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Tag: Arizona

An unusual way to publicize the release of the Yarnell Hill Fire report

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , 3 Comments on An unusual way to publicize the release of the Yarnell Hill Fire report

If a politician has to release information, but they want it to attract as little attention as possible, they do it late on a Friday afternoon or on the weekend. The thinking is that fewer people consume news on a Saturday or Sunday and there are not as many reporters on duty to cover it.

The Arizona State Forestry Division decided to release the Serious Accident Investigation report of the Yarnell Hill Fire fatalities at 10 a.m. MST tomorrow, September 28. The choice of the day of the week led some people to assume the agency wanted to keep the report as much under the radar as possible.

The timing of the relase was a puzzling decision, especially in light of another one they made that will have the opposite effect. A person or organization calling themselves “The Yarnell Hill Fire Investigation Report Rollout Team” sent an email to many, many people Wednesday (about 150 other names were on the distribution list of the message I received) asking them to help spread the word about the report by joining something called “Thunderclap”. After you join using your Facebook and Twitter user names and passwords, “Thunderclap” will use those social media sites to send messages on your behalf so that everyone who reads your posts on those services will see a message that looks like it came from you, but was sent by Thunderclap announcing that the report on the Yarnell Hill Fire has been released.

An excerpt from the email:

…Once the report is released on September 28, 2013 10:00am, Arizona Standard Time, this tool allows us to utilize other people’s Facebook and Twitter accounts to push out the link to the report, nationally, all at one time. To make this work, we need people to know about the campaign we have built on the Thunderclap website and we hope you will be willing to get involved and let people know via your email lists and social media sites.

Arizona State Forestry Division using Thunderclap is a solution in search of a problem — and creates some serious privacy concerns, turning over your social media passwords to a company no one has ever heard of.

No matter what the Arizona State Forestry Division does to encourage or discourage coverage of the report, it is going to be huge news. I expect it to be covered by the big five national television networks. Since the deaths of the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots June 30 on the Yarnell Hill Fire, the mainstream media has been all over wildland fire, firefighters, and hotshot crews. So a Saturday release of the report will not eliminate coverage, and asking hundreds of people to turn over their Facebook and Twitter accounts to spread the word is not going push the tidal wave of media frenzy much faster.

If the State of Arizona follows the new federal guidelines for serious accident reports, it will not include any conclusions, or recommendations. This will make it difficult for the media to come up with coherent, introspective, meaningful coverage. They will be able to report facts, but their relevance to the fatalities could be difficult for them to understand. We heard from an Associated Press reporter who made an appointment to talk with us Saturday afternoon, that the State will not write a second, secret report containing the conclusions and recommendations as required in the new guidelines for federal agencies. That is because the State of Arizona has a very strong open records law prohibiting such shenanigans. But the concept of open records is on the back burner in the U.S. Forest Service as Fire Aviation confirmed when attempting to get a simple list of Type 1 helicopters on exclusive use contracts. It took five months and a great deal of time, going through the Freedom of Information Act process.

Below are some excerpts from the 6,212 words in the Thunderclap terms of service.

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“We reserve the right to modify or replace these Terms of Use and/or to change, suspend or discontinue the Services at any time in our sole discretion.

The way you support a message is to grant the Service access to your Facebook®, Twitter® or Tumblr® account to post that message on your behalf as a status update in your timeline or as a Tweet, as applicable.

When you join a Thunderclap, your username and profile picture from the third party service you joined through may appear on this Website (or otherwise through the Services) indicating that you are a supporter of that message. Also, after you join a Thunderclap, you have the option of sharing that you support that message via Twitter, Tumblr and/or Facebook. You do this by granting the Services access to your Twitter, Tumblr and/or Facebook accounts through standard Twitter, Tumblr and/or Facebook APIs.

By supporting a Thunderclap via Facebook, you grant us the right to use, reproduce, modify, display and distribute for purposes of displaying your Facebook username, Facebook profile picture, and any modifications or changes you make to the message on or through the Services and Facebook to indicate you have joined, supported or your other affiliation with that message.

By supporting a Thunderclap via Twitter, you grant us the right to use, reproduce, modify, display and distribute for purposes of displaying your Twitter username, Twitter picture, and any modifications or changes you make to the message on and/or through the Services and Twitter to indicate you have joined, supported or your other affiliation with that message.”

Yarnell Hill Fire report to be released Saturday

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , ,

Granite Mountain HotshotsThe Arizona State Forestry Division has announced that the Serious Accident Investigation report of the Yarnell Hill Fire fatalities is complete and will be released Saturday, September 28. It will be given to the families of the 19 firefighters that were killed before the public sees the document.

A press conference will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday at the Ruth Street Theater at Prescott High School, 1050 Ruth Street, Prescott, AZ. Officials available to answer questions will include:

  • Scott Hunt, Arizona State Forester,
  • Jim Karels, Serious Accident Investigation Team Leader
  • Mike Dudley, Co-lead for Serious Accident Investigation Team
  • Chief Dan Fraijo, Fire Chief, Prescott Fire Department

The Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health, a state version of federal OSHA, is also working on a report. It is required to be complete no later than six months after their investigation was announced, which would make it due no later than the first part of January, 2014.

Controversy surrounds the Yarnell Hill Fire fatalities

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 8 Comments on Controversy surrounds the Yarnell Hill Fire fatalities
Yarnell Hill Fire
Yarnell Hill Fire. Photo by Joy Collura.

It is enough of a tragedy that 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots died while fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30. But several issues continue to pour salt into the wounds of the grieving families and others that mourn their deaths. Some issues will hopefully diminish when the two reports become public. Or, in a worse case, they could be made worse, or new ones could be unearthed.

The Serious Accident Investigation which was commissioned by the Arizona State Forestry Division is expected to be public within the next week or so, but only after it is distributed first to the families of the 19 victims.

The Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health, a state version of federal OSHA, is also working on a report. It is required to be complete no later than six months after their investigation was announced, which would make it due around the first part of 2014.

The controversy about the the large differences in the survivor benefits for the families of the full time and seasonal firefighters on the Granite Mountain Hotshots has been festering for weeks and is now being discussed in the Arizona legislature.

Another issue that came to light recently is the refusal of the Yavapai County Sheriff’s and Medical Examiner’s offices to release the autopsy reports for the 19 firefighters. This has escalated to the point where the Arizona Republic and 12 News have filed suit against the agencies. The Arizona Republic and 12 News realize that certain photographs of the bodies and perhaps other evidence may not be appropriate to be released, but they are adamant that the remaining records should be released and feel their demands are backed by state law.

Still another issue that will be debated was published by the Arizona Republic and picked up by the USA Today. It relates to the reports prepared by the Serious Accident Investigation team. The latest Serious Accident Investigation Guide, revised August, 2013, recommends that two reports be prepared. One, the Factual Report, would be made public, and the other, the Management Evaluation Report, would be kept confidential, intended for internal agency use only. The public report would not include any conclusions or recommendations. This would result in a public report that is much different from many of the reports we have seen in recent years.

UPDATE: we wrote more about these changes to the Serious Accident Investigation reports.

Infrared mapping, the New York Times on Lassen’s Reading Fire, and more Yarnell Hill articles

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , , , , 2 Comments on Infrared mapping, the New York Times on Lassen’s Reading Fire, and more Yarnell Hill articles
Reading Fire
Reading Fire. Photo by Lassen National Park.

Several online articles came to our attention today that you may be interested in.

New York Times

The Times has an excellent article about last year’s Reading Fire in Lassen National Park in northern California. It was a fire use fire that started on July 23, 2012, escaped the maximum management area, and burned outside the park, blackening a total of 28,000 acres. The author, Paul Tullis, oddly, but in a very interesting way, also writes about fire behavior research being conducted at the Missoula Fire Lab. Checking out the article is worth it, if only for the great photos taken by photographer Richard Barnes.

More articles about the Yarnell Hill Fire

The monthly magazines are now coming out with their articles about the fire on which 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots died. They pale in comparison to the good one that was in Outside Magazine, but if you are obsessed with that multiple fatality incident, like many of us are, you’ll want to see the articles in Popular Mechanics and Men’s Journal.

The USFS infrared mapping program

USFS IR aircraft, Cessna Citation Bravo
One of the U.S. Forest Service’s Infrared aircraft, their Cessna Citation Bravo, N144Z, parked at NIFC in Boise.

Earthzine has an article that does a good job of summarizing the U.S. Forest Service program that operates two fixed wing aircraft that map ongoing wildfires. Here is an excerpt:

…The two IR aircraft are a twin-engine Beechcraft Super King Air B-200 and a small jet, the Cessna Citation Bravo II. Both aircraft take off at between 7-9 p.m. and continuing mapping runs until 4 a.m.

Mapping flights follow a grid plotted out in advance, at an altitude of 10,000- 14,000 feet. From that height, each pass scans a swath 6.5 miles wide. For accuracy, passes overlap each other by 25-30 percent. Flying at 300 miles per hour, a map produced by the Super King is accurate by plus or minus 1 foot. The faster moving jet is only slightly less precise – providing maps accurate to plus or minus 10 feet.

The imagery is sent in real-time to interpreters on the ground while the aircraft are still making runs over a fire. Some 48 interpreters are scattered across the country and will have completed maps on the screens of firefighter command centers before the aircraft make their last landings of the night.

Outside Magazine covers the Yarnell Hill Fire

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 10 Comments on Outside Magazine covers the Yarnell Hill Fire
Granite Mountain Hotshots Yarnell Hill Fire
Granite Mountain Hotshots hike to the Yarnell Hill Fire, June 30, 2013. Photo by Joy Collura.

Outside Magazine has a lengthy article in their November issue about the last days of the 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots who were killed when they were overrun by the Yarnell Hill Fire southeast of Prescott, Arizona on June 30, 2013.

Author Kyle Dickman obviously spent a lot of time interviewing Brendan “Donut” McDonough, the sole survivor from the crew, and several family members of the 19 hotshots. The article not only provides some personal information about some crew members and their spouses, but also has a few details about the fire suppression activities that has not yet been made public.

One of the devices used by the author was to tell us what some of the hotshots were thinking, or how they made decisions at key times. It was sometimes preceded by phrases such as “they would have been thinking…”, but it was distracting as I read it, since those firefighters died before they could tell anyone what they were thinking, or why they made certain decisions. Usually Mr. Dickman’s assumptions seemed logical, but he took a bold step by using that writing trick.

For the article, Mr. McDonough apparently provided some information about his actions on the fire as well as his conversations with the Granite Mountain crew leadership and the superintendent of the nearby Blue Ridge Hotshots the afternoon of the entrapment

Surprisingly the article includes a progression map, showing the spread of the fire at 10 to 20 minute intervals before the crew was trapped. It would be interesting to know the source of that very detailed information, or if Mr. McDonough was able to see all of the fire and remembered or recorded the data.

In the excerpt from the article below, “Eric” is Eric Marsh, the superintendent of the Granite Mountain Hotshots who during the Yarnell Hill Fire was serving as Division Supervisor for the geographic division which included the Granite Mountain Hotshots. “Donut”, Mr. McDonough, was away from the crew serving as a lookout, adding an element of safety for the crew by observing the location of the fire and taking hourly weather observations. The article explained that one of the reasons he was selected for that task was that he had just recovered from an illness, and the relatively light duty would give him another day to recover. The sad thing is, any firefighter would have trouble recovering from what was supposed to have been “light duty” that June 30 afternoon.

From Outside Magazine:

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“THE GRANITE MOUNTAIN crew could see Donut on the UTV racing across the flats. They could see the helicopters and air tankers pivoting from Peeples Valley to Yarnell and dozens of emergency vehicles, lights flashing, speeding down Highway 89 toward Glen Ilah, the subdivision where Truman lived. It would have been difficult for the hotshots, who had been trained to help however they can, to sit idly by and watch houses burn. They would have been thinking of their fellow firefighters placing themselves in harm’s way.

With conditions changing so dramatically, Eric and the crew’s leadership—[acting crew superintendent Captain Jesse] Steed, Clayton [Whitted], Travis [Carter], Robert [Caldwell]—would have gathered for a moment on the ridge to discuss their options while the other hotshots sat perched on white granite boulders watching the drama unfold.

Do we hunker down in the black and do nothing but watch Yarnell burn? Or do we head down there, do some point protection, and try to save a couple of homes? Eric would have made the decision. He couldn’t have imagined that, by heading for town, he was leading his crew toward a series of increasingly compromised circumstances, each more desperate than the last.

He radioed out that Granite Mountain was moving back toward Yarnell.”

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Thanks go out to Bruce

Arizona legislature to debate benefits for first responders

Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories UncategorizedTags , , 8 Comments on Arizona legislature to debate benefits for first responders

After it was revealed that there was a large discrepancy between the survivor benefits for the families of full time and temporary firefighters on the Granite Mountain Hotshots, some members of Arizona’s legislature have been considering what, if any, action should be taken for the families of the 19 firefighters that were killed June 30 on the Yarnell Hill Fire, and for future fatalities.

A committee in the state’s House of Representatives is taking up the issue today. Alia Rau, a reporter for the Arizona Republic, will be live tweeting about the hearing Tuesday afternoon. You can follow her at @aliarau.

According to AZCentral, the bills the legislature is considering could cover an array of issues, including:

  • Who reimburses fire departments that helped fight the Yarnell Hill Fire.
  • Who helps pay for Yarnell infrastructure repairs.
  • Who pays death benefits in wildfire situations.
  • Whether seasonal first responders can participate in state retirement systems.
  • Whether there is a way to retroactively provide benefits to the 13 seasonal hotshots.

“Before the Yarnell fire, nobody thought we were doing anything wrong. We didn’t hear fire coming in saying ‘Our hotshots aren’t covered if something happens.’ We didn’t have cities saying, ‘If something happens, we’ll be in deep trouble,’ ” House Speaker Andy Tobin said. “This has been a punch in the gut. Now it’s time to talk about what we’ve learned from it and what our policy should be going forward.”