During the course of the 2012 season, the National Interagency Fire Center reports that 16,626 prescribed fires treated 1,971,834 acres. At the end of 2012, the Lessons Learned Center (LLC) received reviews on seven escaped prescribed fires (housed in the LLC Incident Review Database [IRDB]). In addition, other agency notifications and media reports indicated seven additional escaped prescribed fires occurred in 2012. (Reviews from these seven events were not submitted to the LLC. Factors associated with these seven escapes are not considered in the detailed analysis that follows.)
When viewed as a whole, 14 escapes out of more than 16,600 prescribed fires represent a very small percentage: 0.08 %. While this might seem to be an insignificant number, it’s only part of the story.
The Lessons Learned Center looked for common themes. They are listed below, but are not necessarily the causes of the escapes.
Are you ready for an escape on Day 1? Are you still vigilant two weeks later?
How do you deal with issues related to unburned fuels inside your project area?
Are your Mop-up Plans adaptable to burn results and forecasted weather?
How familiar are you and your burn organization with your fuels and your unit?
Can you pay for your contingency resources?
Be careful what you ask your prescribed fire organizations to do. They’ll find a way to do it, even if conditions are less than ideal.
Map of the Pautre Fire at 0000 on 4-4-2013, provided by USFS.
The US Forest Service has announced that their escaped prescribed fire is 90 percent contained and is now estimated to have burned 10,800 acres southeast of Hettinger, North Dakota and southwest of Lemmon, South Dakota. One outbuilding has burned, along with fences, hay, and pastures.
On Friday there were 16 engines and 2 water tenders assigned. Firefighters have been engaged in mopup, including trying to put out a burning dump site close to the fire perimeter.
There will be a public meeting at the North Dakota State University Research Center in Hettinger, ND on Saturday April 6 at 4:00 p.m. Information about the Pautre Fire and the claims process will be presented by the USFS.
**** UPDATED at 10:23 a.m. MT, April 5, 2013:
An article in The Rapid City Journal has more information about the impacts of the fire on the ranchers. Privately owned grazing, hay stacks, and miles of fencing were damaged or destroyed during the ranchers’ calving season. Here is an excerpt:
Laurie Casper, 36, said the fire destroyed 95 percent of her family’s farmland, which is more than 1,000 acres.
“We lost all of our calving pasture, we lost our summer grazing, we lost our fall grazing, we lost 100 percent of our alfalfa— which we cut for hay bales in order to feed the cattle this oncoming winter— all that’s completely gone,” she said. “And there’s just just miles and miles of fences that are completely gone.”
Casper’s family didn’t sleep on Wednesday night. The fire came at the worst time for them and other ranchers: the middle of calving season. While Casper’s family found refuge for their cattle in a neighbor’s cornfield, her family is now worried about their herd’s health. On Thursday morning, their cattle wouldn’t clean their calves because they smelled like smoke. They also fear their livestock may suffer respiratory issues after inhaling dust and smoke.
****
UPDATED at 10:21 p.m. MT, April 4, 2013:
The Pautre Fire is 75 percent contained and is still estimated to have burned 14,000 acres.
Eighteen fire engines and two water tenders are assigned to the fire and continue to work on strengthening the perimeter and providing structure protection. Full containment of the fire is expected by Friday evening.
Paul Hancock, Grand River District Ranger said, “As suppression operations are ending, the Forest Service will be conducting an assessment to determine property damage and working on short and long term strategies to pay for the damage we caused.”
****
(Originally published at 12:34 p.m. MT, April 4, 2013)
A prescribed fire on the Grand River Ranger District of the Dakota Prairie National Grasslands escaped on Wednesday and burned 14,000 to 16,000 acres of grassland near Lemmon in northwest South Dakota (map). The fire was being conducted by the U.S. Forest Service, the agency that administers the National Grassland.
Babete Anderson, a spokesperson for the National Grassland, told Wildfire Today Thursday morning that the spread of the wildfire now named the Pautre Fire, has been stopped and no structures were destroyed. A little snow Thursday morning assisted firefighters with mopup
The original plan for the prescribed fire called for treating 130 acres with fire. At about 2 p.m. on Wednesday winds gusting up to 30 mph pushed the fire across control lines. Approximately 50 to 60 percent of the acres that burned were on private land. Firefighters are calling it 50 percent contained on Thursday and expect strong winds again late in the afternoon on Thursday.
“The Forest Service regrets that the prescribed burn escaped the containment lines and affected so many people. I appreciate the support and efforts from the firefighters, their families and the communities affected by this fire.” stated Paul Hancock, Grand River District Ranger.
A prescribed fire being conducted by the Montana Department of Resources and Conservation north of Great Falls on Wednesday escaped and burned 560 acres of state and private land. The goal of the project was to treat 160 acres of DNRC trust land with prescribed fire.
The fire got away at about 12:30 p.m. when the fire activity increased and the five engines on scene ran out of water and could not contain it. After receiving assistance from firefighters in Cascade and Teton counties they controlled the fire by 3:30 p.m. No structures or crops were damaged.
Results have been released for an evaluation of the review process for escaped prescribed fires to attempt to determine if reviews are contributing to or inhibiting achievement of organizational learning. The entire report is here, and below is a very brief summary provided by the Joint Fire Science Program:
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RESULTS: Based on conversations in a series of workshops and follow-up interviews, researchers identified several elements of the review process that best facilitate organizational learning:
Local Leadership: The local leader sets the tone for creating a learning environment in the unit. When an escape does occur, involving the local fire leadership in a discussion about the purpose and process of a review can dramatically improve the local learning environment.
Review Team: Review team members act as witnesses and facilitators to first help the local unit make sense of what they experienced. They do this by providing for psychological safety and by emphasizing listening without judgment.
Boundary Management: Boundaries for information that should be shared and not shared, and with whom, are continually identified and respected.
Transfer: The learning modalities need to simulate the spaces of action in which people actually work.
Follow Through: Just as a burn plan needs to account for mop-up and monitoring, so does the review of an escape prescribed fire need to provide for follow through to promote learning.
Lower North Fork Fire. Photo provided by Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office
A special commission created by the Colorado General Assembly to investigate the Lower North Fork fire has released their report. The fire originated from an escaped prescribed fire southwest of Denver on March 26, 2012. It burned 4,140 acres and killed three local residents at their homes. The report offers a number of recommendations but did not place blame.
This is the second report about the fire. The first, released in April, 2012, was conducted by Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources. That 152-page report (a very large 11.8 MB file) only addressed the management of the prescribed fire, and did not cover the suppression of the wildfire, the three fatalities, or the controversial evacuation procedures during the wildfire.
The charter of the commission which produced the second report was to investigate the following:
causes of the wildfire;
the impact of the wildfire on the affected community;
the loss of life and financial devastation incurred by the community;
the loss of confidence by the community in the response to the emergency by
governmental bodies at all levels; and
measures to prevent the occurrence of a similar tragedy
Their recommendations were on the following topics:
Coordination among fire districts
Raising the liability cap
Wildland-urban interface and local land use egulations
Funding for the federal FLAME Act (which is not fully funded by Congress)
911 capabilities
A consistent revenue source for wildfire suppression
Air emission permits
Funding for the SWIFT Program
The Commission also recommends that four bills be introduced in the Colorado General Assembly:
Prescribed Burn Program in the Division of Fire Prevention and Control
Wildfire Matters Review Committee
Extend Wildfire Mitigation Financial Incentives
All-hazards Resource Mobilization and Reimbursement
Firefighters in North Carolina’s Pilot Mountain State Park hope to have an escaped prescribed fire 90 percent contained by the end of the day on Monday. On Thursday the burn boss and New River State Park Superintendent Joseph Shimel supervised the ignition of the fire intending to burn 180 acres, but in the afternoon a dead tree near the fireline torched, sending burning embers into steep terrain outside the project’s perimeter, eventually blackening about 800 acres over the weekend.
According to the Winston-Salem Journal, Charlie Peek, public information officer for the N.C. Division of Parks and Recreation said the escaped fire:
…pretty much illustrated why we need prescribed burns, because any time fire hits this area — leaf litter, debris and brush — it’s much more difficult to control, and things can get out of hand much more quickly.
Previously the largest prescribed fire in the Park had been 35 acres. Small burns had been conducted in 2004 and 2009.
