies would accept the standards of each other.

Miscellaneous

Other provisions would ease some environmental regulations for certain hazard fuel reduction projects, require an inventory of 452,000 acres of young-growth timber stands on Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, and make any money left over from fire suppression funds at the end of the year available for hazard fuel reduction projects. (If you’re thinking inventorying half a million acres of the Tongass NF has nothing to do with wildland fire, you are correct.)

Supporters

If this discussion draft morphs into actual legislation, more Senators will publicly support it, but for now the list includes Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Senator Ron ‎Wyden (D-OR), Senator Michael Crapo (R-ID), and Senator James Risch (R-ID).

A previous trial balloon

In July of 2015 the Democratic Staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources prepared a list of concepts, called a White Paper, that also was a hopeful step toward an actual bill. It had one important provision that is lacking in this latest discussion draft. It would have revised or repealed Public Law 107-203 that was passed in 2002 as a reaction to the ThirtyMile Fire the previous year. That law resulted in a crew boss on the fire being charged with 11 felonies, including four counts of manslaughter. Since then firefighters that witness accidents have been advised to lawyer-up and reveal as little as possible about what they know, reducing the opportunities for learning lessons — possibly resulting in more firefighter fatalities down the road. This law has also led to accident investigations and fatality reports that do not identify the causes, squandering learning opportunities.

The revision or repeal of Public Law 107-203 is very important.

You can read the entire Discussion Draft HERE.

If you have an opinion about what is, or is not in this discussion draft, contact your Senators and/or put your thoughts in a comment below.

500 firefighters from U.S. and South Africa mobilized to Canada

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

Following up on our story from May 23 when Canada requested 200 firefighters from the United States, the order was filled today when the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) mobilized 10 hand crews to assist with the Fort McMurray fire in Canada. Five of the crews flew on a Canadian aircraft out of NIFC in Boise, Idaho, at 9:15 a.m. and another five departed from Missoula, Montana. The crews are comprised of Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Forest Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wildland firefighters.

In addition, 300 firefighters from South Africa will also assist the Canadians.

South African firefighters Canada
The largest ever deployment of firefighters from South Africa, from Working on Fire, were mobilized to Canada.

“We have a bilateral firefighting assistance agreement with the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, which works well when either country is in need of wildland fire suppression resources. Canada has assisted the U.S. many times in the past, so as soon as Canada requested assistance, we quickly accommodated their request,” says Dan Buckley, NIFC’s National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group Chair.

On May 10, the U.S. mobilized two heavy air tankers and a lead plane to assist with wildfires in Canada. The tankers, based out of Bemidji, Minnesota, flew retardant to wildfires in the Ontario province for one day. In the last 5 years, the U.S. has supported Canada twice. In 2015, NIFC mobilized 200 firefighters and one heavy air tanker and in 2010, 30 smokejumpers and one Type 2 Initial attack crew were sent to Quebec.

Conversely, Canada has provided support for wildfires in the U.S. For each of the last five years, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC) mobilized fire managers, large air tankers, smokejumpers and wildland fire crews.

Firefighters to Canada 1

Expertly training the tactical athlete

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 1 Comment on Expertly training the tactical athlete

Professional-level physical training for wildland firefighters and others.

Yesterday the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center’s Facebook page linked to an organization in Jackson, Wyoming that trains tactical athletes, wildland firefighters, and other individuals. The Mountain Tactical Institute has numerous training programs and plans. Their customers can either purchase a written plan, or train in the company’s gym or “sport-specific cycle”. In light of the two recent serious injuries during physical training on the first and second day of the fire season, some of their guiding principles could be applicable in training wildland firefighters, especially those new to the job.

We are not affiliated with the company, but you may be interested in some excerpts from the company’s website:

Strong Swift Durable develops strength and conditioning which transfers to performance and durability on the mountain, battlefield, urban streets, and fire grounds.

All that matters is outside performance.

Our facility in Wyoming is a Strength and Conditioning Laboratory. At any one time we can be working with climbers aiming for Fitz Roy, female soldiers gunning for Ranger School, fire fighters developing a fitness assessment, airmen trying for PJ Selection, professional ultra runners building offseason strength, stock brokers with a GORCUK Challenge on the horizon and teenage girls preparing for soccer season.

FITNESS GOALS OF STRONG SWIFT DURABLE PROGRAMMING

  • High Relative Strength By “Relative Strength” we mean strength per bodyweight. This isn’t a power lifting regimine focused on how much you can lift. Not is it a body building program designed to make you look good. Our strength training is designed to get you as strong as possible without significant weight gain.
  • Rapid Movement Over Ground Sprinting, mid-distance running, hiking uphill under load. We want to get you faster.
  • High Work Capacity for Short/Intense Events We want to replace the pokey V-4 engine in your chest with a high horsepower, V-8.
  • Stamina for multiple events over a long duration. Stamina for a long event. Be able to go long and hard on day 1. Be able to do it again on day 2.
  • Mental Fitness Mental Fitness can be trained, and de-trained, just like physical fitness.
  • Durability It’s hard to stay fit and enjoy outside the gym sports and recreation when you’re hurt. We use strength training, core strength training and focused mobility work to keep our athletes in the gym, on the field, and in the mountains.
  • Embrace and celebrate the fact that soldiers/LE officers/Firefighters are professional athletes.
  • Articulate the responsibility Tactical Athletes have to themselves to be fit for duty – it’s link to survivability.
  • Articulate the responsibility Tactical Athletes have to their families to be fit for duty – their survivability.
  • Articulate the responsibility Tactical Athletes have to their partners and teammates to be fit for duty   – tactical performance and survivability.
  • Fitness Improves Everything.

(For the Unit Fitness Leader)

You’ll need at most two types of group programming to get started – an OnRamp training plan to get guys spooled up, and daily training for everyone else.

[…]

Fat tactical athletes aren’t funny. “Legacy” members aren’t “special snowflakes” and experience is no substitute for fitness. No “slow” fires exist for unfit firefighters. No “slow” bullets exist for unfit soldiers and LE officers. Understand the poisonous effect unfit members and a poor fitness culture has on unit morale. Speak with actions and words. Be steadfast and direct, but never righteous or indignant, and never preach. Be a quiet, steadfast, professional.

[…]

No one can force or convince grown adult men and women to fix their diet and start a training program. Don’t let unit commanders force an adult parenting role upon you by sending you unfit, unhealthy members and expecting you to give them self discipline. You can be a resource for diet/training info, offer encouragement, and invite them to join the group onramp or regular training group, but you cannot make them attend or train.