The Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center recently posted three reports: 1) An After Action Review, 2) A Facilitated Learning Analysis, and 3) a 72-Hour Report.
1) Painter Piles escaped pile burning project, After Action Review; Black Hills National Forest near Custer, South Dakota, March 12, 2010. While the title of the report is “Painter Piles After Action Review”, the terms “Painter prescribed fire” and “Windsong prescribed fire” are both used in the report. Here is an excerpt from the Executive Summary:
On March 12, 2010, a U.S. Forest Service prescribed fire near the town of Custer, South Dakota, spread onto Forest and Private Lands. The slopover was contained within the first burning period and was not declared a wildfire. The pile had been ignited on March 10, 2010, and was one of the thousands in the Painter project. The Windsong Incident involved one land owner.
Some of the private land that burned. USFS photo
The Windsong Prescribed Fire was immediately adjacent to the Forest boundary and was managed by the Hell Canyon Ranger District (RD) of the Black Hills National Forest, in the Rocky Mountain Region of the U.S. Forest Service. Prescribed fire was planned to treat up to 3200 acres of hazardous fuels (piled slash) on National Forest land. The Windsong Incident consisted of 8.1 acres outside the intended treatment area, including 0.5 acres of private land. The fire traveled down slope and directly threatened one single family dwelling, and two out buildings. Damage to private property was minimal including one scorched pine, one small cedar tree, and scorched fence post.
2) Cooter’s Bog escaped prescribed fire, Facilitative Learning analysis, Kisatchie National Forest, in Louisiana, April 26, 2010. Here is the text from the Introduction:
On Tuesday, April 26, 2010 on the Calcasieu Ranger District of the Kisatchie National Forest, Louisiana, the 709 acre Cooter’s Bog Prescribed Burn (Compartment 132) was implemented. After completion of the firing phase of prescribed burn operations, a pine snag caught fire and threw embers outside of control lines, causing a spot fire in a pine plantation on adjacent private lands. The fire intensity and size of the escape grew rapidly and exceeded the capabilities of onsite resources for that burn unit. The FMO declared the escape a wildfire at 1445, per direction in the prescribed burn plan. The wildfire eventually burned 132 acres of pine plantation before being brought under control by on-site and contingency resources.
3) Smoky Hill Wind Farm Engine Burnover, 72-Hour Report, Lincoln County, Kansas, January 29, 2011. This incident is very similar to another engine burnover that occurred in Stafford County Kansas on November 3, 2010, except in that case the firefighters escaped unharmed. Here is the “sequence of events” from the report about the January 29 incident:
The initial responding engine entered the pasture involved, and went up to the top of a hill in an attempt to find access to attack from the black, in order to be able to work from within a safety zone. They were unable to find immediate access to the burned area, and for reasons as-yet unknown, their engine stalled. They got out, and were almost immediately overrun by the head fire. They ran laterally out of the head fire, back towards where they had come from, which placed them in unburned fuel on one flank of the fire. At that point, a wind shift converted that flank to the new head, and threatened to overrun them again, as the rate of spread was too fast to outrun. The initial attack IC was nearby in a pickup, and was able to drive over and remove them before the new head fire again overran them. He estimates the time frame for this sequence of events was under one minute from onset until he had them in his vehicle and was driving away.
The first firefighter, who was going to be doing the direct attack, was wearing full structural bunker gear (not wildland PPE), consisting of boots, pants, coat, gloves, and helmet, except for his Nomex hood. He did have a “grass mask” on. He sustained 2nd and 3rd degree burns in the areas between his helmet, mask, and coat. He was treated initially at a local hospital, and is receiving outpatient treatment from the burn unit, but the area burned is small enough it did not require inpatient treatment. The other firefighter was the driver of the engine, and as such was only wearing bunker pants and boots over street clothes. He sustained burns on his face, neck, hands, and arms. Burns were initially identified as 2nd degree and have now been determined to involving some 3rd degree burns as well. He remains an inpatient in the burn unit in Wichita at this time.
The engine involved experienced significant body damage, but after the fire had moved past, it was discovered with its pump still running, and the interior was intact. It was started and driven back to the fire station after the fire.
Smoke from a prescribed fire in southern Mississippi caused a chain-reaction crash that involved a school bus on Friday. The U. S. Forest Service conducted a prescribed fire near Bethel Road in Harrison County which produced smoke that mixed with fog, reducing the visibility to near zero. As the school bus entered the smoke on Highway 15, the driver quickly slowed down and was hit from behind, followed by a six-vehicle chain-reaction crash. Thankfully there were no serious injuries.
Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesman Master Sergeant Johnny Poulos said:
The conditions today were not favorable for safe driving. We have the fog that came in that actually kept the smoke down to the roadway. Just a really bad situation when you’re trying to drive and navigate, especially with a school bus.
The Forest Service had signs posted on the highway that warned drivers about the smoke. Spokesman Mario Rossilli released a statement for the agency:
Safety is a top priority for the National Forests in Mississippi. Fortunately, according to reports, there were no serious injuries sustained in the accident today. The National Forests in Mississippi has already begun what will be a comprehensive review of this incident. We are always looking for ways to further enhance safety. Prescribed burning is actually one method of creating a safer forest environment for visitors, including those in vehicles, by reducing the threat of catastrophic wildfire. Stakeholders, including local, county and state law enforcement are notified before burns are initiated. Our Forest Service Law Enforcement Officers are active participants in our prescribed burns.
Here is a video about the accident from WLOX in Biloxi, MS:
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has published a document titled Wildland Fire Management in the Southeast: Keeping Fire on our Side. It is very well done and apparently is intended to be given to members of the public in order to educate them about prescribed fire. Published by the USF&WS Southeast Regional Office in Atlanta, the document also contains a short section about making your home more fire-resistant.
Vote on the most significant wildland fire stories of 2010
As we documented earlier this month, the 2010 wildland fire season, when measured by the acres burned in the 49 states outside Alaska, was the slowest since 2004. But in spite of that, there has been significant news about wildland fire. In fact, we posted over 670 articles this year.
Continuing that tradition, below we have listed the top stories of 2010. The line of duty fatalities are not listed unless there was an unusual spin-off story associated with the fatality. Below the list, there is a poll where YOU can let us know which stories you feel are the most significant of 2010.
Top wildfire stories of 2010
Jan. 8: The National Park Service released the report on the August, 2009 Big Meadow escaped prescribed fire in Yosemite National Park. The fire blackened 7,425 acres before being controlled by 1,300 firefighters at a cost over $15 million. It became the eighth largest fire in California in 2009.
Jan. 21:Federal wildland firefighter bill introduced in Congress. The “National Infrastructure Improvement and Cost Containment Act” would affect the pay, retirement age, and fireline liability of federal wildland firefighters.
Apr. 30: The International Association of Fire Chiefs, an organization that concentrates on structural fire, received at least $13.2 million from the U.S. Forest Service and DHS-FEMA over a seven-year period, reportedly for wildfire-related purposes. The IAFC became furious at Wildfire Today for exposing the information.
Aug. 2: Hundreds of wildfires in Russia claimed more than 50 lives, left more than 3,500 people homeless, and caused massive air quality issues in Moscow and other areas.
Aug. 2: A BAe-146 jet airliner was converted to an air tanker and was tested in Missoula. The Interagency Air Tanker Board failed to certify it due to inadequate ground coverage of retardant.
Aug. 26: In spite of weather forecasts that would have alarmed most fire managers, the Helena National Forest in Montana ignited the Davis prescribed fire during a near record heat wave. The fire escaped and burned 2,800 acres. The report was released in November. The Forest Supervisor said the report did not point out “something clearly that we did wrong, done incorrectly or that we’re going to make big changes on”.
Sep. 6: The Fourmile Canyon fire burned 6,200 acres and 169 homes a few miles west of Boulder, Colorado. The fire was devastating to local fire districts within the burned perimeter in several ways, including the facts that a firefighter’s burn pile escaped and started the fire, the homes of 12 firefighters burned, and one fire station and an engine inside it burned.
Sep. 21: The Commander of the Utah Army National Guard assumed responsibility and apologized for the Machine Gun fire that burned 4,346 acres and three homes near Herriman, Utah. The fire started during target practice with a machine gun at a National Guard base.
Sep. 24: The Australian state of Victoria tested the U.S.-built DC-10 very large air tanker and concluded that it did not perform adequately and would not be suitable for use in their wildland-urban interface areas.
Oct. 13: The US Forest Service’s response to the 2009 Station fire is criticized, and Congress holds hearing in Pasadena, CA about the management of the fire, which burned 160,000 acres near Los Angeles.
Dec. 7: NTSB holds a meeting about the helicopter crash on the Iron Complex fire in northern California in which nine firefighters and crew members died. Much of the blame was attributed to falsified helicopter performance documents supplied by Carson Helicopters when they applied for a contract with the U.S. Forest Service. Carson and the surviving co-pilot dispute that conclusion.
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Honorable mention stories (not exactly top stories, but interesting; they are not part of the poll).
May 11:NWCG outlaws the use of some terms, including “appropriate management response” and “wildland fire use”.
Jun. 20: It was not a wildland fire, but every firefighter can relate to some of the problems encountered when a kinked fire hose and improper procedures delayed the rescue of IndyCar driver Simona de Silvestro from her burning race car which crashed at Texas Motor Speedway.
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POLL
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Feel free to leave a comment (or “response”) explaining your choices, or to discuss other news items that did not make the list.
I would not want to be the Burn Boss for this project.
A house near Escondido, California contains 9 to 12 pounds of high explosives, including HTMD, PETN, and ETN, which is the largest cache of its type ever found in the United States. The house is crammed full of junk and the explosives are scattered around in clumps. All of these types of explosives have been used by terrorists around the world. PETN was the choice of the underwear bomber, the shoe bomber, and was found in the printer cartridges that were shipped from Yemen a few weeks ago.
Some of the explosives can be very easily detonated and are shock-sensitive. A gardener stepped on some in the back yard of the Escondido house and triggered a blast that injured his left eye, torso, and an arm. That explosion called attention to the house and resulted in the arrest of the occupant, George Djura Jakubec, on 26 counts of manufacturing or possessing explosives. He is also accused of committing two bank robberies in San Diego. Jakubec is being held in jail in lieu of $5 million bail.
County Sheriff Bill Gore said “There is no viable method to render the property safe. It is also not habitable. The most effective way is to destroy the residence by fire.”
He said weather permitting, they expect to burn it between December 8 and 10, after building protective barriers around the site. Dozens of homes will be evacuated, other residents will shelter in place, and the nearby Interstate 15 will be closed for about three hours.
Firefighters will heat the house so that it will burn quickly, and then ignite the fire.
I wonder how they will ignite it? I’m thinking they will not use a drip torch.
Todd Newman, fire chief of the San Marcos Fire Department said, “We have a very high confidence level that these chemicals will be neutralized very quickly. They’ll be neutralized by the heat of the fire pretty much before it leaves the property.”
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The house at 1954 Via Scott that will be burned is in the blue area. Yellow shading designates shelter-in-place area. Light red shading designates evacuation area.
James Douglas uses an ignition device on an ATV during a prescribed fire. Photo: R. Darren Price / The Item
TheItem.com has an article about prescribed fire in the state forests of South Carolina. Here is an excerpt:
…Right now, [Forest director Harvey] Belser said the foresters are in the process of burning grasslands to plant longleaf pine, a tree native to the Carolinas, to replace slash pine, a Gulf Coast species susceptible to disease, wind and ice breakage. And, according to state Department of Natural Resources, longleaf pine thrives in a fresh-burned forest floor.
The trees planted will one day be chopped down and sold – but Belser said it was an important step nonetheless. “It’s critical these plants are planted to the correct depth,” Belser said.
So, [Charlie] Scruggs and the other firefighters got to work getting things ready.
Controlled burns are more science than pyrotechnics, said [James] Douglas. After spraying an area with herbicide six weeks before the burn, the forest has to get a fire permit and wait for a day when the wind and humidity are not too high. Then the group figures out what type of fire they plan to light based on the plants and brush in a burn area, which they call “fuel.” For a grassland like the one burned Nov. 19, they light a fire at one end of the tract and let a light breeze blow the fire to the other end. For that kind of burn, Douglas said the entire area will be completely burned after just a few hours, and they can start planting as soon as the ground cools off.
“We’ll probably plant this field in the next couple of weeks,” he said of the singed grassland.
Volunteer firefighters
CBS News “Sunday Morning” had a very good segment about volunteer firefighters. The video is below, and here is a transcript. It’s worth viewing and reading.
WUI meeting in Washington, DC
The West Yellowstone News has an article about the National Wildland/Urban Interface Council’s fall meeting in DC. They interviewed Hebgen Basin Fire District Chief Scott Walron about the meeting and how their fire district west of Yellowstone National Park is dealing with the WUI.
More details about the fatal crash of the firefighters’ crew carrier
Corinna Craddock has a well-written article about the crash of the inmate crew carrier in which one firefighter, Julio Sanchez, and the driver of a second vehicle were killed. Here is an excerpt:
…The fact that [Julio] Sanchez and the rest of his crew were serving a court-ordered sentence at the time Sanchez was killed is a fact with little relevance. The reality is that when men go to camp where they are trained to fight wildfires, this is what they become. Sanchez was a firefighter.
Men who sleep on the side of a mountain in order to continue battling the blaze of a wildfire when they awake once again are men who know that there is no such thing as being an “almost firefighter” any more than it is possible for a woman to be “almost pregnant.” It is just one of the all-or-nothing things in life. This is why inmates who are trained to fight fires must undergo the same feats of endurance, strength, and perseverance that every American firefighter is trained for.
Firefighting is not for weak Americans. There is the kind of stress on a firefighter’s heart that is something akin to being in combat when a team of firefighters tackle such a threat to life. What some of these men will take away once the fire dies is the image of wild rabbits running ablaze. This is the sight that broke my own father’s heart more than once as he explained to me how he had no other choice but to hit an animal with his shovel hard enough to put it out of its misery rather than watch it suffer as it died. Anyone who knows a cat-lover, such as my dad was, might be able to imagine how a six-foot-four man could be hurt watching a tiny creature suffer.
Thank you to all our family and friends who send their love, thoughts, and prayers in our most recent loss. Fernando Julio Sanchez, youngest child of Ramon “Chunky” Sanchez, lost his life on 11-23-10 in a Tragic car accident while serving as a Firefighter for Cal Fire.
Services will be held on Wednesday (12/1) at 2200 Highland Ave in National City at California Cremation and Burial between 3pm-9pm.
Funeral will begin at 11:00 am on Thursday (12/2) at California Cremation and Burial. funeral will take place at Holy Cross Cemetary followed with a Celebration of Life at the Centro Cultural de la Raza, 2004 Park Blvd.
Donations can be mailed to: Ramon Sanchez 6367 Radio Dr, San Diego, Ca 92114.
Book about the Fourmile fire will help rebuild fire station
The proceeds from a new book about the Fourmile fire, which was near Boulder, Colorado last September, will go toward rebuilding a fire station that burned during the fire.
The Helena Independent Record has an excellent editorial about the report that was released on Monday on the prescribed fire that escaped on August 26, 2010 and burned over 2,000 acres of private and U.S. Forest Service land 28 miles northwest of Helena, Montana. The report, and the reaction to it from Kevin Riordan, the Helena National Forest Supervisor, indicates that the U. S. Forest Service is not fully aware of, or at least will not publicly admit, the impacts of the serious mistakes and errors in judgement that were made. Accountability did not seem to enter the minds of the 5-person review panel or the Helena National Forest.
Read the entire editorial, but here is an excerpt.
…Our disappointment with the Forest Service’s lack of accountability to accept responsibility is threefold:
First, the Forest Service’s top fire officials should have known the weather, fuels conditions and tree types. That’s what they’re paid and trained to do. The wildfire wouldn’t have ignited had the fire boss used common sense and called off the prescribed burn out of precautionary measures. If there is any blame to be had, it’s there. Right there.
Second, if this was a Regular Joe who didn’t put out a campfire which boomed into a $3 million firefighting effort, they’d be in jail, or at least facing stiff criminal charges. Instead, the Forest Service gets a free pass to “Go.”
Third, we expect more from our governmental leaders. If they goof, which happens, we expect them to own up to it and admit their mistakes. It’s OK to learn from those mistakes; that’s how we all grow to be better people and better citizens. But to blatantly disregard those mistakes is unacceptable.
Ultimately, the forest will grow back, and Forest Service officials will continue to rightfully use prescribed burns as an important forest-health mechanism. Ultimately, they might even learn a lesson or two from this debacle.
But it’s the public trust that has been burned the worst, and that is going to be hard to redeem.
The mistakes and errors in judgement before this prescribed fire was even lit are mind-boggling. Some Forest Supervisors, if their heads were not in the sand, would consider firing those responsible.
We have previously covered good and bad examples of accountability and accepting responsibility. We’ll make a mental note to add this incident to the bad example list.
Firefighters line the Stemple Pass Road Thursday, Aug. 26, watching the Davis Fire. Dylan Brown photo.
The Helena National Forest has released their report on the Davis prescribed fire that escaped on August 26, 2010 and burned over 2,000 acres of private and U.S. Forest Service land 11 miles southeast of Lincoln and 28 miles northwest of Helena in Montana.
The firefighters ignited a test burn at 10:45 a.m on Wednesday, August 26. By 2:00 p.m. strong winds became a problem and the fire moved into the tree canopy. All ignition ceased, but soon there was a spot fire which burned 20 acres in heavy mixed conifers. When all personnel left the fire at 10:00 p.m. to avoid the hazard of falling trees, the spot fire had been partially lined.
The next day, Thursday, additional personnel were on scene. They were completing the fireline and gridding for other spot fires when an undetected one took off at 1:00 p.m. which quickly transitioned to a crown fire. The prescribed fire was declared an escape at 1:15 p.m. and a Type 2 Incident Management Team was requested at 2:27 p.m. By nightfall the fire was estimated at over 1,600 acres on federal land and 450 acres on private lands involving multiple landowners. Approximately 22 structures were evacuated on Thursday afternoon and evening.
The five-person review team consisted of three US Forest Service employees, one from the Bureau of Land Management, and one from the state of Montana.
The Helena Independent Record today quotes Kevin Riordan, the Helena National Forest Supervisor, about the findings from the report.
“I don’t want to push anything off or say it was no big deal on any of those things, but each of the factors identified in and of themselves were not a huge piece where we can say, ‘Jeez, here’s something clearly that we did wrong, done incorrectly or that we’re going to make big changes on,'” Riordan said on Monday. “I think there are some small pieces of something that adds up to be a bigger thing. Those are what we are trying to dial into and focus in on so we can make some changes.”
I will go beyond Mr. Riordan’s assessment, and go out on a limb and say there are at least two “huge pieces” that were clearly “done wrong”.
1. The first issue was the failure to take notice of the spot weather forecast that was issued at 10:43 a.m. Wednesday on the day of the burn, just before the firefighters ignited the test burn. That forecast predicted stronger winds than in the forecast that was issued the previous day which was for “winds upslope 3 to 6 mph, ridge top winds southwest 5 to 10 mph with gusts to 15 mph”. Here is what Wednesday morning’s forecast predicted for the day of ignition (the all-caps are from the weather forecast, a bad habit the NWS needs to break):
WIND (20 FT)……..SOUTHWEST WINDS 10 TO 15 MPH WITH AFTERNOON GUSTS 20 TO 25 MPH.
RIDGE TOP WIND……WEST AT 15 TO 20 MPH.
The report says:
The prescribed fire personnel stated they did not note any differences between the two forecasts.
That forecast also stated that on the following day, Thursday, the winds in the afternoon would be 30 to 35 mph. The maximum wind speed allowed in the prescription for the project was 15 mph, which, from my experience, is quite high for a prescribed fire.
2. The second issue is the fact that they knew on Tuesday, the day before the burn began on Wednesday, that near record heat and a Fire Weather Watch with gusty southwest winds was forecast for Thursday. This Watch was upgraded to a Red Flag Warning on Wednesday afternoon after ignition had begun. Even in a best case scenario, if there had been no spot fires or other control problems on Wednesday, the 30 to 35 mph winds predicted for the day after ignition should have alerted experienced fire management personnel that the winds across the 100-acre prescribed fire could have caused embers to be blown across the lines, resulting in the fire escaping. Control would have been difficult in 30 to 35 mph winds.
We wrote about the escaped fire as it was burning in August. This Wildfire Today search page lists some of the Wildfire Today articles about the fire.
Prescribed fire at Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Photo: Joe Strickland.
The National Park Service planned to burn 700 acres at Cades Cove in Great Smoky Mountains National Park last week. This photo from their Facebook page was posted on November 13. It is undated, but is most likely from that project. The park burns some of their fields on a three-year rotation to keep trees from invading and to preserve the historic scenes.
