In the words of the great Chief John Hawkins “Order Big, Stage Early, Risk A Lot to Save A Lot, Risk Little to Save Little” in other words, hit it hard and hit it early. As I said in my original post the ONLY way to stop fires early is aggressive initial attack. You can’t “monitor” an IA fire through binoculars and think it’s gunna go out. You must commit ground resources to aggressive initial attack. Anchor, Flank and Hold.
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I don’t think there is an option that we haven’t explored yet. Even with more resources it has been all about the fuel load. In the short term the solution just becomes “through everything we got at it” and then when you get your resources in place and making good progress and you might be able to hook this 50-100 acre fire there is a new IA. So it is up to the IC if they can release any help, but when they engaged on the current fire they built a plan with all the resources on order. If you give up 1 tanker of your 2 you might lose a flank that cost you 1-2 hrs to build. Kinda like robbing petter to pay Paul thing. You sound like you have a good grasp on the ICS, I can tell you as boots on the ground a lot has changed in ten years. Long term planning is going to have the biggest impact. As far as short term I feel as though we are as hard/flexible as we can be.
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I Agree with your replies. Your stuck with being reactive until you get proactive enough. And doing an amazing job of it given the current circumstances
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The Brush species have a 14-18 year life span. Let’s call the brush, grass, & timber BIOMASS as it continues to grow. This problem didnt start overnight and it won’t be solved overnight either. In the meantime, the Biomass continues to grow. The Native Americans use to burn to control game. But the population was 1/4 what is today. In my 47 years living in California the population has doubled from 20 to almost 40 million people. The real estate of California has remained the same. So the WUI has become more and more of a problem. Meanwhile, the biomass continues to grow. 10 acres or less 95% of the time, the 10am rule, environmental mismanagement etc have all contributed to this problem. Homeowners need to be held responsible for the 7 P’s (Piss Poor Planning Produces Piss Poor Products) Even then with 100’ clearance, the Siege Fires are going to happen till the biomass is taken care of. IMHO this will take 2 decades or longer of VMP’s, Timber Harvesting, and fuels management just to get EVEN WHERE WE NEED TO BE. However it will take 2 decades or more of Red Tape, Lawsuits, and Environmental Regulations just to START the 2 decades of treatment needed.
In the meantime
THE BIOMASS CONTINUES TO GROW
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Wholly agree
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So we can probably agree that best solution to our severe wildland fire problem is fuel or biomass reduction to manageable levels which is probably at least decades away and meanwhile we have a huge problem.
And aggressive initial attack is the best way to stop fires from becoming big fires, and boots on the ground, hand crews, wet lines, hose-lays, and dozer lines are the only real way to accomplish this.
But air resources are a way to hold a fire in check or reduce the rate of spread until ground resources can get on scene, one person above has suggested that water seems to work better than retardant. So, if you had the budget, would, let’s just say, an additional 50 CWN water dropping helicopters stationed throughout California make a big difference? If every time you turned around you had several copters at your incident in no time at all? And would that be the best spend of the budget in terms of IA to combat our problem? I am aware they don’t come cheap.
I know it might sound extreme, but at this point these huge fires only seem to get bigger and more destructive and more frequent with no immediate end in sight, and desperate times call for desperate measures.
The only answer is that anybody who owns land needs to take whatever measures are necessary to clear said land of flammable fuel. If they cannot/will not do it then sell it to someone who can and move to town.
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SEATs need to be staged at the small local airports during Red Flag events and they need to be dispatched at the initial reports. Aggressive IA with appropriate equipment is absolutely necessary–forget sending strike teams of ‘city’ engines, and forget point protection of houses… Get the lines around the head of the wildland fire first and let the locals worry about houses as they are just another fuel type… It does no good putting the effort, retardant, and emphasis on houses in the WUI and letting the main part of the fire go over the hill into another group of houses or other valuable resources.
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I made that same statement some years ago but in a not so nice choice of words. If persons can’t take of their land they should sell it or get some people to help them. Some thing I’ve noticed or maybe its just me being picky is that the younger generations that are moving on to properties theyve inherited or bought a house with some ground don’t seem to be as willing to do the proper unkeep and yearly fire clearance work. I base this off what I see during my weekly drive through some areas of fku.
First, how many “FMOs” are willing to take the risk of 25-30 years of service and retirement going up in smoke because they let a fire burn for 7 days and watched it burn across the landscape as a destructive force on day 8 through 21?
Man has not been suppressing fire efficiently for 100 years. In 1918 there were few initial attack forces “trying to stop every fire early”. There were folks trying to protect their livelihood (timber, range) or their homes and towns but not many “trying to stop every fire early”. This is a concept that has been preached for over 40 years along with the fuel loading from stopping fires has increased to the point of being explosive. Then one needs to assess the efficiency of early wildland fire fighting. Low topped shoes and floppy hats with a long handled shovel did not stop much fire. Conscripted fire fighters with no training and often not even a strong back did not achieve much. There is truth in the idea that some fires do more good than harm. I tend to lean to past forestry practices that put a tree on the ground, bucked up to the first set of limbs and left the rest laying in the forest as holding some of the responsibility for heavy fuel loading. Long past practices and logging clean up of slash has vastly improved. Of course it takes threat, money and the law to make that clean up occur. Private land owners need to take the responsibility of protecting their own land and not depend so much on the government to “protect” them. With great caterwauling and foot stomping, advancements have been made in some states in this area. Side note you can park that political V-VLAT until conditions are right and not launch it every time smoke is in the air. My 1910 2 cents or 53, 2018 cents worth.
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Short note: helicopters support ground personnel. Ground personnel do not support helicopters.
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Aggressive initial attack not only key in stopping a fire quick but also key in saving homes. We’ve seen many times were establishing structure protection is the most important objective until more resources arrive and in more than a few fires has lead to a stop.
Seat planes are great aircraft for I.A. they can land at a place like the Mariposa airport or other landing strips. I don’t understand why we don’t see them used more in California.
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In my estimation you are mixing apples and oranges, my friend. Burning flat land is considerably easier and more cost effective than burning on slope. Vegetation type is different. Weather conditions and fuel loading is different. I do hear your vote for burning but fuel reduction is only one part of the answer. And no we are not paying for it now. We have already paid for it but the Gov. of CA feels it is more important to fund the bullet train.
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Station a super scooper in every significant town with an airport along HWY 99 in California. First in could be anywhere in the Sierra within 3/4 hours and the rest could stager in to form a train of targeted water drops while ground crews are en route. Dropping retardant ahead of the fire head simply does nothing in the Sierra environment. Cool the head, slow the rate of spread, extinguish hot spots. There’s a recipe for success!
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in drought years that leaves Millerton, Shaver lake, Pine flat, for refill unless its a weekend meaning they are a no go due to boat traffic for the central sierra and further south all you have is Isabella.
You always have a bunch of mile long stretches of the California Water Project aqueduct-- 125’ wide which is bigger that most runways… There are a bunch of other reservoirs, and if there are dry areas, replace the scoopers with SEATs and mobile batch plants. Some of the water system reservoirs do not allow public use, and these could be used on weekends without having boaters.
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Stto please refer to my earlier post (20) Absolutely Im mixing apples and oranges as they are vastly different in the areas you say I would never say otherwise, but I and others (on this site PM’d me) can attest it is viable and past practice to begin to attempt to put good fire down there, just not on the scale that will make a dent as was stated earlier as well. Also I agree its only one part of the answer as I stated earlier as well, any one end-all beat all is probably not the answer. As for the money and resources you have paid and I verbalized earlier I felt it was for all reactive measures instead of any proactive. Lastly again, I truly believe 8 million acres a year of good fire down where you need it much like is being done elsewhere in the country is a viable option with your army of firefighters and resources, as well as fuel weather and topography with some good changes in mindsets, laws/regulations, trained burn bosses, pre planning, and line prep. Do it on your terms or on the worst most unpredictable and dangerous ones… again choice is ours ultimately. And probably do it on both terms for a decade or two or longer, so what at least your actually improving the situation (which seems to be a excessive biomass) in a much safer, cost effective, and less devastating manner than these epic wildfires cost in lives money and damage to infrastructure, public/private land, and natural resources. I feel this would be the greatest one step forward in the original posts question, and Iam ok if Im wrong but I haven’t seen much in the way of reasons to believe otherwise in the previous discussion. Personally thank goodness the earlier firefighters weren’t as good and as efficient at stopping fires, this problem would be worse even still if that were the case.
Not to answer for pyrogeography, but I think what he is saying is letting the fires in his district burn to what ever extent they can in say not the worst fuel weather or topography in his district and be rewarded for doing it safely. I dont think anyone here is advising any FMO to simply let fires burn and hoping for the best on day 8… it takes a lot of work and pre planning and experience with the local factors, but is possible to allow fires to burn under the right conditions (current and forecasted plus worst case), and I agree would be awesome to see them rewarded as a fire that reduces the fuel (biomass problem) without doing harm is accomplishing exactly what we seem to agree on the problem being here.
Also I do love seeing these large scale burn operations on fires taking advantage of conditions to stop a fire safely and as effectively as possible, but also probably almost always inadvertently doing exactly what Im suggesting in putting good fire down to stop bad decreasing the biomass problem in that area, and seeing fires slow or even stop years later from the burn scars left behind, once again you guys still are doing an amazing job with the cards you have been delt, and im proud to serve along side you as you try all means possible to save all you can
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There is not an army big enough to burn on 40 to 60% slopes averaging 35-50 acres/day to reduce the fuel loading. I did not mention that along the west coast the Air Quality Management Districts shut down prescribed burning 50% of the available days when weather and fuel conditions are favorable to burn. You can line the units and plumb them but AQMD says no go it is not going to happen.
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Ok, enough from me but here goes. My 1st fire season was in 1971. A lot has changed since, that is a fact. One thing that changed (within the USFS) is the abandonment of the 10 o’clock policy. Simply stated the 10 o’clock policy directed every fire manager to do all they were capable of to stop the spread of a new fire by 10 o’clock the following day. Today, if I respond to a fire and arrive after 2300 more than likely I will be bedded down to be “fresh” for day shift, tomorrow. What about those poor folks trying to catch the fire? Priorities have shifted away from trying to stop the fire by the beginning of the next burning period to running thru the process of briefing, planning, and shift change. When is the best time to make progress against a fire? Normally at night when RHs are up and fire behavior is dropping off. Of course this is not always the case (poor RH recovery, local winds, thermal belts, Foehn winds) but today we are afraid to work in the dark. Take note working at night is not a common denominator in fatality fires. A watch out but not common denominator.
Of course there are scheduling issues for day shift if most resources went out as they arrived during the night. Hence, the 36 hour scenario that old firefighters talk about. If we did not catch it that night the day shift was slim or very tired and watched from a safe location as the fire ripped. Today those watching the fire as it rips are rested, anyway.
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