fatality Archives - Page 21 of 43

Wildfire briefing, December 3, 2012

Bill GabbertDecember 3, 2012August 25, 2019UncategorizedCanada, fatality, Illinois, lodd, Tidwell, Virginia

Firefighter killed in Clinton County, Illinois

A firefighter was killed Sunday at the scene of a wildfire that spread to a structure. Here is an excerpt from an article at KSDK:

A 45-year-old fireman with the Santa Fe Fire Protection District in Clinton County, Illinois, has been killed at the scene of a fire.

Timothy P. Jansen died of injuries sustained when he was struck by a fire truck in the 9700 block of River Road in Bartelso. The accident happened about 7:45 p.m. Sunday.

Jansen was among the first firefighters to arrive at the scene, which began as a grass fire and spread to a building.

Santa Fe Fire Chief Adam Maue said Jansen was standing on the back of a truck, pulling hoses, when he slipped off. The driver of the truck told the chief he did not know Jansen fell, so he backed up, striking Jansen.

Jansen was married and had two daughters. He’d been with the fire district for 15 years and owned a restaurant directly across the street from the firehouse.

Fire engine overturns en route to wildfire, injuring 4

A fire engine that was participating in a Christmas parade in Bedford, Virginia was dispatched to a wildland fire duirng the parade but didn’t make it to the fire. It overturned while rounding a curve, landing in Phyllis Carimi’s front yard.

Here is an excerpt from The News & Advance:

Lt. Todd Foreman, of the Bedford City Police, said he believed there were only four men inside the truck, all of whom were hospitalized.

Foreman said two were airlifted from the wreck — one to Lynchburg General Hospital, the other to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. The other two were taken by ambulance to Lynchburg and Bedford hospitals.

Their conditions and identities have not yet been provided.

Chief of the Forest Service expects 12 million to 15 million acres to burn annually due to higher temperatures

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told a group in Boise Friday that in the future even more acres are going to burn and the cost of fighting fires will continue to rise. One of his answers to the problem, of course, is to increase timber sales by 20 percent.

As we pointed out November 23, so far this year the number of acres burned, 9,093,431, was the third highest total since national wildfire statistics have been kept beginning in 1960. Remaining at the number one and two spots are 2006 with 9.9 million, and 2007 with 9.3 million.

Rocky Barker wrote in the Idaho Statesman on Saturday:

Tidwell told the City Club of Boise that as many as 12 million to 15 million acres will burn annually now because of warming temperatures and drier years.

[…]

More than 30,000 homes have burned in the past decade, Tidwell said, including 3,000 just this year — homes in a Pocatello subdivision among them. Experts expect fires to keep claiming houses, but fuel-reduction steps can make communities safer and easier to protect, Tidwell said.

Federal budget cuts will make money more scarce, but communities are increasingly taking responsibility, he said. Flagstaff, Ariz., passed a $10 million bond to do forest restoration on private and federal land there.

The comments people have left at the bottom of the Idaho Statesman article are interesting.

Canadian Commission rejects changes to codes to protect communities

From the Edmonton Journal:

EDMONTON – A federal commission has rejected proposals to change Canada’s national construction codes to better protect communities from destructive wildfires.

The changes would have required builders in areas prone to forest fires to use less flammable building materials, to space buildings farther apart and to keep them clear of trees and vegetation.

[…]

The proposal for changes came from the National Fire Protection Association and an Alberta-based non-profit group called Partners in Protection.

The proposals were submitted to the commission before wildfires in May 2011 destroyed hundreds of homes in Slave Lake, Alta., and forced thousands of people to flee. The disaster cost more than $1 billion in damage, firefighting and relief costs.

Air tankers still on active duty

Two large air tankers are still on active duty, long past their normal mandatory availability periods. More information at FireAviation.com

Thanks go out to Dick

Differences between military and Forest Service accident investigations

Bill GabbertNovember 30, 2012February 7, 2015UncategorizedCantwell-Hastings, fatality, lodd, MAFFS, report, Thirtymile fire1 Comment

The accident report on the fatal crash of the military C-130 MAFFS air tanker which was released yesterday illustrated one very important difference between accident investigations conducted by the military and the U.S. Forest Service. A notice on page two of the report points out that the findings of military aviation accident investigations are regulated by law, 10 U.S.C. 2254(d), which states:

Use of Information in Civil Proceedings.—For purposes of any civil or criminal proceeding arising from an aircraft accident, any opinion of the accident investigators as to the cause of, or the factors contributing to, the accident set forth in the accident investigation report may not be considered as evidence in such proceeding, nor may such information be considered an admission of liability by the United States or by any person referred to in those conclusions or statements.

C-130 MAFFS crash, July 1, 2012 — C-130 MAFFS air tanker crash, July 1, 2012. US Air Force photo

For fatal wildfire burnovers or entrapments of U.S. Forest Service employees, a law provides for just the opposite, thanks to a bill that was sponsored by Senator Maria Cantwell and U.S. Representative Doc Hastings, which became Public Law 107-203 in 2002:

In the case of each fatality of an officer or employee of the Forest Service that occurs due to wildfire entrapment or burnover, the Inspector General of the Department of Agriculture shall conduct an investigation of the fatality. The investigation shall not rely on, and shall be completely independent of, any investigation of the fatality that is conducted by the Forest Service.

The Cantwell-Hastings bill that was signed into law in 2002 was a knee-jerk reaction to the fatalities on the Thirtymile fire the previous year. The Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General’s office had no experience or training in the suppression or investigation of wildland fires. They are much more likely to be investigating violations at a chicken ranch than evaluating fire behavior and tactical decisions at a wildfire. The goal of the Inspector General investigation would be to determine if any crimes were committed, so that a firefighter could be charged and possibly sent to prison.

After the trainee wildland fire investigator for the OIG finished looking at the Thirtymile fire, on January 30, 2007 the crew boss of the four firefighters that died was charged with 11 felonies, including four counts of manslaughter. The charges were later reduced to two counts of making false statements to which the crew boss pleaded guilty on August 20, 2008. He was sentenced to three years of probation and 90 days of work release.

The criminal charges brought against the firefighter who may or may not have made some mistakes on the fire had a serious, chilling effect on wildland firefighters. Not only does it make them reluctant to speak to anyone about what happened on an accident, some even had second thoughts about their willingness to continue working in a professional they loved because potential criminal charges or convictions could ruin their lives and the livelihood of their families.

In addition, firefighters lawyering-up after an accident makes it difficult to discover the causes of an accident and to learn lessons which could save lives by preventing similar fatalities.

The four-fatality MAFFS accident was a complex chain of events involving many individuals and firefighting resources. But in spite of the complexity, the report was released to the public only four months after the accident, making it possible for lessons to be learned while reducing the chances of a similar accident taking more lives.

This short turnaround is unheard of in the wildland fire agencies in part due to the potential civil and criminal implications down the road.

This is literally a life and death issue — Senator Maria Cantwell’s and Representative Doc Hastings’ hastily conceived Public Law 107-203 must be repealed and replaced by one similar to 10 U.S.C. 2254(d), which serves the military very well. The Cantwell-Hastings law serves no useful purpose. Accidents are investigated, with or without the ridiculous law. It had unintended consequences and needs to be fixed.

Wildfire briefing, November 16, 2012

Bill GabbertNovember 16, 2012November 24, 2019Uncategorizedarson, fatality, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, South Australia

Pennsylvania Firefighter sentenced for arson crimes

A 21-year old former volunteer firefighter pleaded guilty in October to conspiracy to commit arson after igniting a wildfire in July 2010 in Northampton County. Cory A. Praschyk suffers from anxiety and depression and has been diagnosed as a pyromaniac, according to a psychological evaluation completed prior to sentencing. He is already serving time for arson in Lehigh County. The new sentence for the Northampton County offense is one to 12 months in county prison to run concurrently with his Lehigh County sentence, which will conclude in about three months.

Kentucky man dies suppressing debris fire

Robert Childress, 64-years old, died in a Lexington hospital from smoke inhalation and burns over 95 percent of his body after he was found by a Kentucky Division of Forestry fire crew that arrived to suppress a vegetation fire reported by an aircraft. According to a report at Kentucky.com, Mr. Childress was apparently attempting to put out a fire that was called a debris burn by officials.

California fire crew accused of drug use and murder threats

Television station 17 KGET in central California has an article about their investigation into what appears to be serious problems last summer within the Rincon hand crew, a Sequoia National Forest Type 2 crew based out of Kernville, California. Here is how it begins:

Fire crew members say drug and alcohol abuse, fighting, and even murder threats were just some of the reasons a Forest Service fire crew was grounded over the summer. Those allegations came to light after a four-month investigation by 17 News.

We received hundreds of pages of previously secret government documents. 17’s Rob Martin broke the first story in June and has been digging ever since.

Rincon, a National Forest Service, Type 2 fire crew based in Kernville, was grounded for months this summer.

Rincon was rife with salacious allegations, including years of drug use on the team. It’s something the Forest Service refused to talk to us about, so we did the story without them.

Koalas injured in large vegetation fire in South Australia

Animal hospitals are caring for koalas that were injured in a massive brush fire in South Australia.

(the video is no longer available)

Summary of this year’s wildfires in the west

Bill Croke has written an interesting article at Spectator.org that nicely summarizes the wildfire season in the western United States. Here are some excerpts:

…There were notable named conflagrations in Colorado such as High Park near Denver and Waldo Canyon near Colorado Springs, and in Idaho (Hallstead near Stanley; Mustang near Salmon; Trinity Ridge near Boise). New Mexico saw the Whitewater-Baldy Fire on the Gila National Forest, at 465 square miles (297,000 acres) the largest in state history. The Waldo Canyon Fire took the grand prize for structures burned with 347. A hot, dry summer coupled with ongoing conditions of heavy fuel loads in pine beetle-infested forests (thanks to past fire suppression and little timber harvest on federal land) has brought us record fire seasons in the West for the last two decades.

According to a story in Montana’s Missoulian newspaper, recent seasons have seen a sevenfold increase in fires greater than 10,000 acres as compared to the 1970s, and five times more fires larger than 25,000 acres. Current seasons are an average of 75 days longer. Is this last the result of the factors noted above, or those factors and climate change proceeding in tandem? So goes the endless argument on the public lands in the West.

[…]

A young woman named Anne Veseth, 20, a U.S. Forest Service firefighter, was killed when a burning tree fell on her in Idaho’s Clearwater National Forest. She joined seven fellow firefighters (mostly air tanker crew members) who died in the field this year. In June a plane crash on a fire in Utah took the lives of two Idaho men, Todd Tompkins and Ronnie Chambers. Another crash in South Dakota this summer killed four, as a donated North Carolina Air National Guard C-130 went down. This brings to twenty the number of aircraft related fatalities recorded since 1987. An aging fleet of air tankers has become a chronic problem.

Fusees redesigned

Orion signal flare/fire starter. Photo by Orion

The Orion company is one of the companies that manufacture “fusees”, hand-held torches that wildland firefighters use to ignite prescribed fires, backfires, and burn outs. Now Orion is producing a modified version of the fusee that is designed to be a “signal flare/fire starter”.

It is much smaller than a fusee and does not have a handle. Apparently the entire device will burn up, so if someone is using it for signaling, they are cautioned to place it on the ground in an area where it will not start a wildfire. However, it can also be used to start a campfire while it burns for five minutes at over 3,400 degrees.

Thanks go out to Dick

Air Force report says microburst caused crash of MAFFS air tanker

Bill GabbertNovember 14, 2012September 30, 2019Uncategorizedair tanker, fatality, lodd, MAFFS, MAFFS 7, South Dakota15 Comments

(Update: On November 29, 2012 the Air Force released the full report on the crash. More details are at FireAviation.com HERE and HERE.)

A US Air Force report concluded that strong winds out of a thunderstorm caused the crash of a military C-130 air tanker July 1. The accident occurred on the White Draw Fire near Edgemont, South Dakota and resulted in four fatalities. Two crewmen in the rear of the aircraft were injured but survived. Those two were operating the Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) in the cargo hold which enables the C-130 to function as an air tanker, capable of dropping up to 3,000 gallons of fire retardant.

MAFFS C-130 crash, White Draw Fire, July 1, 2012. US Air Force photo.

The report said a microburst of turbulent air out of a thunderstorm caused the crash. During a previous retardant drop on the fire the aircraft experienced a drop in airspeed despite operating under full power. Before the second drop the crew discussed the air speed problem but decided they could adjust to the conditions. The plane crashed on the second drop about five minutes after the first one.

A lead plane flying a half-mile ahead of the C-130 experienced a microburst that pushed it within 10 feet of the ground. According to a news release from the Department of Defense:

The investigation also determined factors that substantially contributed to the mishap included the failure of the Lead Plane and Air Attack aircrews to communicate critical operational information; as well as conflicting operational guidance concerning thunderstorm avoidance.

“If you add all the pieces up, it was very clear they should not have attempted the second drop,” said Brig. Gen. Randall Guthrie, the Air Force Reserve officer who led the investigation. “With all apparent conditions, they should not have gone ahead.”

The Associated Press reports:

“They struggled to keep that [lead] plane flying,” Guthrie said. A second small plane also reported “more than moderate turbulence.”

The crews of those planes failed to alert the trailing C-130 to go around the storm, the investigation found. Instead, the lead plane crew advised the C-130 to drop its load of retardant to lighten the craft to help it climb.

“We felt like they had information and the importance of that information was not passed,” Guthrie said. Those crews later said “they also didn’t really add all those factors up themselves.”

The C-130 dropped the retardant but crashed seconds later, dropping into a lightly-wooded plateau, then into a ravine and breaking apart.

The aircraft that crashed was MAFFS #7 from the North Carolina Air National Guard’s 145th Airlift Wing based at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport.

We are working on obtaining a copy of the full report. We we get it, we’ll update this article with a link.

Killed in the crash were Lt. Col. Paul Mikeal, 42, of Mooresville; Maj. Joseph McCormick, 36, of Belmont; Maj. Ryan David, 35, of Boone; and Senior Master Sgt. Robert Cannon, 50, of Charlotte. The two seriously injured were Chief Master Sgt. Andy Huneycutt and Sgt. Josh Marlowe of Boiling Springs.

UPDATE: links to the report can be found at FireAviation.com

Thanks go out to Al

Water tender rollover kills firefighter

Bill GabbertNovember 12, 2012August 25, 2019Uncategorizedfatality, Indiana, lodd, rollover4 Comments

A water tender responding to a vegetation fire Sunday night near Fort Wayne, Indiana rolled over, killing the driver who was believed to be the only person in the truck. The firefighter, who has not been identified, lost control while turning at an intersection. The Washington Township Fire Department truck rolled over several times taking out three utility poles. Live electrical wires at the scene prevented firefighters from accessing the wreckage until the power had been shut off. Photos show extensive damage to the water tender.

Washington Township FD water tender — A Water Tender from the Washington Township Fire Department. Photo from their Facebook page.

The Washington Township FD’s Facebook page said the county coroner will be releasing the individual’s name following positive identification later on Monday.

Fatal wrecks involving water tenders (or “tankers”) are so common that the Centers For Disease Control issued a bulletin in 2001 through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health warning of the danger. Here is how NIOSH described the hazard:

====================================================

“Mobile water supply vehicles, known as tankers or tenders, are widely used to transport water to areas beyond a water supply system or where the water supply is inadequate. Incidents involving motor vehicles account for approximately 20% of U.S. fire fighter deaths each year; cases involving tankers are the most prevalent of these motor vehicle incidents. During 1977–1999, 73 deaths occurred in 63 crashes involving tankers. Of those deaths, 54 occurred in 49 crashes in which tankers rolled over (no collision), and 8 occurred in 6 crashes in which the tankers left the road (no collision). The other cases involved collision with another vehicle (10 deaths in 7 crashes) and collision with stationary object(s) (1 death) [NFPA 2000].

Tanker drivers may not be fully aware that tanker trucks are more difficult to control than passenger vehicles. A tanker truck requires a much greater distance to stop. Tankers weigh substantially more, and their air brake systems take more time to activate than the hydraulic/mechanical brake systems on smaller passenger cars. The effect is influenced by the amount of water the tanker is hauling and whether the tanker is baffled.”

Injured Australian firefighter released from hospital

Bill GabbertNovember 7, 2012November 13, 2016UncategorizedAustralia, fatality, lodd, Western Australia

One of the two Australian firefighters that were seriously injured when their engine was overrun by a bushfire has been released from the hospital. The 24-year old woman, whose name has not been released, had burns over 40 percent of her body and had been treated at the at the Royal Perth Hospital.

Her colleague, 45-year old Wendy Bearfoot, passed away on Thursday, November 1, after suffering burns over 60 percent of her body while fighting the same fire on October 12. Both of the firefighters worked for the Department of Environment and Conservation in Western Australia.

Ms. Bearfoot joined the Department in 2003 as an Indigenous Land Management Trainee and progressed through the roles of conservation employee, national park ranger and most recently overseer in the Albany District office.

Both firefighters had been suppressing a fire in a pine plantation with 20 other firefighters near Albany when strong winds caused the fire to suddenly change direction on a slope. Three other firefighters were also injured in the burnover and were treated at a hospital in Albany.

Burned engine, Photo credit Department of Environment and Conservation — Burned fire engine in Western Australia. Photo credit: Department of Environment and Conservation

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