Wildfire Today

Firefighter Cancer Awareness Month

Kelly AnderssonJanuary 3, 2023Uncategorizedcancer, FCSN, IAFF, NIOSH2 Comments

January is Firefighter Cancer Awareness Month, and the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) says that cancer is the leading cause of death among firefighters. Annual deaths from various forms of cancer account for more than 74 percent of the line-of-duty deaths added to the IAFF fallen firefighter memorial wall of honor each year.

The National Firefighter Registry program is finalizing its enrollment web portal, a voluntary registry of firefighters that collects occupational, lifestyle, and health information on firefighters to evaluate cancer rates and cancer risk factors in the U.S. fire service. The NFR was created by the Firefighter Cancer Registry Act of 2018 in response to growing evidence of carcinogenic exposures and increased risk for cancer faced by firefighters. The NFR is maintained by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).

All U.S. firefighters, no matter their length of service, can participate in the Registry, including:

Active, former, and retired firefighters
Career, paid-on-call, and volunteer firefighters
Structural firefighters
Wildland firefighters
Industrial firefighters
Military firefighters
Instructors
Fire investigators
Other fire service members

The Firefighter Cancer Support Network (FCSN) provides public education on the issue of cancer risk for firefighters. For more than 16 years the FCSN has provided support for firefighters and EMS members who have been diagnosed with cancer. The firefightercancersupport.org website includes information to educate firefighters and raise awareness about why cancer cases are on the rise in the fire service and how to limit day-to-day exposures to carcinogens. Resources are available for firefighters diagnosed with cancer.

Since 2005, the nonprofit FCSN has provided assistance and one-on-one mentoring to thousands of cancer-stricken firefighters and their families. FCSN also delivers extensive firefighter cancer awareness and prevention training nationwide.

Judge dismisses lawsuit over Oregon’s new heat and smoke rules

Kelly AnderssonDecember 24, 2022Uncategorizedheat stroke, Oregon, OSHA, smoke5 Comments

When local residents who aren’t firefighters see summertime haze or clouds on the horizon, they often guess it’s smoke. Mid-summer they often think it’s wildfire smoke, and in the fall they suspect it’s a prescribed burn. This is a “common experience” with wildfire smoke, according to attorneys with Oregon OSHA, who successfully argued last week that it’s fairly easy to determine when the air is smoky and affecting air quality.

On Tuesday, according to the Salem Statesman Journal, a federal magistrate dismissed a lawsuit against Oregon OSHA in which plaintiffs claimed the state agency’s new heat and smoke rules somehow violated the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution and were unenforceable. Lawyers for Oregon Manufacturers and Commerce, Associated Oregon Loggers, and Oregon Forest Industries Council claimed that air quality fluctuations are caused by many factors, and not just wildfire smoke.

“Most times, it’s not obvious,” attorney James Anderson declared. “There’s no method to determine that air quality is due to wildfire smoke, or prescribed burn smoke, or other things that make up particulates.”

Magistrate Mark D. Clarke was not persuaded. “Why is it that complicated?” he asked. He said Oregonians are quite familiar with wildfire smoke. “I’m not sure any of us have any trouble knowing when wildfire smoke rolls in. I’m having trouble with that, factually.”

The lawsuit also claimed that OSHA’s rules to protect workers against extreme heat and smoke were too vague to be enforced. The new rules, as KGW-TV reported last July, took effect after recent heat waves in Oregon resulted in medical problems and deaths, prompting new requirements for employers to protect employees from heat-related illnesses. The new OSHA rules require, when the heat index hits or exceeds 80 °F, that employers provide shaded areas for workers to rest, more break time, and access to plenty of water. When temperatures exceed 90 then breaks must be longer, communication must be more frequent, and workers must be monitored more closely.

Dangerous heat exposure is risky especially for farm workers, according to Ira Cuello Martinez, policy director for Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregon’s farm worker union. “You’re constantly moving and doing repetitive motions, having to bend down, and there aren’t many shaded structures when it comes to the field or doing work in agriculture,” he said.

Mexico and U.S. working together on wildfire

BillDecember 8, 2022December 8, 2022WildfireCONAFOR, International Programs, Mexico10 Comments

This year the U.S. and Mexico celebrated their 200th year of diplomatic relations, and for almost 25 years now the two countries have worked together in information-sharing and wildfire management. The U.S. Forest Service and the National Forest Commission of Mexico (Comisión Nacional Forestal, or CONAFOR) work with similar wildland fire challenges and a shared approach in the Incident Command System.

This collaboration has its roots back in 1998, when Mexico suffered through its worst fire season on record and was mounting a massive response to try to contain environmental damage and community threat. According to a recent feature story by the Forest Service’s International Programs, smoke from the 1998 Mexico fires caused serious air quality deterioration across hundreds of miles from Veracruz north to the Gulf States along the U.S. border.

The USFS sent literally tons of equipment, personnel, and other resources to Mexico, initiating what’s become a longstanding knowledge-sharing exchange. U.S. firefighters began then to regularly travel to Mexico to teach ICS principles and operations and to share resources, and Mexican firefighters started traveling here to help fight fires and add skills alongside U.S. firefighters.

Eduardo Cruz with USFS fire people — Eduardo Cruz with USFS Region 5 fire people
photo courtesy CONAFOR

Eduardo Cruz traveled from Mexico to the Sequoia National Forest soon after the 1998 fires. He worked on a helitack crew in California and launched longtime international friendships; Cruz is now the fire management director of CONAFOR. During 2020’s brutal R5 season, he brought five crews of Mexican firefighters to California to work on fires — the first time that Mexico had sent an entire delegation of firefighters to support U.S. efforts.

CNN reported back in September 2020 that the Mexican crews brought to California by Eduardo Cruz worked on the Sequoia Complex, which at the time had burned more than 144,000 acres and was just 35 percent contained. “Fires do not have borders, fires do not have different languages and cultures,” Cruz told CNN. “In the end we all speak the same language when it comes to fighting fire.”

The Forest Service has a 2020 photo album online [HERE].

An archived story from WILDLAND FIREFIGHTER Magazine about the 1998 fires in Mexico is online [HERE]. (NOTE that it’s on the archive.org website and most of the old links on that page are no longer functional.)

Department of Defense joins NWCG board

BillDecember 6, 2022UncategorizedNWCG15 Comments

The National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG) has added the DoD as a primary member of its executive board.

“A key function of NWCG is the establishment of standards for the wildland fire community,” said Shane McDonald, NWCG Executive Board Chair. “With the addition of DoD to the Executive Board, they will now be a part of the process to help create the common operating framework for wildland fire resources.”

Across its 27 million acres of land used for training and testing, DoD manages about a million acres for wildland fire, according to a press release from the Homeland Security news. Including the DoD on the NWCG board acknowledges the cross-jurisdictional nature of wildfire and will contribute to the interagency approach of the federal agencies in charge of fire management.

NWCG provides national leadership to enable coordinated wildland fire operations among federal, state, local, tribal and territorial partners. Other primary members of NWCG include the Forest Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Association of State Foresters, U.S. Fire Administration, Intertribal Timber Council, and the International Association of Fire Chiefs. Associate members include the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Office of Wildland Fire and the National Weather Service. The NWCG priorities include training, operations standards, qualifications, IT requirements, research, policy, and safety. More info is available on the NWCG website.

New study report says states do not adequately budget for wildfire

BillDecember 4, 2022WildfireNASF, states

Increased spending on wildland fire suppression risks states’ fiscal stability, according to a recent report from The Pew Charitable Trusts. Over the last ten years, the five major federal fire agencies within the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture have nearly doubled combined spending on wildland fire.

State governments, particularly those in the West, operate under differing budgetary constraints and organizational approaches to wildfire management, according to the report, but unlike the federal agencies, states are required to balance spending and revenue every budget cycle. After their extensive review of existing research and available data, the Pew researchers completed 18 semi-structured interviews between December 2021 and July 2022 with wildfire and budgeting experts in six states — Alaska, California, Florida, Nevada, Texas, and Washington. They also interviewed key fire officials with the DOI, the USFS and FEMA, and the National Association of State Foresters — which has information on all states’ wildfire management online.

Oregon Public Broadcasting reported that the Pew study looked at how states budget for wildfire costs, the challenges with those budgets, and what might be done for improvement. Each of the analyzed states primarily uses general fund appropriations to pay for wildfire costs upfront; revenue for the general fund comes from state taxes and fees and is used for general state operations.

“To the extent that more expensive and unpredictable wildfires are being pulled from that same pool of money, it’s a problem for state fiscal stability moving forward,” Colin Foard with the Pew Trusts told OPB. “As fires have grown, so has government spending on the costs associated with them.”

The report and other related studies are available online from PewTrusts.org.

Firefighting helicopter collides with Navy helicopter, both land safely

Bill GabbertNovember 23, 2022November 23, 2022UncategorizedBlackhawk, mid air1 Comment

At Brown Field near San Diego, Nov. 22, 2022.

Damage to a Navy MH-60R Seahawk after colliding with a UH-60A Firehawk — Damage to a Navy MH-60R Seahawk after colliding with a UH-60A Blackhawk contracted to SDG&E Nov. 22, 2022. NBC7.

This article was first published at Fire Aviation.

It is very rare to hear about a mid air collision of two helicopters which then land safely with no reported injuries of the five occupants.

It happened Tuesday night Nov. 22 at Brown Field near San Diego during a night training exercise that included two Blackhawk variants.

One helicopter suffered damage to the main rotor and the other had damage to the rear stabilator, City of San Diego Public Information Officer José Ysea said.

Ensign Bryan Blair, spokesperson for Commander, Naval Air Forces, issued the following statement: “On Nov. 22, an MH-60R Seahawk helicopter attached to Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron (HSM) 41 made an emergency landing at Brown Field in San Diego after experiencing a collision with a helicopter contracted by San Diego Gas and Electric during a flight for a night training event. Both aircraft landed safely and there were no injuries to personnel. The incident is under investigation.”

UH-60A Firehawk contracted to SDG&E that collided with a Navy MH-60R Seahawk — File photo of the UH-60A Blackhawk contracted to SDG&E that collided with a Navy MH-60R Seahawk Nov. 22, 2022. SDG&E photo.

The second helicopter, a UH-60A Blackhawk, N160AQ, is contracted to SDG&E for firefighting in the utility’s service area. An SDG&E official issued this statement regarding the incident: “We have been made aware of the incident by our contractor who owns and operates the aircraft and the most important thing is that all parties are safe.”

Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Tom.

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: