Thirty-five years ago today three members of the Mormon Lake Hot Shot crew lost their lives on the Battlement Creek fire in Colorado between Grand Junction and Glenwood Springs. On July 17, 1976 a burnout operation initiated by a hot shot crew moved across a canyon and then up a steep slope overrunning the position of another crew, the Mormon Lake Hot Shots who were also burning out a section of fireline. Four of them were entrapped; only one survived, but with severe burns. The victims were Anthony A. Czak, Scott L. Nelson, and Stephen H. Furey.
From the accident report:
Apparently, neither crew knew of the specific location or assignment of the other.
The crew all wore aluminum hardhats, canvas vests, Nomex shirts and non-fire-resistant work pants. Fire shelters were not used. The report, which is surprisingly long, detailed, and thorough, states that fire shelters may have prevented serious burns and deaths. Policy on issuing and carrying shelters had not been established yet. This incident became the catalyst for the mandatory use of fire shelters and fire resistant clothing.
Click to enlarge. Red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both. Credit: Eric Fischer
Eric Fischer has created a series of maps showing the locations of the users of Twitter and Flickr. I find this fascinating. Click on the image above to see a larger version. A high-res copy is here.
Mr. Fischer wrote a program that uses the geo-tagging features of the two services. In a comment on Flicker he wrote:
There’s not a whole lot of technology behind it. It’s a C program that runs through the photos/tweets in chronological order, plotting the earliest ones the most brightly and stepping the brightness down for points that don’t show up for the first time until later on.
The points on the maps are allowed to diffuse by a few pixels when there is an additional record for a point that is already plotted, with the brightness falling off exponentially as the point that is actually plotted gets further from its intended location.
Mr. Fischer also created zoomed-in maps of several dozen cities around the world. Here is one example — New York.
New York. Red dots are locations of Flickr pictures. Blue dots are locations of Twitter tweets. White dots are locations that have been posted to both. Credit: Eric Fischer
We can’t afford to lose nobody as dry as it is right now. We got to have all hands on deck.
Those were the words of Michael Batton, the district fire coordinator with the Texas Forest Service out of Jacksonville, discussing the implications of firefighters working in the extreme Texas heat.
Here is a link to a video report in which Mr. Batton further elaborates on fighting fire under the current conditions in Texas.
C-130 MAFFS air tanker helping to protect the ruins in Frijoles Canyon on the Las Conchas fire, June 27, 2011. Photo: Jayson Coil
After almost a month, flying 242 sorties and dropping over 609,000 gallons of retardant on fires in the southwest, the military C-130 Modular Airborne Fire Fighting System-equipped aircraft have concluded their assignment, due at least in part to the monsoons returning to the area. Four were activated on June 15 and dropped over a half million gallons of retardant until two were released on July 7. The remaining two continued working out of Albuquerque, NM until their assignment ended on July 13.
A helmet, Pulaski, and boots were placed on the Mineral Wells High School Auditorium stage during the July 8 memorial service for Caleb Hamm in Mineral Wells, Texas. The picture of Hamm, 24, was contributed by former Bureau of Land Management co-workers when Hamm was on a USDA Forest Service helitack crew in Utah. Other photo credit, David May/Index.
Firefighters gathered in Boise on July 14 to pay respect to Caleb Hamm, a member of the Utah-based Bonneville Hot Shot crew who died while fighting the 337 fire in Texas on June 7. The Idaho Statesman has a gallery of 17 photos of the funeral and some of the hundreds of firefighters that attended. Mr. Hamm collapsed and later died while he was being transported to a hospital. Early indications are that the extreme heat in Texas was a primary factor.
A television station reported that a dozen hot shot crews were present to honor Mr. Hamm, who had been a wildland firefighter for six years. He was a Boise resident who attended Boise State University and the University of Idaho before transferring to Weber State University in Utah, where he was majoring in fire ecology.
In the video below which reports on the funeral in Boise, the correct name of the organization they are referring to is the Wildland Firefighter Foundation. The family has requested that in lieu of flowers that people make donations to the WFF which has been assisting the family since the fatality.
The Las Conchas fire, taken at 1:44 p.m. June 26, 2011, approximately 45 minutes after it started. Photo: Michael Grady
The Associated Press has widely distributed a story with the headline “Largest fire in NM history might have been averted”. The article quotes Albuquerque real estate agent Roger Cox who owns the 200-acre ranch near where the largest fire in New Mexico history started:
If there had been someone to attend to it when the power line got hit, there would have been no fire. It would have been a small burn, but there wouldn’t be a big fire. We didn’t have anybody there when the fire started. It’s not like we started a campfire that started a wildfire. The tree broke the wire and started the fire. There is nobody at fault. It is just an act of God that caused it, and it’s a horrible thing, but that’s it.
Mr. Cox goes on to explain that the ranch’s caretaker had gone to Los Alamos to run an errand and returned just in time to evacuate their 10 horses and 20 steers.
New Mexico State Forestry reported on July 3 that a powerline caused the Las Conchas fire:
Investigators believe the fire started after an aspen tree was blown down onto nearby power lines during a period of strong winds. The contact resulted in the line arcing, which then caused the tree to catch fire. Heat and flame caused the line to snap, which then allowed the burning tree to fall onto the ground where the fire spread into nearby vegetation.
The photo of the fire above taken by Mike Grady approximately 45 minutes after the fire started, shows that it was well established at that time and was being influenced by a strong wind. InciWeb states the fire started at “approximately 1:00 p.m.” June 26. On that day the records of the Tower weather station about 5 miles west of the fire’s origin show that at 1:21 p.m. the relative humidity was 6%, the temperature was 90, and the wind was out of the west at 19 mph gusting up to 41 mph.
Weather data from the Tower RAWS weather station June 26, 2011
Under those weather conditions it is doubtful that a ranch caretaker could have detected, gathered fire suppression equipment, traveled to, and then put out a fire being pushed by 19 to 40 mph winds adjacent to an arcing powerline.
Firefighters meet at a ranch in the Jemez Mountains where the Las Conchas fire started. Photo: Clyde Mueller/The New Mexican
Before it was picked up by the Associated Press, the article was originally written by Julie Ann Grimm for The New Mexican, where the headline does not say the fire could have been “averted”, but says “Co-owner of ranch near start of fire says caretaker was gone when tree ignited”.
It is unfortunate that the New Mexican and the Associated Press (especially) give so much credence to the statements of a real estate agent, and such fire suppression capability to a ranch caretaker. The fire could have been averted if the caretaker had not been running errands? Doubtful.
It was unrelated to the three fatalities, but the day before, on July 16, 1976, a B-26 air tanker working on the fire crashed about one mile south of the fire.
