Firefighters with the Black Eagle Fire Department working on a fire that burned 40 acres in northern Montana didn’t know what started the fire until Kyra Vanisko discovered a dead hawk at the point of origin. Still in the bird’s talons was a snake, also very dead. The carcases were below a poweline, so the working theory is that the hawk, carrying the snake, intended to land on the line but on final approach the snake dangling below contacted one line while the hawk touched another. The completed circuit electrocuted both animals.
A hawk carrying a snake started a fire in northern Montana last week. Photo by firefighter Kyra Vanisko of the Black Eagle Fire Department. Used with permission.A hawk carrying a snake started a fire in northern Montana last week. Photo by firefighter Kyra Vanisko of the Black Eagle Fire Department. Used with permission.
Waffle House “Jump Teams” help keep their restaurants open during local emergencies.
I learned in 1992 during our Incident Management Team’s response to South Florida after Hurricane Andrew that the local National Park Service personnel who would normally be rescuers, had become victims and needed the assistance from outside the area.
Waffle House calls them “Jump Teams” but when an area is hit by a hurricane or other disaster they respond from outside the region to keep their local restaurants up and running as much as possible. The concept is not unlike land management agencies sending teams and crews across the country to help the locals deal with a wildfire or other emergency.
Waffle House is known in hurricane-prone areas for being among the last to close and the first to open in area where residents are forced to evacuate. New employees receive training about how to manage the restaurants during difficult circumstances.
Below are excerpts from a Yahoo article published August 25 as the effects of Hurricane Harvey were unfolding on the Texas coast:
A Waffle House jump team consists of a small team of restaurant operators from outside the hurricane zone. These employees swoop in at the first possible moment after a storm to restore service and get things open. Typically after a storm, demand for food is high and functioning restaurants are in low supply, and things get extremely busy.
“There’s a jump team outside of Nashville ready to go on Sunday. Jump teams are [also] ready in Louisiana,” said Warner. “Then we can deploy from the main office some teams that may or may not go depending on severity.”
One of the reasons why these jump teams are the key to the chain’s success is because employees may not be able to work if they’re dealing with their own hurricane damage.
“It does help to bring operators from outside so it relieves [local employees] so they can focus on family,,” said Warner. “They don’t have to worry about their restaurant at the same time.”
“Only the Brave” opens in theaters October 20, 2017.
In about seven weeks the new movie “based on the true story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots” will be in theaters. In 2013, 19 members of the crew were entrapped and killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire south of Prescott, Arizona.
Not many many movies have been built around wildland firefighters. There was Red Skies of Montana that in 1952 introduced the myth of exploding trees, and Firestorm brought us Howie Long in 1998. Always was a good movie, but it was not really about wildland fire. So, many of us will be skeptical while waiting for Only the Brave to open on October 20.
However, there are reasons to be optimistic. Black Label Media which produced the film also made the award winning La La Land (Golden Globe Best Picture, Musical or Comedy), a story that could not be more different from Only the Brave, but it at least indicates that skilled personnel are employed by the company.
Molly Smith, an executive with Black Label, said it’s the film she’s most proud of. On her Instagram page she wrote:
We hope you feel, when you see it, as patriotic and proud as we have to have some of the greatest firefighters in the world constantly putting themselves out there for our well being. The ones who have lost their lives we honor respectfully every day, and the ones who wake up covered with dirt and ash and stale coffee on their breath (and always a ribbing laughter) we salute you again and again and again. I hope you feel we have represented you well.
The film has quite a few well-known actors, including Josh Brolin (plays Eric Marsh), Jeff Bridges (Duane Steinbrink), Jennifer Connelly (Amanda Marsh), Andie McDowell, Miles Teller (Brendan McDonough), and James Badge Dale.
In an Entertainment Weekly interview, Mr. Brolin, who for a while was a volunteer firefighter in Arizona, talked about how the actors in the movie still maintain regular contact:
This was different, probably because of the subject matter. Nobody’s willing to let it go.
Oregon’s Chetco Bar Fire has exceeded 100,000 acres
Above: Firefighters on structure protection duty set up a sprinkler system on the Chetco Bar Fire in Southwest Oregon. Undated photo on Inciweb.
(Originally published at 9:03 a.m. PDT August 24, 2017)
The wildfires in Southwest Oregon and Northwest California continue to grow at a fairly steady pace, with occasional large expansions during wind events.
The Chetco Bar Fire five miles northeast of Brookings, Oregon was mapped very early Thursday morning at 102,333 acres, moving past the 100,000-acre threshold into “megafire” territory. But it is still one-fifth the size of the Biscuit Fire that covered almost half a million acres in the same general area in 2002.
The red line was the perimeter of the Chetco Bar Fire at 12:16 a.m. PDT August 24, 2017. The white line was the perimeter two days before.
The map of the Chetco Bar Fire shows that while it continues to spread along much of the perimeter that growth has slowed since it quadrupled in size over a four-day period, August 18 to 22. It added 2,389 acres on Wednesday through minimal flanking, backing, and creeping fire behavior due to cooler temperatures and higher humidities.
More fighters have poured in to the Brookings, Oregon area which is five miles southwest of the fire. Over 1,100 personnel are now working on the blaze, including 21 hand crews, 118 engines, and 8 helicopters. The incident management teams report that 25 structures have burned.
Three teams are assigned to the Chetco Bar Fire: Livingston’s Type 1 team, Greer’s Type 2 team, and Houseman’s National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) team. (The NIMO folks need to come up with a better name for their teams.)
The red, brown, and yellow dots represent heat detected only within the last week on wildfires in southwest Oregon and Northwest California.
The fires in Northwest California do not receive much press coverage since they are in remote, sparsely populated areas. The largest is the Eclipse Complex of five fires 10 miles north of Happy Camp which has burned 40,500 acres. It is also known as “CA-KNF-006098 Complex”. On Wednesday the inversion that had been moderating fire behavior lifted over one of the five fires, the Prescott Fire, which became active and burned towards the Oak Fire. This produced a large smoke column that caused ash fall along the Hwy 96 corridor and throughout the Happy Camp area.
The Toll and Squirrel Fires are not in Northwest California, but are near Quincy, California. August 20, 2017. Inciweb.
In other wildfire news, the Secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture are visiting Missoula and the Lolo Peak Fire today (August 24), accompanied by the USFS National Fire Director, Shawna Legarza.
The map shows the distribution of smoke from wildfires at 12:51 p.m. MDT August 23, 2017. You can’t read the labels, but large fires are tagged on the map.
Smoke from wildfires in Canada has reached the UK:
This almost looks like a magic trick, but it shows what can happen with very deep-seated fires, such as peat. Smouldering underground with limited oxygen, the very hot material and gasses can transition into flaming combustion once introduced to an atmosphere with a higher concentration of oxygen.
