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1942 typewritten account of the 1910 Big Burn Fires uncovered

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 5 Comments on 1942 typewritten account of the 1910 Big Burn Fires uncovered

Britt Rosso of the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center discovered a 23-page typewritten account of some of the stories from the 1910 Big Burn fires that blackened huge areas of Idaho and Montana — the fires that changed the course of fire management in the United States.

Mr. Rosso describes his find:

As I was digging through some boxes at work, I came across a hard copy of this report on the 1910 fires. It was written in 1942 by Elers Koch, who was the Forest Supervisor on the Lolo NF in 1910. He created this 1910 fire summary so history would not be forgotten. It’s now posted on our LLC web site.

There are some amazing stories in here, and there are also reports from seven different fire crews on how they dealt with the “Great Fire”. There is a crew story in here about “burning off a large area…thinking that they would have absolute protection”. Maybe Wag Dodge wasn’t the first FF to ever use an escape fire.

Take your time and read it slowly.

Since documents at the Lessons Learned Center are known to be moved around and become difficult to find, we stashed a copy here for our readers.

One of the stories features the 30-person Moose Creek Crew led by Deputy Supervisor Ed Thenon, who wrote the account. (It is not clear what Forest Mr. Thenon was from.) They were working on a fire in Idaho in the upper Selway River area near Moose Creek. The sleeping crew, which was in an unburned area not near the fire edge, was aroused at 10 p.m. by debris falling in their area. Soon what one of the men thought was a “falling star” landed nearby and started a spot fire. When they could see the fire approaching they moved their camp and their food, or “grub”, to a small six-foot wide sand bar, or strip, in a creek that had water six to eight inches deep. Mr. Thenon told the men to lie in the creek and put wet blankets over their heads. Wet blankets were also put on their horses.

Below is a brief excerpt from his account. Click on it to see a larger version:

1910 Fires excerpt

Even though two men ran off and took refuge in another area, all 30 of them survived. However “the ‘lullaby boy’ was taken to an asylum”.

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

Wildland firefighter job vacancies, 2016

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 11 Comments on Wildland firefighter job vacancies, 2016

Many state and federal agencies as well as private contractors are beginning their hiring processes for wildland firefighters for the 2016 season. We can’t write an article about each one, but we encourage private and government organizations to include in a comment below this post a SHORT description of the wildland firefighter jobs they will have open, and a link to more information.

U.S. Forest Service recruits “park rangers”

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized2 Comments on U.S. Forest Service recruits “park rangers”

USFS park rangersWe were unaware that the U.S. Forest Service called any of their positions “park rangers”. The social media person for the USFS Pacific Northwest Region who wrote this tweet probably assumes the term will garner more interest than “forestry technician”, which is the title for most USFS firefighters.

The region, that includes Oregon and Washington, will be accepting applications for over 1,000 temporary spring and summer jobs from November 30 until December 7. Positions are available in multiple fields, including fire, recreation, natural resources, timber, engineering, visitor services, and archaeology.

Fort Collins brewery partners to thin and prescribed burn forest

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

Anheuser-Busch and the 15 craft breweries in Fort Collins, Colorado depend on clean water to produce their beer.

In 2012 the High Park Fire west of the city burned 87,000 acres and 259 homes. One resident was killed, $38 million was spent on suppression, and the insured losses totaled $113 million. But much of the damage occurred just after the fire was contained when summer thunderstorms washed ash and debris into the Cache la Poudre River, turning it black. Fort Collins and Greeley obtain much of their drinking water from the river and temporarily turned off their water intakes. Flooding in 2013 after 15 inches of rain in Rist Canyon created more problems.

Anheuser-Busch is contributing $110,000 to help The Nature Conservancy protect the watershed in the Poudre River watershed. The funds will enable the organization to improve forest conditions on a demonstration area, allowing for treatment testing and informing future larger-scale restoration projects to reduce catastrophic fires and improve water security for the people of these communities. The plans include thinning and prescribed fire.

Below is an excerpt from an article at Mother Nature Network:

…The Nature Conservancy’s prescription instructs those who wield the chainsaws on which trees to leave untouched and which trees to cut down. For example, old trees, trees with flat tops, and those that have visual nesting cavities or favorable conditions for nesting are left alone. Old species are left untouched, too. Trees are left in small clusters to give safe haven to squirrels who might become prey if they came down on the ground to get to their next tree.

The trees that are the most undesirable are Douglas firs. The prescription calls for removing 90 percent of them that are less than 10 inches in diameter. Why do Douglas firs get the chainsaw? The same thing that makes the species great-looking Christmas trees also makes them “ladder fuels” in the forest. They carry fire from the grass into the treetops via their low branches. Once the fire gets up into a tree, it then gets into other trees, even those that are adapted to fire with a lack of low branches and thicker bark. Before humans started suppressing forest fires, Douglas firs would be taken out in natural low-intensity fires and the more fire-intolerant trees would often remain. But now, it’s not unusual for all trees to burn in a forest that has become overly dense…

North Carolina wildfire managed with limited suppression activity

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,

Bald Knob fire

When most people hear of wildfires that are managed with a strategy of limited suppression they think of fires in remote areas of the western United States. But last summer the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina managed the Bald Knob Fire for over a month until it was knocked out by rain after burning 1,200 acres, only taking suppression action when it was absolutely necessary. Other fires in the Southeast have been managed in a similar manner but they don’t get the publicity western fires receive.

The firefighters in North Carolina benefited greatly from an adjacent 1,950-acre prescribed fire unit, a portion of which had been completed just six months before. Both that prescribed fire and another 120-acre project served as barriers to significant spread of the wildfire.

Below is an excerpt from a report about the management of the Bald Knob Fire:

The James Lake prescribed burn was treated six months prior to the wildfire and stopped the Bald Knob fire on the southeastern edge, creating a barrier to nearby communities and private land. The Clinchfield prescribed burn, treated last year, provided protection to several nearby residents west of the wildfire by allowing firefighters to utilize existing fuels breaks to contain the wildfire. Likewise, the Dobson Knob prescribed burn, treated last year, would have provided control opportunities for fire fighters had the wildfire grown that large towards the northeast. All of these treatments were critical in containing the fire and were used in the decision for managing the fire for resource benefit.

Existing lines from the surrounding prescribed burns were used in the confine and contain strategy for the Bald Knob fire. The only prescribed fire area that experienced fire activity in the Bald Knob fire was the Lake James burn. On August 5th, a localized thunderstorm with high winds allowed the wildfire to spot across the control line into the Lake James burn unit.

The Lake James fuel treatment clearly influenced the spread of the wildfire. FLN monitoring plots in the Lake James treatment area showed a significant reduction in Mountain Laurel and Rhododendron shrub height throughout the burn unit. The decrease in this highly volatile live fuel within the burn unit when compared to the surrounding untreated area was likely significant in reducing spread of the wildfire. The Clinchfield and Dobson knob prescribed burn units experienced a similar reduction in Mountain Laurel and Rhododendron, providing a fuel break that supported the management decision.

Bald Knob Fire
The Bald Knob Fire, which started on July 14, is in the top-center of the image, in pink and red. All images are from the USFS report. Click to enlarge.

Bald Knob Fire

The report, which can be download here (4.7Mb), is mostly well written and very informative. We like how they overlaid weather stat graphics with a transparent background over the Google Earth image — very creative. On the other hand, one of the other graphics uses 10 shades of red and 5 shades of blue on one map to represent 15 different wildfires and prescribed fires. We are fairly certain a plethora of very different colors are available that would make the map more useful.

CAL FIRE’s academy accused of improper testing procedures

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , 8 Comments on CAL FIRE’s academy accused of improper testing procedures

CAL FIREMore allegations of improper activities have emerged about the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection’s firefighter academy in Ione.

They are still dealing with repercussions from earlier scandals. Within the last year one of the instructors was convicted of the murder of his mistress, and 16 either resigned, were fired, or were disciplined. All of the disciplined employees were replaced at the academy following charges that included drinking on duty, using state property to meet with prostitutes, and sexual harassment. In March Ken Pimlott, Director of CAL FIRE, felt the need to deal publicly with the scandal when he addressed the issue in a Legislature budget hearing.

Now according to the Sacramento Bee there are new allegations of questionable practices related to administering tests at the school. Below is an excerpt from the article:

For more than an hour in August 2014, Shannon Browne sat with investigators at CHP’s Valley Division office in Sacramento, at first hesitant, then growing more confident as she laid out her concerns. Instructors were manipulating scores on tests at Cal Fire’s firefighting academy in Ione, she told the officers.

[…]

“Instead of saying, ‘Hey, we’re not teaching this correctly,’ and keeping (the questions) … they were just passing students,” Browne said during a 70-minute interview recorded by the investigators. “They were going to pass everyone … and I know that this is a safety issue. This is someone’s safety and life, and other people are depending on them. … They (the cadets) should not be passed if they don’t know the material. I mean, these are critical basic skills.”