I hope newspapers never go away. Many of them are struggling financially and are laying off reporters and photographers, but the world will be a different place without skilled reporters digging out facts and writing prose that is a pleasure to read.
Amy B. Wang, in an article she published Wednesday for the Arizona Republic, illustrates this. She covered last month’s Slide Fire south of Flagstaff, Arizona about 70 miles away from the fatal Yarnell Hill Fire. When we wrote about the Slide Fire, we noted that within five hours of the fire being reported, already a Type 1 Incident Management Team (IMT) and 15 additional Type 1 crews, over and above the initial dispatch, had been ordered. In her article she compared the anemic response (my term) on the Yarnell Hill Fire to the heavy ordering of firefighting resources in the first hours of the Slide fire.
In the interest of full disclosure, Ms. Wang interviewed me for the piece, and quoted me near the end.
Below is an excerpt from her article, a section where she was writing about the fire camp for the Slide Fire:
…The firefighters were elusive. A hotshot at a fire camp is likely one of two things: exhausted and sleeping or exhausted and preparing to head out to the lines.
On Thursday morning, they huddled around their crew buggies, many in silence. By 6 a.m., most had climbed into their vehicles. One by one, the buggies rumbled out of the park, team names emblazoned on the sides — Carson, Blue Ridge, Northwest, Prescott — and headed south toward the flames.
About 7 miles south of the fire camp, at the Oak Creek Vista Overlook, two members of the Carson Hotshots served as lookouts for their hand crew below. Stoic, they observed as part of the fire worked its way up the wall of Sterling Canyon.
A large plume of smoke billowed above the canyon walls, pushed by a light wind. Only the streams of radio chatter and sounds of helicopters cycling through the skies every 10 minutes pierced the silence.
They spoke neither to each other nor to a growing crowd of television cameras. With the unwavering attention of Buckingham Palace guards, the hotshots remained oblivious to the lenses and shutter clicks. One shook his head and declined to give his name for a photo caption.
A fire information officer with the Kaibab National Forest, who had accompanied the group to the lookout, interjected.
“Guys, if they say no, that’s it,” she said firmly.
(Originally published at 9:19 a.m. CT, June 13, 2014)
House teetering on cliff to be prescribed burned
NBCDFW photo.
A house at the top of a cliff over Lake Whitney in Texas will be burned intentionally Friday morning. The cliff below part of the house has fallen away, leaving the house precariously teetering. The house will be burned, which is considered a better option than allowing it to fall into the lake where the debris would have to be removed.
A crew is prepping the house by breaking out windows and adding bales of hay soaked in diesel fuel to the interior.
Ignition has begun. Firefighters are on scene applying water between the burning home and a nearby house, perhaps to minimize damage to a couple of trees.
(UPDATE at 11:36 a.m. CT, June 13, 2014)
It’s pretty much over:
The photos are from NBCDFW.
Funeral services for Nevada firefighter
The funeral services for Donovan Artie Garcia Jr. will be held today, Friday, June 13. Mr. Garcia, the Assistant Chief of the Hungry Valley, Nevada fire department, died of a heart attack while participating in wildland fire training June 5. Services will be in Reno at 11 a.m. at the Hungry Valley Gymnasium, 9070 Eagle Canyon Drive.
MD-87 air tanker makes first drops
Erickson Aero Tanker’s two MD-87 air tankers, T-101 and T-105, made numerous drops on the Two Bulls Fire near Bend, Oregon shortly after they became certified and reported for duty. Wallowa.com has an article in which they quote pilot Brent Conner:
“I mean, I always wanted to be flying propeller planes, so this is new for me, and for most of us in this business,” he said.
“We can hold it in check, as we did with this fire, for about two days with retardant,” he said. “That gave them enough time to get the other flank taken care of.”
While it’s a job he’s done countless times before, it was Conner’s first weekend in real wildfire action with the Aero Tanker.
“It was a little nerve-wracking, actually,” he said. “We hadn’t been on a fire yet, the fire’s only 15 miles away. We barely had time to get the airplane cleaned up and we were already putting the flaps down, slowing down and getting ready to go.”
More information about the MD-87s is at Fire Aviation.
Reward for information about Two Bulls Fire
And speaking of the Two Bulls Fire at Bend, Oregon, the reward for information leading to a conviction of the person or persons responsible for setting the 6,908-acre fire has increased to $31,500. Anyone with information that could help identify suspects in the fire is asked to contact the Crime Stoppers Tip Line at 1-877-876-8477 (TIPS).
Hot pink may be the new color of fire retardant
The Missoula Technology Development Center is testing new colors for the fire retardant that is dropped by air tankers and helicopters. Below are excerpts from KPAX:
Over the last three years, some pilots have been complaining that the bright orange retardant is hard to see. “Particularly in late season when we’ve got grasses and trees that start turning color,” said Zylstra. With that concern, researchers at the US Forest Service’s Technology and Development Center in Missoula began looking into a solution, potentially a hot pink colored slurry. “So we run a product through a variety of different tests in our lab before it’s used out in the field,” said Zylstra.
[…]
The first batch of the hot pink slurry will be tested at four air tanker bases in California in regions predicted to have busy firefighting season.
Helitack crews train in Idaho
MagicValley.com has an article about U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management helitack crews training for the upcoming wildfire season.
Austin, Texas to get wildfire detection system
The Austin City Council voted to purchase a system of sensors mounted on towers that can detect smoke. The approval will allow the installation of two towers which will be tested for a year. At the end of the year they may decide to expand the system. In 2013, West Lake Hills, a community near Austin, also approved the acquisition of a similar system. It can detect smoke within 6 miles by rotating their sensors, completing a 360-degree rotation every 8 to 12 minutes, during which it takes images, analyzes, and then transmits those images for secondary analysis. If possible fire events are detected, the system alerts fire authorities.
Hotshots assist with prescribed fire on military base
The Laguna Hot Shots, based at Descanso, California, helped conduct a prescribed fire at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar on Thursday north of San Diego. Below is an excerpt from an article at 10News:
As a formation of Marine FA/18’s passed overhead to land at MCAS Miramar, members of the Laguna Hotshot crew were setting fire to the east side of the base.
The prescribed burn, as it’s called, is part of an annual brush management system put in place after the 2003 wildfire.
“After it burned more than 17,000 acres, the Cedar Fire really opened our eyes to a strong brush management program at the air station,” said Miramar Fire Operations Chief Paul Thompkins.
Construction begins on firefighter memorial in Prescott
Construction has started on a memorial in a cemetery in Prescott, Arizona for the members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots that were killed while fighting the Yarnell Hill Fire on June 30, 2013.
Below is an excerpt from KJZZ.org:
Construction is starting on a cemetery memorial for 19 firefighters killed in the Yarnell Hill wildfire, nearly a year after the fire started near Prescott. Each firefighter will have a plot and a bronze grave marker at the state-owned Pioneers’ Home Cemetery in Prescott. The plots are surrounded by a two-foot wall where mourners can sit.
Officials say 10 of the Granite Mountain Hotshot firefighters are already buried there. They say there’s room for family members to be buried alongside them.
The state designated a new section of the cemetery for the hotshots and charged $100 per grave site, instead of the usual $900.
The following memo was sent on June 6 from Dan Smith, Chair of the National Wildfire Coordinating Group’s Executive Board.
****
“SUBJECT: “A Week to Remember, Reflect and Learn” June 30-July 6, 2014
This summer, the interagency wildland fire community will mark the 20-year anniversary of the South Canyon Fire accident, that occurred on July 6, 1994, and the one-year anniversary of the Yarnell Hill Fire accident, that occurred on June 30, 2013.
Although these accidents were separated in time by 19 years, they are bound together by several tragic commonalities. Both accidents were burnovers; both accidents resulted in multiple fatalities of highly trained, skilled, and experienced wildland firefighters; and both occurred during devastating wildfire seasons in which 34 wildland firefighters lost their lives in the line of duty.
We believe that the anniversaries of these accidents merit designating Monday, June 30 through Sunday, July 6 as “A Week to Remember, Reflect and Learn,” to honor the memories of all fallen wildland firefighters and to reflect on lessons learned from different types of wildland fire accidents. We invite and encourage all local, state, and federal agencies with roles and responsibilities in wildland fire suppression to participate in this commemoration as they see fit.
From June 30 through July 6, the “6 Minutes for Safety Program” will provide resources to facilitate reflection on, and discussion of, the South Canyon and Yarnell Hill fire accidents as well as some of the hazards that pose the most serious risks to wildland firefighters. The 6 Minutes for Safety Resources will be available online at the Lessons Learned Center website at http://www.wildfirelessons.net/6minutesforsafety and in the daily Incident Management Situation Report from June 30 through July 6, available online at http://www.nifc.gov/nicc/sitreprt.pdf
Public commemoration events are being held in Colorado and Arizona. Information is available online at http://www.southcanyonfire.com
Many positive changes have occurred in the culture of the interagency wildland fire community, and many effective tools have been developed, that have significantly enhanced the safety of wildland firefighters during the 20 years since the South Canyon Fire accident occurred. Agencies with roles and responsibilities in wildland fire suppression continue to work together to do everything possible to reduce the likelihood of similar events in the future. The “Week to Remember, Reflect and Learn” offers an opportunity to renew our commitment to enhancing the safety of the men and women dedicated to protecting lives, property, and natural and cultural resources throughout the United States. We hope that your agency will choose to participate.”
This is an animation developed by Janice Coen, Ph.D., a Project Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. It simulates through a coupled weather-wildland fire environment model the spread of the Yarnell Hill Fire and the wind direction and speed. The arrows indicate the wind direction; the length of the arrows vary with the wind speed. On June 30, 2013 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots were overrun by the fire when the winds from a thunderstorm cell north of the fire changed the direction of spread of the fire by about 90 degrees, surprising the firefighters on the south side of the fire, resulting in their entrapment.
See if you can tell when conditions worsened for the Hotshots.
Dr. Coen’s description of the simulation:
It begins at 2 am on 6/30/13. The fire is initialized in the model using the ~3 am VIIRS active fire detection map. Each frame is 1 minute apart, the sequence extends until 8:15 pm on 6/30. The fatality occurred around 4:45 PM. The color bar on the right indicates the heat flux (watts per square meter) from the fire, with more intensely burning areas in bright yellow and white, and less intensely burning areas in darker reds.
In the simulation, solar heating stirs up the boundary layer circulations throughout the day. Convection occurs in outer domains (not shown) to the northeast, creating high-based convective clouds as air flows south/southeast over the Mogollon Rim. Rain falls into a very dry boundary layer, creating a broad gust front that reaches the south edge of the fire at frame 936, which is 51 minutes after the fatality, so the simulated rush through the fatality site is about an hour slow.
The map below shows the approximate location of the fire at 4:30 p.m. on June 30, 2013, about 15 minutes before the Hotshots were entrapped at the deployment site (X) on the south side.
Yarnell Hill Fire, estimated perimeter at 4:30 p.m. June 30, 2014. Source: Arizona State Forestry Division.
The Atlantic has produced two very good pieces on wildland fire.
One is the video below, about research into the science of combustion and how fires spread. It was filmed at the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory and has excellent production values and photography. Some of the researchers featured will be familiar to those who follow the topic; they include Mark Finney, Jack Cohen, and Sarah McAllister.
The other is a long-form article about the Yarnell Hill Fire that killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain Hotshots June 30, 2013. There have been several similar articles, but this one, written by Brian Mockenhaupt, is better researched and written than some. In addition to describing the fire, and the fire fight, It includes information about what went on behind the scenes at various dispatch and coordination levels, as well as the personal lives of the firefighters.
Here is a brief excerpt:
“To our families and friends, we’re crazy,” [Crew Superintendent] Eric Marsh wrote in the spring of 2013, in a sort of Granite Mountain manifesto addressed to the town of Prescott. “Why do we want to be away from home so much, work such long hours, risk our lives, and sleep on the ground 100 nights a year? Simply, it’s the most fulfilling thing any of us have ever done.”
[…]
Marsh took the lead in hiring new recruits, and focused as much on character as on stamina. “When was the last time you lied?” he asked in every interview. “Tell me about that.” Truth telling was a guiding principle for Marsh. He had quit drinking more than a decade earlier, and being honest with himself and others had become a big part of his sobriety.
[…]
Like many others who fought the Yarnell Hill Fire and who knew the hotshots who died, [Prescott Fire Department Wildland Division Chief] Darrell Willis has spent a lot of time asking himself why they did what they did. Part of the answer he’s come up with involves the very natural urge to fight and protect our own. “They wanted to reengage,” he said, standing by the posters. “Sure, they could sit up there in the black. But if they could try to get back in the game, they were going to. What they had been doing was lost. And that happens a lot. You put a day’s worth of work into something, and all of the sudden it’s gone, and you have to have a new starting point somewhere. There’s a lot of sweat and expended energy. So what do we do, just sit up here and watch it go by? They knew there was an evacuation going on, they knew there were people staying in their houses. So what would the public think? ‘You’re not going to help us? Why did you even show up?’ ”
Prescribed fire smoke in Manhattan, Kansas, March 29, 2014. Photo by Eric Ward.
Prescribed fire smoke in the Flint Hills
In light of the discussion on Wildfire Today about prescribed fire as a tourist attraction in the Flint Hills of Kansas, Eric Ward sent us the above photo that he took Saturday afternoon in smoky Manhattan, Kansas. He explained that many of the ranchers in the area conduct extensive burning projects this time of the year in order to enhance weight gains of cattle if they plan to stock pastures in May. On days when the relative humidity and wind speed are within an acceptable range, the evidence of the burning is very visible in the atmosphere, especially if weather for the previous week or so has been bouncing between snow and red flag weather conditions, as it has this year.
Colorado report recommends contracting for air tankers and helicopters
A long-awaited report about aerial firefighting by state agencies in Colorado was released Friday by the Colorado Firefighting Air Corps (CFAC). Some of the more significant recommendations include:
Increase the number of Single Engine Air Tankers (SEAT) on exclusive use contracts from two to four.
Contract for the exclusive use of four Type 3 or larger rotor-wing aircraft. (Type 3 helicopters can carry 100 to 300 gallons.)
Contract for the exclusive use of two Type 2 or larger air tankers. (Type 2 air tankers can carry 1,800 to 3,000 gallons). The contingency, if the State is unable to contract for two air tankers, is to contract for two helitankers, or a combination of one fixed-wing air tanker and one helitanker.
Arizona seeks to immunize the state from liability from wildfires
A bill that was approved unanimously Tuesday by the Arizona Senate Appropriations Committee, House Bill 2343, would exempt the state and state employees from prosecution for harm resulting from the action, or inaction by state employees on state lands. Hundreds of millions of dollars in claims have been filed by the families of the 19 firefighters killed on the Yarnell Hill Fire and by property owners whose homes burned. The fire was managed by the state of Arizona in June, 2013.
Firefighters assisting with Oso landslide
Personnel that usually can be found at wildfires are helping to manage the response to the tragic landslide at Oso, Washington. We have reports that some of the resources assisting include Washington Incident Management Team #4 (a Type 2 team), miscellaneous overhead, and some Washington Department of Natural Resources chain saw teams. The IMTeam was dispatched on March 27.
New topic from “Safety Matters”
The “Safety Matters” group has released their “Topic #5”, and they are seeking input from wildland firefighters. Below is an excerpt:
…2014 marks the 20th Anniversary of South Canyon and the 38th Anniversary of Battlement Creek. Both fires fit the model of firefighters dying in a brush fuel type, on a slope, during hot and dry conditions.
The loss of the Granite Mountain Hotshots indicates that a significant accident occurs every 18 to 20 years. Is there a reoccurring cycle, and if so why? Could it be related to a cyclic turnover of firefighter culture, training and attitude? What are the thoughts of Safety Matters readers?
The Daily Beast has reprinted an excellent essay that Pete Dexter wrote for Esquire in 1981 about Norman Maclean. It explores a side of of the author that is not revealed in his book about firefighters, Young Men and Fire. Mr. Dexter spent quite a bit of time with Mr. Maclean, who at that time was writing the final chapter. Mr. Maclean also wrote A River Runs Through It, which was made into a movie starring Robert Redford and Brad Pitt. The Esperanza Fire, a book written by his son John N. Maclean, is working its way towards becoming a movie.
U.S. National Guard assists with fire in Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico has enlisted the U.S. National Guard to help extinguish a fire that has ravaged a forest in the island’s central region. Firefighting Chief Angel Crespo says that about 40 percent of the Modelo Forest in the town of Adjuntas has been destroyed. Authorities say they believe the fire was intentionally set and that it has consumed up to 290 acres (117 hectares). A U.S. National Guard helicopter helped dump water over the area on Friday.
Fantastic photo
Listening to details of UN report on climate change @bbc5live-will #wildfire become more of an issue for Fire Service pic.twitter.com/Cc8hsYty0z
