A week-long class aimed at training forest rangers and technicians to use heavy equipment to fight wildfires
Still image from MFC video.
Earlier this month 16 employees from the Mississippi Forestry Commission (MFC) took part in the agency’s Heavy Equipment Academy (HEA).
“Training is a huge part of what we do at the Mississippi Forestry Commission,” said Russell Bozeman, Mississippi State Forester. “Responding to wildfires is dangerous and the Heavy Equipment Academy gives our employees the real-world training they need to safely and effectively suppress wildfires in the state.”
During the HEA, students participate in two days of classroom instruction followed by three days of field work at the MFC’s HEA training site in Raymond. Students learned how to properly plow a firelane with a bulldozer, how to use a bulldozer to shape slopes, and how to properly “recover” a bulldozer that gets bogged down in mud.
“This real-world training gives our employees the experience and confidence they need to perform their wildfire suppression duties when called upon,” Mr. Bozeman said.
Soil moisture is very low across much of the West and Upper Midwest
Soil Moisture, May 24, 2021. NOAA.Drought Monitor, May 18, 2021. NOAA.
In some areas of the Western states the 20-year long drought has reduced moisture content in plants to the lowest levels scientists have seen. Soil moisture is very low — at or near record lows across much of California. Particularly hard hit are locations in Colorado, Utah, Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona, and California.
Junipers are dying in Arizona from a lack of water. The East Bay Times reports that drought is likely responsible for dead or dying acacia, eucalyptus, and Monterey pines in East Bay Regional Parks near San Francisco.
In Arizona, junipers are succumbing to the 20-year drought and its two-year intensification, said Joel McMillin, a forest health zone leader for the U.S. Forest Service there. Officials haven’t done a precise count but anecdotally the die-off is 5% to 30% with some patches up to 60%.
Until the dead needles drop to the ground, which takes a year or so, the fire hazard increases, fire manager Steinhardt said. “So you have something that’s highly flammable and it’s … 20-, 30-, 40-foot tall and every single one of those needles on there now becomes an ember that can be launched.”
“This is probably one of the driest and potentially most challenging situations I’ve been in,” said the veteran of 32 fire seasons.
In California, normally drought-tolerant blue oaks are dying around the San Francisco Bay Area, said Scott Stephens, a fire science professor at the University of California, Berkeley. “They don’t have access to water. Soil moisture is so low. When you start to see blue oak dying, that gets your attention.”
Human-caused climate change and decades of fire suppression that increases fuel loads are aggravating fire conditions across the West, scientists said.
Global warming has contributed to the megadrought and is making plants more prone to burning.
Vegetation with a low moisture content is easier to ignite in a wildfire and contributes to a rapid rate rate of spread that is more difficult for firefighters to suppress. Dead or dying trees that still have leaves attached during the first year or so after their decline can also enhance the spread and intensity of a fire and adds to the number of burning embers lofted into the air that can ignite spot fires ahead of the blaze, putting structures at risk that are distant from the fire.
Extremely dry soil and vegetation in May does not guarantee a busier than average summer fire season in the West — the weather in the coming months is the primary factor. If it turns relatively cool and wet, the number of acres burned is not likely to be extreme. But if the drought continues into June, July, and August, normal weather, or especially warmer and drier than normal weather, could produce a busier than average Western fire season.
Precip & Temp outlook for May 1-7, 2021. Made May 24, 2021.Precip & Temp outlook for June, July, & August, 2021. Made May 20, 2021.
Four firefighters were killed on the fire at Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California
A documentary film about the 1977 Honda Canyon Fire that killed four people and injured 65 on Vandenberg Air Force Base has been accepted at multiple film festivals. It is based on the book by Joseph N. Valencia titled Beyond Tranquillon Ridge.
Mr. Valencia, one of the first firefighters on the fire, served as a technical consultant on the documentary which is adapted from the book.
Here is how Mr. Valencia described the fire to us in an email:
A combination of hurricane-force winds and the snapping of an electrical pole starts the Honda Canyon Fire on Vandenberg Air Force Base, California, early in the morning of December 20, 1977. Over a thousand people consisting of professional firemen and military personnel fight the fire. Outlier winds would increase to over a hundred miles per hour, making the firefight almost impossible. Four fatalities and sixty-five injuries resulted. Ten-thousand acres burn, resulting in significant damage to the military installation infrastructure. Ironically and fortuitously, the fire will be out, a little more than 30 hours later, due to a rain storm-front coming in.
Others working on the film included producer Dennis R. Ford and Christopher Hite, Director of Photography and Cinematographer. Mr. Ford was one of the firefighters on the fire.
The fatalities in 1977 included the Base Commander Colonel Joseph Turner, Fire Chief Billy Bell, Assistant Fire Chief Eugene Cooper, and Heavy Equipment Operator Clarence McCauley.
Boney Creek Fire in Alaska, July 19, 2019. Photo by Camila Roy, BLM.
Spatiotemporal patterns of overwintering fire in Alaska
By Rebecca Scholten and Sander Veraverbeke Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
What are holdover and overwintering fires?
Fires can appear to be out, but retain smoldering combustion deep in the fuelbed and flare up again when the weather favors flaming behavior and fire spread. This phenomenon occurs not infrequently in boreal forests of North America, and presents a well-known challenge to firefighters. Over the last two decades, fire managers noted increasing occurrences where fires survive the cold and wet boreal winter months by smoldering, and re-emerged in the subsequent spring.
Scientists and managers seek better understanding of how these fires sustain during such unfavorable conditions. Fire managers have already started targeting locations where they expect fires to flare up again. However, they are missing detailed information on the environmental and climatic factors that facilitate these fires. This information is crucial to detect fires at an early stage and keep firefighting costs low. A research group at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is studying when and where these holdover fires emerge and how their occurrence is tied to specific geographic locations.
Mapping overwintering fires from satellite data
Since 2005, fire managers reported data on 39 holdover fires that survived winter in Alaska. However, the location and emergence date of these fires were used in conjunction with satellite data to develop an algorithm for overwintering holdover detection. From satellite imagery, we can only observe fires that are large enough to generate a considerable amount of heat and burn a large enough area. Consequently, 32 out of 39 reported overwintering fires were too small (all smaller than 11 ha, 25 out of 32 smaller than 1 ha) to be detected from space. The location and emergence date of these small overwintering fires were used for the calibration of an algorithm focused on large overwintering fires. From the remaining seven large reported overwintering fires, our algorithm classified 6 out of 7 as overwintering fire. In addition, our approach revealed 9 large overwintering fires that were not reported by agencies between 2002 and 2018 in Alaska. A results paper is currently in preparation.
The spread rate of smoldering fires is known to be very low, and a smoldering fire would spread only between 100 and 250 m in an entire year (Rein, 2013). So, overwintered fires usually emerge within or close to the previous year fire (Fig.1) and can re-emerge with flaming behavior as soon as favorable burning conditions appear in spring develop in to flaming forest fires before the major lightning-induced fire season. The onset of warm and dry conditions varies from year to year depending on the winter and spring temperatures and precipitation. These variables also shape the regional snowmelt day, which can be inferred from satellite observations. Indeed, our research indicates that holdover fires usually re-emerge within 50 days after the regional snowmelt. Overwintering fires are more likely to occur the year after a large fire
year (Fig. 2).
Figure 2: Years with a large burned area (grey bars) are more likely to generate overwintering flare-ups (orange bars) than years with less burned area. Rebecca Scholten and Sander Veraverbeke.
Can we predict where overwintering may re-emerge?
It is not only important to know when these fires emerge, but also where. We therefore analyzed spatial drivers of the overwintering fires we detected. Our research indicates that holdover fires are facilitated in those regions of a fire perimeter that had burned deeper into the organic soil the year before. Deep burning is a characteristic of a high severity fire. We also observed that overwintering fires were more likely to emerge in lowland areas with black spruce-dominated forest. Overwintering fires thus have some temporal and spatial predictability. Monitoring the edges of fire perimeters from the preceding year in lowland forested peatlands early in the fire season, and especially after a year with large burned area, may prove beneficial to extinguish flare-ups from overwintering fires before they develop into a large flaming forest fire. This could be a cost-efficient strategy for fire management agencies. In addition, this would preserve terrestrial carbon by safeguarding it from combustion.
This article is from the Alaska Fire Science Consortium’s Fire Science Highlights.
The agency issues statement about compensation, recruitment, and retention for wildland firefighters
Firefighters on the Legion Fire in South Dakota, Dec. 12, 2017. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
I was working on an article for Wildfire Today about the difficulties the federal land management agencies are having trying to recruit and retain firefighters while their employment packages pale in comparison to similar jobs in some state or municipal organizations. I sought out a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service (FS) in California, Jonathan Groveman who works out of their regional office, asking for specific numbers of firefighter positions in the state that can’t be filled.
About 20 hours after we last spoke, Mr. Groveman sent an email with a rather extraordinary official statement. There were no detailed numbers like I requested, but what was sent instead was six paragraphs that indicated that the FS, or at least Mr. Groveman, recognizes some of the issues that are beginning to seriously cripple the ability of the five federal land management agencies to protect the homeland from wildfires.
When Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen testified before a House Appropriations Subcommittee on April 17 she squandered two clear opportunities to accept or ask for more funding in two very important inadequately budgeted areas, fuels treatment and aerial firefighting. It was not clear if the Chief selected that strategy because her chain of command in the Department of Agriculture and the White House demanded that she remain agnostic about adequate funding for those areas, or if she took it upon herself to remain meek, adopting a don’t-make-any-waves posture. If it was the latter, the Chief needs to find another job.
At that point it looked hopeless to expect the Forest Service to be proactive about requesting Congress to provide badly needed funding for protecting our homeland from fires.
In order to solve a problem, first it must be identified — which is tough to do with one’s head buried in the sand.
Mr. Groveman’s statement identified some of the issues that are seriously degrading the effectiveness of federal wildland firefighting. Assuming it represents the stance of the agencies and the White House, the next step is for Senators and Congressmen to work with the agencies to make sure they have the tools needed to do their jobs. Here are some of the highlights — quotes from the document. Following those, is the complete statement.
“Federal wages for firefighters have not kept pace with wages offered by state, local and private entities in some areas of the United States. We have seen key highly trained personnel leave the Forest Service and we have also experienced some inability to recruit new employees into the agency, which we understand is due to wage disparities with the states.
“We are committed to ensuring that Federal firefighters are properly compensated and recognized for the work they do
“This is not about minimum wage but about a competitive wage.
“In order for us to remain competitive we need to create a structure for establishing a wage that creates greater parity. This would enable us to maintain the necessary firefighting workforce necessary to meet wildland fire response expectations.”
The full statement is below:
Maintaining our ability to hire and retain firefighters as we see the complexity of the firefighting environment grow exponentially, has been further complicated by our inability to offer competitive wages. Federal wages for firefighters have not kept pace with wages offered by state, local and private entities in some areas of the United States. We have seen key highly trained personnel leave the Forest Service and we have also experienced some inability to recruit new employees into the agency, which we understand is due to wage disparities with the states.
We are committed to ensuring that Federal firefighters are properly compensated and recognized for the work they do and the administration is focused on equity in all forms. These problems are not unique to the Forest Service and also apply to firefighters within the Department of the Interior.
This is not about minimum wage but about a competitive wage. Particularly in states like California we are seeing that federal wages for firefighters is about half of what they would get for similar jobs in state and private entities. In order for us to remain competitive we need to create a structure for establishing a wage that creates greater parity. This would enable us to maintain the necessary firefighting workforce necessary to meet wildland fire response expectations.
We are working with OPM and OMB to evaluate options to modernize the firefighting workforce compensation structure, including job series, pay grade levels, and other changes.
In light of these challenges the Forest Service still maintains a robust and highly capable wildland fire workforce and will be able to meet the demands of what is expected to be another challenging fire year. We work with our federal, state, tribal, local and private partners to be sure we can access all available resources to respond to wildfires as needed.
The Forest Service is focused on creating a more modern firefighting workforce where we have specialized year round capability to respond to the wildfires conditions of not only today but into the future. This includes greater utilization of technology to enhance firefighter capability, effectiveness and safety.
Firefighters being briefed on the Pine Gulch Fire in Colorado, August 21, 2020. InciWeb.
A senior-level wildfire management person in the U.S. Forest Service (FS) told Wildfire Today that there are hundreds of vacant permanent firefighting positions in California. The agency’s difficulties in recruiting and hiring seasonal and permanent firefighting personnel has resulted in multiple hotshot crews not qualifying to respond to a fire with 18 personnel, the minimum required by interagency standards.
More than a dozen FS fire engines in the state are completely unstaffed, or instead of seven days a week coverage they have cut back to only five. (Check with your local fire department and ask which days of the week they staff their fire engines.) Thirty modules of FS hand crews, dozers, or water tenders in California have been shut down due to a shortage of employees, according to our source.
(Read more: Forest Service issues statement saying in part, “Federal wages for firefighters have not kept pace with wages offered by state, local and private entities in some areas of the United States.”)
The personnel issues are caused by two primary factors, difficulty in hiring, and experienced firefighters leaving the organization for better pay and working conditions.
Seasonal federal firefighters in California are generally hired in January and start working in mid-May or mid-June. The centralized hiring process now being used has been heavily criticized as inefficient.
A look at the system for advertising vacant permanent firefighting positions in the federal agencies, USA JOBS, shows a large number of unfilled FS positions. Here is a sample from this week:
Some of the FS fire jobs at the website are open for a few months or a year, and others are basically continually open with no end dates. Hiring of permanent fire personnel can go on throughout the year as additional positions become vacant.
The entry level wildfire job with the federal agencies is usually a GS-3 working under the title “Forestry Technician,” which receives $13.32 per hour, almost $2 less than the minimum wage sought by some politicians recently. In California a state agency that competes with the federal government for hiring firefighters pays about double that rate. A recent survey found that the first and second most cited reason for leaving federal firefighting organizations is to move to a job with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Suppression or local municipal fire departments.
Difficulties staffing Incident Management Teams
Skilled fire personnel leaving the federal land management agencies have made it difficult to find employees qualified and willing to serve on Incident Management Teams (IMT) that are mobilized to suppress large wildfires and manage other incidents.
From a report released May 13, 2021 by the Incident Workforce Development Group:
Today, critical challenges in rostering and managing IMTs is leading to a decrease in the number of teams available for an increasing number of complex incidents.
In the past five years there have been multiple occasions where all available IMTs have been assigned to large fires. Local units have had to face the consequences of managing a complex incident without the services of an IMT.
Firefighters in the Department of the Interior
A spokesperson for the Department of the Interior told Wildfire Today that they do not anticipate having a large number of vacant firefighting positions. (Wildfire Today was unable to confirm this claim):
The Department of the Interior is on track to have available a total of approximately 5,000 firefighters, a similar number to what was available last season.
The initial bureau hiring targets are:
Bureau of Indian Affairs – 600
Bureau of Land Management – 3,450
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service – 530
National Park Service – 930
How many firefighters does the FS have?
The Forest Service, which is in the Department of Agriculture, has been saying for years that they have 10,000 fire personnel. Wildfire Today filed a Freedom of Information Act Request with the the agency on December 10, 2019 to obtain the actual number of firefighters. We are still waiting to receive factual information.
Widespread news coverage
Three major news organizations have published articles this week about the recruitment and retention of federal wildland firefighters. Below are excerpts:
Despite the increased threat, the Forest Service does not expect to meet its goal of hiring 5,200 federal firefighters in California this year.”It will be below that number,” said Bob Baird, director of fire and aviation management for the Forest Service Pacific Southwest Region. “With hiring challenges and attrition, it could be a lower percentage than that, but we won’t know until we finish our hiring process.”
“California is ground zero for attrition,” said Riva Duncan, a former Forest Service officer who is the executive secretary of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, which advocates for federal fire personnel. “We’re losing people at an accelerated rate because there are so many other opportunities.”
The [FS] projected a shortfall of 313 firefighters in Region 5 this year, at least 8% fewer firefighters than it aimed to employ. The shortfall is frustrating for many in California’s state government, which relies on the federal service to help put out wildfires, but has little control over staffing levels.
Thom Porter, the chief of California’s state fire agency, CAL FIRE, said he’s had regular conversations with California-based Forest Service officials about staffing this year. He said he’s most worried that when the agency’s teams are moved to fight fires in other states, the Forest Service won’t have enough people, or enough experienced people, to backfill those roles in California.
“If they’re unable to hire, if they’re unable to keep staff on when we’re having our most critical periods, it is a public safety risk,” Porter said of the Forest Service. “Because we so much rely on each other that—there isn’t a single agency in California that has all of the resources it needs for a major incident of any type. It’s all hands on deck.”
Jon Groveman, a spokesman for the Forest Service in California, said the agency attempts to staff 46 hotshot crews in the state annually, but it hasn‘t been able to fill all of those positions for several years, leaving it with between 35 and 40 crews. The agency expects “a similar number of crews to be staffed this fire year,” he wrote in an email, adding that “some crews for various reasons (mainly due to staffing challenges) will not be able to attain Hotshot standards.”
Hotshot crews that have lost that designation include the Horseshoe Meadow Hotshots in the Sequoia National Forest and the Modoc Hotshots in the Modoc National Forest, both of which the agency considers “unstaffed.”
A Forest Service job posting earlier this spring for a full-time, experienced firefighter in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in Jackson, Wyoming, warned applicants that real estate costs were high. It suggested a few affordable options, including Habitat for Humanity, the nonprofit home builder that helps low-income people get into new homes.
