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Horrible tragedy, 19 firefighters killed

paiken

paiken

SOH-CM-2023
Nineteen members of a "hotshot" crew perished in a wildfire in the town of Yarnell (about 80 miles NE of Phoenix) on Sunday afternoon when outflow winds from a thunderstorm caused the fire to double back on them.
http://www.cnn.com/2013/06/30/us/arizona-missing-firefighters/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
Heartfelt condolences to the family and friends of these brave firefighters.

*edit* Reports of over 250 structures (mainly homes) have also been destroyed or damaged by the fire, making this one of the most destructive wildfires in the US.
 
As someone who has an involvement in firefighting here in Australia my heart goes out to the families of these brave men.
 
I have a son that is a firefighter and my heart goes out to the families and to the community . The whole world grieves when a tragedy likes this happens .
 
as Viperpilot stated..my first thought last night was a memory of the Storm King tragedy,which happened on my birthday,i was talking to a friend last night on facebook chat when we got the new of this,,he is a Captain with Calfire and is currently a crewboss with the Washington Ridge conservation camp...the state firefighting handcrews..CDC prisoners..and my ex-partner in crime..err on the engine we ran out of Gietzen Station in auburn city.we even grew up together..litterally...our fathers were volunteers with auburn city from before we were both born..lol..but he told me that for the first time in his fire fighting career,he is concerned ( he is a "he-man" would never say hes scared..even with urine runnin down his leg..he wouldnt admit it...lol)..but like he said with the dry fuels,heat,winds,ect...going to be a very bad year..and now deadly...

as far as airtankers go..California has the premiere program,with the S2T's placed around the state and being dispatched as Initial Attack...in the Nevada,Yuba,Placer ranger unit where i live,every wildland dispatch starts with Air attack 230,tankers eight-eight,eight-nine,and then BC ,engines(SRA and LRA),water tenders,dozer,handcrews.

but i place direct blame for the loss of acres,home,and lives on the USFS desk jocky ( i cant findout his name or id complain at a federal level)who managed to shut down the Aero Union Corp,as ive said on here before..i have inside information that ALL of the paperwork and FAA filings were correct and legal and this man at the USFS used his position at the federal level to play politics and in my opinion,illegally ,refuse to accept anything Norm sent him for the aircraft to prove they were currant..BTW everytime Norm did send the required paperwork..it disappeared until finally they were given 24hours to get all the P3's to Sacramento or be grounded where they sat.

well guess what..we lost that fleet of P3's..that man at the USFS quit his job,and went to Lockheed Martin,and has now secured a long term contract (its a future contract,not yet implemented,but signed)for a minimum of 10 ,new build, C-130J-30 which will be tanked with an internal gravity dump system,there is currently a C-130Q being built in southern california with the same system...but off hand i cant remember the company who will operate it. the point is...he could not have secured this contract,which will make him a wealthy man..without first destroying Aero Union.and leaving the western USA without good well known,tried and true airtankers.
 
One thing's for certain; the West is experiencing drought conditions, and with all of the beetlekill in the National Forests out here I fear it's going to get worse before it gets better.

Whether it's new Hercs, CL-215's, or Flying Fortresses... there needs to be a larger, more flexible fleet of water bombers that can react and re-position at a moment's notice.

:salute:
 
Hey All,

This is incredibly tragic.

First I am a fire management specialist in BC. I work on the planning side - modelling wildfire planning fuel breaks prioritizing values planning for the use of wildfire - all that kind of stuff. I am not on the suppression operations side. That said I'm well trained in fire - one course short of being a certified fire behaviour analyst (fban).

When I see these kinds of events I have to wonder - how can this continue to happen? We know what winds do around thunderstorms and we can see thunderstorms coming via radar... Almost always these things happen due to "failure(s)" on the part of the human element. Storm King was because coming weather failed to be communicated to the troops on the ground and fire below you is always one of the worst possible circumstances.

I don't know what happened here but from what I understand there was an incident command transfer from one team to another going on - that may have created confusion. I don't know what the command structure on the incident looked like - i.e. was it unified or not? In other words who was in charge of that crew of "hotshots" - local FD or the federal type 2 or 1 incident command team? I'll be curious to see the "report" on this one.

The other issue is shelters - controversial for sure - about as controversial as the Aussie policy of stay and defend. In BC we don't as far as I know equip our crews with shelters. Our philosophy is that if one of our people needs a shelter somebody didn't do their job. Where you draw the line at risking people's lives is always an interesting question.

Irrespective be aware that the US has lost 19% of it's wildland fire fighting capability in the last 2 years and this fall the Vandenburg Hotshots crew will exist no more - sequestration you know. This despite fire seasons averaging about 50 days longer than in the past (climate change you know). The aircraft situation is a mess but it has to be dealt with - we cannot continue flying WWII aircraft on fires anymore - there are too few of them, they are too slow and increasingly unreliable. We have to move to other platforms and that is expensive. What platform(s) is/are best well that has yet to be figured out.

We are beginning to come to grips with these changes in BC as well although where it will go is up to aviation at the ops centre in Kamloops. My guess is a mixture of maneuverable jets and something like Dash 8s and more seats (single engine air tankers). We already use helis like mad. In BC our focus is on preparing the landscape for fire as we know that more suppression resources are not coming - in fact there will be less even as we move into increasingly warmer conditions.

It is heating up here in BC and our turn may be coming. Probably be bringing the unit (our hotshot equivalents) crews home from the Yukon before long...

-Ed-
 
Irrespective be aware that the US has lost 19% of it's wildland fire fighting capability in the last 2 years and this fall the Vandenburg Hotshots crew will exist no more - sequestration you know. This despite fire seasons averaging about 50 days longer than in the past (climate change you know). The aircraft situation is a mess but it has to be dealt with - we cannot continue flying WWII aircraft on fires anymore - there are too few of them, they are too slow and increasingly unreliable. We have to move to other platforms and that is expensive. What platform(s) is/are best well that has yet to be figured out.

We are beginning to come to grips with these changes in BC as well although where it will go is up to aviation at the ops centre in Kamloops. My guess is a mixture of maneuverable jets and something like Dash 8s and more seats (single engine air tankers). We already use helis like mad. In BC our focus is on preparing the landscape for fire as we know that more suppression resources are not coming - in fact there will be less even as we move into increasingly warmer conditions.


i do agree very much with your comments about the WWII aircraft,and even some of the later radial engined AC like the convair 540s should be looked at...ive got a PDF on my computer somewhere..ill post it if i can find the darn thing in my mess,with the new class..i forget what they call it..but they are talking about the BAe-146,,two are flying now,the DC-10,an MD87,C-27s,and something else i cant remember off hand.

as far as SEAT's..california wont allow them unless on USFS lands and called by USFS,but with 800 gallons and their size..i think they can be very effective myself....specailly in the narrow deep canyons where i live.that MD87,and the DC-10s have to stay up on top..so do the ANG C-130s ive seen...AU P3s went down into them as do the S2Ts...but man..:icon_eek:
 
God's speed to those 19 souls who gave their all for their community.

While in college after VN, I fought fires for two summers as a Helitack crewman/foreman with the Bureau of Land Management in the early 70s and saw casualties from a Forest Service Hot Shot crew on one major fire in Colorado and an air tanker (A-26) go down in Utah.

I was surprised to see that this crew was not from the US Forest Service, but with the local fire department, as I normally associate the term "Hot Shots" with Federal regional crews. Will that have anything to do with their training, doctrine and deployment? Probably not, but I look forward to a more lucid final report than what the media is providing at the moment.

My brother is a retired Smoke Jumper and fire management officer with the USFS and his son is currently on a Helitack crew down in Arizona. We've had a family member in fire suppression from the early 70s until now so we've compared notes extensively and my brother is published on various aspects of fire fighting in the professional journals.

Once again God's speed to the 19 souls and sympathy to their families. They were no doubt some of the best that the community of Prescott produced.
 
Terrible tragedy and one I hope we really take a look at.

One of the best reads I was ever handed was "Young Men and Fire" by Norman Maclean (writer of "A River Runs Through It"). I personally think it should be required reading for any Company grade Officer and NCO in the U.S. Army. The book is about the Mann Gulch Fire of 1949 in which 12 smoke jumpers and 1 ground crewman died. Maclean's book is valuable because it tracks the sequence of events that lead to the deaths including the sets of assumptions, reinforced by the Forest Service's own training program for smoke jumpers, which ultimately led to 13 men trying to outrun an inferno.

As a paratrooper you'd enjoy reading this Jagdflieger. See how often you recognize yourself in the story. It was a bit eery when I read it because I saw myself and my various units in almost every chapter. It's an excellent primer for anyone conducting any small unit training.
 
Hey All,

Yes I was going to mention Mann Gulch - a classic studied in Advanced Wildland Fire Behaviour classes like the one I took. When culture and the fire behaviour triangle collide bad things can happen. A great book though. You do know the Mann Gulch site killed not only the fire fighters but also the USFS fire researcher who first studied it as he had a heart attack on site. The fire that in a strange way disturbs me the most was in Ontario Canada - a controlled burn in which the ignition pattern got strooed up - high school kids wanting to learn about fire did the hard way - burning to death. A guy who was there said their screams until they end while you can't do anything is the worst thing a human can suffer hearing. I believe it is still in the courts.

These tragedies and there are many of them simply remind us of how dangerous firefighting can be. I have talked to several ex-military who have told me firefighting is far far scarier than a tour in Vietnam or Afganistan ever was. You can't kill a fire - you are at it's mercy - you have no control at all when things go wrong. And then there is the fear - burn to death or a bullet - which would you want even though the reality is that the breathing in of hot gases kills you long before you burn.

I hope they didn't suffer much. RIP Hotshots.

-Ed-

An add: I too thought it wierd that city fire fighters were considered "hotshots". i don't know what it takes to be considered a "hotshot" crew. The fact that the Vandenberg hotshots (an air force crew) exist - until this fall - as a result of a fire in the 70s indicates that to be "hotshot" you dont have to be USDA, USDI federal. I too am kind of curious...

Another add: the scientist was Harry Gisbourne
 
My friend of many years from his time as a firefighter in Ashe County NC lost his life in this fire.. I don't know anything about firefighting... All I know is someone I cared deeply about is gone.... He was dedicated to his job and now he is gone. I am at a loss for words.
 
Quicksand said:
My friend of many years from his time as a firefighter in Ashe County NC lost his life in this fire.. I don't know anything about firefighting... All I know is someone I cared deeply about is gone.... He was dedicated to his job and now he is gone. I am at a loss for words.
Click to expand...


sorry to hear of your personal loss in this quicksand...i send my prayers and condolences to you and your family and ask you to send it to your friends family and let them know the entire nation,if not world are thinking of them...
 
answer to the Hotshot in the city thing

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prescott_Fire_Department_(Prescott,_Arizona)

they are a real hotshot crew based with in the prescot department...sort of an offshoot..

http://www.cityofprescott.net/services/fire/hotshots/

some images of shot crews https://www.google.com/search?q=hot...8G5GYigL1l4GQDQ&ved=0CFcQsAQ&biw=1920&bih=892

another informative site http://www.fs.fed.us/fire/people/hotshots/IHC_index.html if you look at north ops..american river ihc..thats my local crew..ha..my..they are the local crew...
 
They used the DC-10 bomber in the recent Black Forest Fire...

View attachment 89541

My point about the CL-215's is that smaller scooper style fire bombers would be ideal for situations like the Black Forest Fire. There are many local reservoirs that can be used as supply points for the bombers; ones that the CL-215 and her sister ships can get in and out of easily.

High tech and large capacity droppers are fine and dandy, and I know they're on the drawing board or in pre-production. But, we're looking at an epidemic here... one that isn't going away anytime soon.
We need a quick and dirty approach, and quickly. The West Creek Fire in southern CO has consumed almost 100K acres, and it's only 4% contained!

:icon_eek:
 
A bush fire is the scariest thing you can be in front of - on the worst ones, radiating heat can kill you from 3-400 metres out and the emberstorm is something from a hellish nightmare. My wife and I have worked in local volunteer bush brigades and have a small inkling of what goes on - my condolences to all concerned, and if it was communications cockups that caused it - lets hope heads roll.....!
A bad start to what looks like a bad season for you guys over there.
 
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