Winner of photo caption contest announced

Wildfire Today is pleased to announce that Judy Van Aswegen  has won the photo caption contest. Judy’s caption was:

When the cooler box and refreshments failed to materialize, Dave began to suspect he had misread the memo.

The photo WITH the winning caption is below.

firefighters in canoes
When the cooler box and refreshments failed to materialize, Dave began to suspect he had misread the memo. Caption: Judy. Photo: Peter Willis, State of Minnesota

Judy is a software developer in the Vancouver area and has marketed Firebreak Equipment’s Blackline Burner in North America. She has been a reader of Wildfire Today since we started in January, 2008.

The response to the contest was overwhelming. We received 57 comments with captions, and some of them had multiple entries. Many of them were great, and it was very difficult choose a winner. Thanks to everyone who participated, we really appreciate it.

Here are some Honorable Mention entries:

Todd says:
Boy Scout troop attempts to fulfill their wildland firefighting and canoe skills merit badges in a single day.

moenkopi says:
Portage to Portage? I thought it was Portal to Portal.

Leann Briggle says:
So boss, really, how are we going to identify where to put that wet line?

sage says:
I must have missed the day they taught this in 130, 190.

Brian says:
Nomex shirt $95, aluminum canoe, $699, commuting to a fire in the BWCAW, priceless.

Dick Mangan says:
Taking the WCT in Minnesota: paddle/portage a 45 pound canoe for 3 nautical miles in under 45 minutes.

Jeff says:
With the recent rise in Forest Service health benefit costs, American firefighters flee to Canada by any means possible.

Tim Walton says:
“There were a hell of a lot things they didn’t tell me when I signed on with this outfit”

Jeff says:
Joe always made fun of firefighters who wore goggles on their hardhats until he realized that if he just had a set of goggles and a snorkel he would have one hell of a story when he got home.

The story of the photo:

We heard from Peter Willis, the photographer, and I asked him about the story behind the photo:

The fire was the Cavity Lake fire [July 14, 2006]- one of the big fires that happened in the blowdown area in the BWCAW [Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness]. Yes the firefighters were heading to the smoke across the lake. They were then to cut line across to another lake to contain the north end of the fire.

If I remember right there were around 200 canoes leased to get fire fighters in to the fire. Some canoes were flown deeper in to the fire by tying them to the floats of the beavers the FS has. This crew was spiked on some islands across the short portage I was standing on. They then canoed to work every day. On this fire as on many of the fires I have been on in the BWCAW in addition to the standard ground support unit they also have a boat support unit.

I was the COML [Communications Unit Leader] on a Type 2 team for this fire (It was right about the time a Type 1 team took over so I left shortly afterwards). I had just done a reclone for this crew before they headed across the water.

Happy birthday Glacier National Park

Glacier National Park turns 100 today, May 11. In honor of the occasion the park held a Rededication Ceremony this morning. I just talked with Dave Soleim, the Fire Management Officer and an old buddy of mine, and he is serving as the Planning Section Chief for the Centennial activities in the park. There are seven live web cams in the park, including one that showed today’s ceremony.

The park was created during the infamous year of the Big Burn, 1910, during which huge fires raged across portions of Montana, Idaho, and Washington. This year western Montana is dry, and NICC has projected that the area will have “increasing to above normal fire potential” mid-July through August.

Glacier NP fire crew
Glacier NP firefighters

According to the Park’s web site, the fire staff consists of 16 people, including:

  • 1 Fire Management Officer,
  • 1 Fire Operations Specialist,
  • 1 Fire Ecologist,
  • 1 Prescribed Fire Specialist,
  • 1 Fire Program Assistant,
  • 1 Lead Fire Effects Monitor,
  • 1 Cache Manager,
  • 4 lookouts,
  • 3 engine crew personnel and
  • 2 fire effects monitors

The fire season of 2003 was a busy one for Glacier National Park. Several pages on their site are devoted to photos and videos of those fires.

Robert fire
Robert fire. A Burnout was conducted near the Fish Creek Campground and near Kelly Camp in an effort to reduce fuel sources from the advancing Robert Fire. This was taken across Lake McDonald.

NWCG, the terminology police

The National Wildfire Coordination Group, apparently with a lot of time on their hands, distributed a memo on April 30 directing that certain terminology is obsolete and should not be used, and that other terms are now in vogue and should be used if you want to be one of the cool people. This, from the group that in the 1990’s brought us “Wildland Fire Use for Resource Benefits” as a term that should be used when talking about wildland fire with the general public. Rolls off the tongue very easily.

But seriously, there is a need for land management agencies to use the same terminology when planning for and discussing fire, but the terms have to make sense, be descriptive, and be easily remembered.

According to the memo, there are two terms that are now illegal to use and are described as obsolete:

Appropriate Management Response: “Although obsolete, this term was used in Land/Resource and Fire Management Plans as the type and level of response to a wildland fire based on threats to lives and safety, resource values, and fire conditions. This may have included a flexible range of tactics and strategies to achieve one or more objectives. While the technical definition aligns with the 2009 implementation guidance, the term was often used incorrectly. In general, it is expected that “appropriate” is dropped and communications address the incident objectives, strategies and tactics.”

Wildland Fire Use: “Although now obsolete, this was once used to describe the goals/objectives, strategies, and tactics for a naturally-ignited wildfire to achieve improvements or positive effects to natural resources or reduce risk as identified in land-use and resource management plans. Previously was reported by agencies but now there is no longer internal or external reporting of this type of fire.”

Other interesting tidbits:

Controlled Burn, Prescribed Burn, and Prescribed Fire can all be used interchangeably, and are synonymous.

Wildfire: “An unplanned ignition caused by lightning, volcanoes, unauthorized, and accidental human-caused actions and escaped prescribed fires.”

Arizona approves fireworks, bans human-animal hybrids

Florida used to be the state that produced weird news, but recently it has been Arizona that has been capturing the headlines. Governor Jan Brewer recently signed into law dozens of bills, one of which allows the sale of certain kinds of fireworks, including ground and hand-held devices such as sparklers, spinning wheels, and smoke devices. The law bans fireworks intended to rise above the ground, such as bottle rockets or roman candles. It allows cities to ban the use of fireworks within their boundaries. Bobby Ruiz, an Assistant Chief for the Phoenix Fire Department said, “Now, we’re going to have more kids with matches and playing with fireworks that put out a lot of sparks and easily ignite dry vegetation.”

Another law signed by the governor bans the use of human embryos for creating “human-animal hybrids”.  Whew. I’m glad she took care of that issue.

Emergency notification of the public

Yellow Bird
Dr. Stephen Robson with his YellowBird emergency radio activator. Photo: Richard Briggs

An obstetrician in Australia has invented a device that would turn on your AM/FM radio during an emergency. After experiencing bushfires in 2003 and the Boxing Day Tsunami in 2004, he came up with the concept of an electronic device that could be activated by emergency management authorities that would turn on your AM/FM radio. When the radio is activated by a tone broadcast during the radio transmission, you would hear a siren and see flashing lights before the emergency warning message. The device, named “YellowBird”, can also include technology to detect your location so that the emergency services could activate radios in specific locations.

Some Pacific nations have embraced the concept, but the federal government in Australia has not tested it and prefers a new system that sends voice messages to landline phones and a text message to mobile phones. The phones in Australia are targeted by the location of the handset or the billing address of the mobile phone. The federal government is considering using location-based technology in mobile phones in the future to send information based on their current location.

None of these systems are perfect, in that if a single technology is used, a segment of the population will be left out. For the AM/FM radio system, you have to have a radio that contains the electronic chip, which will increase the price of the radio. Some people are not interested in even owning an AM/FM radio anymore, at least in their homes, but they might be convinced to purchase one if the additional price of the technology was reasonable.

With some mobile phone automatic notification systems, at least in the United States, you have to opt-in to be notified. That is, you have to contact the authorities and give them your mobile phone number. The Australian system appears to bypass this opt-in requirement and sends messages to all mobile phones based on the billing address.

Thanks Dick

Large prominence eruption on the Sun


From NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day:

Explanation: Sometimes part of the Sun can just explode into space. These explosions might occur as powerful solar flares, coronal mass ejections, or comparatively tame eruptive solar prominences. Pictured above is one of the largest solar prominence eruptions yet observed, one associated with a subsequent coronal mass ejection. The prominence erupted last month and was recorded by several Sun-sensing instruments, including the recently launched Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). The above time lapse sequence was captured by SDO and occurred over a few hours. In recent months, our Sun has becoming increasingly active, following a few years of an unusually dormant solar minimum.