 The fire community suffered a tragic loss this last year when a firefighter was killed by a falling snag. This event was a sobering reminder of a serious hazard that we work under on a regular basis. The incident response pocket guide addresses the concern we have for snags and hazard trees under the section called Hazard Tree Safety. Please refer to this as we go back to the 2003 fire season and listen to a division supervisor that was on the B&B complex in Oregon. He's going to talk about an injury he had to deal with regarding hazard trees. Yesterday we had an incident where an individual was working and mopping up in this division, Division Delta. And he was mopping up under a tree that was a fork tree. It had about a five inch top on it at the fork. And one side of the fork had burned out, the other side was still standing. And the other side was about three inches or so in diameter. And that side of that fork, while he was working on that tree, when he was working he apparently jarred the tree somehow or something happened and made that fork kick out of it. The other side of that fork kicked out. And it hurt his back, it hurt his head, neck, and back. And it knocked him down and he had some real severe pain in his right leg. Oftentimes when people and crews go look in the forest and they're always talking about hazards in a general sense, it's not the big thing that's going to kill you. It's the load of things in my opinion because most folks can see big things. But most people walking through the woods can't see the load of things that's falling out of a 120 foot dump fur. The things that we try to look for while we out here, especially in the mop up stage because we're going in the interior, is stuff like this. When you're working around this and you've got to go mop up, it's kind of hard to, when people get really focused on what they're doing as opposed to looking up. And if you've got wind, like we had these winds today, this stuff blows out of a tree and you may hear it and you may not. And a lot of times when you're mopping up, you know, you knock stuff out of a tree just by drawing it with all that pressure from the water. And if the wind's blowing and the tree's been uprooted for some reason during the fire or ate out what they call a cat face where you can't see, can't see it because you're on the backside of it and that's a problem. So we try to make sure that all the crews are aware of the hazards that are out here and how to look for them and how to recognize them so that we won't continually have the accidents like we had yesterday. You know, I referenced this book here that talks about hazard tree indicators and environmental conditions and tree defect and bug kill trees. So that even a person that doesn't really have a whole lot of knowledge in terms of timber or trees, they can recognize when they're in a hazardous situation or next to a hazardous tree. Once a hazard tree is identified, some people say you get a tree link on a half way but I take out the half and I say two tree links away. So in order to be certain that people are not in harm's way because, you know, it could hit a tree, what they call a woodmaker could hit a tree and bounce off another tree and get kicked the way you are. You're not in that path of that woodmaker and it could get you. So I feel like two tree links away is a fair distance, a safe distance for one to be able to stand back and watch and see what happens. For this next exercise, we're going to show you a video clip of a burned out area with numerous hazard trees. Let's assume that you've just been asked by your supervisor to mop up this section. Now watch closely because after viewing this clip, you're going to be asked to get into your groups and explain whether or not you would accept this assignment and if so, how are you going to mitigate the obvious hazards. Assume that your supervisor has just approached you and wants this area to be mopped up 100% because of its close proximity to residential houses. This video clip was taken the previous day and your supervisor is showing it to you so that you'll have a good idea of what you're walking into. He notes that the weather forecast calls for variable southwest winds between 3 and 5 miles per hour with occasional gusts up to 10 miles per hour. Now let's get into our groups and complete the exercise in your student workbook.