 Let's go back to Deer River and see how this prescribed fire turned out. At 12 o'clock, a test fire was ignited. Acceptable fire behavior was observed, so the decision was made to proceed with the burn. The IC deployed ignition specialists along the river to start burning to the north along the riverbank. He positioned several crew members along and across the river to watch for spot fires. All went well for the first 60 to 90 minutes. By 1310, the pump unit based in the boat on the river was called to put wetline in the northwest corner of the burn ahead of the ignition crew. Ignition was halted for 20 to 30 minutes while this wetline was being established. What we were doing when we burned, we were using the river as a holding line and it's a good 50 to 60 feet wide. Most of the spotting that comes off of this grass falls within 100 feet of where it's at with the primary concentration of that being very adjacent within the first 10 to 20 feet of the fuel. So we knew that spot fires were a potential consequence and we set our holding crews up in order to be able to do that. We had people established on the offside of the river. We had a boat in the river that was an initial attack boat is what we called it. Crews on the river bank up there were positioned with bladder bags. The intention being that if a spot fire is detected, two or three people crashing on it with the bladder bag kind of hold it until the boat can run and get there. And we fire a little bit at a time making sure we're secured as we go. Anchor flank and hold, that same kind of scenario. Fire activity increased as the fire backed into the willow cane grass component about 30 to 50 feet inside the line. The first spot fire crossed the river at 1335. The holding crew quickly congregated at the spot and attacked it. The pump unit in the boat was repositioned to back up the hand tool bladder bag operation. However, trouble with the pump delayed its operation for about 5 minutes. And it was while we were doing that that we had multiple spot fires. One of the problem areas, multiple spot fires and one of the spot fires was just more fire than what we could contain. It became established and as soon as it became established it pretty much does what it wants to do out here. When you're lighting fire and whether it be out here in this grass component or in a slash component, brush component, timber, any of that type of thing, how you're using your ignition method and pattern can dictate fire behavior that could be completely different from what you'd see if that was a point source ignition. A one match fire that builds on itself and then gets up and runs. It's really obvious to see that change happen in grass because it's all right there in front of you. It's your standard uniform fuel bed that you can pretty much see wherever you have fire you have fire and you can see what's going on there. So when you're lighting that and using this as an example when we initially light a strip we have a lot of fire but then it quickly lays down within 30 seconds. It's probably laying down to where it's a one foot backing flame now moving off into there. If we had moved out into that grass just 30 to 50 feet and did the same thing just or even just dropped a dot of fire and let that get up ahead of steam and build and run on its own you'd see something completely different. And using that spot fire as the perfect example once that became established and started to run away as that intensity built and kept coming off the head of it it would pull in from the sides and then once it got a breath so to speak it would let the breath out and it comes back out and then it breathes again and it just keeps doing that and the more and more fire you have established the more perimeter you have doing the same thing especially in close proximity to the head and of course when you're attacking spot fires they're small you are in close proximity to the head almost any time you're working on that until they get to be of a reasonable size. Unfortunate thing about it is that we were only 200 feet from turning the corner in which case we would have started coming into the wind now with fire and we would have been home free so to speak it would have been well black lined and we would have had a wrap on it in about four hours it would have been done and it was about an hour into it it took us about an hour to get the top of the burn burned out black lined off the river and we were just another 20 minutes in 200 feet of hooking that corner and going and we would have been home free. At 14.05 an employee was moving along the left flank of the spot fire to see where it was heading the wind shifted quickly and the fire pushed him away from the flank walking was difficult in the thick grass and he decided to run through the flaming front into the black running through the flames he sustained minor injuries. And out in here this grass you don't see a lot of it right here farther on up it looks like just a big open hay field but I guarantee you that it's not hay field by any means the footing out there can be pretty tough and there's these hummock patches that you walk into if you've ever been walking in the low spot in the cow pasture you know how those holes are all over the place well you can get in the same thing out here and they walked into the hummock patch which slowed him down tremendously at that point they were already on their way out which scape route was just kick out to the side circle on around in behind it pretty easily done, commonly done type of scenario but that hummock patch slowed him down and that heavy grass burning the way it was moving out coming back in out coming back in like that just got too close and the person made a management decision to saw a window in the flaming front where the flame came down to about three to four feet high and they just tucked and punched back through it and did he sustain some injuries? he had burns on his face and hands they had lost their gloves while they were working with some mechanical equipment pumps that type of thing and had burns on the face and hands first and second degree burns from 1415 to 1530 the prescribed burn was still within a contingency plan for the operation between 1530 and 1600 a patch of jack pine east of the meadow had caught fire and was torching once it got established it ran across the meadow and went into the timber and for the most part it hit hardwood timber except for one little section of bank about a hundred foot long section of bank that rose off the river when it got to the timber it rose off the river about a 40 to 50 foot climb pretty hard steep climb and there was a pine plantation about 20 year old jack pine plantation 25 year old right up to the edge of it and of course it had a head of steam on it it came across it rocketed up that slope and it came into that pine and it took out just that first leading edge of pine probably 200 feet long and maybe 50 feet deep that's all it did and from there it threw spot fires out about 6 to 800 feet across our secondary containment line which was an old road and of course in this country you can't immediately see that aircraft actually has picked up the spot fires that the fire had thrown out there and they made us aware of those fires now that were the spot fires that now had also become established out there keeping in mind that at the time that it hit the jack pine and then went beyond that it was now burning in timber and it was no longer burning in this grass so we did not have near the rates of spread we didn't have the intensities for the most part I've done a lot of prescribed burning in timber and I would have said it was a great under burn the problem is that it was an uncontained under burn and that in itself had produced just those few spot fires which now we had several spot fires that we had to deal with which there again is a watch out and then there went your resources yeah then our resources became over taxed we didn't have enough of them of course resource ordering or getting resources in response time associated with that those spot fires become more and more established and within a mile of the river bank of course is the community ball club and even though we didn't have hard fire charging towards the community ball club it was enough fire on the ground and enough smoke drifting their direction that caused a lot of political concern and so we thought that it was probably best to move into there, alert people tell them what was going on and it got kind of a trigger point which what we used was within a half a mile if the fire got to within a half a mile we would trigger evacuation and it got to within 1800 feet so we triggered evacuation on a small subdivision up in there the fire continued to back into the grass bump the edge of the woods over here and we had a containment crew just following along with it kind of knocking it down as it hit just like we would have when we were burning making its way all the way down and we used the river here and a couple of wet oxbows out in there to stop it before it got to the highway just to reduce the complexity and now have an open flame bumping a major roadway while all this other stuff was going on had it just been a burn that wouldn't have been that much of an issue but with the wildfire and everything going we thought it best to just shut it down out here the fire was controlled on May 8th at 475 acres no structures in the ball club housing area were lost this scenario reminds us that situational awareness is just as important on prescribed fires as it is during a wildfire incident but it also brings up a good point regarding contingency plans although the after action review of this incident revealed that the contingency plan was not adequately addressed in the written burn plan all the personnel on this incident were well briefed on what the contingency plan was for the day the plan was communicated that if spot fires occurred across the river holding resources were signed in position to pick up these spots as they occurred the pump unit in the boat was available to supply water if needed in hindsight this contingency plan was not adequate but how far out do we need the plan do we need a contingency plan in case our contingency plan doesn't work in a perfect world of unlimited resources and funding maybe we can but that's never the case we've made our decisions on site-specific expected fire behavior and we're usually limited on our available resources let's listen to a few more thoughts from the burn boss on this incident regarding contingency planning if that doesn't work what'll we do and we had run through the we used the road up there I've mentioned a road earlier about a secondary containment line okay we'll pick it up at the road and that's fine but what then if we get spot fires 500 feet beyond the road what's our next line well our next line was all the way back at the subdivision we probably needed to have it in a little bit tighter than that especially since we established a trigger point within a half a mile of the subdivision so that's really where it probably needed to be and if that was the case what did we need to hold fire there and we didn't go that far out with dedicating resources to be able to hold fire there to do that I think on many occasions irregardless of what where you're at with it how many years you've been doing it we plan for the unexpected but whether we expect that or not is a whole different thing and you know the as they say the best laid plans can go awry and so you can think that okay if this happens and that happens is what we'll do and many times that's based on our historical knowledge it's either what we know or what we have been taught to know and I guess what I would say to that is just that it may not always be that way and so whenever you're dealing with any kind of a situation where you know that this could happen out here I would say really take another look at it really pay attention to it and run through that scenario run through that scenario with the entire crew don't just talk about it but actually run through it what are we going to do, who's going to do what how are you going to act what's the best method what are your trigger points for engagement or disengagement just be a lot more thrilled with it having gone through this spot fire that got away kind of scenario I can tell you that's one of the things that we will do we'll do sand table exercises on this very fire we will build it into 131 the class I taught last summer we're building this stuff into it we're drilling on it at our IC refreshers we will likely talk about it next spring at our spring fire it's a good lesson to learn for that alone yeah we know this can happen we get spot fires they run etc etc and we'll do this well what if that doesn't work then what or what if you go there expecting to do that and you get there and it's not at all what you ought to be doing or not at all what you plan to do based on now what you're seeing that you did not expect even though you planned for it so that's a great take home message there is just even though you plan for it we don't always expect that we end up engaging in that and we have to because it's as real as anything else that we'll do it's part of it to help us in the planning process let's review an acronym used by the military PACE stands for primary alternative contingency and emergency let's listen to Mark Smith share his thoughts on the PACE principle in the military when we talk about contingency planning there's an acronym called PACE which is primarily around planning communications but it means having a primary plan an alternate plan, a contingency plan and an emergency plan so in essence plan A plan B, plan C, plan D and as many of those as you can do in the limited time that you've got to work with your available time to influence what you can get done so you can't do it all you can only do those few things that are the most important things so those are the few things where you're really going to attempt to have a plan C or even a plan D if it gets that bad and those are the situations like Southern California in 2003 when we're talking about the Pacific Ocean as plan D that's indicative that we got overwhelmed in our initial contingency plans and underestimated what the potential of the environment well how many contingency plans do you make for a given situation you've got to look at the risk and you've got to look at the importance of a particular objective or a particular part of the plan to the whole so the riskier it is that the plan will fail if this fails it will depend on terrain on time on money all these things apply back home too budget decisions you know or fraught with what's our primary plan what's our alternate and so on so you've got to use your judgment you've got to look at what you've got you've got to say where are we the most vulnerable if this fails where are we the most vulnerable in terms of does this one objective or is this one geographic area more vulnerable we've got to devote our attention to trying to make as many contingency plans as we can in the time available so how many do you make as many as you can given the time you've got well trigger points come into the picture because that's what can actually manage when we have to shift from plan to plan to plan so in Southern California for example in 2003 the trigger points that they set were totally inadequate for what the energy that the environment was unleashing by the time they set a trigger point at the next ridge these fires had moved 5 miles and it wasn't until later on in the game where people started adjusting trigger points which was hard because it meant writing off subdivisions and huge tracks of acreage but you've got to have that size up that your team has done dictates the reality of where your trigger points can be as we go into this fire season keep updated on the availability of neighboring resources and coordinate your efforts and planning process with cooperators fires seem to come in busts or waves and chances are that when you need additional help you probably won't be alone in your request