Heat from a fire detected by a satellite near I-15 north of Conrad, MT, May 3, 2021 near the site of the fatal crash as reported by the Montana Highway Patrol.
A tractor-trailer that slowed as it traveled through a cloud of smoke from a controlled burn near the highway led to a chain-reaction crash on Interstate 15 near Conrad May 3, killing two young women from Columbia Falls.
A chain reaction series of crashes began when a tractor trailer slowed to 25 mph as it entered the smoke according to the Montana Highway Patrol (MHP). A second tractor trailer plowed into the first, then a sedan with the two women hit the second truck and a fourth vehicle, a sedan, hit the vehicle with the two women, who died at the scene. Four people in the fourth vehicle were injured.
The crash occurred at approximately 1:15 p.m. on I-15 at mile marker 344, about five miles north of Conrad, 0.78 mile south of Ledger Road (MT 366).
During a 2:54 p.m. MDT overflight on the day of the crash a satellite detected heat from a fire just west of the location of the crash reported by the MHP. According to Google Earth imagery virtually everything within a mile of the site, other than roads, is agricultural fields, including the location of the detected fire. It appears likely that the controlled burn was from agricultural or debris burning, rather than a prescribed burn used by land managers to reduce hazardous fuels or restore fire to a fire dependent ecosystem.
The fire prompted evacuations on the Blackfeet Reservation
Map showing the approximate location of the fire east of Browning, MT. The red dots represent heat detected by satellites at 3 p.m. March 28, 2021.
A fire that started about a mile east of Blackfeet Community College burned 25,000 acres between Browning and Meriwether in northern Montana Sunday.
The fire was pushed across farm lands by southwest winds gusting to 54 mph while the relative humidity was in the mid-20s. There is a report that one structure was destroyed.
The Blackfeet Covid-19 Incident Command reported that local fire departments suppressed the fire along with Blackfeet Fire Management and the Chief Mountain Interagency Hot Shots, a crew based in Browning.
Rain that started at about 9 p.m. Sunday followed by snow during the night and temperatures in the low 20s slowed the spread of the blaze.
The Montana DOT camera at Browning, MT showed snow at 2:08 p.m. 3-29-2021.
Poll: help them choose a new “Smokejumpers” logo for their school
(Updated January 29, 2020)
The students at Desmet School in Missoula, MT have made their decision about which proposed logo will identify them as the Smokejumpers. Since 1890 the mascot of DeSmet Public School in Missoula, Montana had been Padres — Catholic priests. The school is not affiliated with a religion and not all genders could identify with priests who are all male, so they felt they needed a change, and selected smokejumpers as their new mascot.
There were four logos the students could choose from (see the images below), and on January 28 they made a split decision, using variations of two designs.
For informal use, such as on shirts, there will be two versions of number four. Principal Matt Driessen said Friday the design will be modified by the artist to make it “less cartoonish” and there will be one version with a male smokejumper and another showing a female smokejumper.
For more formal use, such as on stationary, signs, and on the floor or wall of the new gym, number two will be used.
As you can see in our poll below in which 844 participated, number two came in first with 35 percent, and number four was third with 21 percent. The ages of the students, grades K-8, may have led them to gravitate toward number 4.
(Originally published January 22, 2021)
DeSmet Smokejumpers Logo Options
Since 1890 the mascot of DeSmet Public School in Missoula, Montana has been Padres — Catholic priests. As the facility is undergoing a major $6 million renovation it seemed like a good time to reevaluate their mascot. DeSmet is not affiliated with any religion, and since all priests are male, some females at the school could not relate to it.
The Missoula Smokejumper Base is virtually across the street from the school. Principal Matt Driessen said their students can see their planes take off from the airport on training flights and watch the smokejumpers parachute from the aircraft and land on the ground. He said the jumpers then run back to the base as part of their training.
Smokejumpers made the list of 100 possible mascots that the administration submitted to the students. And, that’s what they selected. They are about to become the DeSmet Smokejumpers.
But they need a new logo, and that’s where our Wildfire Today readers come in. They have the four possibilities above.
Principal Driessen said number four is a pencil draft, and if it is selected by the students a graphic artist will make a polished version in the same quality as the other three.
Vote for the image you prefer in the poll below, clicking on one of the numbers that represents the image above that you prefer. The poll closes Wednesday night, January 27, 2020, since the students will make their choice the next day. Keep in mind it will be seen on uniforms, and probably on the floor of the new gym being built.
The poll has closed
Choose new logo for DeSmet School
2 (35%, 297 Votes)
1 (29%, 247 Votes)
4 (21%, 180 Votes)
3 (14%, 120 Votes)
Total Voters: 844
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The decision of which image to choose is up to the students, of course. But we can weigh in, using the poll. Principle Driessen is fine with us helping them make their decisions.
He also said a new mascot is going to require new uniforms.
“Once chosen, the school will need to purchase new uniforms for the teams,” said Principle Driessen. “We are a small K-8 elementary school with a population of about 110 students. If you would like to donate to the cause, we are always pleased and thankful for donations.”
You can send donations to:
DeSmet Elementary
New Uniforms
6355 Padre Lane
Missoula, MT 59808
Below is an excerpt from an article at the Missoulian:
Driessen said the kids saw the smokejumpers as the best of the best — tough, fierce and skilled. They’re heroic, smart and the elite of the wildland firefighters. They are everything the kids want to aspire toward.
“When I got the call from the school it was really humbling and flattering that they chose us as a mascot,” said Dan Cottrell, the training foreman at the Missoula Smokejumper Base. “We were proud and we were excited and just really thrilled that they, you know, thought of us and gave us that opportunity.”
After the students make their selection, we will update this article. Watch this space.
From the Facilitated Learning Analysis for the Bridger Foothills Fire entrapment.
The report released Friday about the burnover of three firefighters on the Bridger Foothills Fire is jaw-dropping — and not only because there were three firefighters with only two fire shelters to protect them as the flames swept over. It is a well written and thorough report but lists few lessons to be learned, leaving it up to us to read between the lines.
The incident occurred about three miles northeast of Bozeman, Montana on September 5, 2020 when there were 115 active large wildfires burning in the United States which at that time had consumed 3,000,000 acres. Over 22,550 wildland firefighters and forestry technicians were committed across the nation. The August Complex of fires in Northern California had burned 305,000 acres which would be less than one third of its total size when it finally slowed down in the Fall after blackening over one million acres. In August and September there was a serious shortage of personnel to staff the fires. Few if any areas had an adequate number of firefighting resources to initial attack new fires or contain those that had been growing for weeks.
The initial attack on the Bridger Foothills Fire on September 4 included four smokejumpers, “several engines,” plus helicopters and air tankers. According to statistics on the national Situation Report at the end of the day on September 5, the second day of the fire, there were a total of 99 personnel on the fire. Five structures had been confirmed as destroyed and it was on its way to ultimately burning 28 homes and growing to 8,224 acres.
The 37-page report can’t be fairly summarized in a few paragraphs here. I suggest you check it out yourself, then leave a comment below with your impressions.
But briefly, three members of a Montana state helitack crew attacked the fire on September 4, spent the night on the fire, then during the afternoon of the next day were overrun by the fire in the meadow that served as their helispot. They attempted to set an “escape fire”, as used on the Mann Gulch Fire in 1949, to burn off the grass and sage before the fire reached them, but the grass was too green to easily ignite. As the fire approached them two men deployed their aluminized and insulated fire shelters designed to reflect radiant heat, but the third had failed to replace the shelter in his pack he had removed days earlier to lighten his load while on physical training hikes. Two of the men, both large individuals, crammed into one shelter that was made to accommodate one person. The three of them only suffered fairly minor injuries and walked away to a point where they could be transported to a hospital.
From the report:
The firefighters involved in this deployment came to decisions that made sense to them at the time. To learn from this unintended outcome, it is important that you read this without the assumption that this could never happen to you. Instead, please consider that you read this with the luxury of hindsight bias. Our intent is that you find the lessons that you can apply to your program to hopefully avoid experiencing what these folks went through.
Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, there were many things that contributed to the entrapment. If only one of them had occurred, the three helitack crewmen probably would not have been burned over. But the cumulative effect of numerous issues led to this near-fatal event.
Firefighters are familiar with the Swiss Cheese Model of Accident Causation.
Swiss cheese model by James Reason published in 2000.
The New York Times published on December 5 a version of the model adapted for the current pandemic:
James T. Reason’s Swiss Cheese Model as applied to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many of our readers could study the report and substitute events that happened on the Bridger Foothills Fire for the layers in the Swiss Cheese Model.
Let us know in a comment below what you’re thinking. I’ll get it started with a few:
Very few firefighting resources initially attacked the fire.
Communication issues were mentioned many times in the report. Almost every very serious incident within an incident has communication problems.
Air tankers dropped retardant on the west side of the fire but not the east side that day. A person who was on the fire told Wildfire Today that if retardant had been applied to secure the east side it may have prevented the blowup. With the national fire situation at the time, air tankers may not have been available to continue dropping retardant that afternoon. (Would it have made a difference if the air tanker base 73 air miles away at West Yellowstone had not recently been closed and converted to a call when needed base?)
At times there was confusion about the location of the three entrapped firefighters. If a safety officer or Division Supervisor had known the exact location of the firefighters and the real time location of the fire, it may have made a difference — there might have been enough time to extract them by helicopter before the smoke and the flaming front made it impossible. THIS RECURRING ISSUE COULD BE SOLVED WITH OFF THE SHELF LOCATION TRACKING SYSTEMS for personnel and the fire! Federal and state wildfire organizations need to make this an urgent priority! This is a life-safety issue and the tools should have been deployed years ago by the federal and state agencies. Funding is not an acceptable excuse. Neither is apathy. Dig deep to find the motivation and the money.
Below is the section of the report that describes the deployment itself, but does not include what led up to it. The names have been changed.
The Deployment “What do you mean you don’t have your shelter?”
Charlie frantically worked to light off the sage with his fusee. Hands shaking, the sage was lighting better than the grass had before. But it didn’t matter – there was no more time to burn – the fire was coming up fast on him and his crew from both the south and the east.
Charlie turned around to his crewmembers and noticed that one of them, Sam, was already in his shelter. The spot fire that had cut-off their last possible escape route was now well established on the slope below them, and the trees were crowning out with flame lengths of over 100 feet. The wind was blowing so hard that his helmet went flying off his head. Next thing Charlie realized, he was back at the small oval that they had cleared of ground fuels, looking down on his other crewmember Casey, who was laying in the fetal position with his chaps slung over his back and gear bags piled up around him.
“Get in your f**king shelter!” Charlie screamed to Casey.
“I don’t have it – share with me!” Casey shouted back.
“What do you mean you don’t have your shelter?! Did it blow away?!”
It hadn’t blown away, although that would have been easy in the “hurricane-like” winds that were whipping across the hillside in all directions. Casey had taken it out of his pack a few weeks earlier for PT hikes, and never put it back in.
But ultimately, why the shelter wasn’t on the hill did not matter. At this moment, Charlie realized how dire of a situation they were in. Casey was roughly 6’2” and weighed in at around 225 lbs, and Charlie was around 6’ and 190 lbs. And if they were both going to survive this flame front, they would have to squeeze into his one shelter as best as they could.
They could both feel the heat now, and the fire was “cooking.” Charlie ripped out his shelter and struggled to open it. Unlike Sam’s shelter, which Sam later described as “shaking out just like a practice shelter, [or] better,” opening Charlie’s shelter felt like trying to open a ball of tin foil. With Charlie and Casey each pulling at it, they fought to get it open, and valuable moments were lost as they furiously tried to shake it out. The moment they opened the shelter, Casey and Charlie locked eyes, then glanced up at the flames towering above them before they dropped to the ground. The updraft winds at that point were so strong, they had to fight to reach the dirt.
The last-minute nature of their deployment meant that neither Casey nor Charlie were completely in the shelter. Casey had dropped to get his head facing to the north and lined up with the hole he had dug and filled with water, with his legs largely sticking out of the shelter. Charlie was facing nearly the opposite direction, in a crouching position. In this arrangement, neither firefighter could get a seal on the shelter, and embers were blowing in just as fast as Charlie could sweep them out. Casey screamed over the radio that they had deployed, a transmission that was copied by air attack. Charlie then took the radio and remembers transmitting that there were three of them who had deployed, with only two shelters. Air attack, who confirmed that three people had deployed, did not recall hearing that there were only two shelters.
Charlie later described how, in their initial arrangement, “I couldn’t take it anymore, I couldn’t get air, and it felt like I was in a microwave.” In this moment of desperation, Charlie stood up, thinking nothing could be worse than being crammed into the shelter, in the heat, without any way to breathe. Charlie immediately realized how much worse it could get with the fire burning all around and was forced to dive back into the shelter. This time, Charlie was shoulder to shoulder with Casey, which allowed them to get a slightly better seal.
The experience, however, was still far from comfortable. Unable to breathe and battling through the extreme heat, Charlie “was certain we were gonna die. [I thought] every second was our last second.” Casey described the sensation of trying to breathe as like “if anyone has ever been cleaning around you and it’s extremely potent – it’s like that but it’s on fire.” To try to alleviate the heat, he began splashing plastic water bottles on himself and Charlie, squeezing 4-5 bottles out along their backs.
Sam was equally certain that they were not going to survive. “100%, I thought we were dead. No doubt … I couldn’t breathe.” To try to get a breath, he wet down his shirt and started digging a hole into the ground. Although opening the shelter had been easy, Sam struggled in the wind to create a strong seal. For the fifteen or so minutes that Sam remained in the shelter, he was absolutely terrified for his life.
Casey and Charlie emerged from their shared shelter around 8 minutes after they first got in, after the initial flame front had passed. Their surroundings, however, still resembled a hellscape. Casey’s line gear, which he had been unable to throw very far away from the deployment site, was on fire and burning Charlie’s leg, so Charlie kicked it farther away. Outside of the circle, the cans of bug spray and sunscreen in the bag exploded. Combined with the combustion from the remaining fusees, the explosions caused the gear to burn down to nothing.
Even without the flames, the heat, smoke, and winds were still so intense that Charlie and Casey reentered the shelter, where they remained for another eight or so minutes, getting continuously hammered by the wind. Eventually, while getting oxygen was still nearly impossible, it became clear that they were going to be miserable whether they were in the shelter or out. Knowing that everything was nuked around them, and the worst of the heat had passed, they emerged from the shelter again. But the beating afflicted by the fire was still far from over.
Sam’s experience:
“I deployed my shelter and within probably a minute or two could hear, feel, and see the fire going over and around us. The inside of my shelter glowed red … there was no place to get a cool clean breath. Embers blew inside my shelter and I would push them out. I tried to dig in the ground to get a clean breath and was unsuccessful. At some point I remember Charlie asking how I was doing. I responded with ‘Not good man, I can’t f**king breathe.’ I thought about my wife and kids and knew with some certainty that I was dead.”
Devastation from the Almeda Drive Fire in the area of Phoenix and Talent in southern Oregon. Screenshot from video shot by Jackson County on September 8, 2020.
The traditional way — and the easiest way — to compare wildfire seasons is the number of acres burned. That figure is fairly straightforward and reliable, at least for data within the last 35 years; before 1984 the data is questionable.
But blackened acres does not tell the whole story about the effects of fires on humans. A 50,000-acre fire in a northwestern California wilderness area has fewer direct impacts on the population than, for instance, the 3,200-acre Almeda Fire that destroyed 2,357 residences in Southern Oregon a few months ago.
Top most destructive wildfires in the United States. Headwaters Economics.
Headwaters Economics has built a user friendly interactive data base of the number of structures, by state, destroyed by wildfires from 2005 to 2020. It presumably includes all structures, including back yard sheds, other outbuildings, commercial buildings, and residences.
Here are three screenshots, examples for the entire U.S., Colorado, and Montana.
Top most destructive wildfires in Montana. Headwaters Economics.Top most destructive wildfires in Colorado. Headwaters Economics.
The best way to prevent homes from being destroyed in a wildfire is not clear cutting or prescribed burning a forest, it is the homeowner reducing flammable material in the Home Ignition Zone. This includes spacing the crowns of trees at least 18 feet apart that are within 30 feet of the home, 12 feet apart at 30 to 60 feet, and 6 feet apart at 60 to 100 feet. The envelope of the structure itself must be fire resistant, including the roof, vents, siding, doors, windows, foundation, fences, eaves, and decks. A FEMA publication (13 MB) has excellent detailed recommendations. Headwaters Economics found that the cost of building a fire-resistant home is about the same as a standard home. When implemented, Chapter 7A of the California Building Code, regulates these features.
Uncontrollable extreme wildfires are inevitable; however, by reducing home ignition potential within the Home Ignition Zone we can create ignition resistant homes and communities. Thus, community wildfire risk should be defined as a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem. Unfortunately, protecting communities from wildfire by reducing home ignition potential runs counter to established orthodoxy.
For Throwback Thursday we are revisiting an article published February 28, 2008 about an issue that is still before us today.
At a three-day conference organized by FireSafe Montana, Wally Bennett, a Type 1 Incident Commander, told the group that climate change and fewer air tankers and hand crews are making the job of wildland firefighters more difficult.
“Coming summers will bring more and bigger wildfires to the Northern Rockies. But it also will bring fewer firefighters, less equipment for them to use, and more and more homes to protect in flammable landscapes.
That’s the message spelled out Tuesday by climate and firefighting experts at a conference at the Bozeman Holiday Inn.
“We’ve got a lot less of the toys we need to do the job we’re doing out there,” said Wally Bennett, a veteran commander of a Type I incident command team, the type of force that tackles large and complex blazes.
Bennett was one of the speakers at the three-day conference organized by FireSafe Montana, a fledgling nonprofit group that is trying to motivate landowners, county governments, developers and other entities to do more to protect private land before wildfire reaches it.
Several years ago, Bennett said, firefighting teams had 32 large retardant planes available to them. Last year, they had 16.
The number of 20-person hand teams has declined from roughly 750 to about 450 over the same time period, he said, and that number is likely to fall further.
“There’s not enough to go around,” he said.
That’s partly because a rookie firefighter can earn about the same pay flipping burgers at McDonald’s.
Meanwhile, a warming climate is bringing earlier snowmelt along with hotter, drier summers, said Faith Anne Heisch, a climate researcher who works with Steve Running, the University of Montana professor who was part of the Nobel-prize winning International Panel on Climate Change.”
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