Unexploded ordnances make it unsafe for firefighters or aircraft to battle the blaze
The red dots represent heat on the Hawaiian island of Kahoʻolawe, detected February 22 by a NASA satellite. On the following day, February 23, the fire spread further to the south and east. Smoke can be seen blowing off to the south.
A brush fire on the smallest of the main volcanic islands in the Hawaiian Islands has burned approximately 4,000 acres on Kahoʻolawe southwest of Maui since it was reported Saturday. (UPDATE at 7:02 a.m. MST Feb, 25, 2020: on Monday fire officials said the fire had burned 5,400 acres.)
The island is sacred to the native population, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 the island was transformed into a bombing range. Ships fired their big guns at the island and submarines tested torpedoes by firing them at the shoreline cliffs. The weapons testing stopped in 1990 but in spite of removing more than 9 million pounds of unexploded ordnances it is still not safe for firefighters to attempt to suppress fires on the island. That includes ground-based firefighters as well as water-dropping aircraft, said fire officials on Maui.
The most notorious of the weapons tested on the island were the three “Sailor Hat” tests in which 500 tons of TNT were detonated to simulate the blast effects of nuclear weapons on shipboard weapon systems.
Air Tanker 911, a DC-10, left Richmond, Australia Monday afternoon U.S. time en route to the U.S. and within the next 24 hours will likely refuel in Hawaii. If it wasn’t for the danger of the fire burning through unexploded ordnances, it would be a rare opportunity for a Very Large Air Tanker to drop on a fire in Hawaii.
Let’s also come up with ideas for gatherings of adults
Apparatus for demonstration of pyrolysis, used back in the day.
Today I received a message from a mom who needs our help:
Hi-
My son chose the topic of wildfires for his project on natural disasters. We’re having a hard time thinking of a demonstration that’s safe for his classroom. Do you have any suggestions?
Thank you.
So, I’ll put this out there for our readers. Can you help out this fourth grader that has an interest in wildfires? The young man needs to choose a demonstration this week. Leave a comment with your ideas.
The tricky part is coming up with something that will be safe to do in a classroom full of 10-year olds.
The first thing that came into my mind was a demonstration of pyrolysis, the process of combustion of vegetation. Before canned training was developed for entry level wildland firefighters, we wrote lesson plans and stood before the new hires and taught them about fire behavior, line construction, weather, and fire science. At least that’s the way we did it on the El Cariso Hotshots.
One demonstration I used that would not be safe for a fourth grader without adult supervison, was pyrolysis; showing them that when wood or vegetation is consumed in a fire, it’s actually a gas that is burning. It would be best to do this outside in an area cleared of flammable material. Stuff a coffee can with some sawdust or dried vegetation (grass or brush). Take aluminum foil and form it into an upside down funnel and place it around the top of the can, making it as air-tight as possible (similar to the photo above). Then make a hole a little smaller in diameter than a pencil at the top of the foil. Place the can on a heat source, such as a stove, and wait until a steady stream of smoke comes out of the hole at the top. Then hold a long butane lighter used for igniting a BBQ grill adjacent to the smoke and watch the gas burn. A version of this is described on YouTube.
Everybody at some point has played with matches. Mike Dannenberg of the Bureau of Land Management, a fire suppression supervisor in Montana and the Dakotas, puts on a presentation about residential fire preparedness that involves hundreds of matches. The article at wvmetronews.com has more details as well as a series of photos. Here is an excerpt.
“I liken it to building in a flood plain,” said Dannenberg. “If you thin around your house, if you reduce the fuel load, if you build out of materials that are not combustible a lot of times it will protect your home.”
Demonstration of fire on a slope, and how a clearance around structures can be effective..
Dannenberg has created a demonstration model to show the intensity of a canopy fire. He loads a pegboard with hundreds of match sticks. Each match represents a highly combustible evergreen tree. A road snakes through the middle of the model forest. The upper corner of the board features a homestead with a house, garage, and various outbuildings. The scene is created to the specs recommended by the BLM. Each building is covered with a metal roof and the yard space has only sparse and wide spaced trees.
Dannenberg tilts the board to replicate the speed of a fire moving up the slope of a hill or mountain. He lights a single match at the far end of the pegboard and at the foot of the simulated hill. The fire spreads rapidly, but stops short of the home–leaving it untouched. It’s an effective demonstration that Dannenberg says plays itself out every summer in the western United States.
UPDATE, February 24, 2020:
There are some good ideas in the comments. Keep them coming. Like the one above (the matches on the peg board) some of them are not appropriate for fourth-graders, but somebody somewhere might find them useful at another venue. So think about gatherings of adults as well.
This “word cloud” was generated using the injury descriptors from the 53 incidents included in the analysis. The size of a word indicates its relative frequency. (From the report)
Captain Hughes died when a 105-foot tall Ponderosa Pine fell in an unexpected direction on the Ferguson Fire on the Sierra National Forest near Yosemite National Park in California.
A Tree Falling Accident Analysis was completed by the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center at the request of the the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. Their study compares 53 incidents from 2004 to 2019 in which firefighters were injured or killed in the process of falling trees.
Anyone involved in tree falling should read the entire 17-page report, but here are some of their findings:
53% of the time the tree fell in the intended direction.
28% of the time, the tree impacted another tree during its fall—including 2 of the 8 fatalities.
19% of the time, the top broke out and came back—including 2 of the 8 fatalities.
Of all the reports that included recommendations, 21% recommended enhancing training related to tree conditions (like rot) and species-specific traits.
19% of the time, the sawyer was working on a hung-up tree— including two of the eight fatalities.
51% of the time, the incident involved a direct helmet strike.
Of the reports that include recommendations, 24% recommended research and development related to wildland fire helmets.
42% of the time, the person struck was not cutting—including in 5 of the 8 fatalities.
24% of the reports recommended somehow improving safe work distance and compliance.
40% of the time, the person struck was in the traditional escape route—including in 5 of the 8 fatalities.
79% of the reports recommended improving risk assessment.
13% of the time, the tree strike happened during training— including in 2 of the 8 fatalities.
26% of the reports recommended improving faller training.
21% of the reports recommended enhancing training related to tree conditions (like rot) and species-specific traits.
The findings will be due by the end of August, 2020
The Suomi Joint Polar Satellite System captured this photo of smoke from bush fires in New South Wales, Australia, November 8, 2019. The red areas represent heat.
The Governor-General of Australia has appointed three commissioners to lead a royal commission to look into the bushfires that so far during the 2019-2020 fire season have devastated to an unprecedented extent large areas of Queensland, New South Wales, and Victoria.
From ABC Australia:
Two more commissioners, former Federal Court judge Annabelle Bennett and leading environmental lawyer Andrew Macintosh, will join former Australian Defence Force (ADF) chief Mark Binskin.
The trio are due to deliver their findings to the Federal Government by the end of August.
More than 30 people died across the country during the disaster, and thousands of homes were destroyed.
The ABC revealed earlier this month that hazard reduction would form a key part of the inquiry, after Prime Minister Scott Morrison demanded an investigation into whether controlled burns and land clearing operations had been hampered across the country.
Climate change, and specifically its effect of creating longer, hotter and drier fire seasons, will also be considered by the royal commission.
In January when a royal commission was being proposed, the United Firefighters Union of Australia said there had already been numerous bushfire-related inquiries over the past two decades. One more commission would likely come up with the same issues, they said.
The union believed there should be instead, an audit all of the existing recommendations that haven’t been implemented. They said Royal Commissions are expensive, can take hundreds of days, force witnesses to relive the trauma, and the commission has no binding power to implement recommendations.
Witnesses included two expert panels and 100 “lay” witnesses drawn from bushfire-affected communities. Almost 1,700 written submissions were considered by the Commission, close to 1,000 exhibits tendered and 20,500 pages of written transcripts produced.
Meanwhile, New South Wales is conducting an “independent expert inquiry” into the 2019-2020 bushfire season. Dave Owens APM, former Deputy Commissioner of NSW Police, and Professor Mary O’Kane AC, Independent Planning Commission Chair and former NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer, are leading the six-month inquiry, which is reviewing the causes of, preparation for, and response to the 2019-20 bushfires.
The Inquiry welcomes submissions from bushfire-affected residents, emergency and support personnel, organizations and the general public.
On Sunday, three forest watchers were killed after they were trapped inside a major wildfire in the Vadakkanchery forest range in the Thrissur district of Kerala.
Divakaran, Velayudhan, and Shankaran were killed while trying to douse a fire that broke out at Desamangalam on the district’s border.
The fire which, authorities believe was set deliberately by some miscreants was reported on Sunday morning and by afternoon it had got out of control.
Following the death of the three guards, there are allegations that the department was not prepared to deal with wildfires, which is going to spike in the next few months.
In fact, it is not just Kerala, forest departments across the country are severely ill-equipped when it comes to controlling wildfires. The kind of deployment of resources in Australia bushfire is something that India can only dream of. Many see this as the result of not having a well thought out policy at the national level.
Our sincere condolences go out to the family, friends, and coworkers of the three men.
Former inmates that acquired skills while they were incarcerated are making use of that training and experience in the woods of New Mexico.
Lawrence Jaramillo and Joshua Melendrez became qualified as wildland firefighters and chain saw operators while serving time in Los Lunas prison. The Inmate Workers Camp program (IWC) taught them the basics of wildland firefighting.
After they spent three years in prison the two of them formed a private company, All Around Forestry LLC.
I talked with Mr. Jaramillo Friday just after the final inspection was completed on the largest project they have worked on since the company was issued a business license in November. On the 13-acre job the company’s six employees thinned dog hair thickets, removed some large trees, and otherwise reduced hazardous fuels around structures at the Ponderosa Christian Camp in the Jemez Mountains. He said they have submitted bids on other projects that they hope to hear from soon.
Mr. Melendrez told us, “The cool thing about it is that every single one of our employees with us are wildland fire certified as well,” he said. “We all have done the program. We all went through as ADs for New Mexico State Forestry [after we got out of prison] — went on fires and fought fires with each other for quite some time now. We all have the knowledge of what needs to be done, and to do it thoroughly as well.”
They want to realize what is implied in the company’s name, All Around Forestry LLC, and hope to provide additional services such as a 20-person crew and a fire engine.
For these men it’s about giving people like them a second chance.
“A lot of people are happy and proud to see, I guess, a success story,” Melendrez said. “We owe a lot of it to IWC but it’s also our own mindset to be better for ourselves.”
“They’ve been doing an amazing amount of work, they’ve gotten an amazing amount done,” Ponderosa Christian Camp board director Craig Mathews said. “We hope this is just a spring board for them, and that they’re very successful in the projects they get awarded in the future.”
Not only is it an opportunity to grow, but also a chance to go at life a different way this time.
“We did wrong in the past but that’s not us anymore, we’ve changed our lives completely,” Melendrez said.
Jaramillo said they are looking for other clients to do business with, as well as other former inmates who want to join the company.
