A freight train spraying sparks along railroad tracks in southern Maine started multiple wildfires in five cities on Thursday. Firefighters responded from 20 communities to the five alarm incident to battle fires in South Portland, Scarborough, Old Orchard Beach, Saco, and Biddeford. The worst hit area was the Wagon Wheel RV Resort and Campground, at 3 Old Orchard Beach Road. Firefighters said 10 campers were destroyed and another six were damaged.
Veterans hired as firefighters in New Mexico
A state-funded program in New Mexico called “Returning Heroes” is putting 46 veterans to work as wildland firefighters. More information can be found at KOAT.
Rain on the fires in Oklahoma
About an inch of rain Wednesday night is helping firefighters in Oklahoma suppress and mop up the fires near Guthrie and Woodward.
Air tanker arrives early at Santa Maria
A DC-10 and other firefighting aircraft are stationed at the Santa Maria airport in California about a month earlier than normal. A spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service said the planes were brought to Santa Maria early because of recent red flag warnings for extreme fire danger in the area.
Prose in a Police Log
The Police Log published in the Georgetown Record in Massachusetts does not waste any words. An entry about a vegetation fire on April 25, for example:
9:48 p.m. Services were rendered for a brush fire on Nelson Street.
Other services “rendered” included “a utility emergency on East Main Street”, “a disabled motor vehicle on Andover Street”, and “an animal complaint on Central Street”.
It takes years of experience and training to write an official report in the style of a firefighter or police officer.
Three small fires started Thursday at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The fires began in Technical Area 36, an area that is used for testing up to 2,000 pounds of high explosives. The Lab’s fire department had one fire truck on scene during the test, but called in a second rig after the fires ignited. According to lab spokesman Kevin Roark the total area burned was less than a quarter acre.
Much of the research that developed the first nuclear bomb occurred at Los Alamos. According to their website their current mission “is to develop and apply science and technology to ensure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent; reduce global threats; and solve other emerging national security and energy challenges.”
Los Alamos has a fire history. The Cerro Grande Fire which began as a prescribed fire on National Park Service land escaped control in 2000 and burned into the laboratory and the community, destroying 280 homes. In 2011 the largest fire in the history of New Mexico, the 150,000-acre Las Conchas Fire, also burned onto the lab’s property.
One of the concerns about fires at Los Alamos is the radioactive material stored in drums on the site.
Below is a description of Technical Area 36 from the Lab’s website:
4.18.2.1.2.1.1 Eenie Site, The Eenie Site (Buildings 3 and 4, Figure 4-18, Sheet 2) has the only aboveground bunker at TA- 36. This bunker allows the use of a variety of optical and electronic diagnostics. Belowgrade bunkers at TA-36 are used to protect 35-mm streak cameras, which observe the test device through a periscope. Image-intensifier cameras, a 70-mm streak camera, a combination streak camera with a 2-million-frame-per-second framing camera, and a laser velocimeter are routinely available at this site as needed for specific tests. The Eenie Site primarily performs small-bore (less than 100 mm) gun tests against conventional, ceramic, and reactive armors; shaped-charge jet tests against conventional, ceramic, and reactive armors; diagnostic experiments to determine shaped-charge jet physics; deflagration-to-detonation experiments; detonation physics experiments; and studies in explosives vulnerability to projectile and shaped-charge attack. The site has a load limit of 2,000 lb (907 kg) of HE. The Eenie Control Building (Building 3) and the Eenie Preparation Building (Building 4) are categorized as L/ENS.
Three firefighters were injured while fighting a 12-acre wildfire that spread to a structure in Florence County, South Carolina late Wednesday afternoon. One firefighter suffered second and third degree burns to his face and neck while suppressing fire in a mobile home.
Arizona Forestry Division outlines changes for 2014
According to an article at KNAU, Arizona State Forester Scott Hunt told reporters on Wednesday:
“Our first priority is firefighter and public safety. And it’s always going to be our first priority,” he said.
But, Hunt did say that he expects when there is an initial report of a fire that there will “heavier responses” than in the past.
On June 30, 2013, 19 firefighters were killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire which was being managed by the Arizona Forestry Division.
Los Alamos National Laboratory under pressure to move radioacitve waste before wildfire season
From TheState.com:
Los Alamos is under a tight deadline to get nuclear waste off its northern New Mexico campus before wildfire season peaks, and the New Mexico dump [temporarily closed due to a fire] is the federal government’s only permanent repository for waste from decades of nuclear-bomb building.
Aerial firefighting training for California National Guard
File photo of California National Guard aerial firefighting training, April, 2010. Photo by Bob Martinez.
Helicopter units of the California National Guard are scheduled to conduct their annual aerial firefighting training Friday through Sunday at the CAL FIRE academny in Ione.
Colorado Senate passes funding bill for aerial firefighting
The Colorado state Senate on Thursday passed a bill that would provide $21 million for a portion of the aerial firefighting program recommended by the Colorado Firefighting Air Corp (CFAC) in a report the agency released on March 28. The funds would enable contracting for four helicopters, four Single Engine Air Tankers, and the purchase of two fixed wing aircraft for fire detection and remote sensing, but not for the two large air tankers called for in the report.
Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who has been quoted as saying farmers and ranchers should be the state’s first defense against wildfires, is opposed to spending the additional $11.9 million for contracting for two large air tankers.
Wildfire season begins early in Russia
From ITAR-TASS:
Forest fires have broken out early in a season dubbed “tense this year”, Minister of Natural Resources Sergei Donskoi told a conference chaired by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and addressing preparations for difficult days ahead.
“The situation is tense in Russia this year. Because of low precipitation, the season has begun almost 1.5 months ahead of the norm,” the minister said. Seventeen fires have already been registered across a territory of 2,000 hectares, the minister said.
Citing reasons for danger, the minister noted an early spring and a shallow layer of frozen soil. This was only 40-50% of normal levels and was leaving dry surface soil.
The Ministry of Natural Resources has adopted an inter-regional fire prevention plan employing an additional 3,000-strong contingent of firefighters, 800 units of firefighting equipment and 4,000 fire extinguishers, the minister said.
The National Weather Service at Albuquerque has published information about the winter weather in New Mexico and how that could affect their wildfire season. Below are some excerpts:
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“…The grasses have since turned dormant and now provide significant carryover fuel. Wildland fire mangers next consider whether there has been sufficient enough heavy-wet snow to mat or compress the standing grass. Snowfall thus far has been well below normal but some areas did receive enough early season (November-early December) snow to partially mat down some of the previous grass growth. This is important because standing grass is much more susceptible to fire spread than matted grass. Figure 3 shows a photo series taken at similar times at a Sandia mountain location (at 8000 feet) east of Albuquerque from 2010 to 2014. The 2014 photo shows some grass compaction while the 2013 photo showed little grass compaction.”
The report is very well written and appears to discuss in detail numerous issues directly and indirectly related to the accident. It does not use, like the first Yarnell Hill Fire report, dozens of the latest in-vogue buzz words that are in fashion this week in the human behavior community. (It only uses a few.) The report covers real issues that firefighters, and especially firefighters who operate ATVs, can relate to.
It does not place blame on anyone, and from the evidence presented, this seems appropriate, in that no one really made any serious mistakes that would normally have been avoided. All of the required personal protective equipment, training, and qualifications were in place.
The accident occurred as Mr. Token was searching for a reported fire on an ATV, as he attempted to go up a short 30 percent grade, a slope easily traversed on an ATV. A tire slipped on a rock that may have been partially hidden by pine needles, causing the center of gravity to shift. The ATV began to roll, causing Mr. Token to either jump or fall off. The ATV rolled over Mr. Token, hit a tree and then settled back on him. The rear cargo rack landed on his neck, impacting just below his full-face helmet, and he died instantly.
The video below uses some surprising techniques to illustrate how the accident occurred.
Two items listed in the lessons learned analysis generated further discussion in the report:
ATV safety culture
In the course of the search, line officers spent a lot of time in the field with employees talking about the use of ATVs in the Forest Service. The employees shared their experiences concerning close calls and minor accidents involving ATVs which had not been reported. Several of these instances were shocking to the line officers. who had no experience on ATVs. The employees thought that if these numerous incidents had been reported the agency would have banned ATVs, which were thought to be extremely useful in accomplishing their jobs. After these revelations, the line officers were stunned, and not sure what the Lesson should be. They didn’t want to make an uninformed knee-jerk decision, and felt the need to obtain a deeper understanding of ATV risks.
I can understand this culture completely. While scouting a very large planned prescribed fire on an ATV, it rolled 90 degrees. I stepped off, uninjured, as it ended up on its side. I pushed the undamaged ATV back onto its tires, started it up and continued evaluating the prescribed fire. Of course I did not report it to anyone, including the other person traveling ahead of me on another ATV.
There are probably hundreds of similar non-injury unreported ATV mishaps that occur every year in land management agencies.
Location reporting devices
Example of a Satellite Emergency Notification Device. Photo by Bill Gabbert
While radios and cell phones can be very useful in most cases to call for help in the case of an accident, there are times when an employee is in an area where there is no reception. Or, as in the case of this ATV accident, the victim is incapacitated and can’t make a call. While a real-time automatic location tracking device would not have saved Mr. Adams, since he died instantly, it would have made a difference to the 200+ searchers and his family who spent a week looking for him.
In 2012 we wrote about the USFS’ solicitation to buy $1.2 million worth of Satellite Emergency Notification Devices (SEND). The agency purchased 6,000 of them. This is not enough for every employee, and one was not used by Mr. Token that day. These hand-held consumer-quality devices are better than nothing, but it is a very unprofessional attempt to enhance the safety of field personnel. We can do better.
I have written before about how the inability of fire supervisors to always be situationally aware of the location of firefighters has contributed to at least 24 deaths in recent years — 19 on the Yarnell Hill Fire and 5 on the Esperanza fire.
The Holy Grail of Firefighter Safety, as I envision it, would enable firefighters’ radios to transmit their location in real time which would then show up on a remote display (on anything from a cell phone or a 7″ tablet, up to a laptop or desktop computer) that would be monitored by a dispatcher, Safety Officer, Branch Director, Operations Section Chief, Branch Director, or Division Supervisor. The display would also show the real time location of the fire. Knowing either of these in real time would enhance the safety of firefighters. Knowing both is the Holy Grail.
New protocol for accident reports?
The report was “the product of the Coordinated Response Protocol (CRP) Team convened by the Chief of the U. S. Forest Service”, and referred to the “Draft CRP Guide (9/19/2013)”. That date is two weeks after Mr. Token was found, and is 10 days before the first report on the Yarnell Hill Fire was released. This process, the report says, attempts to “minimize bias in the way we approach data gathering, synthesis, analysis and sensemaking”. And, it “integrates the accident investigation process with employee health and wellness, law enforcement investigations and other actions taken in response to a serous accident”.
We asked Jennifer Jones, a Public Affairs Specialist for the U.S. Forest Service in Boise, if we could get a copy of the new protocol. She replied:
According to Steve Schlientz, Director of the Office of Safety and Occupational Health, Washington Office, U.S. Forest Service, the guide has undergone extensive revision and is still under development. It is not expected to be completed until late spring/early summer this year and we can’t release the guidebook until it is completed and approved.
Las Conchas Fire, 7-14-2011. Photo by Andrew Ashcraft, Granite Mountain Hotshots.
The U.S. Forest Service has sent a $38 million bill to the electric cooperative that operated the power line that started the Las Conchas Fire in June, 2011. The blaze burned 156,000 acres and 63 structures in the Jemez Mountains west of Los Alamos, New Mexico near the Valles Caldera National Preserve.
An interagency investigative team led by New Mexico State Forestry determined that the fire was caused by a fallen tree that caught fire after coming into contact with nearby power lines, according to New Mexico State Forester Tony Delfin.
In addition to the USFS, others seeking compensation from the Jemez Mountains Electric Cooperative include two pueblos, several insurance companies, and dozens of property owners. Some of the claims also name the USFS which granted the power company an easement for the power line.
