Don Hall sent us this picture of a convection column over the Beaver fire, saying it was taken at about the same time the three firefighters were entrapped.
(Updated at 7:15 p.m. August 12, 2014)
The three firefighters who were entrapped and deployed fire shelters were removed from the fireline and transported to a hospital in Yreka, California Monday evening, according to Corey Wilford, a spokesperson for the Incident Management Team (IMT). He said all three were treated for symptoms of smoke inhalation and one of them had second degree burns on his lower leg. After treatment, they were all released from the hospital.
The area that the IMT had previously described as a “safety zone”, did not meet the definition, in that fire shelters were required. On the other hand, the three firefighters had previously observed the area and remembered that it could serve as a “deployment site”, meaning that firefighters could likely survive being burned over at that location, but they would need to deploy fire shelters.
****
(Originally published at 8:44 a.m. PDT, August 12, 2014)
Three firefighters were entrapped by advancing flames Monday afternoon on the Beaver Fire in northern California, approximately 15 miles northwest of Yreka.
The incident occurred at 5:30 p.m. as a rapid wind shift affected the fire. All three firefighters deployed their fire shelters in a predetermined safety zone. They were evaluated on scene and no serious injuries were reported.
All firefighters on the fire were actively withdrawing as a thunderstorm approached. The weather system east of the Beaver Fire produced 30 to 35 mph outflow winds that changed direction rapidly and caused extreme fire behavior. With the increase in wind speed, flame lengths extended into the canopy of the trees, causing a sustained crown run which aligned with the exposed west slope on Buckhorn Ridge.
Beaver Fire, 8-11-2014. The California/Oregon border is the white line just north of the fire.
The lightning-caused Beaver Fire was discovered on June 30 and has blackened 28,000 acres. It is burning in a very remote area and could be a long-duration event. The Incident Management Team is calling it 30 percent contained.
In 1985 118 firefighters were burned over while fighting the Butte Fire on the Salmon National Forest in Idaho — 45 of them took refuge in a safety zone in a clear cut, but 73 had to spend an hour and a half in fire shelters in deployment sites that had been created by dozers on a ridge top. The fire made a 2-mile run at them in about 15 minutes. The heat was so intense that handles on shovels next to the firefighters were completely consumed by fire. None of the firefighters suffered any burns, but five were treated in a hospital for heat exhaustion and released the next day .
This video has been around on VHS tape since shortly after the burnover, but the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center uploaded this digital version to YouTube in April.
The U.S. Forest Service’s Washington office has directed their Technology and Development Center to conduct a review of the fire shelter system, which includes the fire shelter, fireline pack, practice shelters, and training. The Forest Service said the review “had been scheduled to begin in 2015, but due to factors both internally and externally, the WO-FAM requested this review process start in 2014.”
One of those “factors” is of course the deaths of 19 firefighters on the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30, 2013 in Arizona. They all deployed shelters, but none of them survived, however it is not certain if they were all completely inside the devices when they were overrun by the fire. This review, which will include a search for different, more heat-resistant lightweight materials, may find that in order to protect firefighters entrapped in 2,000-degree flames they would have to carry something that would be too bulky and heavy to transport for 16 hours a day over steep terrain while constructing fireline on a hot day. Or, there might be a technological breakthrough with a radical new design and unthought-of materials.
After the county Sheriff has repeatedly publicly criticized how the Fire Chief handled the first two hour of the destructive Black Forest Fire in Colorado Springs, an independent investigator has been called in.
A man whose body was found during a brush fire in Arvin, California in August was murdered, before the suspect tried covering up the crime with a fire.
Protecting archaeological sites from wildfire and extreme weather using a wireless sensor network.
A former member of the El Cariso Hotshots, a southern California crew based on the Cleveland National Forest, sent us a copy of a newspaper article from August 9, 1964 that described a “new three-pound bodyguard” carried by U.S. Forest Service firefighters. It was one of the early versions of the tent-like aluminum fire shelters which are now standard issue for most wildland firefighters in the United States.
But what was news to me was an entrapment of 36 members of El Cariso on June 22 of that year when they deployed the shelters on a fire near San Bernardino County’s Cajon Pass. The article said they set an escape fire, then deployed the shelters in the freshly blackened area. No one was burned, except for one crewmember who was in a different location and did not use his fire shelter. He suffered serious burns which could have been worse, Lynn Biddison the Forest Fire Control Officer said, if he had not been wearing another new piece of equipment, a cotton shirt treated to be fire resistant.
The Hotshots were told at the time that it was the first time fire shelters had been deployed in a life-saving situation.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe when 12 members of El Cariso were entrapped and killed on the Loop Fire on the Angeles National Forest two years later on November 1, 1966, they were not carrying their fire shelters because a decision had been made that it was not necessary because the fire was relatively quiet.
****
(UPDATE November 13, 2013)
Concerning the use of fire shelters on the Loop Fire, below is a passage from the report on that fatal fire:
From the Yarnell Hill Fire report: “The burned remnants of a fire shelter that was recovered from the Yarnell Hill Fire deployment site shows signs of extremely high heat. The photo was taken during equipment inspection.”
Wildland firefighters who carry pup tent-like aluminum foil fire shelters hope they never have to unfold and climb into them as a wildfire approaches. Quite a few firefighters have deployed and survived inside them, but too many have died using the limited protection it provides.
The investigation that followed the deaths of 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots June 30 on the Yarnell Hill Fire in Arizona found that all of the fire shelters were very seriously damaged during the burnover. The outer foil shell was 95 to 100 percent burned away on 17 of the 19 shelters, while the foil on the other two was 80 percent burned away. The shelters are constructed of numerous panels of material that are sewn together with heat-resistant quartz and fiberglass thread which failed in some areas on most of the shelters, causing some of the seams to separate, allowing super-heated gasses to enter.
Quartz thread becomes brittle and can break at 2,000°F, aluminum foil will melt at 1,220°F, and silica cloth, one of the layers in the shelter, becomes brittle at 2,000°F, according to data in the investigation report. The failure of the seams and the brittle silica cloth found in some areas indicates that the temperature of the fire was over 2,000°F, hotter than many fires.
With the spectacular failures of the shelters on the Yarnell Hill Fire, some are calling for firefighters to be outfitted with designs that are more survivable. I received a call several weeks ago from a father of one of the Granite Mountain 19 that is exploring options for better shelters.
A company in Valencia, California is asking for donations so that they can build a prototype of a shelter made with ceramic fiber that, depending on the grade, can withstand continuous use up to 1,472°F or 2,462°F. Jim Moseley is the CEO of the company, SunSeeker Enterprises, Inc. which in addition to designing a new-generation fire shelter sells “fire blankets to 3000°F” for structures. Mr. Moseley is featured in the video below in which he is seen wearing clothing advertising a golf course and a shark-watching tour company. He also is the principle in The Great Trombonist, LLC, based in Los Angeles.
Finding high-temperature-resistant material is one step toward producing a practical fire shelter. But the finished product and everything that goes into it has to be high temperature resistant, foldable into a small space, easy to quickly deploy, durable enough to be carried by firefighters for years, affordable, and not too heavy.
A better fire shelter is needed. We hope that Mr. Moseley or someone else can come up with a better design that meets the requirements.
Some will no doubt say that firefighters should avoid a situation where a fire shelter, a last resort, is needed. Of course that is true, and no firefighter should DEPEND on a shelter to save their lives. And, no firefighter should DEPEND on aircraft to serve as a lookout, drop life-saving water or retardant, or extricate them before an entrapment or at the end of a shift. But, firefighters, in spite of their best intentions and wildland firefighting experience, find themselves forced into fire shelters. That is the reality. If possible, we should take steps to improve their chances of survival.
(Originally published at 11:19 MDT, September 28, 2013; updated at 6 p.m. September 28, 2013. Observations after reading the report are at the bottom of this article.)
The Arizona State Forestry Division has released the Serious Accident Investigation report of the Yarnell Hill Fire, which on June 30, 2013, killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots. It was produced by a very large cast of characters, 18 core Team Members, 17 Support Team Members, and 19 Subject Matter Experts, for a total of 54 people.
The report found:
The judgments and decisions of the incident management organizations managing this fire were reasonable. Firefighters performed within their scope of duty, as defined by their respective organizations. The Team found no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol.
Air Attack’s photo of the Yarnell Hill fire at 7:24 p.m. June 29, 2013
A news conference about the report was live-streamed by at least two Phoenix area television stations. In the question and answer period several national news organizations as well as local media asked questions of the five-person panel which consisted of the Arizona State Forester, two people from the investigation team, and two officers from the Prescott Fire Department.
Below is a 21-minute video released by the investigation team today, which they described as a “A brief overview of the Yarnell Hill Fire Investigation report.” Much of it comes word for word from the report but it makes effective use of Google Earth to provide an overview of the geography of the fire.
Granite Mountain Hotshot Christopher MacKenzie shot the two video clips below shortly after 4:00 p.m. on June 30, 2013. These are the last images of the hotshots before they died. The video was unexpectedly made available today for the first time by the Prescott Daily Courier, which has an article about how the video and other photos of the fire were found.
Our observations after reading the report and viewing the press conference and the question and answer session.
The official report commissioned by the Arizona State Forestry Division, a case of them investigating themselves, did not break much new ground. There was little of a negative nature written about the crew or their employer, the Prescott Fire Department, which was barely mentioned. The Granite Mountain Hotshots were fully qualified, staffed, and trained and they were on day 13 of a permitted 14 days in a row of fighting fire. And, there was “no indication of negligence, recklessness actions, or violations of policy or protocol”.
Why did the Granite Mountain 19 leave the “black”?
The investigators emphasized that they were unable to answer one of the most-asked questions about the fatalities — why the crew left the safety of the already burned area, the black, to attempt to walk 1.6 miles mostly through unburned brush to another safety zone, the Boulder Springs Ranch. They came to within 0.38 miles of their destination when they encountered one of the heads of the fire that had wrapped around the ridge to their left in the box canyon and was headed toward them, cutting off their path probably much to their surprise. Click the map below to see a larger version of the wind at the deployment site.
No one knew where the crew was in relation to the fire
There was confusion about the location of the crew. Other firefighters thought they had either remained safely in the black where they had been for a while, or they had headed north to another safety zone. But instead, they traveled south. When they reported that they were entrapped and were deploying their fire shelters, no one knew where they were. Finally they told Air Attack they were on the “south side”, but even though a DC-10 air tanker was orbiting and ready to drop on them, airborne personnel could not find them, either due to heavy smoke or because they were looking in the wrong place. But under the extreme wind and fire conditions, it is unlikely that air support would have helped the firefighters very much.
Improving situational awareness
This is another fire, like the Esperanza Fire, where if the fire overhead, such as a Division Supervisor, Operations Section Chief, or Safety Officer, had known the location of the personnel on the fire in relation to the real-time spread of the fire, it could have saved lives — 24 on these two fires alone.
It is irresponsible for the wildland fire agencies to continue to do nothing to improve the situational awareness of firefighters, which has proved fatal to too many of them.
We have written about this several times before. Many local fire departments, EMS divisions, and police units have the ability to send location data to dispatchers. If the analog or digital ground-based radio systems being used today can’t handle this task in remote areas, then use a satellite-based system. The U.S. Forest Service asked for proposals to purchase thousands of little location devices last year, and adding high tech video systems to air attack ships could help. We have also written about a device we called a Firefighter’s Emergency Situational Awareness Device, a FESAD.
One of the recommendations in the report was to “review current technology that could increase resource tracking, communications, real time weather, etc.” The Q&A panel today said, in response to a question, that the surviving family members of the 19 Hotshots strongly suggested while being briefed this morning that tracking systems for firefighters be utilized.
Very Large Air Tanker not ordered because of “steep terrain”
The information that the state of Arizona released on July 16 about the resources deployed on the fire said a DC-10 Very Large Air Tanker (VLAT) was in Albuquerque and available on June 29, but was not ordered due to Air Attack’s concern about its effectiveness in steep terrain and inability to deliver retardant before cut-off time. The way this was addressed in today’s report was “ICT4 declines the VLAT offer at 1750 [June 29] based on fire conditions.” There was nothing about “steep terrain”, which didn’t exist on the fire to the extent that it would severely limit the effectiveness of a DC-10 VLAT. In fact, the next day, June 30, they used the hell out of both DC-10s, dropping over 88,000 gallons in 8 flights. A recommendation in today’s report was to “…develop a brief technical tip for fire supervisors/agency administrators on the effective use of VLATs.”
Air tanker drops on Yarnell Hill Fire, June 29 and 30, 2013.
The DC-10s may have been effective on June 29 when the fire was still small, but by the time they both arrived on June 30, the day of the entrapment, the wind event was making it difficult for anything dropped from the air to slow down the fire — too much heat, and too much wind blowing the retardant away before it hit the target.
Aerial Supervision Module taking on too many roles?
During the time of the entrapment the roles of Air Attack and Lead Plane were filled by a single aircraft called an Aerial Supervision Module (ASM), coordinating all of the aerial firefighting, directing air traffic, preventing aircraft from bumping into each other, developing tactics, AND serving as Lead Plane, physically leading the air tankers into their targets about 200 feet above the ground. The Lead Plane duties limited their ability to perform full Air Attack responsibilities over the fire at the same time. The report said, “ASM was too busy handling multiple duties to communicate with the crew just prior to the deployment”.
One of the recommendations in the report is to request the National Wildfire Coordinating Group to develop guidance to identify at what point is it necessary to separate the ASM and Air Attack roles to carry out required responsibilities for each platform.
No overwhelming force
The ordering and use of ground and aerial firefighting resources was less than aggressive on June 29, the day before the tragedy when the fire was still small. The only air tankers used that day were two single engine air tankers, and for only part of the day, dropping a total of 7,626 gallons. After being released, they were requested again by Air Attack, but dispatch only allowed one to respond to the fire, wanting to keep one in reserve in case there were other fires. General Norman Schwarzkopf’s philosophy when confronting the enemy was to use “overwhelming force”. This strategy also is effective when confronting a wildfire. Overwhelming force for a short amount of time can prevent megafires burning for weeks, consuming many acres, dollars, and sometimes homes and lives.
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation quotes the chair of the fire equipment working group for the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre as saying fire shelters have not been used by wildland firefighters in Canada since 2005.
In Canada, fire shelters are no longer used at all. Marc Mousseau, chair of the fire equipment working group for the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre, said they were never widely deployed, and B.C. became the last province to stop deploying them in 2005.
Lucy Tower, manager of B.C.’s fire equipment depot, told CBCNews.ca Tuesday that the decision was made because the province’s firefighters are never put in a situation where they would need to deploy a fire shelter. Much of the terrain where wildfires occur in Canada is also densely forested.
That type of terrain is unsuitable for using the shelters, said John Flinn, equipment coordinator for the New Brunswick provincial fire warehouse.
“You have to have some place open … where you can get away from adjacent fuels,” he said in a phone interview Tuesday. “There’s no place in the Maritimes you can do that, really.”
In general, Canadian wildfire fighters are equipped with the view that firefighters should avoid putting themselves in harm’s way to begin with.
The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center has published a video about the burnover of three fire engines and a hand crew that occurred on the 1987 Crank Fire in northern California. Three engines were destroyed. The burnover was captured on video by a fixed wing aircraft that was conducting an aerial retardant study.
Under the direction of the four supervisors, two USFS and two CDF, all 25 firefighters deployed their fire shelters and remained under cover for about 40 to 45 minutes. The injuries which occurred were limited to a few first and second-degree burns, eye irritation, and minor smoke inhalation.
The written report about the burnover can be found HERE.
The burnover occurred on August 30 during the “Siege of 1987″, when lightning in late August started 1,600 fires in northern California and southern Oregon that burned 650,000 acres. Some of the fires burned into October.
NIOSH has released their report on the line of duty death of Cactus, Texas firefighter Elias Jaquez. While working on a wildfire on April 9, 2011 Mr. Jaquez suffered 3rd degree burns over 60% of his body and died 11 days later in a burn center. (Wildfire Today’s original report on the fatality.)
During fire suppression operations, the engine that Mr. Jaquez was in became stuck in sand. Efforts by that crew and a second engine to free the truck were unsuccessful when both became stuck. The crews of the engines fled on foot as the fire approached. Later Mr. Jaquez was found by himself 1.0 to 1.5 miles away lying face down on a road. He was still wearing a structural fire-fighting helmet, bunker pants, T-shirt, and the remains of his metal frames from his safety glasses. His rubber turnout boots had been removed and were lying in the road behind him. He had experienced severe third degree burns on his torso and head; however, he was conscious and coherent.
