Re: Working to be a sad day in the Fire world


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Posted by Nick [99.100.212.49] on Monday, July 01, 2013 at 13:08:57 :

In Reply to: Re: Working to be a sad day in the Fire world posted by Doc Dave [70.192.193.159] on Monday, July 01, 2013 at 06:27:33 :

The technology used today is more advanced than previous shelters used. The "New Generation" fire shelters are as advanced as they can be, but as has been stated alot lately, these are to be used only as a last resort. These were developed by the brother of a smoke jumper killed on the Storm King fire in Colorado. He had the assistance of NASA scientists in developing this shelter.

My guess, and it is strictly that, but 18 years in wildland firefighting has taught me a lot, that the scenes of this fire I have seen show very very very very heavy fuel loading with scenes of 50-70 ft flame lengths. These flames are lasting for a long duration. The fire shelters are not meant to last for long duration of heavy flame impingement. If they did get a chance to get in them, as Tom said, the shake and bake feeling begins. Training with practice shelters allows us to deploy them in a timely manner, under 30 seconds, but NOTHING can prepare us for the effects of being in the actual shelter under the conditions we are trying to avoid. Strong winds try to blow the shelter off of us and the sound and heat are unthinkable. The hardest part is CONVINCING yourself to stay in the shelter, that no matter how uncomfortable it is IN them, its a million times worse out of them.

Obviously its way to early to speculate what happened in this situation. but rest assured more technology and training information WILL come from this tragedy as has from others.

The problem with todays fires is the fuel loading. The USFS has, for YEARS suppressed fires, allowing fuel loading to increase. Now with bug kill in forests and drought conditions lasting for years, the fuel loading is unbelievable in most areas, approaching tons per acre. The only solution to this is to bring back controlled, prescribed burning under the proper conditions. CAL FIRE has been seeing this problem for years, as we are a very aggressive fire dept. Our mission states we are to keep 90% of our fires under 10 acres. Meaning we aggressively attack and suppress our fires. USFS "manages" it's fires. We are seeing a change in our tactics nowadays, to where we are more and more fighting fire with fire. Meaning we back off to roads, trails, creeks, rivers whatever, and fire the edge.

The only way to reduce the likelihood of this happening, is to not place fire fighters out in front of these fires with large fuel loading. The problem there is the amount of homes allowed to encroach into the wild land. Ou job is to protect life and property, and if you tell any fire fighter there is property threatened, we will do what we can to save it. Sometimes at the wrong cost. More education needs to be provided to home owners about construction techniques, hazard reduction clearances. More education needs to be given to fire dept and govt officials to reduce fuel loading in critical areas.

The 10 Standard Fire Orders and the 18 Situations that watch out are rules, guidelines, checklists, whatever you want to call them, to assist us in decision making on fires to prevent situations like this. In classes I teach, I tell people the 10 Standard Fire Orders are laws, we dont break them, we dont bend them. If you do, something will happen. The 18 SItuations that Shout Watch out are just that, if you see any of those, watch out, something could happen. These were developed in the 30s and 40s. And EVERY single tragedy can be related to breaking or violating these. It will come out in the future what these crews did, and it will be related to the two lists. I am in no way bashing or insulting the crew, they did what they did, they were fighting fire. Its possible they got tunnel vision until it was too late and they couldnt get to their safety zone, or the safety zone wasnt big enough.

Sorry, I could go on for hours on this.



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