Steven Pyne: evacuations not always necessary

The prolific author of books about wildland fire, Steven Pyne, has been quoted in a Canadian publication as being an advocate for homeowners, in some cases, not evacuating in front of a fire, but staying, and putting out the small embers after the fire front passes. Sometimes this is called “prepare, stay and defend, or leave early”.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

VICTORIA, B.C. — A U.S. fire-fighting expert says evacuating communities to escape forest fires is not always the right thing to do.

Fire historian Stephen Pyne says it’s rare that communities are engulfed in a “tsunami of fire.”

More often, homes are destroyed by fires started from small burning embers thrown out from the fire front, Pyne said in an interview. They could be extinguished with little effort.

“After the front has passed, or the main surge, you could go out with a squirt gun and a whisk broom,” said Pyne.

He pointed to a wildfire that destroyed a number of homes an evacuated neighbourhood in Los Alamos, NM, nine years ago.

Afterward, officials realized most were the result of burning embers, said Pyne, who teaches at Arizona State University.

“Are these mass evacuations the right approach?” he asked. “Or is that what people are doing because they’re afraid of TV or lawsuits, who knows what?”

 

“Prepare, stay and defend, or leave early”: dead or alive in Australia?

Debate continues in Australia following the tragic Black Saturday fires of February 7. Some want to scrap the “prepare, stay and defend, or leave early” policy, but the program still has its defenders as evidenced inan excellent article by John Schauble, a fire researcher, Country Fire Authority captain, and author of The Australian Bushfire Safety Guide.

 

Thanks Dick

Policy of prepare, stay, defend or leave early is under fire

Until the the “Black Saturday” fires on February 7 killed 173 people in Australia, many jurisdictions in the United States were considering implementing a program developed in Australia called “prepare, stay, defend, or leave early”. It hinged upon homeowners adequately preparing a defensible space around their home, made of fire-resistant materials, and then they would not necessarily have to evacuate when a vegetation fire approached. With some basic firefighting equipment, water and garden hoses, they could put out small fires around their house caused by airborne embers.

But on February 10, Chip Prather, Chief of the Orange County Fire Authority in California, told a group of homeowners in Silverado Canyon that the “stay and defend” policy would not work in Orange County. And even before that, on January 23 Harold Schaitberger, the general president of the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), a union, wrote an article for the LA Times criticizing the “stay and defend” or “shelter in place” program that was being proposed for some areas in California.

Los Angeles County Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman, foreground, and Orange County Fire Chief Chip Prather, background right, join other fire chiefs from around Southern California in a press conference in Diamond Bar Wednesday. Lorren Au, The Orange County Register

Yesterday at a news conference Chief Prather officially abandoned the program in favor of a new one called “Ready, Set, Go” which urges residents to clear brush and be ready for fire season, be prepared if they need to evacuate, then go at the first hint of danger. At the news conference in Diamond Bar he was joined by fire agency representatives from Los Angeles, Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and Orange counties, as well as officials from Los Angeles Fire Department, U.S. Forest Service, California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, and the California Emergency Management Agency.

Meanwhile, in Australia

While some agencies in southern California abandon the prepare, stay, defend or leave early program, a Royal Commission in Australia is getting to the bottom of what led to the deaths of 173 people on February 7.  After the first two and a half weeks of testimony, the commission has been told that the deaths were caused by grossly inadequate emergency services, lack of fire warnings and the absence of any centralized evacuation plan.

Here are some excerpts from wsws.org about some of the recent findings of the Royal Commission:

Testimony from Country Fire Authority (CFA) chief Russell Rees and Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin has attempted to justify the [“stay or go”] policy while suggesting that some fire victims failed to “read” warning signals. Most of those killed were given no emergency warnings or were given them too late.

While “stay or go” depends on accurate and timely emergency warnings, Rees told the commission that the CFA was under no legal obligation to provide official fire warnings to householders in fire-prone areas. Its role, he said, was to send information to the various regional headquarters for the service’s volunteers to respond. When asked why various ICCs had no knowledge of where the fire was, he pleaded ignorance, declaring: “I couldn’t make that judgement, I wasn’t there. I cannot say that they didn’t know where the fire was.”

Rees admitted that he was unaware that Melbourne University forestry and fire modelling scientist Dr Kevin Tolhurst and two other mapping experts were working in the IECC building on February 7. IECC fire-modelling maps are generally hand-drawn and based on information sent in from ICCs throughout the state.

Tolhurst and a team of two other fire-modelling mappers had been called in to assist the IECC and at 2 p.m. were asked to produce a map for the blaze that would eventually sweep the Kinglake, Strathewen, St Andrews and Flowerdale townships.

A hand-drawn map was completed by about 4.50 p.m., but not digitalised and emailed to local ICCs until 6.17 p.m., well after the fire had destroyed most of the communities in its path. Tolhurst and his mapping team were not told that an infrared aerial scan of the fire had already been carried out at 12.33 a.m., almost 14 hours earlier.

At 3.30 p.m., the mapping team was asked to predict the path of the Murrindindi fire, which would wipe out the towns of Marysville and Narbethong. They were unable to produce a map until 5.45 p.m. and the electronic version was not distributed until 9.17 p.m., more than two hours after the fire hit Marysville.

Tolhurst told the royal commission on May 24 that the IECC gave low priority to fire modelling maps. “We’re seen as a bit of an add-on,” he said, and “considered secondary”. He warned that if the Black Saturday fires were repeated, the state’s emergency services would still be unable to provide adequate and timely fire warnings. “We are still exposed to that risk,” he said.

In fact, the emergency services control centre information was so inadequate on February 7 that Strathewen and Marysville were still being officially acknowledged as “safe”, a day after fires had incinerated the towns. Strathewen did not receive its first official alert until an hour after the town was completely ravaged. It suffered the greatest ratio of deaths on February 7—27 out of 200 town residents killed.

Situation reports on Marysville issued at 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. on February 8, a day after the fire, stated: “We understand everyone in Marysville is safe and are assembled in Gallipoli Park.” Marysville recorded the largest absolute number of deaths for any location—a total of 34.

CFA chief Rees placed the blame on the fire victims during his testimony. Asked why Strathewen was not given any official warning before the fire hit or even mentioned on the CFA’s fire map, Rees said it was up to fire-prone communities to “obtain as much information (as possible) and make judgments”. When asked to explain where residents could get this information, Rees arrogantly declared: “There was smoke in the sky, there was a whole lot of things happening.”

In the aftermath of Black Saturday scores of fire survivors said that the CFA fire-station sirens could have been used to warn local residents. Rees told the commission that these sirens were currently used to summon volunteers and not as a warning system.

Emergency Services Commissioner Bruce Esplin has testified twice and on both occasions downplayed the lack of warnings, insisting that state authorities had responded as best they could under unprecedented circumstances.

Esplin rejected suggestions that there should be a mass evacuation policy and attempted to counter evidence that this policy had saved hundreds of lives in California during wildfire seasons. He told the commission that California’s freeway system was unable to cope with mass evacuation during wildfires and that there had been fatalities. He failed to point out, however, that California’s wildfire death toll has never reached the catastrophic levels seen in Victoria on February 7.

Esplin admitted that an emergency warning signal that can interrupt radio and television broadcasts was not activated on Black Saturday because authorities didn’t want to “desensitise” people to it. “It’s a balance between not overusing the … sound and therefore desensitising the community to its importance,” he said.

Thanks Dick

San Diego fire chiefs blast stay and defend policy

August Ghio press conference
August Ghio, president of the San Diego County Fire Chiefs Association at a press conference. photo: East County Magazine

The prepare, stay and defend, or go early policy which has been used in Australia for decades and is being slowly adopted in some areas of the United States has encountered substantial resistance in San Diego County. Here is an excerpt from an article in East County Magazine:

“Fifty-three fire chiefs agree that the best way to keep families safe is to evacuate early,” August Ghio, president of the San Diego County Fire Chiefs Association, said at a press conference at Cal Fire’s El Cajon station. Ghio joined other local fire officials (photo) in drawing media attention to Australia’s policy of encouraging homeowners to stay home and fight wildfires–a factor that many believe to have contributed to a death toll of over 200 in Australia’s catastrophic blazes.Australia’s tragedy also casts a pallor over some San Diego County Supervisors and local developers calls to adopt “shelter-in-place” standards for certain new housing projects. “The people here who cite Australia as a role model will have to back off, because clearly Australia was a disaster,” Leonard Villareal, public information officer for the San Miguel Fire District, told ECM.

[…]

Ghio stressed the importance of evacuating as early as possible, and said sheltering in place should be a last resort if you are over-run by a fire and can’t escape. But he added, “To make a decision to stay and defend, that’s the part we just can’t support.” During a disaster, there may not be enough emergency officials to assist with evacuations, he noted. “The citizens are responsible for their own safety.”

[…]

But (Chief Howard Windsor of Cal Fire) warned, “We can’t have people out there in flip-flops and T-shirts with garden hoses.” Under disaster scenario conditions such as firestorms fanned by Santa Ana winds, Ghio concluded, “Mother Nature Rules the Day; you need to get out of harm’s way.”

In the article, the term “stay and defend” is used frequently, but in Australia it is referred to as “Prepare, Stay and Defend, or Leave Early”. The “Prepare” and “Leave Early” parts should always be included in describing the system.

The program can only work if:

  1. the terrain and fuel conditions are favorable,
  2. the Preparation including removing flammable vegetation for at least 100-feet is complete,
  3. the home is constructed of fire-safe materials, and
  4. the homeowner has been trained and has the equipment to Defend.

Not every home and homeowner can meet these qualifications.

As we wrote on Wildfire Today on January 23, many people die while attempting to evacuate from a wildfire:

“…8 of the 14 citizens who died in the 2003 Cedar fire near San Diego perished while they were evacuating. And 19 died while trying to evacuate from the Tunnel (or East Bay Hills) fire in Oakland in 1991.”

UPDATE: Feb. 25, 2009

California’s FIRESCOPE and the Governor’s Blue Ribbon Fire Task Force, groups consisting of local fire chiefs, the CalFire director, officials from federal fire agencies, and other organizations, issued a statement on Feb. 13 about the policy. In part:

“Any consideration of the Australian so-called “Leave Early or Stay and Defend” policy would be irresponsible at this time in light of the tragedy in Australia, as well as California’s own experience responding to firestorms.”

Thanks, Dick and Chuck

Wildfire news, February 12, 2009

Prepare, Stay and Defend OR Go Early–Nevada and California

In light of the 200+ deaths in the recent “Black Saturday” fires in Australia, some of the “Prepare, Stay and Defend OR Go Early” programs being implemented or considered in the United States are being looked at closely. The International Association of Fire Chiefs is for the concept, while the International Association of Fire Fighters is against it. (Note: the IAFC removed their document from their web site.)

In Nevada, Kurt Ladipow, Washoe County fire services coordinator, said of the plan they have been working on:

“Are we having second thoughts? In my opinion, we are not.”

In Ventura County, California, Bob Roper, a fire chief who also chairs the IAFC’s Wildland Fire Policy Committee said:

“Right now, there’s not enough information as to exactly what happened, why it happened or what caused the deaths. A light bulb has come on that says we really need to look at what happened over there.”

Esperanza fire trial

On Wednesday jurors were shown about an hour of a video of Raymond Lee Oyler being interviewed at the Cabazon sheriff’s station on October 27, 2006 the day after the fire started. Investigators were led to Oyler after seeing his car going to and from the origin of a fire on October 22, 2006 in video shot by a hidden camera.

Oyler is on trial for setting the Esperanza and 22 other fires in 2006. Five U.S. Forest Service firefighters died in the Esperanza fire.

The Press-Enterprise has excellent coverage of the trial.

West Virginia man dies in brush fire

From the State Journal:

A Pocahontas County man was killed while burning brush. The state fire marshal’s office confirms one man was killed in a brush fire in Marlinton. Officials say the fire was less than 10-acres.

The man’s name has not been released but investigators say it appears he was burning brush around his house when the fire got out of control.

The Division of Forestry responded. It took about 3 hours to get control of the fire.

Investigators say it’s been several years since West Virginia has seen a death as a result of a brush fire.

Del Walters named new director of CalFire

Del Walters, new CalFire Director
Del Walters, new CalFire Director

Del Walters, 54, of Redding, California, has been appointed director of CalFire, replacing the retiring Ruben Grijalva. Mr. Walters has worked for CalFire for 30 years and has been their Executive Officer since 2008. Before taking that position, he was the Staff Chief of the Northern Region.