File photo of the Sawmill Fire in Arizona, early in the morning on April 24, 2017. It was caused by an exploding target. Photo by Arizona Department of Forestry and Fire Management.
From CNN, April 4, 2020:
A gender reveal party in Florida went wrong and sparked a 10-acre fire, CNN affiliate WESH reported. Firefighters were called to a home in Brevard County, Florida, last weekend after reports that a blaze was possibly ignited by fireworks, fire officials said. But when they arrived, firefighters realized some explosives had been in the mix.
“We were informed that it was caused by a gender reveal using Tannerite and a weapon,” Brevard County Fire Rescue Chief Mark Schollmeyer told WESH. Tannerite is a highly explosive substance often used as a rifle target.
The county had been under a burn ban, including outdoor activities such as campfires, bonfires and trash burning, because of the dry conditions in the region. The order comes with a fine of up to $500. It’s unclear whether anyone faced a fine.
A gender reveal party in Arizona in 2017 ignited the 46,000-acre Sawmill Fire when an off-duty Border Patrol agent shot a Tannerite explosive target. The agent pleaded guilty and was ordered to make an initial payment of $100,000, then make monthly payments after that. According to the Arizona Daily Star and the Green Valley News, he agreed in court to pay $500 a month for the next 20 years, which adds up to $120,000, for a total of $220,000. He was also sentenced to 5 years of probation and agreed to participate in a public service announcement with the U.S. Forest Service concerning the cause of the Sawmill fire.
Exploding targets consist of two ingredients that when mixed by the end user explode when shot by a high-velocity projectile. After the ingredients are combined, the compound is illegal to transport and is classified as an explosive by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Exploding targets have caused many fires since they became more popular in recent years, have been banned in some areas, and caused the death of at least one person.
Over 3,500 rental cars burned at Southwest Florida International Airport at Fort Myers, Florida April 3, 2020. Photo by Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.
Yesterday a fire at the Southwest Florida International Airport at Fort Myers, Florida destroyed 3,516 rental cars that were stored in an overflow parking area on the east side of Terminal Access Road. Firefighters on the ground were assisted by helicopters dropping water on the flames. The cars were stored in a grassy field, a fact that may have helped the fire spread. Vicki Moreland, communications director for the airport, said even though 3,516 cars burned, another 3,800 cars in the lot were saved. She said the cause of the fire is being investigated by the State Fire Marshal.
Over 3,500 rental cars burned at Southwest Florida International Airport at Fort Myers, Florida April 3, 2020. Photo by Florida Forest Service – Caloosahatchee Forestry Center.
The main road leading to the terminal was closed during the fire but reopened at 11 p.m. Friday. Saturday morning, Florida Forest Service personnel returned to the scene to make sure the fire did not pick back up again, according to Melinda Avni, FFS mitigation specialist.
The Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office reported that one of their Huey helicopters flown by Chief Pilot Shane Engelauf made over 80 water drops on the fire.
Over 3,500 rental cars burned at Southwest Florida International Airport at Fort Myers, Florida April 3, 2020. Photo by Charlotte County Sheriff’s Office.A small pyrocumulus cloud forms over the convection column of smoke as over 3,500 rental cars burned at Southwest Florida International Airport at Fort Myers, Florida. Photo by Sean Tully, April 3, 2020.
Plus, our opinion about fighting fire during the pandemic
Price Valley Prescribed Fire in Idaho, 2019. Photo by Kari Greer.
The Chief of the U.S. Forest Service has laid out some very broad guidelines about how the agency will approach fire management during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a letter to Regional Directors dated April 3, 2020, Chief Victoria Christiansen said one of the objectives during this fire year will be to minimize the exposure from the virus and smoke to firefighters and communities. Local resources will be prioritized and the predominant strategy will be rapid containment, Chief Christiansen said.
Additionally, resources should be committed to fires “only when there is a reasonable expectation of success in protecting life and critical property and infrastructure.”
Click here to read the full letter from Chief Christiansen.
Kari Cobb, a Public Affairs Officer with the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise told us about some steps the federal wildland fire agencies are considering:
Hiring more seasonal employees than usual to help reduce risk;
Focusing on aggressive initial attack to quickly contain fires while relying more on aviation and local resources;
Social distancing by unit, without traditional fire camps and with quarantines both before and after fires;
Deploying resources in a way that minimizes travel to other geographic areas;
Where feasible, increasing technology use through virtual work to reduce the risk of exposure to the coronavirus;
Setting up systems for screening, testing, quarantining, and tracking our firefighters;
Tailoring the way we communicate and coordinate with our workforce, partners, cooperators, and the public to the novel risks we face this year; and;
Shifting our workloads to respond to COVID-19, protect the public, and safely manage wildland fire throughout the fire year.
Area Command Teams
As we first reported on March 17, the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group (NMAC) has assigned three Area Command Teams to work with partners at all levels in the fire community to develop protocols for wildfire response during the COVID-19 pandemic. The protocols will be integrated into Wildland Fire Response Plans and will be available to Geographic Areas, Incident Management Teams, and local units to help guide effective wildfire response. The Teams will also be working with and following guidance from federal, state, county and tribal health officials. Area Command Teams are working directly with NMAC and agency representatives; Geographic Area Coordination Groups; the National Wildfire Coordinating Group; dispatch and coordination centers; local units; and federal, state and county health officials as appropriate to ensure thorough and current wildfire response plans are in place.
Response plans will include procedures for potential wildland fire personnel infection, which will be led by the local State Health Department following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance and protocol.
The annual refresher training, RT-130, is also not required this year. Instead, employees are encouraged to complete a self-study refresher utilizing the WFSTAR videos and support materials. The Board recommends that the study include topics that focus on entrapment avoidance, related case studies, current issues, and other hazards and safety issues.
Many training events, meetings, and conferences that had been scheduled for months have been cancelled or postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Will firefighters be tested for COVID-19?
We asked Kaari E. Carpenter, a Lead Public Affairs Specialist with the Forest Service if wildland firefighters would be tested for the virus. She told us, “Specific risk-based protocols for how we will respond will be developed at the field level by line officers and through the National Multi-Agency Coordinating Group.”
Ms. Carpenter said no Forest Service firefighters have tested positive for the virus or died from COVID-19. She did not say how many have been tested.
Leadership defers some COVID-19 decisions to field level
When asked if firefighters are still reporting for duty at their fire stations, Ms. Cobb replied, “Specific risk-based protocols for how fire stations are being staffed is developed at the field level by line officers and can vary by location.”
Our take
It is hard for me to conceptualize how small, medium, and large wildfires can be safely suppressed during this pandemic. Wildland firefighting in the best of times is one of the more hazardous occupations, but now, with no treatment, widespread testing, or vaccines for COVID-19 firefighters will be risking their lives at another level by working together as they always have. The three Area Command Teams have been laboring for 17 days to develop protocols for managing a wildland fire department during the pandemic, so it will be interesting to see what they are able to develop.
In a couple of examples above, important decisions about the health and safety of federal employees are being punted. Instead of leaders making tough decisions about how to protect personnel they are backing away and ordering them to be made at the field level. Leaders at the highest level should be making decisions about how to utilize testing, for example. Leaders at the Department or White House level should have the authority and responsibility to order that tests be made available for all wildland firefighters on a recurring basis. This is not a field level decision. The Area Command Teams should make this their Number One Recommendation. But firefighters ought not to have to wait for the Teams to put this in writing. Testing should have been implemented a month ago.
Time is being squandered.
Epilogue
The administration is keeping a very close handle on information about how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting wildland fire management in the federal agencies. All of Wildfire Today’s official inquiries are passed along a chain that goes up to the headquarters of the agencies in Washington and then further, to the Departments of the Interior and Agriculture. Due to the laborious approval process, it is unusual to receive a substantive response in less than two days. Very specific questions about firefighting sometimes receive a response like, “we will follow guidance from local State Health Departments and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
Senator Murkowski encouraged the land management agencies to ensure there are a sufficient number of aircraft available to play a greater role on initial attack
White Draw Fire, South Dakota, July 2, 2012. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Republican Chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, yesterday sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt encouraging them to adopt an aggressive posture for fighting wildfires during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Currently, the federal government along with state and local governments across the country are mobilized to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. And now those same government entities, already stretched thin, are preparing to fight wildland fire in a world where COVID-19 still rages,” Murkowski wrote. “This problem could be particularly pronounced for regions like the Pacific Northwest and Northern California, which only received 40 percent of anticipated snowpack levels this winter.”
Murkowski urged the Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to put fires out fast and early, and to limit the practice of intentionally allowing some wildfires to burn on landscapes. She also encouraged the agencies to ensure a sufficient number of aircraft are available to play a greater role on initial attack and emphasized the importance of protecting the health and safety of wildland firefighters.
“This season, these heroes will be waging a war against wildfires in at-risk communities in addition to a pandemic that threatens their families,” Murkowski wrote. “I understand that both Departments are producing guidance to ensure the public health and use of social distancing of firefighters who are deployed in the field. You are no doubt managing firefighter safety as a top priority and I encourage you to continue doing so.”
One of the roles of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee is to oversee the four primary federal land management agencies — Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Fish & Wildlife Service, and Forest Service.
Click here to view the full letter from Senator Murkowski.
Former Superintendent of Little Tujunga Hotshots in southern California
Walt Sneigowski attended the 2009 reunion of the Little Tujunga Hotshots on the Angeles National Forest in southern California. Photo by Robert Garcia.
Walt Sniegowski passed away Tuesday morning, March 31, a victim of the coronavirus.
Walt was a charter member of the Little Tujunga Hotshots when the crew was formed in 1970 on the Tujunga District of the Angeles National Forest in southern California. Rod Wrench was the Superintendent then and Walt and Gary Glotfelty were the crew foremen. Walt was promoted to Superintendent in 1974 and served in the position through 1976. He later worked in fuels management and at the Riverside Fire Lab, retiring in 1990 after 31 years of service.
He left active fire suppression in 1978 because as one former Angeles National Forest veteran said, “he had so much lung damage from years of being on the fire lines that he could no longer continue.”
A person has to wonder if his career as a firefighter made him more vulnerable to the virus.
The excellent biography of Walt below was written in 2010 by Rod Wrench around the 40th anniversary of the Little Tujunga Hotshots.
Since Little T’s inception not a more familiar face could be found than that of Walt Sniegowski. Crew members from 1970 through 1977 could stop what ever they were doing, drive up to Little T Station, roll down their window and yell ―”Hey Walt!” and from somewhere in the bowels of the Little T complex echos the gruff reply, “Hey What!”
Born and raised in a rural area of Western Massachusetts, Walt Sniegowski attended school in the town of Chicopee in the Connecticut River Valley. His family was always involved with hunting or fishing and owned several fishing camps and cabins for that purpose. If it was fresh water fishing the big rivers of Canada or fishing in the ocean Walt could be found on ocean going vessels, power boats and canoes for that purpose. He’s mother said in her diary that Walt was born with a fishing rod in his hand and spent 150 + days per year fishing or hunting right out the back door of the family home. Walt became so accurate with bow and arrow that he competed in regional field archery tournaments in the junior and intermediate categories and helped build tournament courses in Vermont and Massachusetts that still exist today. The career path for Walt was set. He would work for Fish and Game or the Forest Service. The United States Forest Service landed him.
Walt attended and graduated from the Stockbridge School at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst. Armed with an Associates Degree in Forest and Wildlife Management, Walt accepted a position with the Fremont National Forest in Lakeview, Oregon in 1958 & 1959 and became a “Timber Beast” timber estimating, cruising, and marking timber with a little log scaling thrown in. While learning his craft on the Fremont he became a Red Carded Smoke-chaser and made a few lightning fires and one shift on the only campaign fire in those two years. “I had not yet inhaled enough smoke to get hooked into a fire career”.
Encouraged by his District Ranger, Walt attended the University of Idaho in 1960 & 1961 and worked for the USFS experiment station at Intermountain and then in watershed management at San Dimas.
Everything appears to be on track in young Sniegowski’s life but who wants to be on track? “I know…I’ll join a Hot Shot crew.” In 1964 Walt applied for and accepted a position with the Dalton Hot Shots on the Baldy District of the Angeles National Forest. It became his spiritual awakening. “Young” Chuck Hartley was the Superintendent and Walt worked alongside three would be “Lifers” — Lorenzo Armas (Interagency Dispatch Center @ Bishop), Paul Gleason (Supt. Of the Zig Zag and Pike Hot Shot crews), and Lou Yazzie (Dalton Hot Shot Foreman and Supt.).
In 1965 Walt accepted a permanent position with the USFS as a Fire Prevention Technician at Dalton and later Rincon Station. During this time Walt gained a lot of fire experience on sector teams supervising inmates, lemon pickers, and the military. Chosen to organize and train the Y.A.C.C. Crew at Camp Fenner on the Valyermo District, Walt accumulated more fire experience but it wasn’t the same as the Hot Shot world. “I was looking for a supervisors position on a Hot Shot crew but few were available. Positions in Arizona and Idaho were offered but they were temporary and I turned them down”.
In 1970 Walt was offered a supervisory position working for Charlie Caldwell on the Redding Inter-regional Hot Shot Crew. Then lo and behold the Foreman’s position on the Little Tujunga Hot Shots was offered at the same time. “I agonized over the decision for several days, however friends like Woody Hite, Hugh Masterson, and others convinced me of the unique opportunity to start from day one with a brand new crew. Not many people get an opportunity like that and I never regretted the decision.”
Walt Sniegowski. Forest Service photo.
This decision must have been the right one because 8 years later, 4 years as Foreman and 4 years as Superintendent, Walt Sniegowski took into his hands the responsibility to protect, guide, and defend the lives of twenty young men every fire season. During his time with the Little Tujunga Hot Shots, not one fire shelter was deployed or one major lost time accident was recorded.
In 1978 health reasons forced a move out of primary fire fighting positions and into the start of the Angeles National Forest Fuels Program. To get things jump started Walt was stationed at Oak Grove, Then, the program eventually moved into the Supervisors Office in 1980 at Arcadia, California. In 1983 he accepted a new position with the Prescribed Fire Project at the Riverside Fire Laboratory.
In 1990, after 31 years, 6 months, and 16 days Walt Sniegowski retired from the United States Forest Service. But wait!….the telephone never stopped ringing. “Hey Walt!”….”Hey What!”…”It’s the Bureau of Indian Affairs, The Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Department of Justice requesting you put your Whites back on. What do I tell them?”…”Tell ’em I’ll be there!”
For those that don’t know, Walt celebrates and shares his life with his wife Sarita, 4 children and 10 grand children. They live a very active life in Palm Springs, California and never miss the opportunity to be active members of that community.
(end)
Walt Sniegowski is in the front row, second from the right; at the 2009 reunion of the LIttle Tujunga Hotshots. Photo by Robert Garcia.
Our sincere condolences go out to Walt’s family, friends, and co-workers.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Robert. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
Fire Weather Index in California in September, October, and November since the 1980s. From the research paper.
Researchers have quantified some of the factors that have led to an increase in southern California large wildfires during the autumn months in recent decades.
Here are examples of late season fires that occurred in southern California in 2017 and 2018:
The study defines autumn as September through November.
But their analysis goes much farther back than just three years. Among other things, they found that rising temperatures, declining snowpack, and decreasing precipitation in autumn and spring have acted to extend California’s fire season in the shoulder seasons. They also determined that climate change has already doubled the frequency of extreme fire weather days since the 1980s (see the illustration at the top of the article).
The research also found a long-term trend toward more extreme fire weather conditions occurring in both southern and northern California at the same time.
The study was conducted by Michael Goss, Daniel L. Swain, John T. Abatzoglou, Ali Sarhadi, Crystal Kolden, A. Park Williams, and Noah S. Diffenbaugh.
