Firegeezer has a story about how during the large fires last October in southern California, Poway firefighters were ordered to withdraw from an area and then waited for 7 hours in a staging area while 23 homes in that community burned.
2008 Annual Wildland Fire Refresher Training
Having returned from Roatan Island, today I had a chance to review this year’s Annual Wildland Refresher Training. As usual, it is well done and of high quality. The sections about the fire behavior, the Alabaugh Fire entrapment, and treatment for burn injuries are very interesting. Several interviews contributed a great deal to the DVD, including those of Dr. Bret Butler, Kelly Close, Dr. Ted Putnam, and Tom Boatner. The DVD even includes a copy of the piece that “60 Minutes” did on “Mega Fires” last summer.
Alabaugh Fire
There are quite a few issues related to the entrapment that could be opportunities for learning related to this fire which burned 10,324 acres and 27 homes. One homeowner died when he went back to try to save his belongings. The fire started from a lightning strike on July 7, 2007.
Some of the issues are mentioned only briefly in passing, perhaps to avoid criticizing the personnel who were involved. Some of the firefighters assigned to the fire were kind enough to step forward and discuss on camera their ordeal. They deserve our thanks for helping others to avoid a similar situation down the road. I hope the facilitators putting on the training this spring can allow enough time for some of these issues to be expanded upon.
Treatment for Burn Injuries
One of the units in the video describes the horrific situation that two federal employees faced after being burned on wildland fires…. and unfortunately I am not only referring to their burn injuries. The injuries are of course terrible to have to experience, but what could have made them even worse were the delays in being able to obtain adequate medical care.
Burn injuries are very complex and can’t be properly treated by a primary care physician, a trauma center, or an emergency room, even if they have access to a plastic surgeon. Burn injuries require immediate treatment by trained specialists who deal with burns every day. Every day. In many cases, burn injuries will not heal properly or the healing will take much longer if the injuries are not treated quickly by the staff at a “verified burn center”. Waiting days or weeks is not acceptable. The American Burn Association has more information about the verification process and also has a list of burn centers that qualify for this status.
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Lawsuit against Mark Rey and the USFS is dismissed
From a story at Montana’s News Station.com
A lawsuit that forced the nation’s top forestry official to apologize in a Missoula courtroom is over. The lawsuit by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics was filed in 2003, and charged the U.S. Forest Service with violating federal law by indiscriminately dropping retardant on forest fires.
Two weeks ago that case reached a climax when Undersecretary of Agriculture Mark Rey appeared before federal judge Donald Molloy, and faced a possible contempt of court citation.
Molloy was angry that the Forest Service missed deadlines for delivering environmental review documents to him, and for generally taking more time than he liked. Ultimately he decided not to find Rey or the Forest Service in contempt, but not before Rey and other agency officials apologized multiple times.
Now, the case is done. Molloy signed an order last Wednesday dismissing the lawsuit. The judge wrote that the Forest Service has complied with the procedures of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act, and so there’s nothing left to decide.
The sweet smell of smoke
That was the headline above an editorial in the Payson Roundup in Arizona. They are “giddy” about the Forest Service reducing fuels and burning piles.
Here is an excerpt:
It’s not quite the bracing smell of “napalm in the morning,” but we get positively giddy with the wafting of smoke drifting into town these days from the Forest Service slash piles just over the hill.
This week, the Forest Service concluded the last of its major winter burns to get rid of piles of debris from tree thinning operations on more than 4,300 acres on the outskirts of Payson.
Makes us want to do a little jig — and throw our arms around the nearest stalwart in Forest Service green and give him a big, wet kiss.
Make no mistake — that smoke is wafting of Rim Country’s biggest problem.
Truth be told, every other problem on the list — from meth use to propane bills will some day seem like trivial foolishness if the Forest Service doesn’t get thin the dangerously overgrown forest before the inevitable disaster overtakes us.
Unfortunately, it falls to today’s overburdened and underfunded Forest Service to set right a century of mismanagement.
Once upon a time, fires burned through Rim Country regularly — thinning the trees and creating a network of meadows, aspen groves and open patches. The forest was largely fire resistant, with the big trees relatively unaffected by the frequent, low-intensity ground fires.
Then we turned the forest into a tree farm and spent a century stomping out every fire we could. Crowds of pine thickets sprang up in the clear cuts and tons of down wood accumulated on every acre.
So a forest that used to have 50 to 300 trees per acre and more grass than pine thickets now has 3,000 spindly, overstressed trees per acre across vast stretches. A timber industry geared to profit from the now scarce big trees has been nearly shut down, just when the Forest Service needs to thin the forest on a massive scale.
Brush fire at Monkey Junction
OK, I admit it. I just wanted to type that headline. But there really was a 3-acre fire at Monkey Junction near Wilmington, NC, according to WWAY News Channel 3.
Update on study about large fires and greenhouse gases
On March 12 we wrote about a study that was recently released which stated that the amount of gases released by four large wildland fires was comparable to the gases released by 7 million cars on the road for 1 year. I found out who the author of the study is. He has a reputation for drawing, uh, interesting conclusions from a limited analysis of facts.
We posted an update to the story here.