Las Conchas fire, 7-14-2011. Photo by Andrew Ashcraft, Granite Mountain Hotshots.
Andrew Ashcraft sent us this photo of the Las Conchas fire which burned 156,000 acres near Los Alamos, New Mexico in June and July. The photo was taken on July 14, 2011 while the Granite Mountain Hotshots were holding the fireline after the Prescott Hot Shots ignited a burnout. Thanks Andrew.
And speaking of the Las Conchas fire, according to the Rio Grande Sun, two attorneys are gearing up to file a lawsuit against the Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative, claiming the Co-op’s negligence regarding inspection and trimming of vegetation threatening its power lines led to the fire, which investigators determined was caused by a tree falling into a power line.
In 2008 firefighter Andrew Palmer was struck by debris during a tree felling operation on the Iron Complex fire in northern California. According to the coroner he died of “blood loss due to blunt force trauma to the left leg”. He bled to death
Andrew was pronounced dead after he arrived via Coast Guard helicopter at the Redding airport. It took three hours and 20 minutes to get him to the airport due to inadequate planning and many screw-ups and poor decisions.
We previously covered the accident and its effects, here and here, including a paper written by Andrew’s brother, Robert, who recommended that injured wildland firefighters be transported to an appropriate medical facility within the first “Golden Hour”.
The federal land management agencies have done little to adopt a “Golden Hour” policy, but the issue, rightfully, refuses to disappear, as evidenced by this excerpt from an October 17, 2011 article in High Country News:
…Rob Palmer’s suggestions are facing resistance from many in the wildfire establishment. Tom Harbour, the U.S. Forest Service’s director of fire and aviation, says, “Implementing a Golden Hour response as Robert Palmer has framed it would require fundamental changes,” and the benefits might not outweigh “the additional risks or the unintended consequences.”
Harbour contends that a Golden Hour mandate would require greater use of aircraft. Because aircraft accidents are responsible for so many wildland firefighter deaths — 50 percent since 2000 — aircraft fatalities would likely increase. And millions of new homes have been built in recent years within wildfire-prone forests; if crews were prohibited from battling some wildfires around homes, that would put more lives at risk. Continue reading “Medical evacuations of firefighters and the Golden Hour”
A draft report has been released about the the Fourmile Canyon fire. The fire started on September 6 and burned 6,200 acres and 168 homes a few miles west of Boulder, Colorado. The fire was devastating to local fire districts within the burned perimeter in several ways, including the facts that a firefighter’s burn pile escaped and started the fire, the homes of 12 firefighters burned, and one fire station and an engine inside it burned. Wildfire Today covered the fire extensively.
Map of the Fourmile fire near Boulder, showing heat detected by the MODIS satellite at 4:18 a.m. Sept. 8.
One of the interesting findings was that some fuel treatments done before the fire came through actually increased the intensity of the fire, compared with untreated areas. This was primarily due to the more open stands allowing wind to push the surface fires, and the treatment prescriptions’ emphasis on thinning to a target basal area (density of trees) rather than designing a prescription that accounted for fire behavior during dry and windy conditions. In addition, a significant amount of surface fuels remained, including slash piles in some areas that had not been burned after the treatments.
Another finding was that 83% of the homes that burned were ignited by surface fire, rather than a crown fire, which is typical.
The report includes some statistics on the use of aircraft on the fire. I broke out a calculator and did some analysis, arriving at these numbers:
$343,082, total cost of the retardant dropped by air tankers (just the retardant).
$1.97, cost per gallon of retardant (just the retardant).
174,149, gallons of retardant dropped by air tankers.
86, loads of retardant dropped by air tankers.
47.09, total flight hours by air tankers.
3,698, gallons of retardant dropped per flight hour by air tankers.
$3.55, total cost per gallon for the delivery of retardant by air tankers.
$619,483, Total cost of the air tankers, including retardant and flight costs.
0.55 hour, the average time for each air tanker drop. (This is extremely low and is due to the fact that the air tankers were reloading at Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Boulder, Jeffco air tanker base, about 15 air miles from the fire. This helped keep the cost per gallon of delivered retardant lower than on your typical fire, which is normally much more than 15 miles away from the reload base.)
As a comparison, on September 9 there were three large Type 1 helicopters dropping water:
$99,284, Total cost for the three Type 1 helicopters on September 9.
71,950, gallons of water dropped by the three helicopters.
12.9, hours flown by the three helicopters.
5,577, gallons of water dropped per flight hour by three Type 1 helicopters on September 9.
$1.38, cost per gallon of water delivered.
(?) the number of loads of water delivered was not specified.
A decision about using helicopters vs. air tankers should be based on more than just the above numbers. Retardant, sometimes known as “long-term retardant”, slows the spread of a fire more effectively and for a longer period of time than plain water. And helicopters cruise at a much slower speed than an air tanker, so depending on their location at the time of initial dispatch, it can take much longer to arrive at the fire.
Scroll down to see a map showing the location of every drop by a large air tanker on the fire.
Moving on to the rest of the report, here are some excerpts:
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Fuel Treatments
Thinning trees to a specified density (residual basal area) or spacing was the prescription often negotiated with land owners. In addition, the treatments were often focused on improving the health of the forest (removing diseased and malformed trees, i.e., dwarf mistletoe) rather than modifying fire behavior.
Pervasive spotting observed during the Fourmile Canyon Fire easily breached the narrow fuel treatment units and rendered them of limited value to containment efforts.
The abundance of grasses, forbs, shrubs, and often branches and twigs that could have been removed through judicious surface treatments (e.g., prescribed fire) occurring within the areas where the fuels had been treated contributed to the high fire intensities and fire spread rate observed.
Post-fire satellite imagery clearly shows the absence of changes in stand condition inside treated areas compared to neighboring untreated stands. In some cases, treated stands appeared to burn more intensely than adjacent untreated stands, perhaps because of additional surface fuels present as a result of the thinning. One clear example of this comes from near Gold Hill where the piles of slash were scattered in the understory of a thinned stand but had not been burned.
Fire Prevention Weeks ends on Sunday, October 16, 2011. To end the week, President Obama has ordered that all flags be flown at half staff at all federal buildings on Sunday in honor of the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Service. Actually, this is required by Public Law 107-51 which was signed into law on October 16, 2001 to memorialize fallen firefighters.
Here is an excerpt from the Presidential Proclamation:
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For Immediate Release October 07, 2011
Presidential Proclamation–Fire Prevention Week
FIRE PREVENTION WEEK, 2011
BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
A PROCLAMATION
Fires, whether caused by people or nature, can have devastating effects. Hundreds of thousands of fires happen in and around American homes every year, killing or injuring thousands of people and causing untold damage to families and communities. This week, we honor the selfless first responders who put themselves on the line to safeguard us all from fire, and we reaffirm the need for Americans to practice fire safety throughout the year.
[…]
This week, our Nation honors the dedicated firefighters and other first responders who do the hard, dangerous work of keeping our communities safe from fire. Many have laid down their lives to save our friends and neighbors, and their selfless sacrifice defines the nature of courage. As we pay tribute to their memories, let us resolve to maintain our vigilance and take proactive steps to stop fire emergencies before they begin.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim October 9 through October 15, 2011, as Fire Prevention Week. On Sunday, October 16, 2011, in accordance with Public Law 107 51, the flag of the United States will be flown at half staff on all Federal office buildings in honor of the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Service. I call on all Americans to participate in this observance with appropriate programs and activities and by renewing their efforts to prevent fires and their tragic consequences.
IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this seventh day of October, in the year of our Lord two thousand eleven, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-sixth.
Wednesday, October 5th, saw yet another report of an entrapment on a prairie fire in the State of South Dakota. This is the third burn over/entrapment incident to be reported for that date. This incident occurred in Hutchinson County, about 1 mile South and 1 ¼ miles west of Tripp, SD. Jim Burk called the fire department today and gathered some more facts on the situation.
The fire was burning in CRP (Fuel Model 3) and had jumped the county road. The Tripp VFD engine was driving through the smoke, become disorientated, and drove down the steep embankment on the south road ditch. The engine did not roll, but as the firefighters exited the vehicle, one firefighter twisted his ankle trying to get up the steep embankment, and the other firefighter tried to crawl up the ditch, but could not, so exited the ditch running towards the west. That firefighter sustained 2nd degree burns to the face and arms. He will require skin grafts on the upper arms and is in the hospital at Sioux Falls. No damage to air ways. The firefighter was wearing his structure turn out bunker pants.
The weather from the nearest RAWS (Lake Andes) showed 95 degrees, 19 RH and winds SE at 25.
I have filed the ‘Wildland Fire Fatality and Entrapment Initial Report” through GPC and RMCC to NICC.
The SD Fire Marshal’s Office is checking into this report as well. This report is initial, and all information is preliminary and subject to change.
JIM STRAIN
Asst. Chief — Operations, South Dakota Dept of Agriculture – Division of Wildland Fire Suppression
Horse wrangler Erin Bolster on Letterman show with Tonk and Letterman, October 11, 2011.
You may remember last month when Wildfire Today told you about the heroic wrangler lady, Erin Bolster, who twice charged on her horse a grizzly bear that was charging a small boy who was on a horseback trail ride she was leading in Montana. Last night she appeared with her horse Tonk on the Late Show with David Letterman, and David was as impressed with her story as I was.
