An incident base at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in California, 2009. Photo by Carol Jandrall.
A study of almost 7,000 firefighters from municipal fire departments found that 37 percent screened positive for common sleep disorders, including obstructive sleep apnea, insomnia, restless leg syndrome, and shift work disorder.
The researchers found that compared with sound sleepers, those with a sleep disorder were about twice as likely to have a motor vehicle crash, to nod off while driving, and to have cardiovascular disease or diabetes. They were more than three times as likely to suffer from depression and anxiety.
National Interagency Fire Center data that we reported for 1990 through 2014 shows that 45 percent of the wildland fire fatalities were from vehicle accidents or medical issues.
Wildland firefighter fatalities, 1990-2014. Data from NIFC, compiled by Wildfire Today.
Most, 97 percent, of the 7,000 firefighters in the study worked extended shifts of at least 24 hours. Wildland firefighters work 8-hour shifts — except when they don’t. While on fires their shift schedules and sleep routines are often disrupted. The 8-hour shift can be extended to 12 to 16 hours, and their usual sleeping times may be changed and sometimes shortened; not unlike the jet lag of traveling to a different time zone. The first shift on a fire may be longer than 16 hours and a crew used to working during the day can be placed on a night shift.
The municipal firefighters in the study work very different schedules from their brothers and sisters in wildland fire, so a direct comparison of sleep disorders and accidents is probably not valid, but this issue should be watched closely. Crew supervisors and incident management teams should, at least, see that firefighters have an opportunity to get an adequate amount of quality sleep.
The 16″ x 20″ prints of Tanker 07 dropping on the Red Canyon Fire are sold out, but stepping up to take its place is another unusually low price on a print.
Still looking for that special gift? How about a 20″ x 16″ stretched canvas print of Tanker 161, an RJ-85, dropping on the Crow Peak Fire June 27 near Spearfish, SD.
This special lower than usual price of $64 expires at the end of the day on Friday December 23. And only 10 are available at this price.
The image will be printed on a premium glossy canvas and then stretched on a wooden frame of 1.5″ x 1.5″ stretcher bars. All stretched canvases ship within one business day and arrive “ready to hang” with pre-attached hanging wire, mounting hooks, and nails.
The legislation was introduced in the U.S. Senate on December 9, 2016.
A Senator in Montana has introduced legislation that would allow a federal wildland firefighter who was injured and disabled on the job to retain the 20-year firefighter retirement track if they return to work in a non-fire position, rather than converting to the 30-year retirement program of ordinary federal employees.
U.S. Senator Steve Daines’ legislation would also allow the injured firefighter’s history of overtime pay to be considered as income for purposes of calculating worker’s compensation disability benefits.
Govtrack.us estimates that the bill has a 1 percent chance of being enacted, so it will take some serious grass roots efforts to ensure that it passes.
Senator Daines’ website has a page devoted to the legislation which has opinions about the bill from two firefighters, as well as Vicki Minor of the Wildland Firefighter Foundation, and Casey Judd of the Federal Wildland Fire Service Association.
The bill is titled “S. 3544 — 114th Congress: Wildland Firefighter Retirement and Disability Compensation Benefits Act of 2016”. It can be tracked at Congress.gov.
Two fires over the last two days in Colorado have burned a total of almost 2,200 acres.
The red-shaded area was under a Red Flag Warning Friday, December 16, 2016.
The largest fire started Thursday night when very strong winds blew over a truck which then skidded along the road, creating sparks. The blaze, now contained, burned about 2,000 acres near Interstate 25 south of Walsenburg, Colorado.
A fire near Loveland, Colorado also started Thursday night. Loveland Fire and Rescue reports that they have it contained at 189 acres.
A large portion of southeast Colorado was under a Red Flag Warning on Friday, but it expired at 6 p.m.
Snow will begin in the area Friday night after midnight and will continue off and on into Saturday afternoon. The high temperature near Walsenburg Saturday will be around 15 degrees.
The Bear Mountain and Black Hat Handcrews are considered Type 2 Initial Attack handcrews and are comprised of 22 firefighters each. The primary function of the crews is hazardous fuels reduction on state and private lands within the Black Hills of South Dakota. The crews are available for in and out-of-state dispatch assignments, and have responded to various all risk incidents throughout the United States since their inception.
The fire burned from Great Smoky Mountains National Park into Gatlinburg, Tennessee November 28.
Above: Chimney Tops 2 Fire November 27, 2016. Photo by Brett Bevill.
On December 13 the National Park Service delivered a verbal statement and released two documents about the Chimney Tops 2 Fire.
The fire killed 14 people and destroyed 2,013 homes and 53 commercial structures. An additional 244 homes were damaged.
At a news conference on Tuesday Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GRSM) Deputy Superintendent Clay Jordan read a 13 minute statement covering the day by day events from the time the fire was ignited by teenaged arsonists on November 23 to when it burned into Gatlinburg on November 28.
Mr. Jordan said, “On Saturday [November 27 two days before the fire burned into Gatlinburg] we requested a four-day near-term analysis from the U.S. Forest Service at the Rocky Mountain Research Station.” He went on to say, “Their analysis modeled low fire growth downhill over the next couple of days as the fire approached the containment boundary. This analysis did not forecast the behavior the fire generated on Monday.”
Mr. Jordan said Monday morning, November 29, spot fires created by lofted burning embers had occurred “as far as one-half to a mile from the main fire burning on Chimney Top.”
He concluded his presentation by saying:
We believe there is no way we could have controlled this fire prior to the wind event. The reality is we believe there is no number of firefighters or fire engines that could have stopped the spread of this fire in such extreme wind conditions.
We will continue to explore lessons learned from this incident and we appreciate the outpouring of support and resources that we have received from across the nation to help us fight this fire.
Below is a video recording of Mr. Jordan’s statement.
The presentation has a map showing the location of 911 calls, which is interesting.
911 calls up to 10 a.m. November 29, 2016. From the NPS presentation.
From our interviews with people associated with the fire and the information released yesterday, it is clear that no action was taken by ground-based firefighters to actively suppress or stop the spread of the fire until Sunday, November 27, four days after the fire started. The activity that day involved constructing fire line and improving the natural boundaries of containment lines about half a mile away from the fire.
The chronology document released on December 13 implied that three large Type 1 helicopters dropped water on the fire “throughout the day” on Sunday November 27. But the information we obtained, which was confirmed by Mr. Jordan’s presentation yesterday, showed that the drops only occurred in the afternoon. This was the first time any direct suppression occurred on the fire up to that point.
That afternoon a Chinook Type 1 helicopter began dropping water on the fire, refilling at Fontana Lake 13 miles to the southwest, according to a source we talked to who didn’t want their name disclosed because they were not authorized to speak on the subject. The helicopter worked until it had to refuel and then two other Type 1 helicopters took its place until dark. Sunset that day was at 5:21 p.m. which would have allowed them to drop on the fire until 5:51 p.m., 30 minutes after sunset. This 26-mile round trip to refill with water greatly reduced the amount of water delivered to the fire, compared to how much could have been dropped if a closer water source had been used.
During the previous four days no nearby helicopter water sources were identified or created. Often on structure and wildland fires portable, collapsable water tanks are quickly set up for engines or helicopters to draft from or dip into with their buckets. Some of the larger tanks, such as the Heliwell, can hold almost 15,000 gallons. These tanks can be kept full if connected to a fire hydrant or filled with a water tender shuttle.
A Heliwell tank used to refill the helicopter bucket on the Red Canyon Fire July 9, 2016 in the Black Hills. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
If a good water source had been created or identified on day two of the fire and helicopters had been ordered then instead of day five, hundreds of thousands of gallons of water could have been dropped on the fire in the four days before the wind increased on Monday, November 28.
Aircraft dropping water or fire retardant on a fire cannot put it out. However, if huge amounts of water are applied to a relatively small fire in a “wash the fire off the hill” approach, it can have a very positive effect.
Under normal circumstances limited amounts of liquids dropped from the air can be most effective if firefighters on the ground can move in quickly to take advantage of the short term change in fire behavior by constructing firelines, stopping the spread at that location. In this case, there were no firefighters in a position to take direct action.
For two weeks in numerous documents and presentations the NPS has been saying that wind gusts up to 87 mph were recorded at the Cove Mountain weather station 8 miles northwest of the fire’s origin and 4.5 miles west of downtown Gatlinburg. We have been attempting to obtain a copy of the data recorded by that station before it shut down at about 9 p.m. on November 28 when it lost electrical power. On December 15 we were told by GRSM spokesperson Dana Soehn that the data will not be released for at least two to three months because it has to go through a quality control process by multiple agencies. So in other words, they are not sure the data is accurate, but are very comfortable cherry picking one number and repeating it over and over.
However, weather data from numerous other stations is readily available.
At 2 a.m. Monday November 28, the day the fire burned into Gatlinburg, the wind speeds recorded at the Indian Grave weather station 18 miles west of the fire began increasing and the direction became more consistently out of the south and southwest. Until 1 p.m. sustained speeds were 4 to 6 mph with gusts at 12 to 19 mph. Between 2 p.m. and 6 p.m. they increased to 7 to 15 mph with gusts of 22 to 32 mph — all generally out of the south, blowing toward Gatlinburg. From 7 p.m. until midnight sustained winds were at 13 to 17 mph with gusts from 34 to 49.
This data from Indian Grave was not very different from the forecast issued the day before, Sunday November 27 at 7:29 a.m. That Spot Forecast, specifically for the fire area, predicted strong winds all day on Monday — at 7 a.m. 12 mph gusting to 25 and increasing throughout the day to 20 mph gusting to 40 by 6 p.m.
We were not able to find a Spot Forecast for the fire that was requested or issued on Monday, November 28.
Below is a copy of the Spot Weather Forecast issued at 7:20 a.m. Sunday November 27, 2016, and following that, data from the Indian Grave weather station:
