The video below features teams of bomberos (firefighters) in Spain who conduct prescribed fires and educate local residents about fire prevention. Their organization is called Equipos de Prevención Integral de Incendios Forestales (EPRIF), or Integrated Forest Fire Prevention Team.
It is interesting to see how firefighters in another part of the world accomplish the same tasks as those in North America, but with a different twist. We thank them for making the English language version of this video.
San Felipe Fire as seen from Mt. Laguna at 9:50 a.m. PT, May 5, 2013 (click to enlarge)
(UPDATE at 7:18 a.m. PT, May 26, 2013)
CAL FIRE is reporting the fire has burned 2,650 acres and is 90 percent contained. Resources assigned include 612 personnel, 50 engines, 23 hand crews, 6 dozers and 11 water tenders.
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(UPDATE at 12:19 p.m. PT, May 25, 2012)
After overnight GPS mapping, the fire is now listed at 1,800 acres and 70 percent containment.
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(UPDATE at 5:30 p.m. PT, May 24, 2013)
The incident commander of the San Felipe fire northeast of Julian, California is calling it 1,850 acres and 70 percent contained.
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(UPDATE at 3:27 p.m. PT, May 24, 2013)
The images from the Mt. Laguna camera show that the San Felipe Fire is not putting up as much smoke as it was earlier today. CAL FIRE, in a 2:30 p.m. update, reports that it has grown to 1,800 acres and is still 60 percent contained.
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(Originally published at 10:25 a.m. PT, May 24, 2013)
A prescribed fire in Anza Borrego Desert State Park 4 miles northeast of Julian, California got away from firefighters around noon on Thursday. A change in the wind direction is being blamed for the escape, now named the San Felipe Fire, that as of Thursday evening had burned 1,500 acres and was 60 percent contained.
The Ramona Sentinel reported that CAL FIRE conducted the prescribed fire.
Map showing the approximate location of San Felipe Fire, heat detected by a satellite at 10:35 p.m. PT, May 23, 2013 (click to enlarge)
As of 6:15 p.m. on Thursday the resources assigned to the San Felipe Fire included 644 personnel, 65 engines, 24 hand crews, 5 air tankers, 7 helicopters, 5 dozers, and 13 water tenders.
An animation of still photos taken from Mt. Laguna Thursday afternoon is available HERE. A window may pop up outside of your browser. It will take a while to load, and it may not work in the Chrome browser.
Two newspapers, at least, are running a story following up on the May 7 prescribed fire in Devils Tower National Monument that escaped during mopup operations the following day and burned 56 acres outside the project boundary. All except one or two of those “bonus acres” were inside the Monument. The small amount that crossed over the boundary unfortunately burned land leased by Wyoming state Senator Ogden Driskill, but did not damage any structures.
The Billings Gazette and the Rapid City Journal published the same article written by Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal. Senator Driskill’s wife, Rosanne Driskill was quoted as saying:
Fire is a legitimate management tool. Farmers and ranchers use it themselves,” Rosanne Driskill said. “But you don’t do it in your front yard or on the face of a national monument.
However, the Monument’s Chief Ranger, Drew Gilmour, thankfully disagreed, saying that is exactly where you want to do it in order to control invasive plants and reduce fallen timber and other snags that can fuel future wildfires.
File photo of the Meadow prescribed fire, Devils Tower National Monument, May, 2000. NPS photo.
Devils Tower has conducted many prescribed fires without any escapes until this year. But a few of the locals have previously been vocal in their opposition. Around 1996 or 1997, one of the projects burned a little hotter than anticipated and took out a pretty good sized patch of Ponderosa Pine on the east side below the tower — the most visible aspect that can easily be seen from the main highway and as visitors drive into the entrance road. One local citizen was quoted as saying, “The Monument is ruined for generations!”. Since then many of the trees killed in that fire have fallen, and much of the downed wood was probably consumed in the May 7 prescribed fire.
A report has been released that had the objective of determining if fuel reduction treatments are effective in reducing the severity and cost of wildland fires. It was prepared for the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Wildland Fire by the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University. The reason it was written is interesting, according to the report: (emphasis added)
The Office of Management and Budget, Government Accountability O ffice and the United States Congress have repeatedly asked the Offi ce of Wildland Fire in the Department of Interior and the United States Forest Service to critically examine and demonstrate the role and eff ectiveness of fuel reduction treatments for addressing the increasing severity and cost of wildland fi re. Federal budget analysts want to know if and when investments in fuel reduction treatments will reduce federal wildland fire suppression costs, decrease fi re risk to communities, and avert resource damage.
The report has a catchy title: The efficacy of hazardous fuel treatments: A rapid assessment of the economic and ecologic consequences of alternative hazardous fuel treatments: A summary document for policy makers.
Here are a few of the conclusions reached by the 12 authors and researchers:
Studies that use the avoided cost approach to examine the cost of fire demonstrate that treatments result in suppression cost savings.
Modeling studies that evaluate the effectiveness of fuels treatments in terms of changes in wildland fi re size, burn probabilities, and fi re behavior demonstrate that fuel treatments applied at the proper scale can influence the risk, size, and behavior of fire therefore reducing suppression cost.
Modeling demonstrates that fuel reduction treatments are effective at reducing fire behavior (severity) where implemented, and can successfully reduce fire risk to communities.
Although few studies exist on the topic, fuel reduction treatments significantly enhance the price of adjacent real estate, whereas homes in close proximity to a wildfire experience lower property values.
Screen grab from the National Geographic Channel video.
Apparently there is a show on the National Geographic Channel called Python Hunters. I happened to run across this video from the program, which includes a controlled burn. Their objective was not to kill the large snakes, they said, but to drive them out of the brush, or underground.
If you are familiar with controlled burns or prescribed fires, you will not recognize any of the techniques in this video…. unless you prep your prescribed fires by throwing five gallon buckets of diesel onto the vegetation.
Surprisingly, a representative of the Miami-Dade Fire Department is on scene, probably to reduce the chances of the actors killing themselves. The project may have been surrounded by mostly bare ground — it’s hard to tell — so there might have been little chance of the fire escaping.
Screen grab from the National Geographic Channel video.
Just to be absolutely clear, definitely do not try this technique. Diesel is not as volatile or explosive as gasoline but what they did, shown in the video, is dangerous. If they had mixed gasoline with the diesel, as is usually done when fueling drip torches for a real prescribed fire, or used straight gasoline, there could have been an explosion when they ignited it, depending on the concentration.
Cypress Creek Natural Area Prescribed fire, Florida, Palm Beach County photo by Kraig Krum
On Friday, May 10 we posted a photo that Stefan Willet of Daytona, Florida, AKA @bassking511, placed on Twitter. Mr. Willet described it as “huge fire off the highway”. One of our loyal readers, Kraig Krum, the Fire Management Coordinator for Palm Beach County’s Department of Environmental Resources Management, sent us the photo above and identified both of them as a prescribed fire:
…The photo captioned “Fire in Florida” with your Wildfire Briefing 5/10 was actually a prescribed burn conducted by ERM staff at our Cypress Creek Natural Area. The fire was in slash pine/gallberry/palmetto (FM 7) and included about 200 acres. It was the 5th prescribed burn we have done this year for a combined 800 acres. I took the attached photo during Friday’s burn. ERM staff manages approximately 31,000 acres of conservation land in Palm Beach County, with much of it being in densely populated WUI areas. More information on our prescribed burn program can be found at http://pbcgov.org/erm/natural/burn-program/. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for all the great information you have on Wildfire Today! Kraig
