Wildfire Today

News and opinion about wildland fire

Wildfire Today

Missoula smokejumpers on TV Friday night

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 1 Comment on Missoula smokejumpers on TV Friday night

Smokejumpers specialSmokejumpers from the Missoula, Montana base are going to star in a new one-hour special on CMT, appropriately named SMOKEJUMPERS, on Friday night, April 23 at 10 p.m., ET/PT. Currently planned to be just a one-time special, the senior vice president of programming for CMT, Mary Beth Cunin, was quoted as saying that if the special is successful, they could green-light the show for a full year of episodes.

In 2008, a film crew from Megalomedia followed the Missoula jumpers as they trained and fought fires. They did not parachute from a DC-3, Shorts Sherpa C-23, or Twin Otter aircraft with the jumpers, but met them on the ground at fires. (Two smokejumper bases have USFS-owned DC-3 aircraft that have been converted to turbo prop machines–Missoula and McCall, Idaho.)

I talked with Missoula smokejumper Rogers Warren who explained that in 2008 the film crew had a special use permit from the US Forest Service which made it possible for them to film the jumpers and later use the footage for commercial purposes. A public affairs officer from the USFS accompanied the film crew most of the time.

Here is an excerpt from a press release from CMT about the program:

NASHVILLE – April 7, 2010 – CMT’s Friday night is getting hotter with the premiere of a new one-hour special, SMOKEJUMPERS, premiering on Friday, April 23 at 10:00 p.m., ET/PT. The special is the third piece of programming in CMT’s newly branded Friday night of adventure programming, CMT ADVENTURE COUNTRY, and immediately follows new episodes of GATOR 911 and DANGER COAST.

With hand tools, explosives, and the ability to think fast on their feet, SMOKEJUMPERS have one job – to contain the fire they are set to extinguish. But first, they must get there by parachuting into often unchartered territory and treacherous forests and mountains. The men and women of SMOKEJUMPERS show how they can often be the only hope to stop a fire burning out of control, and why they are the most important lines of defense against one of the deadliest natural disasters. Success means saving land, but failure could mean losing lives, property and costing millions of dollars in damage. The one-hour special, offers an inside look at this dangerous profession – from the nervous rookie jumper, to the twenty-year veteran, the thrill-seeking big-wave surfer, and the family man with a master’s degree. These SMOKEJUMPERS share one goal – to stop a potentially devastating and dangerous force of nature.

SMOKEJUMPERS is produced by Megalomedia, with Jonathan Nowzaradan as Executive Producer. Melanie Moreau and Bob Kusbit serve as Executive Producers for CMT.

The Danger Coast series, which follows waterborne firefighters with the Miami-Dade Fire Department, also looks interesting. Episode #102 will air Friday, April 23, at 9:30 ET, just before Smokejumpers.

Here are some photos from the CMT Smokejumper site:
Missoula smokejumpers

More photos are below. Continue reading “Missoula smokejumpers on TV Friday night”

New red flag warning criteria in California

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags 1 Comment on New red flag warning criteria in California

The National Weather Service in southern California is changing the criteria that triggers a red flag warning for fire danger. In addition to wind speed and relative humidity, the new system will take into account local geography and terrain. Weather forecast offices across the state will have different criteria. Check out the full story in the LA Times, but here is a video of an LA Times reporter explaining the new system.

Dick Rothermel’s collaboration with Norman Maclean

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags ,
Dick Rothermel
Dick Rothermel

The Missoulian has an article about how Norman Maclean, in researching the fire behavior on the Mann Gulch fire in 1979, sought out Dick Rothermel of the Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula when Maclean was working on his “Young Men and Fire” book. Here is an excerpt from the article:

Rothermel, an aeronautical engineer, had developed a fire-spread model at the lab in 1972. It’s a model that, while technologically enhanced over the years, remains the engine of tools used to predict fire behavior today.

At first his involvement with Maclean’s book was “something I really didn’t want to do,” Rothermel told a packed room Thursday at the fire sciences lab’s weekly seminar series.

Controversy still swirled around the Mann Gulch fire, in which 13 firefighters died, and he had no desire to reopen emotional wounds. But the tragedy was what spawned establishment of the research lab itself, which recruited Rothermel shortly after it opened in 1960.

“We set up a communication that went on for several years while (Maclean) was back at the University of Chicago, and when he’d come to Seeley Lake and hang out, he’d come and see us,” Rothermel said.

They went to work on Mann Gulch questions that Maclean felt remained unanswered. How did the fire near the Missouri River north of Helena get from a ridge above the firefighters to the mouth of the gulch below? Where did the men go and why couldn’t they escape? Did the escape fire that saved foreman Wag Dodge’s life overtake his own crew?

“We never could get it straight, in (Maclean’s) mind anyway, as to just what happened until finally I worked out a diagram,” said Rothermel.

The graph shows the rate of spread of the fire and the rate of travel of the men, and how “they finally meet in a race that couldn’t be won,” he said. Maclean used it in “Young Men and Fire.” In 1993, the Forest Service published the chart along with Rothermel’s own assessment of the day in a 10-page pamphlet called “Mann Gulch Fire: A Race That Couldn’t Be Won.” Rothermel has high praise for Maclean’s work, calling it “an almost poetic rendition of what happened that day.”

“Norman was kind of a feisty little guy, and he was an English professor,” Rothermel said, recalling the days of scientific discussion with Maclean and fellow fire scientist Frank Albini.

“Norman would look at us and we’d get into ‘rate of spread’ and ‘flame lengths’ and ‘heat content,’ and pretty soon his eyes would glaze over. He’d start saying how strong these young men were. His main thought in this book was the young men themselves, and the tragedy that occurred.”

Rothermel retired from the fire lab 15 years ago. When Norman Maclean died in 1990 the book that he had worked on for 14 years was still not finished, but his son, John N. Maclean completed some editing on the book and it was published in 1992.

Lightning photographed–on Saturn

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized

As far as we know, there is no vegetation on Saturn that can be ignited by lightning, so there’s very little chance of a wildland firefighter being sent there to fight fire. But for the first time, lightning has been photographed someplace other than on our comfy little third rock from the Sun we call Earth.

This video was captured by the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn. It was recorded over a 16-minute period and is compressed into the 10 seconds you will see below.