Nebraska is still reeling from recent destructive wildfires and heading into what’s expected to be an active fire summer.
A new website launched by the University of Nebraska–Lincoln seeks to put the state’s long history of fire on full display, and in turn, help farmers, ranchers and land managers restore the state’s native grasslands.
Thehistoric Morrill Fire and other wildfires burned 821,000 acres across the state between March and April, by far the highest number of burned acres the state has seen in generations. Gov. Jim Pillen recently requested President Donald Trump to issue a major disaster declaration and subsequently unlock federal recovery funding in response to the fires.
The wildfires have been an unwelcome reminder for many that fire is a natural part of the state’s ecosystem. The Great Plains’ grasslands have long been fire-dependent, with frequent burns both benefiting native wildlife and destroying ever-encroaching invasive plants.
“Wildfire recovery unfolds over years, not months,” said Dirac Twidwell, rangeland ecologist at the university. “What we’ve built here is not just a map of fires — it’s a system that helps people understand recovery, anticipate change and respond with better information.”
The online hub was built using data from over 1,300 wildfires across the Great Plains since 1985, university officials said in a press release. The data allows people to view the specifics of historical fires, along with analyzing vegetation’s response to wildfire, and inform recovery decisions.
The data behind the platform draws from multiple national and research-backed sources, including the Rangeland Analysis Platform for vegetation data, the Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity database for historical wildfire perimeters and the National Interagency Fire Center for recent fire data.
“That long-term record lets us see how grasslands actually recover — across different weather patterns, management decisions and landscapes — and that perspective is critical for making sound decisions today,” Twidwell said in the press release.
For example, the critically important Crescent Lake National Wildlife Refuge, which is located in one of the world’s most important intact prairies, was largely burned in the Morrill Fire. The university’s map offers hope for the Refuge in the near future, showing numerous other fires had burned there over the past decades.
South Canyon Fire memorial in Two Rivers Park, Glenwood Springs, Colorado.
Today marks the 28th anniversary of the entrapment and death of 14 firefighters on the South Canyon Fire who were overrun by the fire on Storm King Mountain near Glenwood Springs, Colorado. Those firefighters were Kathi Beck, Tamera Bickett, Scott Blecha, Levi Brinkley, Robert Browning, Doug Dunbar, Terri Hagen, Bonnie Holtby, Rob Johnson, Jon Kelso, Don Mackey, Roger Roth, Jim Thrash, and Richard Tyler.
Barry Stevenson of Outside Adventure Media produced the short video below that looks at an often overlooked part of the event — the eight smokejumpers further uphill who took refuge in their fire shelters for two hours as the fire burned around them.
If you have not seen it already, be sure and watch the excellent lessons learned video about the South Canyon Fire titled Everyone Goes Home. It includes numerous interviews of wildland firefighters who were involved with, or were on scene during the entrapment and deaths of the 14 firefighters.
A truck with a movie projector visited rural communities to teach people about the evils of wildfire. PBS.
A PBS program, “The future of Fire,” takes us from the 1920s when trucks visited rural communities in the Southeast and used a projector to show a movie on the side of barns about the evils of fire, to today when modeling tools help fire managers make better decisions about using and managing fire.
"Her vision is that she'd be able to sit on her front porch and just watch the fire go by and be completely unconcerned because the conditions around her home were such that she would be confident that she had done her work and her neighbors had done their work and it was safe to actually have fire play an active role in restoring the landscape. And that we don't look at all smoke as bad, that we be really working toward seeing smoke and have that be a positive experience, that it's like, oh, the forest is under renewal right now."
Anne Bradley, Forest Program Director, The Nature Conservancy, paraphrasing someone she knows who lives in the forest.
John Hawkins, retired CAL FIRE Unit Chief and County Fire Chief, sent us a .pdf copy of the publication, Forest Fire Fighting Fundamentals, which I had not seen in many years. It may have been considered part of basic training for wildland firefighters, written by the US Forest Service and the agency then known as California Department of Forestry (CDF).
I’m not sure when the 58-page document was first published. As you can see above, it was received on the Medicine Bow National Forest in 1953. The National Museum of Forest Service History says it was published around 1945 (“1945 ca.”), but I wonder if there were multiple editions throughout a couple of decades.
Forest Fire Fighting Fundamentals, p. 23
There are many hand-drawn illustrations, many of which are attention-grabbing or funny, which may have made it easier to retain the lesson being taught.
Forest Fire Fighting Fundamentals, p. 32
There are no chain saws or air tankers, but you will see a dozer and a very early model helicopter. Numerous times it mentions “men” being used to fight fire, “Only physically fit men should be used,” for example.
Forest Fire Fighting Fundamentals, p. 40
It mentions aggressive initial attack, saying that when using direct attack, “You either ‘hit the head’ (point of most rapid spread) or start at the rear and work forward on both sides (flanks) at the fire edge and thus pinch out and control the head.”
Forest Fire Fighting Fundamentals, illustration on page 39
It is very out of date in many respects, but the physics of fire and general principles of fire suppression and firefighter safety remain basically the same. It has been a while since I looked at what rookies are shown in basic firefighter training, S-130/190, but it would not hurt to let them peruse this document to help reinforce some fundamentals.
Evidence for anthropogenic fire 85,000 years ago in Africa may reflect intentional use at the landscape scale, widespread populations creating more or larger on-site ignitions, alteration of fuel availability through harvesting of the understory, or a combination of these activities.
Tanker 85, N6453C, BuNo 64041, a PBY-6A at Lancaster, California in August 1975. Courtesy of the Flight Test Museum at Edwards Air Force Base.
This photo of a PBY-6A taken at Lancaster, California in August 1975 was sent to us by the Flight Test Museum at Edwards Air Force Base. The PBY-5A and 6A were some of the first amphibious water-scooping airtankers.
I have learned that when writing about tankers from the old days, check with JD Davis since he is a great source for high quality photos and is also generous about sharing them. The five photos below, all PBY-6As, were taken by Mr. Davis, and I am very grateful that he is letting us use them.
The aircraft above (and the next three photos below) have the same FAA registration number, N6453C, but it was variously known by different Airtanker numbers.
Tanker 85, PBY-6A, N6453C, Photo by JD Davis at Ontario in September 1975.
Tanker 54, PBY-6A, N6453C, Photo by JD Davis at Chino in 1969.
Tanker 54, PBY-6A, N6453C, Photo by JD Davis at Chino in 1969.
Tanker 84, PBY-6A, N6456C, Photo by JD Davis at Ontario in November 1975
Tanker 83, PBY-6A, N6458C, Photo by JD Davis at Hemet in May 1971
If you have seen the movie Always you remember the PBY-5A in the opening scene:
Currently a CAL FIRE S2-T is using the T-85 number:
Airtanker 85, an S-2T, at MCC on March 26, 2018. Photo by Sergio Maraschin.
World first crop dusting experiment (August 3rd 1921, Troy, Ohio) using an aircraft – Left: McCook Field engineer Etienne Dormoy (left) who designed the hopper and operated it during the flight ; Right: Lieut. J.A. Macready who piloted the plane (Curtiss JN-6). Photo: Houser, J. S. “The Airplane in Catalpa Sphinx Control.” Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station, Monthly Bulletin 7 (1922)
By Richard L. Hilderbrand
EARLY SPRAY EQUIPMENT
Military aircraft have long been used to apply insecticides and herbicides. An entomologist from Cleveland, C. R. Neillie, believing that airplanes could be used to dust a stand of trees, worked with the Army Air Service at McCook Field in Dayton to test the idea. On August 3, 1921, Lt. John A. Macready assisted in the successful treatment of catalpa trees using insecticide dropped from a Curtiss JN-6 airplane to kill sphinx caterpillars.
World’s first crop dusting experiment, Aug. 3, 1921
In 1933 a study summarized the military use of chemicals dispersed by aircraft and included the possibility of using chemicals to deny the opposition the use of rear areas and lines of communication. This basic idea was applied in Vietnam to deny cover and limit food crops.
An engineering study completed in 1952 laid the groundwork for the development of the MC-I “Hourglass” system which was first used for defoliation in Vietnam. Built by the Hayes Aircraft Corporation of Birmingham, AL, the MC-1 system included a 1,000-gallon tank and equipment to support six spray nozzles.
The MC-1 was used on many occasions but was not satisfactory to spray jungle foliage in Vietnam in “Operation Ranch Hand” due to the requirement for two passes over the treatment area. Knowing a second pass was coming for adequate treatment allowed the enemy on the ground to prepare a “return” welcome party. On February 2, 1962, Ranch Hand lost an aircraft and the crew became the first Air Force fatalities in Vietnam.
The need for a three gallon/acre spray capability in one pass resulted in the development in 1966 of the A/A45Y-1 sprayer which incorporated spray booms under each wing and under the tail and a larger pump to increase pressure from 38 to 60 psi. The A/A45Y-1 Internal Defoliant Dispenser, also designed and manufactured by Hayes, was a complete dispensing system with a 1000 gallon tank, jettison capability, and rapid installation into and from a C-123.
AIRCRAFT
In the spring of 1953, Douglas Aircraft Company was flying a DC-7 prototype out of Palm Springs Airport using water in a tank as a ballast to represent a load. At the end of flight-testing, the four-engine DC-7 made a low pass over the Palm Springs runway and dumped its ballast through three six-inch valves in the airplane’s belly. The result was a wide, mile-long swath of water that caught the attention of the DC-7’s pilots as well as observers, thus starting the concept of aerial attack on fires. The first application of aerial attack adapted a 1939 Stearman biplane that had been converted into a cropduster. In 1955 Willows Flying Service, a California agriculture chemical applicator, cut a hole in the airplane’s belly fabric and fitted the chemicals hopper with a flapper hatch that opened when the pilot pulled a rope to release 170 gallons of water. In August of that year the Willows Stearman made several runs on a fire burning in Mendocino National Forest, dropping 170 gallons on each run and assisting in “knocking down hotspots.” This was the first time that a real forest fire had been attacked using water dropped from the air.
TBM air tanker being refueled by truck in 1966 in the Beaverhead National Forest, Montana. The TBM payload was 800 gallons of retardant. Photograph provided by Mr. Dave Stack courtesy of National Museum of Forest Service History, Missoula, Montana.
In 1958 a single engine TBM Avenger (Grumman TBF manufactured by General Motors) dropped retardant on a fire at Lake Elsinore, California and started the use of the TBM as a retardant tanker. Continuing through the 1960s, the tankers were usually modifications of WWII bombers, such as the TBM, that carried a several hundred gallons of retardant and dropped the load using the bomb bay. These drops were bulk drops and frequently a mass of retardant would break the trunks of trees. The military bombers were designed to withstand the “negative g” wing-loads of rapid cargo (e.g., bombs) deployment but were not necessarily adapted to the low-level drops in mountain terrain. Other aircraft used were the PB4Y, B-26, B-17, and P2V Neptune. Other military aircraft were used such as the Grumman AF with a payload of 800 gallons and the C-123. They were usually single purpose aircraft owned and operated by private contractors with much time parked on the ramp. These early pilots flew on the edge and would occasionally return to the retardant base with pieces of tree-top in their wings. C-119 “Flying Boxcars” were used through about 1987 and a few even had 3,400-pound-thrust Westinghouse J34 turbojet atop the fuselage.
