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.
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