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Todd Pechota receives FMO of the year award

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 2 Comments on Todd Pechota receives FMO of the year award

The U.S. Forest Service announced that Todd Pechota, Forest Fire Management Officer (FMO) on the Black Hills National Forest, is the recipient of the 2015 National Forest FMO of the Year award. He received the honor during a recent ceremony at the U.S. Forest Service Regional Office in Colorado.

The Black Hills National forest is in the Black Hills of western South Dakota and northeast Wyoming.

Todd Pechota
Todd Pechota, in a screen grab from a video as he was interviewed about the Whaley prescribed fire north of Hill City, SD, January 13, 2016.

The award recognizes the most outstanding fire manager in the U.S. Forest Service each year.  It has a long and prestigious history of honoring fire managers who have exhibited exceptional leadership in Forest Fire Management leadership as a Forest Fire Management Officer.

“Todd is an exceptional leader in wildland fire,” said Craig Bobzien, Black Hills National Forest Supervisor.  “This award is a testament to the work he has accomplished. It underscores the relationships he has developed locally and across the nation, and the special care that he has shown for all those that have worked with him.”

In addition to his position as FMO on the Black Hills National Forest, Pechota serves as the Incident Commander for the Rocky Mountain Type 1 Incident Management Team and is past Chairman of the Great Plains Regional Dispatch Board of Directors.

Flathead Hotshots — 51 seasons and counting

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,
Deer Park Fire, tipping helicopter
The Life Flight helicopter on the Deer Park Fire in 2010 after landing, and in danger of sliding down a steep slope. Screen grab from USFS video.

The Flathead Beacon has an interesting article about the Flathead Hotshots. A crew that has been based on the national forest with the same name since 1966. The piece is well written and lengthy, but worth your time.

It mentions, among other things, two incidents the crew was involved in between 2008 and 2010. In 2008 two of the firefighters were struck by lightning while working on a prescribed fire.

Two years later on the Deer Park Fire a crewmember suffered a broken femur that became more complicated when the Life Flight helicopter that was going to fly him out landed on the edge of a small helispot and tipped back, resting on its damaged tail rotor and in danger of sliding down a steep slope. This put the helicopter and the helispot out of commission — thus becoming an incident within an incident, within an incident.

A third fire not covered in the article occurred in 2012 when the crew turned down an assignment on the Steep Corner Fire near Orofino, Idaho due to numerous safety-related concerns. The next day Anne Veseth, a 20-year-old firefighter from Moscow, Idaho, was killed while working on the fire. The U.S. Forest Service firefighter was struck when one tree fell and crashed into another tree, causing it to fall onto her in a domino effect.

One item in the newspaper article grabbed my interest:

A study in the late 1990s found that the average male hotshot will lose 15 percent of their bone density from the wear and tear of fire season. The average female hotshot can lose upwards of 23 percent.

I searched and could not find anything about this study. Do any of our readers know where it can be found?

Excellent time-lapsed photos of the Silver Mine Fire in NC

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 1 Comment on Excellent time-lapsed photos of the Silver Mine Fire in NC

Above: A burnout operation on the Silver Mine Fire, April 26, 2016. InciWeb photo.

When we saw the photos below of the Silver Mine Fire burning very close to Hot Springs, North Carolina we had to share them. It’s the only time we have seen photos taken of a fire at the same spot just a few hours apart but one is in daylight and the other was after sunset. The first in each pair was taken between 7:30 and 8:00 p.m. on April 26 and the other was at 9:45 to 10:30 p.m. The photos were taken by a resident of Hot Springs, Kevin Reese.

The fire started April 21 and since then has burned 3,000 acres. On Tuesday firefighters ignited a burnout operation on the north side of the fire using a helicopter. If all of the burnouts go as planned, the fire perimeter could be as large as 4,600 acres when the fire is contained.

Silver Mine Fire

Silver Mine Fire

Silver Mine Fire

Silver Mine Fire

Silver Mine Fire map
Map of the southern portion of the Silver Mine Fire at 5 p.m. April 25, 2016. The red dashed line was the fire perimeter at that time. The town of Hot Springs, NC is on the left. The map was produced by “Stratton”. InciWeb has the complete map.

Six short videos, introductions to fire management personnel

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags

Shenandoah National Park is featuring some great little vignettes of personnel working on the Rocky Mtn Fire. In addition to Jeff Koenig’s above, check out the others:

Fire Behavior Analyst – Gary Jarvis
Safety Officer – Tony Rivers
Air Resource Advisor – Andrea Holland 
Incident Meteorologist – Phil Manuel
Division Supervisor – Jennifer Rabuck
Radio Operator – Justin Perry 

This is great. More organizations should do this.

Pennsylvania: 16 Mile Fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags

The 16 Mile Fire is two miles east of Cresco, Pennsylvania on the eastern shore of Browns Lake. It started April 20 and has burned 8,030 acres and two leased cabins, three seasonal homes and six outbuildings.

Rain Monday night and Tuesday afternoon has slowed the spread of the fire.

Management of the incident will transition from LeCrone’s Type 3 Incident Management Team to a Type 2 IMT. Inbriefing of the Type 2 IMT was scheduled to occur at 11 a.m. on April 25.

Fire Aviation has a photo taken from an air tanker looking at a second air tanker. Both were returning from the fire en route to an airport to reload with fire retardant.

Prescribed fire liability standards of care

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

Above: Pleasant Valley Prescribed fire in South Dakota, March 10, 2016. Photo by Bill Gabbert.

Exposure to liability worries many land managers when they are considering using prescribed fire as a management tool. Knowledge of the facts is one of the first steps toward lessening that concern.

Carissa Wonkka of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln has written an article for the Great Plains Fire Science Exchange that discusses fire liability and standards of care. You can read the entire article here. Below is a very brief excerpt.

…In the United States, state open burning statutes define the standard of care owed to the public by burners. In a lawsuit, a burner will be found liable for damages resulting from their fire or smoke if they have not met the standard of care prescribed by their state statute. If a state has not developed a statute specifically related to open burning or prescribed burning, judges will apply the standard of care established by previous prescribed burning cases in their state. Three different standards of care have emerged for prescribed fire practitioners: strict liability, simple negligence, and gross negligence.

Strict liability is the most stringent standard of care for those using prescribed fire, with only five states (Hawaii, Delaware, Rhode Island, Minnesota, and Wisconsin) applying this standard in prescribed fire civil cases. Under a strict liability standard, a court would hold burners liable for any property damage caused by an escaped prescribed fire, regardless of the action of the burner. This standard is more often established through case law, not explicitly stated in the statute. Some states have language that suggests strict liability will apply even though the statute does not expressly state this. Hawaii, for example, makes escape of fire beyond the established burn perimeter evidence that, if uncontested, is sufficient to prove willfulness, malice, or negligence. This means that a plaintiff in a case against a burner could win a lawsuit simply by showing that the ϐire escaped. The burden of proof would fall on the defendant to prove they were not negligent in the events leading up to the escape that caused the damages…

Standard Of Care

For more information on burning regulations by state: KS, MO, MT, ND, NE, OK, SD, TX, WY. The Great Plains Fire Science Exchange has more fire science resources at http://www.GPFireScience.org.