David Shepard’s house survived the Eiler Fire, 40 air miles east of Redding, California. Photo by Bill Gabbert, August 6, 2014.
Our piece about trends in wildland firefighter fatalities generated discussion of what the data meant and the fact that there was a great deal of variation from year to year. I wrote a comment below the article that grew larger than I originally expected. Here it is:
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With an average of 17 fatalities over the last 25 years the annual numbers will never be smooth or without spikes. If there were more than 30,000 deaths each year, like with motor vehicles and firearms, there would be less relative variation from year to year and it would be much easier to see a trend. The wildfire environment is dynamic and volatile, but human factors may be what most influences the number of fatalities, and that is difficult to measure or predict.
We have seen some interesting discussion, on this article and others, about how to reduce the fatality rate. A large percentage of the fatalities on wildfires are caused by medical issues or accidents in vehicles and helicopters. For example in 2014 there were 10 deaths on fires, but none involved burnovers. But having said that, off the top of my head, here are a few areas that need to be emphasized in order to reduce the number of burnover fatalities:
Realize that firefighter safety is far more important than protecting structures or vegetation. It’s hard to step back and watch homes burn, but it’s far more painful to watch a funeral.
Increase the use of simulation tools such as sand tables and computers to train leaders. Try to make it as realistic as possible, but don’t keep throwing problems at the trainee until they fail. Point out mistakes, but the simulation director needs to avoid getting on a power trip. This occasionally was a problem when we used a simulator with a bank of overhead projectors and a rear-projection screen, a system that was extremely flexible.
Find a way to make crew resource management more effective so that crew members feel empowered. If they see something, SAY something.
The first things every firefighter should consider before committing to a fire suppression effort are escape routes and safety zones. After that, anchor, flank, and keep one foot in the black. Then, escapes routes and safety zones, again and again.
Utilize existing technology that will enable Division Supervisors, Operations Section Chiefs, and Safety Officers to know in real time, 1) where the fire is, and 2) where the firefighters are. The Holy Grail of Firefighter Safety. When you think about it, it’s crazy that we sometimes send firefighters into a dangerous environment without knowing these two very basic things. Last month Tom Harbour told me that he was very concerned that, for example, someone in Washington would be accessing the data from thousands of miles away and order that a firefighter move 20 feet to the left. That can be managed. Making the information available to supervisors on the ground can save lives.
Last week Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack reported that 13 wildland firefighters lost their lives in the line of duty in 2015. That was an increase from 2014 when there were 10 fatalities, and was about a third of the 34 that were killed in 2013 — that year included the deaths of 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots near Yarnell, Arizona.
The National Interagency Fire Center has statistics about line of duty deaths going back to 1910. During that time, according to their numbers, 1,099 firefighters died.
In looking at the 105 years of NIFC data there appears to be an increasing trend. The figures below are the average number of fatalities each year for the indicated time periods:
One likely explanation for the apparent increase is that 80 to 105 years ago probably not all fatalities were reported or ended up in a centralized data base, especially those that occurred on state or locally protected lands. Even if we only look at the figures since 1960, as in the chart above, it still shows a steep increase over those 55 years.
It is possible in the last 25 years the reporting of fatalities and the collection of the data has been somewhat more consistent and complete. The chart below covers that period, from 1990 through 2015, and has a slight downward trend, which would be even more obvious if not for the 19-person crew that passed away in 2013 on the Yarnell Hill Fire.
I can’t prove that there was under-reporting of wildland firefighter fatalities during most of the 20th century, but if a firefighter was killed on a vegetation fire in Missouri in 1921, I can see how that statistic may not have made it into the data base that is now maintained at NIFC.
So what does all this mean? Individuals can look at the same batch of statistics and develop vastly different interpretations. However, it would not be prudent to assume that the fatality rate almost tripled from the first part of the 105-year period to the last 25 years. There are several ways to analyze data like this. The least complex is to look at the trend of the raw numbers of fatalities year to year. A more complex and meaningful method would be to determine the fatality RATE. For example, the fatalities per million hours spent traveling to and working on fires. That would be impossible to ferret out during most of the last 105 years. But the firefighting agencies should be able to find a way to begin collecting this information, if they don’t have it already.
If the fatality and serious injury rates were calculated over a multi-year period, it should illustrate the effectiveness of a risk management program. Otherwise, the simple number of deaths each year might be affected to an unknown degree by the number of acres burned. Other factors could also affect the numbers, such as fire intensity influenced by fuel treatment programs, fire history, drought, climate change, or arson.
Should firefighting agencies have specific goals about serious injuries and fatalities? Is there an acceptable number? Is 5 a year too many? Is 15 too many? Is it stupid to have a goal of zero fatalities — or any number?
The chart below superimposes the number of fatalities over the acres burned in the United States from 1990 through 2015, but it does not include Alaska since many fires there are not suppressed, or they are only suppressed in areas where they threaten structures or people. In 2015 more acres burned in Alaska than all of the other states combined.
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UPDATED January 17, 2016
One of our loyal readers, Bean, has been thinking about this issue and figured that since the amount of firefighters’ exposure to risk is necessary in order to calculate trends, perhaps parameters other than acres burned could be correlated with the number of fatalities. Data that is publicly available as far back as 1990 or 1994 includes mobilizations of incident management teams, crews, overhead, helicopters, air tankers, air attack ships, infrared aircraft, MAFFS air tankers, caterers, military firefighters, and shower units. I considered all of those and concluded that the number of crews mobilized would come the closest to serving as a proxy for accurate data of how many hours all firefighters spent traveling to and working on fires.
Data for crew mobilizations is available from 1990 through 2014. I divided the number of crews mobilized by the number of fatalities for each year and called this the Fatality/Crews Mobilized Index.
Like the earlier chart comparing fatalities to acres burned, this analysis also shows a decreasing trend in the last 25 years. In a comment posted January 17, Kevin9 said the earlier acres/fatalities analysis is “spiky”. This newer crews mobilized/fatalities data also has spikes (especially in 1997 and 2009) but not quite to the degree the earlier chart had. During the 25-year period, 1997 had the least number of acres burned and crews mobilized, but still had 10 fatalities. The second lowest number of crews mobilized occurred in 2009 and there were 15 fatalities that year.
As an experiment, knowing that there were mass casualty events in 1994 and 2013 (14 and 19 fatalities respectively), just to see what the effects were, I changed the data in those two years to the average for the last 25 years, which is 17, and there was no major change in the trend line, except it was a little lower across the entire range.
It’s been a long time since I took statistics courses, but here’s what I came up with when analyzing the Fatality/Crews Mobilized Index data:
Tom Sadowski, El Cariso Hotshots, 1972. Photo by Bill Gabbert.
Charles Palmer, an associate professor at the University of Montana who studies performance psychology of wildland firefighters, has called them “tactical athletes”. Mr. Palmer, who spent 20 years as a firefighter and smokejumper, has said:
These aren’t people who ride around in trucks and squirt water on stuff — this is really demanding from a lot of different angles. You travel around, you have to perform, they’re getting very little downtime, they have nutritional challenges … physically you have to perform really well.
A study of wildland firefighters during suppression activities in Spain found that heart rates ranged from 116 to 133 beats per minute depending on the length of the work. Researchers in Australia measured heart rates of firefighters operating hand tools that were 95 percent of their predicted maximal.
When we read an article at the Monday Morning Quarterback about managing the sleep of professional football players, we could’t help but make the comparison between those athletes and the ones who fight wildfires for a living.
According to the piece by Jennie Vrentas, an increasing number of NFL teams are emphasizing an adequate amount of sleep for their players. Below are some excerpts from the article:
A good night’s sleep is directly tied to key factors such as reaction time, mental alertness, muscular recovery and converting what you’ve recently learned into memory. That’s why the science of slumber has become one of the hottest trends in the NFL: Teams are no longer leaving it to chance that their multimillion dollar investments will manage sleep cycles all on their own.
The Dolphins and Patriots have dark rooms at their practice facilities so players can take naps. Eagles players fill out a morning questionnaire on their tablets, self-reporting how long and how well they slept the previous night.
If you run on four hours of sleep a night for a week, it’s the same as drinking a six-pack and then going to work.
“The average athlete probably needs eight to nine hours of sleep, given their physical demands,” [Washington team physician Anthony] Czeisler says, and even more if you can get it. “I wish I could say there’s a shortcut, but if you are going to be a professional athlete, you need to pay careful attention to sleep.”
A single all-nighter, or a week spent getting just four hours of sleep a night, can make one’s reaction time nearly three times slower.
The article refers to studies completed on football and basketball players, but there has also been research on how sleep affects wildland firefighters. In a study of firefighters in Australia during a four-day simulation of an assignment on a wildland fire, it was found that after two nights of being restricted to four hours of sleep their performance on a hand-eye coordination task declined. However their work output remained about the same even after consecutive nights of restricted sleep.
The firefighters report [that while working on actual fires they get] only about four to five hours sleep per night. They have trouble sleeping due to other people snoring in locations such as cabins, tents or the floor of school gyms. Some are simply so wired after spending the whole day in emergency-mode, that they can’t switch off.
This is consistent with research in the United states, in Technology and Development Publication, Wildland Firefighter Health and Safety Report, Issue Number 13, Summer 2009:
…Sleeping in fire camp can be a challenge. Noise from generators, vehicles, and other firefighters all contribute to sleeplessness. Because almost all wildland firefighters need to sleep either in fire camps or in spike camps, they sleep in tents, on the ground, and in hot, smoky, and dusty conditions. Shift work interferes with sleep, especially for those on night shift.
Sleep log data were collected on members of five incident management teams at fire camps in California and Montana during 2008. [Note from Bill: this data appears to be from overhead team members in fire camp, not “tactical athletes” out in the field.] Data for 140 team members (36 percent female, 64 percent male) indicated that they averaged 6.1 hours of sleep, ranging from 3.5 to 9.0 hours per night. On average, team members went to bed at 9:30 p.m. They reported being awakened an average of 2.2 times per night, awakening from zero to six times per night. When team members were asked to rate the quality of their sleep, the average was 6.6 on a 10-point scale. Nearly one-fourth (23.8 percent) reported feeling tired when they woke, while 53.6 percent felt somewhat rested, 20.2 percent felt rested, and 2.4 percent felt very rested.
Eight hours of rest between work periods is inadequate because only 50 to 75 percent of the rest period is devoted to sleep. Thus it is advisable to have longer rest periods (10 to 14 hours) so workers have time for adequate sleep.
Total sleep deprivation for 1 week has led to cognitive impairment when work requires multitasking. In driving, accidents increase as sleep duration is decreased. In tasks requiring judgment, risky behaviors emerge when sleep is limited to 5 hours per night.
Behavioral alertness and a range of cognitive functions, including sustained attention, and working memory deteriorate when nightly sleep is limited to between 4 and 7 hours. Decisionmaking skills, such as the ability to assess risk, assimilate changing information, and revise strategies to solve problems based on new information are likely to suffer.
Eight hours of rest between work periods is inadequate because only 50 to 75 percent of the rest period is devoted to sleep. Thus it is advisable to have longer rest periods (10 to 14 hours) so workers have time for adequate sleep.
What about naps?
The same publication recommended naps when possible, but the length is important:
Naps restore alertness, enhance performance, and reduce the risk of mistakes. To avoid waking up groggy and exhausted, workers should nap for 20 to 30 minutes OR for longer than 90 minutes. A one-hour nap places you in the middle of deep sleep, making it difficult to wake up. You will be disoriented and clumsy, might make poor decisions, and could be at risk of an injury. A 20-minute nap ends before you descend into deep sleep; a 90-minute nap catches you rising out of deep sleep.
On August 8, 2013 Engine 492 from the Medicine Bow-Routt National Forest and Thunder Basin National Grasslands was involved in a rollover accident on Wyoming State Highway 450 southwest of Newcastle, Wyoming. Three firefighters were injured, one seriously.
A study by Dick Mangan of Blackbull Wildfire Services found that between 1990 and 2009 the leading causes of death of wildland firefighters were: 1. aviation accidents; 2. vehicle accidents; 3. heart attacks/medical causes; and 4. burnovers. From 1990 to 2006, 71 firefighters died in vehicle accidents.
This is a very unscientific data set, but since we started Wildfire Today in January, 2008, we have reported 17 rollovers of fire vehicles that resulted in 44 injuries to firefighters working on or responding to a wildland fire. That does not include non-rollover vehicle accidents, rollovers of heavy equipment (of which there were quite a few), or accidents that occurred in Australia and Canada. Articles on Wildfire Today, 28 of them, tagged “rollover”.
One person was injured when this engine rolled over in 2010 on the Bald Angel prescribed fire on the Wallowa Whitman National Forest near La Grande, Oregon.
What can be done to reduce the number of these injuries and fatalities?
Training
The first thing that is always discussed in accident prevention is training. The most difficult factors to deal with in driving a fire engine are the weight, the center of balance (top-heavy), the physical stress of driving long distances or after a 14-hour shift, and the mental stress of driving an emergency vehicle. All of these are difficult, but not impossible, to train for. Some fire agencies have Engine Academies that actually put trainee drivers behind the wheel, which of course can be extremely beneficial. But it is not easy to train a driver how to react in a split second when they are faced with the sudden decision about possibly hitting the brakes, changing direction, neither of the two, or a combination of the two. Operating a top-heavy 12,000 or 26,000-pound vehicle limits your options. A quick flick of the steering wheel can initiate a rollover.
Driver’s qualifications
When I worked for the National Park Service (NPS) the agency had virtually no specific policy or qualification requirements for the drivers of smaller fire engines, such as a Type 6, other than having a standard state driver’s license. Or if they existed, they were not enforced. A person who had been hired off the street having never driven anything larger than an Austin Mini could be placed behind the wheel of a 15,000-pound top-heavy fire engine.
We checked with the NPS today, and spokesperson Christina Boehle told us that their requirements for driving fire vehicles are on pages 6-9 of Chapter 7 in Interagency Standards for Fire and Fire Aviation (Red Book). This publication includes policies for the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), U.S. Forest Service (USFS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), and the National Park Service (NPS) and supplements other manuals the agencies have. The Bureau of Indian Affairs does not participate in the Red Book program.
In addition to holding a state driver’s license, all drivers covered by the Red Book have to take a defensive driving course. And, as required by Department of Transportation regulations, all drivers must obtain a Commercial Driver’s License (CDL) for operating vehicles weighing 26,001 pounds or more.
Other than defensive driving, no specific additional training is required by the Red Book for driving fire equipment, except for the BLM and USFS which require “driver training”. Those two agencies also complete paperwork to document driver qualifications.
The Engine Operator position has been removed from the Wildland Fire Qualification System Guide (310-1), but now it can be found in the Federal Wildland Fire Qualifications Supplement. The training requirements listed in the document for the position vary widely among the five federal land management agencies. The BIA does not even recognize the position, and on the other extreme is the BLM which requires seven training courses, only five of which are directly related to operating an engine. The FWS and the BLM require the Engine Academy or a BLM Engine Operator Course, respectively. There is also a Position Task Book for Engine Operator.
Seat belts
It almost seems too obvious to mention, but wearing seat belts is the one thing that every person in a vehicle can do to reduce injuries or save lives in a vehicle accident. Most federal land management agencies have policies requiring the use of seat belts.
A study by the Association for the Advancement of Automotive Medicine found that in 7.6 percent of fire truck crashes that were reported to the police some of the occupants were not wearing seat belts, and 74 percent of the fatal crashes involved the non-use of seat belts.
Supervisors at all levels need to proactively ensure that firefighters in all types of vehicles, including crew carriers, wear seat belts.
Engineering
You may have seen Austin Dillon’s horrific-looking crash in the July 5, 2015 NASCAR race. His car became airborne at about 180 mph and crashed into the fence, coming to an immediate stop. Then when it appeared to be over and the remains of the car were upside down, an out of control car hit it with force, causing it to spin around several times on its roof.
The car was barely recognizable as a car after the crash. The front one-third and the rear one-third were gone, but the integrity of the driver’s compartment and his seat remained intact. The only object in the interior that came loose was the radio. Mr. Dillon walked away with only a few bruises.
This shows what can be done to prevent injuries in a very serious vehicle crash. It is not practical to harden the cab of a fire engine to the degree seen in NASCAR, but there are steps that can be taken to prevent the roof from collapsing in a rollover, such as was seen when U.S. Forest Service Engine 392 rolled over in Wyoming in 2013 (see photo above).
The wildland fire agencies should fund research conducted by engineers to determine how to prevent the passenger compartments in their fire engines from collapsing in accidents.
Ensure that fire vehicles are not overweight
In the 1990s one federal land management agency was accepting new Type 6 engines from manufacturers that exceeded the Gross Vehicle Weight (GVW) the day they were delivered after being filled with water.
Adding thousands of extra pounds beyond the GVW to an already top-heavy vehicle can make it difficult to control, especially when making an evasive maneuver or a quick stop. The additional weight is also hard on suspension systems and can cause premature failure of various components.
While federal land management agencies have been guilty of overweight fire trucks, some local fire departments have had the same problem. Too many departments take a Ford F-150 or F-250 and add a very heavy tank and pump package, exceeding the manufacturer’s designed GVW.
A study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health documented some extreme cases, including one where a military surplus tanker designed to carry gasoline was transporting 1,200 gallons of water primarily off road, which put the weight of the loaded vehicle approximately 7,000 pounds over the cross-country weight rating.
I’m thinking the BLM did not waste a lot of money producing this 36-second public service announcement, but I like it, and it could be effective. Nicely done, BLM!
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(UPDATE at 11:18 a.m. PT, July 1, 2015)
After we posted the video, Kevin Conran of the BLM left this comment:
Thank you for the compliments on our PSAs. As you surmised this was very low cost to produce. It was actually produced by a local high school student. We hosted a contest among the high school speech/communications classes and challenged them to produce PSAs aimed at reaching their age group.
FWS Branch Chief John Segar presents National Safety Award to Barton Rye Credit: Josh O’Connor, USFWS
Tallahasee, Florida – On May 7, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) presented its second annual National Fire Safety Award to Barton (Bart) Rye, Prescribed Fire/Fuels Technician from St Marks National Wildlife Refuge for a simple suggestion that helped direct a lost firefighter to safety during a prescribed fire.
The Award, presented by John Segar, FWS Chief, Branch of Fire Management from the National Interagency Fire Center, recognizes Rye for his innovative use of Global Positioning System (GPS) technology to more easily map, track and monitor the location of multiple firefighters, vehicles, and aircraft during large burns on the 70,000-acre refuge.
Rye suggested that his fire crew on foot and all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) carry GPS transmitter collars, like those worn by his hunting dogs, so that up to ten resources could be tracked in real-time by a Burn Boss on a single hand-held receiver. ATVs and dozers on southeastern forests commonly become high-centered on hard-to-spot stumps in heavy vegetation where they cannot be readily seen by others, risking the loss of life and/or equipment during fires.
The refuge first tested the use of the collars last spring. When a firefighter unfamiliar with southeastern terrain walked into a sawgrass pond while igniting a burn and becoming disoriented in knee-deep water with grass over his head, the GPS device allowed the Burn Boss to verbally direct the firefighter out of harm’s way. In February, a helicopter working a 3800-acre burn carried a collar to allow immediate location of the aircraft in case of an accident.
“Bart’s initiative added a level of safety that wasn’t there before and may very well lead to national implementation,” said Segar. “This system is off-the-shelf and simple to operate.”
The Refuge purchased two hand-held receivers — one each for a Burn Boss and Firing Boss — and a transmitting collar for each prescribed fire crew member. A single transmitter and hand-held receiver together cost about $500.
St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge along Florida’s Gulf Coast conducts 40-50 prescribed burns annually, averaging 300-400 acres each, to reduce the risk of wildfire and maintain fire-resilient landscapes.
Map showing the tracks of three firefighters on a prescribed fire, in green, red, and blue.
(All photos were provided by the FWS.) (Note from Bill: The Garmin website has information about one of their tracking systems.)
