A new fire that ignited over the weekend in southwest Oregon is threatening the community of Agness, Oregon, on the Rogue River west of Grants Pass. The fire quickly grew to more than 8,000 acres despite USFS initial attack efforts.
Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) reported that the Flat Fire is growing fast on the Rogue River–Siskiyou National Forest, between Gold Beach on Oregon’s south coast and Grants Pass on I-5. Weather conditions over the last couple days contributed to the quick spread, and an IMT took over from local agencies yesterday. The fire is burning just a couple miles from Agness, near the confluence of the Rogue River and the Illinois River.
The Rogue River flows 215 miles from Crater Lake to the Pacific Ocean. The 84-mile Congressionally-designated “National Wild and Scenic” portion of the Rogue begins 7 miles west of Grants Pass and ends 11 miles before its mouth at Gold Beach.
Bridge over the Rogue
Jefferson Public Radio reported the fire grew more than 8,000 acres in under three days. Nearly 400 firefighters were working the fire, which threatens about 40 structures in and around the small community of Agness. On Monday, crews were building fireline to prevent further spread.
There’s a reason (or 4) that GoogleMaps will show you this “preferred route” and the “short route” between Grants Pass and Gold Beach; it’s really skatey even in the summertime, and LOTS of people get lost or stranded on Bear Camp Road. Please DO NOT interfere with firefighter vehicle traffic up there because you wanto “go get a look at the helicopters” or something … interfering with firefighting operations, whether you’re flying a drone or driving a pickup, will land you in jail, and some sheriffs are touchier about this than others.
Road alternates between Agness and Grants Pass, Oregon
It was planned yesterday that evening operations would include night crews on the northwest corner of the fire, if conditions permit, which would allow crews to burn out vegetation between fire crews and the active fire.
The fire recently was reported at just over 8,200 acres, with a total 378 personnel assigned to the incident. Resources at that time included 16 engines, 13 crews, 2 dozers, 7 helicopters, and 2 water tenders.
Closures: At least one closure order is in place for the safety of the public. Please be careful when driving in the area and do not drive toward the fire if you don’t live there or work there.
Restrictions: Fire restrictions are in place on the Rogue River–Siskiyou National Forest. The Forest has several closures and public use restrictions on the wild section of the Rogue River [HERE] but they’re mostly in pdf format and thus may not be accessible for everyone. Your best bet for mostly current info is inciweb. (Note the correct URL for this website has changed several times over the years, but for right now it is inciweb.nwcg.gov)– and even though the site warns you to redirect to inciweb.wildfire.gov, THAT DOES NOT WORK. The Flat Fire incident page doesn’t yet have any MAPS, but in the meantime here’s one of the general size of it, northeast of Gold Beach:
Flat Fire map
The Flat Fire is now the largest wildfire burning in Oregon and more crews and other resources are expected in the next few days; current management is under Albrecht’s Northwest Incident Management Team 6.
An evacuation shelter has been established at Gold Beach High School for anyone displaced by the fire and needing assistance. As of Monday, there were no evacuations ordered. Residents can sign up for emergency notifications with the Curry County Emergency Management Department.
KPIC-TV News reported that fire officials said the Flat Fire is burning in historic burn scars from both the 2002 Biscuit Fire and the 2018 Klondike Fire. Firefighters are working around numeroous standing dead trees and dense vegetation within these burn scars, and the landscape in this part of the Pacific Northwest is characterized by very steep terrain and extremely limited access options. Fire managers are deliberately considering firefighting tactics to keep crews safe, while protecting surrounding communities and infrastructure.
More resources arrived this morning, and their numbers will be boosted over the next several days. Crews are strengthening and building new firelines, and fire managers will assign aviation resources as conditions and visibility allow. Watch for updates from the Rogue Valley Interagency Community Center.
As of this morning there were no official closure orders for the area, but people are STRONGLY ADVISED TO STAY OUT. This is a rugged part of Oregon’s coastal mountains where people often get stranded or disoriented or lost, and local fire and law enforcement people don’t have a lot of spare time right now, with a fast-growing fire of this size, to come look for you. Stay out, and avoid getting in the way of firefighting operations. The rugged, mountainous terrain makes it more difficult for firefighting crews to access the area, BUT the Lost Coast Outpost reports that firefighters’ goal is “full suppression” on a rapidly growing fire in extreme summer temperatures.
Nationally, there are now eight fires being managed under a strategy other than full suppression. For updates on the Flat Fire, you can email 2023.flat.or@firenet.gov
No one was evacuated as of yesterday morning, Curry County Commissioner Brad Alcorn told the Lost Coast Outpost. But because of the steep and harsh terrain and hazardous weather conditions, Alcorn said he expects the fire will grow.
“There are a handful of residences up there, probably 14 to 15 homes, and the sheriff has contacted everyone,” Alcorn told the Outpost. “They’re in communication, so if there is a situation where we need to do an immediate evacuation we have a mechanism in place to make sure that happens safely.”
The Flat Fire was first reported at about 6 p.m. Saturday, Alcorn told the community in a video briefing on Sunday. It’s burning near Oak Flat, not far southwest of Agness, according to a Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest news release on Sunday. The Forest Service said two days ago that about 40 structures were threatened. The fire is making its biggest gains in the Lawson Creek drainage; it’s on both sides of the Illinois River, burning in the 2002 Biscuit Fire scar.
The fire was mapped at 5,477 acres via an infrared flight two days ago, said Doug Epperson, the PIO for Northwest Incident Management Team 6, the Type 2 IMT that took over fire operations at 6 a.m. yesterday. He said the fire is burning in new regrowth that occurred after the 2002 Biscuit Fire.
“There’s been a lot of growth since then,” he added.
Air Quality Index between Gold Beach and Grants Pass for the Flat Fire, July 2023
A red flag warning was in effect through this morning, and those weather conditions will likely contribute to additional fire spread. An air quality advisory was also issued for parts of Curry and Josephine counties; air quality could be diminished because of smoke from the fire. The National Preparedness Level is still at 2 and the national sit report lists just 16 large fires today.
Recent facebook post by Murry, re-posted with permission and slightly edited; he spent 26 years as a smokejumper followed by 22 seasons on a Cal Fire lookout, and he theorizes that much of the public land in the West has burned because we’re under-utilizing smokejumpers.
Guest post by MURRY TAYLOR
Since 2020 smokejumpers have averaged only 4.5 fire jumps each season. That’s a terrible under-utilization of an important firefighting resource. In the past we easily jumped twice that many, and some years four times as many. I’ve seen it many times while on the Duzel Rock lookout southeast of Happy Camp, California — fires were not staffed for a day or two and then went big and cost tens or even hundreds of millions while the jumpers sat unused.
There seems to be a lack of understanding among fire managers in the Forest Service about the capability of these jumpers. Dispatchers have said they didn’t put jumpers on a fire because the “trees were too tall,” or the “winds were too strong.” Clearly they didn’t understand that jumpers carry 150-foot let-down ropes, and they have a spotter in the plane throwing streamers, so they know EXACTLY what the wind is like over the fire.
The good news is that things seem to be changing for the better. Allowing jumpers to get back to 10-plus fire jumps per season would save big money and lots of acres. For those who think we need to get more fire back on the land, all I can say is, Don’t worry, there’s going to be plenty of that given the way fires burn now. The policy of putting ALL these early season fires out while small would be a big help. That way, when August — the toughest part of fire season — arrives, the handcrews wouldn’t be exhausted and scattered all over hell, and the skies wouldn’t be filled with smoke so that Air Ops are critically limited.
Jumpers and hotshots tell me that Yes, sometimes the fuels and new fire weather are factors in making fires harder to catch. But MOSTLY, they say, there’s always something that can be done to catch these fires if they are hit while small.
The Rogue River–Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon has taken a more aggressive approach to putting fires out when small. In the last three seasons they’ve had 192 fires and burned only 50 acres. This was achieved by pre-positioning jumpers during lightning storms, better utilization of rappellers, and contract fire resources.
I wrote a post on this topic a couple years ago. Over and over, while on the Duzel Rock lookout, I’ve heard that certain fires weren’t attacked early because the country was “too steep and too rough.”
A smokejumper was seriously injured Sunday May 15 during a training parachute jump. Ben Elkind sustained a dislocated hip and pelvic fracture during a hard landing. During surgery at the hospital they found six fractures and placed three plates and 10 screws to repair the damage.
Ben has been a Smokejumper for the US Forest Service based in Redmond, OR for nine years and worked in fire as a member of the Zig-Zag Hotshots before jumping. He rookied as a smokejumper in Redding, CA, in 2014 then transferred to Redmond in 2015 to be closer to home and his family.
If his name seems familiar it is because on Wildfire Today we reprinted an opinion article he wrote that was published in The Oregonian, titled, “A USFS firefighter in Oregon can be paid more at McDonald’s.” Ben was also a member of a group that traveled to Washington, D.C. in March where they met with White House officials about pay issues and passing the Tim Hart Wildland Firefighter Classification and Pay Parity Act (H.R. 5631). They also talked with Marty Walsh, the Secretary of Labor, who oversees the Office of Worker’s Compensation Programs (OWCP), an agency that has been criticized for slow-walking or failing to appropriately process the claims and pay the medical bills of firefighters injured on the job.
In an ironic twist, a GoFundMe page has been set up for Ben’s family by the Redmond Smokejumpers Welfare Organization, an often necessary step taken by many federal firefighters who are injured on the job. Here is an excerpt from their description on GoFundMe:
Ben has a long road to recovery and will be unable to work for a significant length of time and will be missing out on the overtime that so many wildland firefighters depend on to make a living. We are starting this GoFundMe in order to help Ben and his family through this tough time. Please consider donating to help a firefighter and his family while they support each other on the road to recovery.
Eicks Fire, resources dispatched. (from the report)
On May 24, 2021, Smokejumper Tim Hart was severely injured while parachuting in to the Eicks Fire in southern New Mexico and passed away on June 2. Today the US Forest Service released a “Learning Review — Technical Report”. Until now the only information officially released about the accident was that he suffered a hard landing in rocky terrain at the fire.
The 55-page report gets heavily, necessarily, into smokejumper technical information and jargon, but does a pretty good job of explaining so it is fairly easy for non-jumpers to understand.
The fire was in a very remote area on private land in the boot heel of New Mexico seven miles north of the US-Mexico border. Ground resources on initial attack included a couple of engines that were hours away and eight smokejumpers dispatched from Silver City, NM.
This is how the report describes the moment the hard landing occurred:
With Jumpers 4 and 5 on the ground, attention focused on Tim. He was still 200 yards southeast of the jumpspot and three-quarters of the way up the boulder-strewn ridge south of the bowl. He was flying up drainage 200 to 300 feet above the drainage bottom, hands positioned at quarter-brakes to full run. Those who could see the flight remember him flying in this direction for one to three seconds before the canopy turned 90 degrees to the left towards the center of the drainage. The cause of the 90-degree turn is unknown, as no one witnessed a left toggle input initiating the turn. At approximately 200 feet [above ground level] the canopy increased in speed and “came out of the air super-fast, like he got caught in a burble.” The Jumper in Charge (JIC) turned to Jumper 2, who had a streamer held high as a wind indicator for the other Jumpers, and exclaimed, “Are you seeing this right now?” Tim’s hands were on the toggles, and the JIC thought, “You need to turn, anywhere but where you are on final,” and waited for a turn at the last second. The JIC said he had “never seen an angle of attack on a Ram-Air like that before.” The JIC and Jumper 2, without another word, began running towards where Tim was going to land, calling to him without hearing a response. Tim had landed on the side of the drainage, uphill into “rocks the size of garbage pails.”
Thankfully, four of the seven jumpers assisting Tim were EMTs. He had a head/neck injury, was unconscious, had a weak pulse, and other injuries. The jumpers on the ground called for the trauma bag to be dropped from the jump plane. The EMTs stabilized his head and neck, administered oxygen, and splinted what was described as “secondary injuries.” Within 15 minutes of the patient being ready for transport and the landing zone being established, a medivac helicopter arrived on scene. He was extracted from the site one hour and 15 minutes after the injury.
Tim passed away nine days later.
The report describes how increasingly turbulent winds on the lee side of a ridge resulted in very complex wind patterns at the jump spot. Two subject matter experts, W. Kitto and M. Gerdes, wrote in Appendix D:
The accident pilot flew into an area where the conditions were not only challenging, but most likely intolerable (turbulence in excess of the parachute’s limitations), i.e. any pilot of any skill level on any similar equipment would likely have been unable to prevent a hard landing, due to rotor. Mechanical rotor turbulence alone or combined with thermal turbulence can easily create “unflyable” conditions.
From the report:
“Tim began as a smokejumper rookie in 2016 and was trained on the Forest Service Ram-Air parachute system. He was beginning his sixth season as a smokejumper, with a record of 95 jumps (73 proficiency and 21 fire). In 2021, he was on his third stint as a Silver City, NM, Smokejumper detailer. Tim had two previous fire jumps out of Silver City, one each in 2018 and 2019 on the Gila National Forest. Over that same time period, he had three proficiency jumps out of Silver City, all at the Fort Bayard practice jumpspot, the most recent on May 22, 2021.”
“The USFS and BLM has many career-focused employees working without a professional career environment”
File photo, by McCall Smokejumper Base.
by John Culbertson
Wildland firefighter pay and work conditions are in the national dialog.In the October 2021 issue of SMOKEJUMPER I commented that smokejumpers and hotshots that want better pay and benefits are finding jobs with local agencies.I wondered what those who had recently taken these jobs thought. After talking it over with SMOKEJUMPER Editor Chuck Sheley, we agreed that for the public good a survey should be conducted and the results made available to the public and decision makers in addition to publishing this article in the April, 2022 issue of SMOKEJUMPER.
To remain unbiased I used a fixed set of questions similar to those used in business when interviewing for needs or solutions.The respondents were kept anonymous.
Twenty ex-smokejumpers who worked at U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management bases were interviewed. Of those, 17 have left the federal government to take jobs with local agencies in Southern California and the Sierra Nevada. Three have transferred to other Forest Service fire management positions. All smokejumper bases were represented, as are all Southern California Counties with significant fire activity.
Eight jumped within the last five years. Seven within the last ten years.The other five jumped within the last twenty years and are in management positions.
It has been a busy fire season and all were working when interviewed.Ninety percent of those interviewed either got a call while we were interviewing, had just returned from a call or were on an overhead assignment.Most interviews involved multiple phone calls, many over multiple days.The persistence, positive attitude and cooperation of the jumpers has been remarkable. What I found has been both encouraging and surprising.
The Smokejumpers averaged six years of crew experience prior to jumping for the Forest Service or BLM.Experience includes Initial Attack crews (2IA or IA), Interagency Hotshot Crews (IHC) and Helitack crews.Prior work with the Forest Service, BLM, NPS, state and local fire agency crews is represented in this survey.
Contact with an ex-jumper, frequently a supervisor or fire manager was part of the path to jumping for almost all.
Over half had taken a decrease in pay, GS grade or resigned an appointment in order to jump in the GS-5 rookie position. Most had been at crew overhead level and had an AA degree, professional certificate or higher.Less than half were veterans.
Years jumped averaged three.There were two distinct groups.About half jumped one or two seasons while the rest jumped three to six seasons with one significantly more.
All spoke highly of their smokejumper experience and prior hand crew experience.
All expressed strong loyalty and hopes for the best for the Forest Service and BLM. Many expressed a patriotic belief in helping to take care of their country. Reference to conservation principles needed for forest management and the history of public lands was brought up by over half the jumpers. There was considerable expression of desire to not leave jumping or the agencies and concern for the future of jumping mixed with frank consideration of their own situation.
Family needs and salary were intertwined as a subject most voiced as the top reason for leaving jumping with all but one respondent who voiced career development as his reason.
Almost all had discussed leaving jumping in detail with a spouse, ex-spouse or significant other.Time away on fire assignment, the need for significant overtime to support a family, desire to purchase a house, a stable location for family and schools, lack of employment opportunity for spouse in jumper towns and the lack of upward movement in the jumper organization or back at a home forest unit were all frequently cited as issues discussed.
Seven hundred and fifty hours of overtime was the average families depended on while jumping.Due to Federal pay structure, this equals about fifteen hundred hours away from home. Time away from family figured into this issue.
Job location was a factor for a spouse or significant other as it related to school choice, professional opportunity and home purchase.
The majority of jumpers brought up professional development. There is little upward movement in the jump organization.Career development, mentoring and interest in fire management were not given enough consideration by supervisors during evaluations and career counseling at the bases.
Using jumping as a pathway to fire management was a desire of many.About half the jumpers expressed a desire to work in a home forest unit in either fire management or on a district ranger path.
Many had hope of a future in the Forest Service, BLM or NPS and were willing to compromise and receive less pay than local agencies to make this happen but were thwarted by the federal hiring system. A typical comment was that they received no replies to inquiry’s regarding positions with Federal Agencies. The centralized federal hiring and personnel management system was frequently mentioned as frustrating to deal with.
An exception to this was jumpers on detail and one who sought out an apprentice program appointment. After leaving jumping, everyone in this group worked towards fire management positions within the Forest Service.This took an average of six years moving between positions and physical locations. These jumpers showed considerable adaptability in taking on a Forest Service career, including postings to the Washington office and international assignments. All had purchased homes and carried that equity with them on assignment.
For those taking local agency fire jobs, most mapped out a course and began a transition while still jumping.This included completion of online college and fire academy classes and contact with potential employers.The average transition time was three years with 60% taking transitional wildland fire or EMS jobs with local fire agencies.
Those taking transitional jobs with local agencies on IA, vegetation management programs (VMP) and EMS crews all took on positions of responsibility such as lead, squad or foreman.This allowed them to be available for interviews, become known locally and complete training classes such as fire academy or EMT classes.
Many local agency fire managers assisted these jumpers in their transition to full time local agency fire jobs even when employment was found at another agency. For many, this filled the mentoring and career planning need they had not found at the jump base.
Full time paramedic training and internship was a considerable undertaking. Three couples lived on the spouse’s earnings while the ex-jumper used savings from jumping to go through a year and a half of classes and internship.
Department of Defense (DOD) fire employment was another avenue of transition.Designation as a firefighter and DOD pay structure provided a living wage for a family without the lengthy overtime requirements cited above for the Forest Service and BLM.
With a few exceptions the local agency fire jobs required the smokejumper to go through the same highly competitive application and testing process with all other applicants.Smokejumping was simply an added plus to meeting the education, academy, EMT, written and physical test requirements. Contact with local agency managers and local wildfire transition jobs also helped.
Adapting to this process was noted as an adjustment by many.In particular, interview skills were something that had to be developed. Once hired as firefighters the smokejumpers, like all recruits, had to meet stringent probationary requirements that included frequent testing and evaluation.Pay structure during probation varied by agency but was greater than that received as a smokejumper. Average age on obtaining local agency probationary status was thirty-three with average interview age of thirty-seven.
On completion of probation the new firefighters starting salary averaged about $80,000 plus significant benefits. The range of starting salary was $68,000 to $92,000. All noted the salary was sufficient to support the family without overtime.
Adjustment to the new job was noted by most.These adjustments were to the call load, witnessing human tragedy, sleeplessness, need to study, commuting and working with people that lacked the camaraderie of crew and smokejumpers the firefighters had worked with in the past. This was not a criticism but an acknowledgment of the reality of living in a fire station.In some cases jumpers considered a return to a natural resource agency job for a simpler life although none did.Discussion with a spouse or significant other was described as part of this process.
All noted the clear-cut mission and service to the public of local agencies.
Some choose to compete for and take wildfire or vegetation management program related jobs within these local agencies.Some aspect of vegetation management programs, prevention, IA crew, dozers and helicopter operations exist with many of the local agencies. After completion of probation some were able to return to their transitional crew in a leadership position. Multiple jumpers noted that local agency VMP and IA crews are both efficient and increasing in number.
All noted the importance of the portal-to-portal pay structure with a huge factor being fewer hours spent away from home and simplicity of paperwork.Local agency overtime is compensated on a portal-to-portal basis, be it for shift work, filling in at a station, short term call back to cover draw down or out of town assignment.
While on probation all were used for out of town wildfire assignments with engine strike teams.All were able to use their qualifications for overhead assignments on completion of probation and most interviewed had been on multiple extended attack and large fires this season as overhead or had occupied back fill positions at the station for the wildfire draw down.
Looking back at their smokejumper jobs, all felt improvement in pay was in order and this extended to their thoughts about crews in general.Inconsistency of jumper use for Initial Attack between bases and agencies was noted by most. “Sitting on the ramp at PL5 (Highest national fire preparedness level),” was a repeated phrase.This extended to winter work for those on some form of permanent status, “Sewing canteen covers (in the winter) is not meaningful work.”
All wanted the best for Federal wildland firefighters and many felt re-classification to firefighter from forestry tech was important.Parity with state wildland agency pay was frequently mentioned as was looking at other Federal fire models such as DOD.
Flexibility in use of employment status and under utilization of existing appointments was mentioned by more than half the jumpers.This related to both the need to retain jumpers that had other things to do during the winter such as ski patrolman as well as the needs of those that wanted permanent jobs and the importance of mentoring those that desired a return to the districts with fire management and district ranger tracks in mind.
Jumpers that had advanced to management roles including those that returned to the Forest Service were particularly concerned with the potential use of solutions already available.Making incremental but meaningful change kept coming up.Retention of GS grade (or equivalent) and appointment status when training as a jumper was considered important.Second year (GS-6) jumpers automatically receiving a 13 and 13 appointment (if they did not already come on board with one) and starting to accrue retirement and access to the TSP (Thrift savings) program were frequently mentioned as possible solutions.All those now in management roles felt there was a strong need for local hiring and administration of personnel matters at the Forest, District and Program level.This included local administration of injured firefighters.
Frustration was frequently voiced over the encouragement of and even counseling jumpers on how to sign up for unemployment.Jumpers wondered why that money was being wasted by the agencies on unemployment when so much could be done with the money by simply running programs that further employment and well being of crews.
A repeated phrase in the interviews was that those that stay with jumping in the Forest Service feel stuck and not valued.
What stood out to me on completion of these interviews was that these jumpers represent skilled, experienced and motivated of people with high agency loyalty and an outstanding positive outlook.If I were seeking people to manage our National Forests and public lands, or any fire agency, I could not find better candidates.
Any loss to the agencies in training dollars and administrative costs when jumpers leave for other fire jobs is small in comparison to the loss of talent and initiative.
It is my opinion that the Forest Service and BLM are dealing with career-focused employee’s (in this case) and yet not providing a professional career environment for them to work in. Pay is one of several significant factors.
One could take a blunt view and say the Forest Service took a simple job and made it complicated with no net gain in efficiency.Something seems wrong. And I think there is some truth to this as it relates to the work force and agency needs. I was left wondering what the Forest Service mission for jumpers is.
My more pragmatic view is that with the exception of pay and a cumbersome personnel management system, things are OK.Smart people within the Forest Service and BLM including the jumpers, Interagency Hotshot Crew overhead, and fire managers at the district and forest level, are working to make things better.The Forest Service and BLM continue to attract talented motivated individuals that receive excellent training and experience and then go out into the world of fire and enrich many agencies efforts in this most important work.For this the Forest Service and BLM should be proud.
* I want to note that in the process of tracking down jumpers I talked with a number of IHC and IA overhead as well as fire managers from many agencies.Many expressed similar concerns and made thoughtful comments. I feel surveys of these highly skilled and experienced people would be meaningful to any agency seeking improvement.There are many solutions and great strength in the diversity of thought I encountered.
This article is scheduled for the April, 2022 edition of Smokejumper magazine. It is published here with the permission of author John Culbertson and the magazine’s Managing Editor, Chuck Sheley.
Martha Schoppe, a BLM smokejumper, was interviewed for an article that was published today in The Hill.
Here is the beginning of the piece:
“Longer, more intense wildfire seasons are taking a toll on both America’s forests and the people who risk their lives to protect them — but for many federal wildland firefighters, including the few women in their ranks, the camaraderie that comes with the job outweighs its physical and mental challenges.
“Martha Schoppe, an Idaho-based smokejumper for the Bureau of Land Management, said she values the trust she has built with her co-workers, as she and her team of eight parachute into a massive blaze.
“At 42, she has opted to not have kids and is one of only about a dozen women among around 400 American smokejumpers — an elite status she has found to be free of gender bias, as everyone goes “through the wringer” to survive training.
” ‘If you do, you’ve proven yourself,’ Schoppe told The Hill, noting that the jump itself, while exhilarating, is “literally three minutes.”
“ ‘Once we land on the ground, we’re just another firefighter,’ ” she said.
