Two water tender rollovers

One was on the Miles Fire in Oregon and the other was on the Ferguson Fire in California

Two water tenders rolled over while working on wildfires in California and Oregon earlier this month. According to the very brief Rapid Lesson Sharing reports filed with the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center, there were no serious injuries. No assumptions were made about the cause of either accident, and road conditions were not mentioned as being an issue.

The first occurred on the Ferguson Fire in California August 10, 2018. The brief report can be downloaded here.

water tender rollover Ferguson Fire California
August 10, 2018 rollover of a water tender on the Ferguson Fire in California. Photo from Rapid Lesson Sharing report.

The other rollover occurred two days later on August 12 on the Miles Fire in Oregon. (brief report)

water tender rollover Miles Fire Oregon
August 12, 2018 rollover of a water tender on the Miles Fire in Oregon. Photo from Rapid Lesson Sharing report.

This is one of 51 articles we have written on Wildfire Today about rollovers of vehicles on wildland fires. They occur far too often.

It is not always possible to point to a single cause of many of these sometimes fatal accidents. But challenges facing drivers of emergency vehicles on wildland fires include visibility due to smoke or dust, long hours leading to fatigue, low standard or inadequately maintained roads, distractions, skills needed to drive a large heavy vehicle, top-heavy vehicles, weights exceeding manufacturer’s GVW rating, and shifting of weight caused by partial loads of water in the tank.

Of the 440 fatalities on wildland fires from 1990 through 2014, 22 percent were related to vehicle accidents.

The Rapid Lesson Sharing report for the accident on the Miles Fire reached this conclusion:

Statistics show that the biggest risk to firefighters today is the mundane task of driving to and from the worksite. Often, the function of driving is accompanied by fatigue from the day’s events and thoughts of what is yet to come.

Water Tender operators are asked to drive large, heavy vehicles in variable conditions repeatedly for multiple operational shifts. Just like line firefighters, these professional drivers must fight fatigue and complacency from the beginning of an assignment to its end.

Utah firefighter adopts dog found at California wildfire

Many of us had not heard of Draper City, Utah before their fire department Battalion Chief Matthew Burchett was killed by a falling tree while fighting the Mendocino Complex of Fires in Northern California August 13, 2018. That was, of course, a tragedy, but now the city and department are in the news for a different reason. One of their firefighters found and has adopted a dog they found while fighting the same fire.

Holy Fire spots across fireline in Southern California

(Originally published at 1:09 p.m. PDT August 27, 2018)

Holy Fire Santiago Peak California
Flare up on the Holy Fire at Santiago Peak in Southern California, August 27, 2018. Image from KWAVE camera. Click to enlarge.

The Holy Fire has been relatively quiet for the last 12 days, with the reported size of 22,986 acres remaining the same since August 15.

But that changed today when a spot fire ignited across the fireline and once again threatened the numerous electronic sites at Santiago Peak. Those facilities supply many of the television, radio, and communications links for the greater Los Angeles area, along with other sites in the area.

The fire originally started August 6 near Holy Jim Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains southeast of Los Angeles.

The fire was burning quiet well, as you can see in these photos, but by noon or 12:30 p.m. local time the intensity had decreased, due in part to drops by air tankers and helicopters.

These images were captured from live cameras on Santiago Peak, HPWREN and KWAVE.

(To see all of the articles on Wildfire Today about the Holy Fire, including the most recent, click HERE.)

S-2T air tanker Holy Fire Santiago Peak California
An S-2T air tanker makes a drop on the Holy Fire at Santiago Peak in Southern California, August 27, 2018. Image from HPWREN camera. Click to enlarge.
S-2T air tanker Holy Fire Santiago Peak California
An S-2T air tanker makes a drop on the Holy Fire at Santiago Peak in Southern California, August 27, 2018. The image is from a HPWREN camera that has droplets of fire retardant on the lens. Click to enlarge.
BAe-146 air tanker Holy Fire Santiago Peak California
An RJ85 or BAe-146 on final to drop on the Holy Fire at Santiago Peak in Southern California, August 27, 2018. Image from HPWREN camera. Click to enlarge.
S-2T air tanker Holy Fire Santiago Peak California
An S-2T air tanker makes a drop on the Holy Fire at Santiago Peak in Southern California, at about 1 p.m. PDT August 27, 2018. Image from HPWREN camera. Click to enlarge.

After one month the Ranch Fire has burned over 400,000 acres

It is one of four megafires currently burning in the U.S., all larger than 100,000 acres

(Originally published at 9:32 a.m. PDT August 27, 2018)

The Ranch Fire started east of Ukiah, California a month ago on July 27, 2018. About two weeks later it broke the previous record for the largest in California’s recorded history, the 281,893 acres attributed to last December’s Thomas Fire near Santa Barbara. Today CAL FIRE said the Ranch Fire has grown to 402,468 acres, exceeding by 120,575 acres the record set only eight months earlier. The other fire in the Complex is the 49,920-acre River Fire which has not spread for a couple of weeks.

Mendocino Complex fire Ranch California map
The red line on the map was the perimeter of the Ranch Fire at 9:15 p.m. PDT August 26, 2016. The white line was the perimeter on August 14. The red and yellow dots represent heat detected by a satellite in the 24 hour period ending at 2:31 a.m. PDT August 27, 2018. Click to enlarge.

Firefighters are making progress on the Ranch Fire after having backed off on the north and northeast sides to ignite backfires from dirt roads and dozer lines on ridge tops in the Mendocino National Forest. The rest of the fire is looking pretty good, so if this tactic is successful and the weather cooperates it would be a big step toward stopping the spread.

(To see all articles on Wildfire Today about the Mendocino Complex of Fires, including the most recent, click HERE.)

A couple of decades ago it was rare for a fire outside of Alaska to exceed the threshold to become what we call a megafire, 100,000 acres. Now we seem to have multiple megafires each year. Presently there are three others that are presently active in the lower 48 states:

  1. Carr, in Northern California: 229,651 acres
  2. South Sugarloaf, in northern Nevada: 200,692 acres
  3. Spring Creek, in southern Colorado: 108,085 acres

Fire seasons are longer. The U.S. Forest Service has abandoned the term, preferring “fire year” instead. The Thomas Fire broke the previous record in December. DECEMBER! Megafires are not supposed to occur in the dead of winter.

Not only do the fires burn vegetation, destroy homes, change the landscape, require evacuations, disrupt lives, and cause massive air pollution problems, they also kill. Just on the megafires in California this year eight people have died, four firefighters, a power company employee, and three other civilians.


The article was revised to correct the number of fatalities on the two megafires in California this year.

Verizon feels the pressure, says will provide unlimited data to emergency services

The company throttled the data being used by a Santa Clara Fire Department Command and Control vehicle that was fighting the Mendocino Complex of Fires

s2t airtanker holy fire
An S-2T air tanker comes out of the smoke to drop retardant near the communication towers on Santiago Peak August 8, 2018 as the Holy Fire in Orange County, California approaches. HPWREN image. Click to enlarge.

When executives from Verizon were summoned to California’s capitol Friday to sit for a tongue lashing by an Assembly Committee, the company announced that just hours before, they had changed their policy about limited vs. “unlimited” data for cell phone accounts used by emergency first responders. They had attracted an enormous amount of criticism after the Verizon account used by a Command and Control vehicle working on the Mendocino Complex of Fires in Northern California was victim to having their data rate reduced to 1/200th of their regular rate.

According to The Verge:

The company says it has since removed all speed cap restrictions for first responders on the West Coast and in Hawaii, with the plan to continue doing so during future disasters. Verizon will also launch a new service plan next week that’ll cater to first responders and will feature unlimited data with no caps on mobile solutions. That plan will include priority access.

The Command and Control vehicle’s primary function is to track, organize, and prioritize routing of resources from around the state and country to the sites where they are most needed. OES 5262 relies heavily on the internet to do near-real-time resource tracking.

The Santa Clara Fire Department that operates OES 5262 had a Verizon plan advertised as having “unlimited data”. However the fine print in the contract allowed Verizon to throttle the Fire Department’s data to a fraction of the regular rate after a limit was reached.

While fighting the fire, one of the captains operating the equipment complained to Verizon that the command and control unit had been so hobbled that “it has no meaningful functionality”. The battle with the fire morphed into a fight with Verizon as fire department personnel fought with the company about restoring their “unlimited” data rate. Eventually after getting various sections in Verizon and the Fire Department involved, the cell phone plan in OES 5262 was upgraded to a more expensive plan that had more capability.

In a perfect world the fire department might have known in advance that their “unlimited data” was a gross deception by Verizon and could have switched to a more expensive plan that perhaps didn’t have such severe throttling issues. Or, Verizon would not have described the plan as unlimited, since it wasn’t.  Or, Verizon could have un-throttled them very quickly after receiving the department’s first complaint and worked out the details later. But none of that happened.

On August 22 in our article about the throttling, we wrote:

The intentionally misleading use of the term “unlimited” by the four cell phone carriers is part of the problem here. The FCC and the Federal Trade Commission should do their job and stop this practice.

The issue has also fired up politicians in Washington. In a letter to the FTC signed August 24 by Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco and 12 other representatives, they wrote.

…Unfortunately, with its repeal of the 2015 Open Internet Order, the FCC has abdicated its jurisdiction over broadband communications and walked away from protecting consumers, including public safety agencies. We, therefore, call on the FTC to protect consumers from unfair or deceptive acts or practices stemming from this incident.

It is unacceptable for communications providers to deceive their customers, but when the consumer in question is a government entity tasked with fire and emergency services, we can’t afford to wait a moment longer. The FTC must investigate whether Verizon and other communications companies are being unfair or deceptive in the services they’re offering to public safety entities, and if so, to determine what remedies are appropriate to ensure our first responders have adequate service when lives are on the line.

Retired police officer describes how he survived fire tornado at Carr Fire

carr fire tornado redding california
Steve Bustillos tells his story of surviving the Carr Fire. Screengrab from KRCR video.

KRCR has the story of how a retired police officer in Redding, California who was trapped in the Carr Fire survived the same fire tornado that killed a Redding firefighter.

As the fire approached, Steve Bustillos was driving away from his home with his most important possessions in the back of his truck when the strong winds and debris broke a window in his vehicle allowing burning embers to blow inside the cab. He turned around to see that everything in the bed of the pickup was on fire, then the seats in the cab ignited.

He told the reporter, “The truck is moving and I’ve got both feet planted on the brake pedal and the truck is literally starting to lift itself up off the ground.”

CAL FIRE issued a Green Sheet report about the incident which included this information about the fire tornado that entrapped Mr. Bustillos.

Winds at the base of the fire tornado reached speeds in the range of 136-165 mph (EF-3 tornado strength), as indicated by wind damage to large oak trees, scouring of the ground surface, damage to roofs of houses, and lofting of large steel power line support towers, vehicles, and a steel marine shipping container within ½ mile of the entrapment site. The strong winds caused the fire to burn all live vegetation less than 1 inch in diameter and fully consume any dead biomass. Peak gas temperatures likely exceeded 2,700 °F.