Today a far right-wing web site that usually writes about politics ran an article about air tankers. The author, a well known pundit, blames President Obama for politicizing fire suppression, while she politicizes fire suppression to the extreme.
I knew this would happen eventually, but it’s sad that this day has finally arrived. Up until now it’s been a small bipartisan group of politicians who have criticized how the administration has been handling the management of air tankers. Most of them, on the surface anyway, appeared to actually be pushing the administration to improve the safety and efficiency of our fire suppression capabilities, rather than turning it into a partisan issue.
One of the author’s main points is the cancellation of the contract with Aero Union for their eight P-3 air tankers. Unlike the information provided on that web site, the generally accepted reason for the cancellation was that the contract required regular safety inspections which the new management of the company was not performing. According to the U.S. Forest Service, the previous owner had been running the company very well for a long time, but the new team failed to participate in a Continued Airworthiness Program which the USFS felt was critical to ensure the safety of the crews flying those very, very old aircraft. However, Aero Union claims all of the inspections were done and their paperwork was complete. Too many pilots have died in the last 57 years flying air tankers that should have been hanging in museums instead of flying into smokey canyons. The USFS said the new owners of Aero Union were not in compliance with a critical portion of the contract related to safety, so it was cancelled.
Smoke from the High Park Fire seen from the Incident Command Post at the Colorado National Guard Readiness Center near Fort Collins, Colo. (Official Army National Guard photo by 2nd Lt. Skye Robinson) (Released)
Justin Smith, the County Sheriff of Larimer County, is continuing to restrict media coverage of the High Park fire west of Fort Collins, Colorado. On June 11 we covered Sheriff Smith’s request that the media not show photos of destroyed homes out of respect to the homeowners. That request was generally ignored by news outlets.
Nick Christensen, executive officer for the sheriff’s department, was quoted recently as saying, “Our philosophy is the citizens need to see the damage and destruction before the general public.”
Sheriff Smith claims he can decide what the media can cover and what they can’t cover, and not just for the safety of the reporters. That is a great deal of power to put in the hands of a county sheriff.
Colorado law puts the county sheriff in charge of fires on state and private land in unincorporated areas if the fire exceeds the capacity of a single fire department. Other states see it differently, putting an agency that specializes in fire suppression in charge of fires. Texas also has an archaic system, and puts a County Judge in charge of fires in some areas.
Here are some excerpts from a June 20 AP story about Sheriff Smith’s restrictions on media coverage:
…Journalists say the Colorado restrictions are too strict and hurt their ability to report.
“I’m sympathetic to their desire to help the victim,” said Joey Bunch, a reporter for The Denver Post. “I’m not sympathetic to their desire to control what’s going on.”
Bunch, a 27-year-veteran who has covered numerous natural disasters, said the Larimer sheriff’s restrictions are “the most concerted effort I’ve seen to get between the press and the victims.”
At some previous wildfires in Colorado and in other states, authorities have escorted news media into evacuation zones before residents or the general public was allowed in, sometimes while the fire is still active.
With the current fire, “They’re robbing the victims of the chance to tell their story,” Bunch said. “The larger public isn’t being able to fully appreciate the size of the fire and the size of the tragedy because the story isn’t being told.”
Fire management teams routinely try to get journalists safe access to fires to get the news out, said Mike Ferris, a public information officer for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.
“Generally, I’ll do everything I can to get you access to get your story,” he said.
Rules for media access vary from state to state and even from wildfire to wildfire. In California, state law allows news organizations virtually unfettered access to fires. Other states leave the decisions up to the agency responsible for the land involved…
[…]
…In one incident, the sheriff’s department withheld for 24 hours a video recording, made by a fire official inside the evacuation zone using an NBC News camera and tape. NBC News producer Jack Chesnutt said he thought he would get the tape back immediately to share with other news outlets.
Christensen, the sheriff’s executive officer, said the department always intended to show the video to evacuated residents before returning it.
“These are not the conditions that I thought we had agreed to when we handed them the camera,” Chesnutt said. He called the High Park Fire coverage restrictions “unprecedented.”…
Nebraska National Guard crewmembers of Company C 2nd-135th General Support Aviation Battalion dump water from a Bambi bucket onto flames of the High Park Fire, June 18, 2012. (Photo by Staff Sgt. Tate Petersen, Company C, 2nd-135th General Support Aviation Support)
The National Guard has deployed Blackhawk helicopters from several states to the High Park Fire near Fort Collins, Colorado. Additionally Guardsmen from Colorado are augmenting the Larimer County Sheriff’s Department to provide assistance in securing evacuated areas. They posted these photos to Flicker, and some of them, especially the one above showing a rare view from a helicopter while dropping water, are exceptionally good.
Kansas Guardsmen Sgt. Sheldon Snodgrass, a flight instructor with Company G, 2nd-135th General Support Aviation Battalion, observes the High Park Fire in Larimer County, Colo., approximately 15 miles west of Fort Collins while out on a Bambi bucket mission to help provided structure protection, June 15, 2012. (Photo by Sgt. Ryan Kohlman, Company G, 2nd-135th General Support Aviation Battalion)High Park Fire, June 18, 2012. (Official Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Jess Geffre/RELEASED)
The U.S. Forest Service has released two additional reports about last year’s Pagami Creek Fire which was managed, rather than suppressed, for 25 days, until it ran 16 miles on September 12, eventually consuming over 92,000 acres of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in Minnesota. We also remind you of the facilitated learning analysis of the eight USFS employees caught out in front of the fire in canoes.
Policy review
The objective of one of the reviews was to determine if the major decisions made by the incident management teams and the staff of the Superior National Forest were consistent with official USFS policy. The review was conducted by one person, Tom Zimmerman, a program manager for the USFS’ Wildland Fire Management Research, Development, and Application Program in Boise. Mr. Zimmerman analyzed the decisions and compared them with 21 policy statements, manuals, directives, and Forest level planning documents. He concluded that the decisions “appear consistent with all levels of policy and process direction”.
Decisions review
There was another review, “looking at decisions made by line officers and Incident Management teams based on the Delegation of Authority from the Forest Supervisor”. The individuals involved in this review were Jim Thomas, Fire and Emergency Operation Specialist for the Eastern Region of the USFS, and Jim Bertelsen, a Superior NF employee acting in his capacity as President of local NFFE Union 2138. This review also found no fault with how the fire was managed, saying no information was overlooked that would have predicted the unprecedented movement of the fire on September 12.
While we don’t dispute the qualifications of Mr. Zimmerman and Mr. Thomas, a person has to wonder if these internal reviews, each conducted basically by one person, would have reached different conclusions had they been completed by a panel of neutral subject matter experts.
Entrapment and near-miss facilitated learning analysis
Deployed fire shelters on the Pagami fire. USFS photo from the facilitated learning analysis.
In addition to those two reviews, released earlier was an excellent facilitated learning analysis (FLA) of the near misses and entrapments of eight USFS employees who were caught out in front of the rapidly spreading fire in canoes while they were trying to evacuate the recreating public from the area. At one point when they were fleeing the fire, the smoke was so thick they could not see the fronts of their canoes. Two people left a canoe and took refuge in the cold water, deploying a single fire shelter over their heads as they floated, suspended by their life jackets. Two others were flown out at the last minute by a float plane when it somehow found a hole in the smoke and was able to find them and land on the lake. Four people, after paddling furiously in the strong winds, dense smoke, and darkness, unable to find a fire shelter deployment site on the heavily forested islands, finally found a small, one-eighth acre barren island where they climbed inside their shelters as they were being pounded with burning embers.
The very well done FLA is a must read. Someone should make a movie about this.
In 2011 the U.S. Forest Service had 34 helicopters on national contracts and even though their request for proposals for this year was for 34, they only awarded contracts for 30. The agency cut the helicopters formerly based at Alturas, CA; Oakridge, OR; Orland, CA; and Porterville, CA.
Today the USFS announced they changed their minds and decided to award an additional four exclusive use national contracts for helicopters. They will be:
Two S-61s owned by Siller Helicopters of Yuba City, Calif.;
One S-64 Skycrane owned by Erickson Air Crane of Central Point, Ore.;
One S-70 (Blackhawk) owned by Firehawk Helicopters of Leesburg, Fla.
Here is the updated list of USFS helicopters on exclusive use national contracts for 2012:
All of these helicopters are Type 1, which requires a minimum capacity of 700 gallons, except for the eight K-Max ships which can carry only 680 gallons according to the capabilities listed on two of the K-Max contractors’ web sites. The K-Max has about 25 percent of the capacity of an Aircrane and the cost is also about 25 percent. The USFS pays $1,924 per flight hour for a K-Max K-1200 compared to $7,718 for a CH-54/SK-64.
The National Interagency Aviation Council study that was approved by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group in July, 2008 recommended that there be on exclusive use contract in 2012, 34 Type 1 helicopters, 47 Type 2 helicopters, and 100 Type 3 helicopters. The same study recommended that by 2012 there should be 23 large air tankers plus 3 water scooper air tankers on contract, for a total of 26, and by 2018 a total of 35 air tankers (32 plus 3). Currently we have 9 large air tankers on exclusive use contracts with 3 more to be added by the end of this year, and 4 additional in 2013.
There is not a lot of forested land in Nebraska, so when it burns it’s kind of a big deal. The Cottonwood fire in the northwest corner of the state was reported Sunday morning on a pine ridge about 15 miles northwest of Crawford, possibly started from lightning Friday night. With the wind cranking on Sunday at 20 to 25 mph with gusts in the high 30s, the fire raced about four miles through those valuable pine trees and prairies.
Map Cottonwood fire, northwest of Crawford, Nebraska, June 18, 2012
The spot weather forecast for Monday was almost as severe, predicting 15 to 20 mph winds with gusts to 35, along with 91 degrees and 10 percent relative humidity. Knowing it had burned thousands of acres on Sunday, I drove down to the fire on Monday thinking I could photograph some active fire behavior and very busy firefighters.
I was wrong. When I got there at about 3 p.m., there was virtually no wind, the sky was mostly covered by clouds, the humidity was fairly high, and since most of the fire had dozer and grader lines around it, there was not a lot for the firefighters to do other than mop up. But based on Sunday’s fire behavior and the predicted weather for Monday, they had plenty of resources on hand, including two National Guard Blackhawk helicopters with water buckets and firefighters from across much of the state’s panhandle. The estimated size of the fire is 2,500 acres.
