Senate staffer apologizes for office pool on acres burned and aircraft crashes

The Senate staffer who ran an office pool to guess the number of acres burned each year and how many firefighting planes would crash apologized this week. Frank Gladics had been running the annual contest since 2003. It was open to staffers on the House Senate Energy and Appropriations Committees that oversee federal firefighting operations.

Criticism of the pool came from Lynnette Hamm, mother of Caleb Hamm who died on the CR 337 fire in Texas last summer, and the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association.

Robert Dillon, spokesman for the Republicans on the committee, said Gladics started the pool because of his frustration with U.S. Forest Service wildfire management, including the agency’s decision to ground aging aircraft. Dillon said “We certainly understand this is in poor taste and it’s been stopped. There was no disrespect meant and we are horrified anybody would think we disrespect the sacrifices the firefighters have made.”

Frankly, I don’t have a huge problem with a guess-the-acres contest. What bothers me is competing to correctly guess, according to the Grist site that first broke the story,

…how many fire-fighting planes (“fixed-wing, heavy-slurry aircraft”) will crash…

When air tankers crash, the crews almost always die. This contest where the prize is a “When Pigs Fly” hat or a “Holly Jolly Christmas” hat, is extremely disrespectful to the living and dead crews of firefighting aircraft, and all firefighters.

DHS omits Wildfire Today from web site monitoring list

We were saddened and disappointed today to find out that the Department of Homeland Security somehow overlooked Wildfire Today when they created a list of web sites that they are monitoring “in order to provide situational awareness and establish a common operating picture”.

In November the DHS released a “privacy compliance review” document that lists dozens of web sites that they are monitoring. The list includes Facebook, Twitter, Hulu, and the Drudge Report, as well as some other sites that may actually have some information about security in the homeland.

I looked for wildfire related sites on the list and found two: the LA Times’ L.A. Now/Wildfires blog and InciWeb. A third one has the word “fire” in it, but it turned out to be a far right wing site about immigration.

Apparently the DHS does not rank Lame Ass Ideas and Idiots as a very high priority for their monitoring program.

The Chicago Tribune has more information about the DHS list.

Dry conditions in the West and South

As you can see from the snowpack and drought maps, much of the west and south are very dry. If these conditions linger throughout the winter, it could be an interesting fire season in many areas. The snowpack map helps explain the two recent large fires in northwest Montana 30 miles south of the Canadian border (map).

Snowpack_1-2-2012

Drought_monitor_1-3-2012

You can compare these maps to the National Wildland Significant Fire Potential Outlook for January through April, 2012 which we summarized on January 4.

Below are the long-range precipitation outlooks for the next six months, prepared December 15, 2011:
Continue reading “Dry conditions in the West and South”

Firefighter appreciation night at Rapid City Rush game

Saturday night, January 14 the Rapid City Rush hockey team in Rapid City, South Dakota is honoring firefighters and the Wildland Firefighter Foundation with a Firefighter Appreciation Night. This is part of their “Heroes Weekend” — police on Friday and firefighters on Saturday. Discounted tickets for both groups are available by calling 605-716-7825. The team will have Special Edition Police and Fire Jerseys that will be worn this weekend and auctioned off after each game.

Here are some more details from Jim Strain, Assistant Chief for Operations with the South Dakota Division of Wildland Fire Suppression:

…For Saturday Night, the Western Dakota Tech Fire Science program students under the direction of Megan Jaros’ Dad, Tom Jaros, will sell “Chuck-a-Puck” fundraiser pucks for the 2nd period intermission Chuck a Puck throw. All proceeds from the fundraiser will go to the Wildland Firefighter Foundation. Vicki Minor, Executive Director, will be there with *Trampus Haskvitz’ s Mom and Dad and Tramp’s sister and brothers as well. The Rush will show a picture of Tramp up on the big screen, and have a moment of silence in his memory.

In addition, all firefighters in the audience will be asked to stand and be recognized at some point in the game, so if you do go, wear your fire hoodie or shirt, and nomex pants and boots.

*Trampus S. Haskvitz was entrapped and killed on the Coal Canyon fire in the Black Hills of South Dakota on August 11, 2011.

 

Thanks go out to Jim

NPS’ national FMO talks about emotional intelligence

Bill Kaage is known as the National Park Service’s Fire Management Officer or FMO, but his official title is “Chief of the Branch of Wildland Fire within the Division of Fire and Aviation Management”. It’s easier to say “National FMO”.

He works out of Boise and is featured in a new video produced by the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center and the National Park Service. It is part of the WFLLC’s “Learning from the Experts” series. In the video Mr. Kaage talks about emotional intelligence, and I don’t believe he mentions the word “fire” a single time. But since he is the NPS’ National FMO, it is newsworthy, or at least interesting, that he stepped out on a limb and made this video.

What do you think? Can you imagine any of the other “national FMOs” making a similar video?

Stories from last week’s Browning, MT fires

The Glacier Reporter has an excellent article describing some of the firefighting and evacuation management during the wildfires last week near Browning, Montana that burned about 18,000 acres. Here are a couple of excerpts:

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“The fire was just taking off,” [Blackfeet Homeland Security Director Robert] DesRosier continued. “I was just behind [Browning Fire Chief] Dustin Boggs, and what I saw was just amazing. It was moving so fast with the wind, around 40 to 50 miles per hour, across the prairie, so I made the call to evacuate the Boarding Dorm. That was the main priority, to get the Boarding Dorm evacuated, but high winds dominated and everything was happening so fast that we only had about 30 minutes to pull it off.”

[…]

…It was then that DesRosier got a call to return to Browning and set up an Incident Command Center at the Blackfeet Fire Cache. The Blackfeet Tribe designated the Tribal Offices as a temporary shelter for evacuees. “That’s a great community story right there,” said DesRosier. “I assumed Area Command because that’s when we heard about the Y Fire, so I had to divide resources.”

The second major conflagration began just west of the junction of U.S. Highways 2 and 89, called the “Y,” and eventually ran east over about 17 miles of prairie. DesRosier appointed separate Incident Commanders at each fire and designated the resources to be sent out.

“It went really smoothly, to divide the resources but still do the evacuations and warnings because life and safety are the number one priority – all our efforts are set to protect human life, then property,” DesRosier said.