Wildfire briefing, December 3, 2012

Firefighter killed in Clinton County, Illinois

A firefighter was killed Sunday at the scene of a wildfire that spread to a structure. Here is an excerpt from an article at KSDK:

A 45-year-old fireman with the Santa Fe Fire Protection District in Clinton County, Illinois, has been killed at the scene of a fire.

Timothy P. Jansen died of injuries sustained when he was struck by a fire truck in the 9700 block of River Road in Bartelso. The accident happened about 7:45 p.m. Sunday.

Jansen was among the first firefighters to arrive at the scene, which began as a grass fire and spread to a building.

Santa Fe Fire Chief Adam Maue said Jansen was standing on the back of a truck, pulling hoses, when he slipped off. The driver of the truck told the chief he did not know Jansen fell, so he backed up, striking Jansen.

Jansen was married and had two daughters. He’d been with the fire district for 15 years and owned a restaurant directly across the street from the firehouse.

Fire engine overturns en route to wildfire, injuring 4

A fire engine that was participating in a Christmas parade in Bedford, Virginia was dispatched to a wildland fire duirng the parade but didn’t make it to the fire. It overturned while rounding a curve, landing in Phyllis Carimi’s front yard.

Here is an excerpt from The News & Advance:

Lt. Todd Foreman, of the Bedford City Police, said he believed there were only four men inside the truck, all of whom were hospitalized.

Foreman said two were airlifted from the wreck — one to Lynchburg General Hospital, the other to Carilion Roanoke Memorial Hospital. The other two were taken by ambulance to Lynchburg and Bedford hospitals.

Their conditions and identities have not yet been provided.

Chief of the Forest Service expects 12 million to 15 million acres to burn annually due to higher temperatures

U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told a group in Boise Friday that in the future even more acres are going to burn and the cost of fighting fires will continue to rise. One of his answers to the problem, of course, is to increase timber sales by 20 percent.

As we pointed out November 23, so far this year the number of acres burned, 9,093,431, was the third highest total since national wildfire statistics have been kept beginning in 1960. Remaining at the number one and two spots are 2006 with 9.9 million, and 2007 with 9.3 million.

Rocky Barker wrote in the Idaho Statesman on Saturday:

Tidwell told the City Club of Boise that as many as 12 million to 15 million acres will burn annually now because of warming temperatures and drier years.

[…]

More than 30,000 homes have burned in the past decade, Tidwell said, including 3,000 just this year — homes in a Pocatello subdivision among them. Experts expect fires to keep claiming houses, but fuel-reduction steps can make communities safer and easier to protect, Tidwell said.

Federal budget cuts will make money more scarce, but communities are increasingly taking responsibility, he said. Flagstaff, Ariz., passed a $10 million bond to do forest restoration on private and federal land there.

The comments people have left at the bottom of the Idaho Statesman article are interesting.

Canadian Commission rejects changes to codes to protect communities

From the Edmonton Journal:

EDMONTON – A federal commission has rejected proposals to change Canada’s national construction codes to better protect communities from destructive wildfires.

The changes would have required builders in areas prone to forest fires to use less flammable building materials, to space buildings farther apart and to keep them clear of trees and vegetation.

[…]

The proposal for changes came from the National Fire Protection Association and an Alberta-based non-profit group called Partners in Protection.

The proposals were submitted to the commission before wildfires in May 2011 destroyed hundreds of homes in Slave Lake, Alta., and forced thousands of people to flee. The disaster cost more than $1 billion in damage, firefighting and relief costs.

Air tankers still on active duty

Two large air tankers are still on active duty, long past their normal mandatory availability periods. More information at FireAviation.com 

 

Thanks go out to Dick

Wildland firefighter LODDs, 2010

At Wildfire Today we try to keep track of the line of duty deaths (LODD) of firefighters working on wildland fires. The past year, 2010, again produced a lengthy list of firefighters who passed away while doing their job. We make no claim that it is a complete or official tally. If you are aware of any that we missed, let us know. Some of the dates are approximate and may be the date of the report of the fatality. The last three incidents are gray areas, in that the victims were not all firefighters, or were not necessarily actively involved in fire suppression at the time of the incident. They were included because they were very significant incidents.

At the end of the list is a report from the U.S. Fire Administration providing their statistics on the number of LODDs for 2010.

January 11. Australia. A firefighter was killed and four others were injured when their fire truck rolled over while they were responding to a grass fire at Lake Mokoan near Benalla in northeast Victoria, Australia. (map)

April 11. Kansas.  A firefighter was overcome by smoke and died while working on a fire west of Peru.

April 24. New Brunswick, Canada. A pilot from Grand Falls, with Forest Protection Ltd., was conducting a practice flight in a water bomber when the plane crashed shortly after taking off from the airport.

June 23. Washington. The chief of the Franklin Fire District 4 in Basin City, Washington, was killed when a snow cat that had been converted to a fire apparatus rolled about 100 feet down a hill while he was working on a vegetation fire.

July 30. Russia. Wildfires in Russia killed at least 25 people including 2 firefighters, and destroyed over 1,000 homes. Some reports say three firefighters died in the fires.

July 31. Canada. An air tanker crashed while working on a fire in British Columbia. The Convair 580, operated by Conair, went down in central B.C. The two pilots were killed.

August 2. Arkansas. A firefighter was operating an Arkansas Forestry Commission 2002 International tractor trailer, and was en route to check on the status of an earlier fire. The tractor trailer load reportedly shifted causing the vehicle to cross the roadway center line, go into a ditch and then overturn.

August 11. Portugal. Civil protection officials said a female firefighter died, one fireman was badly burned and their team had to be evacuated when they found themselves surrounded by flames after a sudden change in the direction of the wind in Gondomar region. On Monday, a fireman was killed and another seriously injured when their truck fell into a burning ravine in the mountainous Sao Pedro do Sul area.

August 13. Spain. Two firefighters were been killed in wildfires. The blazes hit near the village of Fornelos de Montes in the country’s northwestern Galicia region, close to the border with Portugal, where several forest fires are still raging.

September 21. Spain. A 46-year old firefighter died while extinguishing a wildfire in Senes.

September 24. Ohio. A firefighter was killed when a pressurized tank failed and he was struck by debris.

September 24. Virginia. A firefighter collapsed and later died while working on a fire in New Church, Virginia off Route 13.

November 16. South Carolina. A firefighter was suppressing a grass fire in the median of Interstate 20 when a van rear-ended a sedan as they approached the fire scene. The sedan was pushed into two parked fire trucks causing them to crash into a firefighter, causing his death.

November 23. California. One inmate was killed and 12 were injured when their crew carrier vehicle was involved in a head-on accident. Three of the injured were in critical condition. The elderly driver of the other vehicle was also killed. As far as we know the inmate crew was not assigned to a fire at the time of the crash.

December 5. China. A massive wildfire in Tibet’s Sichuan province killed 22 people, including Chinese soldiers during a rescue operation. Of the 22 killed, 15 were soldiers, two were workers with the grassland administration, and five others were local civilians.

December 6. Israel. At least one of the 43 government employees that were killed in the Carmel Mountain fire in Israel was a police officer. The Police Chief in Haifa (Israel) died in the Line of Duty from her burn injuries after 4 days of hospitalization. She was the first ever woman police chief there, and was gravely injured in the Carmel forest fire, while driving along with the bus full of Prison Service cadets that burned and killed the cadets as well.

Below is the The U.S. Fire Administration’s report of the on-duty firefighter fatalities in 2010. Click on FullScreen to see a larger version.

Continue reading

Virginia: St. Mary’s fire

Helitorch

The St. Mary’s fire on the George Washington National Forest has grown to 4,060 acres. (UPDATE March 30; 4,505 acres) It’s interesting the way the media describes the aerial ignition operation.

From The News Virginian, an excerpt:”Instead of rain, a helicopter dropped a hailstorm of ping-pong-ball-sized balls of a chemical that, with a delayed reaction of about 10 seconds, started a potent fire – on the east and west slopes of the ridge leading to Route 56. It’s known as a backfire operation, McPhereson said, and it worked to contain the fire.

Helitorch
Helitorch photo by Bill Gabbert

At the same time that was happening, most of the 121 people involved, from federal and state agencies to local volunteers, were out burning terrain along the road leading away from the bulldozer line, according to Charlie Rudacille, normally with Shenandoah National Park but one of those assisting in controlling the fire.

The helicopter chemical drops, he said, would help prevent big runs with the fires and would lessen their intensity.

In the half-hour it took for the helicopter to drop the many thousands of chemical balls and make its way around both sides of the ridge, visibility was reduced to near-zero as heavy, dark-brown smoke filled the sky and bright orange flames dotted the slopes.

“If it all goes well, in an hour it’ll be boring,” Rudacille said while the helicopter was in the air.

The gusting, 15 to 20 mph winds – blowing the fire northeast, away from the west slope – was a blessing to the firefighters, as were the dry, overcast conditions. But Rudacille was aware of forecasts calling for a chance of thunderstorms later in the day.

“The thunderstorm, and the erratic winds associated with the thunderstorm, would be a problem,” Rudacille said.”

InciWeb has more details.

Virginia Has Already Spent Their Fire Suppression Funds for the Year

Due to fire activity much busier than usual, the Virginia Department of Forestry has already spent their budgeted wildland fire suppression funds for the year. They intend to ask the Governor’s office for more.

From the Richmond Times Dispatch:

 

“Entering the second week of the spring fire season, the Virginia Department of Forestry already has spent its entire 2008 funds for firefighting.

Preliminary estimates indicate that the outbreak of wildfires across the state two weeks ago that led Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to declare a state of emergency may have cost the department about $500,000, spokesman John Campbell said.

That’s the agency’s budget for firefighting for the entire year, Campbell said. “We are thinking we are tapped out . . . and we are just beginning the year.”

The estimate includes expenses such as overtime payments and gasoline, as well as the use of helicopters and other heavy equipment. It doesn’t include the localities’ expenses, he said.

The National Guard, which was sent to help several counties, may have spent an additional $175,000, Campbell said.

Across the state, officials are still trying to calculate the financial losses from the 348 wildfires two weeks ago.

The fires, fueled by high winds, were caused mostly by downed trees that hit electrical wires. The fires consumed nearly 16,000 acres, about 4,000 more acres than burned in all of 2007, forestry officials said.”

 

Fires in Virginia, North and South Carolina

Lake Carolina fire
Lake Carolina fire
Lake Carolina in Richland County, VA, from wistv.com

Strong winds up to 50 and 60 mph caused problems for firefighters in Virginia and North Carolina.

Virginia, from Pilotonline.com:

Beyond southeast Virginia, dozens of brush fires burned across the commonwealth and some were still burning Sunday night.

Local authorities declared emergencies in Bedford, Roanoke, Caroline, Orange, Dinwiddie, Lunenburg, Nelson and King George counties.

Shelters were opened in Roanoke and in the counties of Bedford, Hanover and Nelson for evacuees from residential areas threatened by brush fires.

Brush fires and downed power lines have closed parts of several major roads: I-81 north of Roanoke; U.S. 460 in Botetourt County; I-95 in Hanover County; U.S. 60 in New Kent County.

Carolinas, from Foxnews/Associated Press:

CONWAY, S.C. — Wind-whipped wildfires chased churchgoers from worship, forced hundreds of residents to flee homes and closed highways across the rain-starved Carolinas and Virginia on Sunday.

Twelve small structures, including at least one business and an unknown number of homes and sheds, were damaged by a blaze near the South Carolina coast; no injuries were reported, authorities said.

About 60 homes were briefly evacuated Sunday afternoon as the fire sent smoke billowing above this city of about 11,000 people about 15 miles northwest of Myrtle Beach.

“The flames were at the top of the trees and I could feel the heat,” said Lewis Cooper, 37, who fled the fire.

In North Carolina, winds gusting up to 60 mph in some areas toppled trees and power lines and also fanned brush fires.