 I hope that dusted away some cobwebs and got you into the fire game again. I also hope that the yellow book proved to be very helpful. Let's go back to Montana now and hear how the division supervisor handled that situation. As part of our initial attempts to suppress the fire, we tried the traditional put in hand line and dozer line and also used natural barriers. We also used burned off of roads, tried burning off of roads. Those proved ineffective because the fuels just would not carry the fire. If they did carry the fire, in those instances it jumped into the canopy and we get just so much torching and spotting that that was quickly eliminated as an opportunity to secure the hand lines. After the burnouts failed, what we did is we spread the crews out, put in segments of line as best we could and used the resources we had, the Type 6 engines, to begin mopping up the hotspots and the spot fires and to get the fire down onto the ground and there we fought it with traditionally just mopping up the spot fires. We didn't get ahead of ourselves. We let certain amounts of the fire burn so that we had anchor points along the way and as the fire line and the mopping up effort progressed we were able to secure more and more line and we're pretty close to securing the division today. Now remember, if your solutions didn't exactly match the actual events that doesn't necessarily mean that your solution was wrong. Firefighters generally want to focus on tactics during these scenarios. I want to stress however that the important thing here is that you focus on the thought process you employ to address the situation. Can you justify your solution with a thorough analysis? Have you utilized all the tools that are available and have you addressed all the safety concerns that are present? And now that we're all thinking about fire again let's go over some of the basic tools we use as firefighters. The 10 fire orders, the 18 situations to shot watch out and LCES were all created to keep firefighters out of harm's way. Yet every year we seem to have both fatalities and injuries as a result of people breaking one of the fire orders or not paying attention to one of the watch out situations. To closely examine these tools I'm going to ask you to complete the next exercise in your student workbook. Now I want to take you to a fire that happened this last season in the Pacific Northwest. This will be a three part exercise and I hope it will solidify the importance of situational awareness in regards to the 10 fire orders and the 18 watch out situations. Let's take a look. My name is Thomas Taylor. I was a squad boss on the incident that will be discussed. I received the page to report to my duty station at 048 the morning of July 11th. 20 person crew I was assigned to consisted of people from three separate ranger districts. The crews were compiled in the early morning and we arrived at the fire at approximately 0900 that same morning. The fire was located in a steep narrow canyon of 3,000 vertical feet of terrain on both sides. The field type consisted of an overstory of spruce, Douglas fir, lodgepole, and ponderosa pine, as well as cottonwoods. The understory consisted of birch trees and a large variety of shrubs and bushes. There was also a heavy concentration of dead and down material on the forest floor. At that time the temperature was about 70 degrees with a relative humidity of about 50% and the winds were calm. Initial size up of the fire showed that the main body of the fire was contained between the road and the river with a number of small spot fires across the river to the east burning in a riparian zone. The resources available consisted of our 20 person type 2 crew, two mark 3 pumps, 1,500 feet of hose, numerous gated wise fittings and nozzles. A hot shot crew had done some preliminary line cutting and would be departing the incident for a rest period. Air support had been ordered but its arrival time was unknown. Welcome back. At this point let's go back to Tom Taylor and find out what actually happened. We received our briefing about 10.30. The tactics consisted of the following. The crew would be split into three squads. Squad 1 was assigned to take care of a slop over on the main fire then would proceed across the river to aid in the suppression of the spots. Squad 2 would be in charge of the setup and operation of the pumps. My squad, Squad 3, was supposed to anchor into existing hand line and flank the largest spot fire using hand tools and a progressive hose lay. The remaining crew member would be our lookout and would be placed in a rock outcropping to the east of the fires. The escape routes for this incident were clearly marked and easily accessible back down the line across the log into the road. We engaged the fire around 1,100 hours. Temperatures at this time were in the 80s with a relative humidity of about 20% and the winds were calm. Squads 2 and my squad, Squad 3 moved the pumps and hoses across the log to the east side of the river. From there, my squad then proceeded to the anchor point and started with our operations. As the day progressed, a number of problems occurred. With numerous spot fires, heavy torching and extreme fire behavior, additional resources were ordered, pump operations were abandoned, and the lookout was removed from their position as fire activity increased beyond our control. It was then that we decided to disengage the incident and retreat to our safety zone. A riparian zone next to the road, later known as the lunch spot. We were greeted by the hotshot crew, which was called back after two hours of rest. A district AFMO arrived shortly thereafter. At this time, all personnel on the fire were at the lunch spot. By this point in time, a break was needed. We sharpened tools, ate lunch, filled our canteens and observed a full-on crown fire. Weather taken at the lunch spot indicated temperatures of 87 degrees, relative humidities at 17%, and winds 5 to 6 miles per hour. As you can see, things are heating up on this incident. And remember that the crew is assembled and on the road most of the night before. To keep us all together, let's assume now that we have all disengaged the fire and we're sitting at the lunch spot. What needs to happen before you would consider re-engagement? With this in mind, let's get back into our groups and proceed with part two of this exercise. Firefighters work in a dynamic environment. The only real constant is change. Paul Gleason, an ex-hotshot supervisor and a creator of LCES, once said that fire supervisors are asked to make complex decisions given limited information in a dynamic environment. This is true. At times, a fire situation can change so fast that it's hard to keep current on your situational awareness. We have to realize, however, that at these times of rapid change, a valid situational awareness is the most important. It's always easy to be critical as a Monday morning quarterback. But as we go back to Tom and hear what actually happened, I want you to put yourselves on this fire and think about what you would do in this situation. Be specific. Would you call someone? Would you say something to someone? When? What exactly would you say? What are your concerns and how exactly would you address them? Let's go back to Tom and find out what happened. Approximately 30 minutes into our break, the hotshot superintendent and his assistant scouted the road up the canyon from the lunch spot. At that same time, two engines proceeded past the lunch spot to patrol for spot fires up the road. Upon encountering a spot fire approximately one-half mile from the lunch spot, one engine radioed the IC and requested one squad to assist them in the handling of the fire. The IC then asked for the crew boss trainee and squad one to head up the road with him and tie in with the engine. Once they arrived at the spot fire, they felt they needed some more assistance. So the crew boss trainee then radioed me and asked for my squad. I then rounded up my folks and we proceeded up the road, passing the crew boss trainee in an empty van as he was headed back to the lunch spot. We arrived at the spot fire and noticed the engine was departing. We then geared up and walked about 100 feet off the road and tied in with the IC and squad one. The spot fire was small in size, so I instructed my folks to help squad one digging line. About two minutes go by and we receive a call from the hotshot superintendent that we should get back into the van and head back down the road to the lunch spot. Because they had left the lunch spot to assist in fire operations, based on the fire behavior, they made a no-go decision on the mission and went back down the road to the south, along with the remaining squad, the crew boss trainee, the two engines and the district AFMO. We received another call that we should head out as quickly as possible. So the IC, my squad and squad one retreat back up to the road and pile into the one remaining van. Squad boss number one and three of his folks see that getting into the van was time consuming, so they start off down the road on foot. The rest of us quickly get in the van and proceed down the road. While shadowing the four on foot, we get about 100 feet in front of them and we observe a wall of fire crossing the road, blocking our escape. We then turn the van around, pick up the four crew members from squad one and drive up the road to the eventual deployment site. By this time my blood was pumping, 14 people crammed inside one van. Emotions were running high. We drove up the road with fire behind us. Fire was now burning very hot on both sides of the road at enormous intensity. We stopped the van in an area that was green, calm and open. The Chewatch River ran smooth and calm in contrast to the heavy activity around us. We got out of the van to observe the fire. Some took pictures, others sat and bewildered me of what was happening. I puffed on a cigarette while pondering the events of that day. To the east the fire was burning from point of origin up the canyon walls and scoured the upper third of the slope. The column of smoke was huge. Just as I put out my cigarette, a Dodge pickup had made its way down the road to our location. I quickly approached the vehicle and asked the driver where the road went. I was sadly informed that it was a dead end. My heart sank with the fact that we were trapped. 14 firefighters, two civilians and no way out. I quickly told the IC this is a dead end road. He said we will be safe here. We had two saws and had discussed reducing some of the fuels in the area but the IC decided that that would not be necessary. So I thought it would be to my best interest to hike up into the rocks to get a better perspective on what was headed our way. I saw from a distance a full-on crown fire consuming everything in its path from one side of the canyon to the other. But at the site it was surprisingly calm. Five crew members from the same district had sat down on two large boulders 15 feet from the road. The rest of the crew, now joined by two civilians gathered on the road. The fire was now burning with tremendous energy forming two columns. The column to the east was now huge with the fire burning up the canyon floor away from us to the northeast. The column to the west seemed more tame. Though it was devouring everything in its path my view was blocked so I could not see its full size. So basically from my locations in the rocks I could see two separate columns moving away from each other and forming a V. As time passed that V kept moving closer and closer. We will be safe here kept running through my mind. I thought that I would stay on the rocks until it got too hot and then I would head down to the road. As the V came overhead I ran down the rocks towards the road. About 25 feet from the road I was hit by an enormous wall of superheated air as if I had run into a freight train. I then retreated back up into the rocks a short distance tore off my pack and grabbed my shelter. Tearing the tab off my shelter and pulling it out of its sheath was something I had only done in training. Now it was the real deal. With shelter in hand I simply held it out in front of me the winds opened it on its own like a parachute. The shelter was very tough to hold onto. Just before climbing in my shelter I saw five folks running up the rocks towards me. They were only 15 to 20 feet below me and I immediately yelled deploy, deploy. I then put one foot in my shelter and rolled into it. The moment I entered my shelter I was hit with intense heat and wind instantly overcome with fear and terror. The fetal position allowed me to keep the shelter from burning me as I was able to push it away from me with my right hand while holding down the shelter with my left arm and both feet. With intense heat and troubles breathing it was not a good situation. I had to think fast. If I stay in the shelter I will die. If I choose to leave my shelter I will die but I can't give up. So I made the decision to flee from my shelter down the rocks and to the river. With my last breath I threw the shelter off of me ran down through the smoke and fire across the road and dove into the river. The other firefighters and the two civilians joined me in the river approximately 15 minutes later. After a headcount was done we knew that there were five people missing. After the IC tried to contact the squad boss on their radio and having no return traffic I climbed from the water and proceeded back up into the rocks and discovered four of my coworkers. Shouting their names yielded no response. With the intense heat being held in by the rocks I returned back to the road and discovered one of the five in the van severely burned but alive. I then grabbed the IC's radio and notified Air Attack and coordinated our rescue. At this time your local facilitator will lead the class in a discussion on the lessons learned from the 30 mile fire. You should turn to part three of this exercise in your student workbook. Also available for you as an addendum to your student workbook is the incident timeline taken from the 30 mile fire investigation report. Visiting the fatality site on the 30 mile fire is a sad and humbling experience. I remember looking around and thinking about how we go about selecting a safety zone. What is a safety zone? How do we define it? Isn't it different for each situation? We train people that a safety zone is an area that you can survive in without deploying your fire shelter. Well that tells us what a safety zone should do. But how do we know how big a safety zone should be in order to accomplish that? Safety zone selection is something we often talk about but we seldom discuss specific parameters regarding necessary dimensions and characteristics. Safety zone selection criteria must include the worst case fire behavior, possible air flows, and radiant heat considerations. I walked away from the 30 mile incident with a new appreciation for the movement of superheated air. When Tom Taylor was asked why he didn't continue to the road from the rock pile, he responded you don't run into the face of a bullet. To give you a more scientific perspective on safety zone selection, we spoke with Dr. Brett Butler at the 30 mile incident. Listen to what he had to say. You know, coming and visiting the site of the 30 mile fire, it's another tragic fire that's always sad to have things like this happen and lose people, firefighters. And it's frustrating and a whole bunch of things that upset us and make us wonder what we're doing and what we need to change. For me today, coming and seeing the site and talking to a couple of people that were here I think it's made me think well I need to sharpen the pencil a little bit more. If I'm going out on a fire or I'm talking to people that are going to be going out on a fire I need to look for safety zones. I think even more than that they need to look specifically at where is the safety zone relative to the fuel. In the case here there's a couple different choices rocks, slides but in some of them there's trees right next to the slide just across the road and some of them maybe there's a little more space another hundred feet, which would make a huge difference. Another factor here is it looks like a good clean rock slide but you get walking around there or look a little closer and there's some a lot of dead and down debris there that's going to catch on fire and burn. Now most cases that's going to burn later on after the main fire front passes but I think I'm going to certainly try to emphasize you go to a safety zone and it's probably hopefully it's not a last resort but when you're looking at safety zones find the area the biggest you can get but also anything that burns you want to stay as far away from it as you can. Whether it's trees, whether it's dead and down debris anything like that and then you also need to think about where is the fire going to come from and where is it going to be going and in terms of that what kind of winds are going to be pushing it if you're in the bottom of a steep canyon then you can have some really strong winds and that's the same thing that happened on the South Canyon fire it's similar to here really steep canyon and then in the topography drives the wind so if you have turns in the canyon the wind is just going to follow those turns and in fact on the South Canyon fire they had a really strong cold front driving winds from the west but the firefighters that died on that fire were caught because of winds that were going South to North and 90 degrees off the general flow and just all topography driven so you need another thing to think about what are the winds going to do, how is the topography going to influence the local wind flow right where you are certainly experience plays a major part and is important but also you need that quantitative method of analyzing and evaluating what the fire is going to do same thing applies to safety zones I don't think about safety zones forever everybody for 20, 30, 50 years 100 years, whatever, ever since we've been fighting fire we need to have a safety zone what is it, can we define quantitatively what a safety zone is I don't know that's a good question everybody should ask themselves if they don't have a method to say this is what a safety zone is for this type of fire behavior then they need to find something some way to come up with a number Jack Cohen and I thought we could make some impact was do a simple engineering analysis and look at the energy transfer and say how far away do you have to be to keep from getting burned and you know it's a relatively simple kind of almost a homework problem but I think it's provided at least a baseline and if it's wrong, that's fine if people find out that it's wrong it's okay but at least they can say this doesn't work, we need something bigger but the basic rule of thumb we came up with was you need to be four times the flame height the maximum flame height that you're seeing you need to be that far, at least that far away from the fire to keep from getting burned and like I say maybe that doesn't fit all conditions but at least take that one and try it out and if it doesn't work think about it, when you're out on a fire line you go to a safety zone you watch the fire go by if you're comfortable you can get closer, you know, saying how far away am I from that flame what's the conditions, what's the weather what's the fire doing write that down maybe in a notebook and use it to kind of build your own quantitative model like Dr. Butler says, I hope you test this rule of thumb this summer and use it as a guideline for determining a method that does work in your area for further information on safety zones you should refer to the safety zone guidelines and your incident response pocket guide remember, it is the right and obligation of every firefighter to know their escape route and safety zone with that in mind let's hear some final thoughts from the survivors from the 30 mile fire it can happen, it can happen real quick let your squad boss know what's going on in your location really be assertive on what you're observing don't be complacent you know, just because you have a if you have a wind shift you really need to stress that regardless if it's just a real quick burst or prolonged definite wind shift out of direction, that type of thing and you know trust the feelings you have you know, listen to your gut if your gut's telling you it's not a good situation because of changing fire behavior whether stuff like that, then it's probably a good idea to let your squad boss or crew bosses know and take the steps to get out of there you know, you assume that your escape routes and safety zones are going to be pretty clear and cut and dry and taken care of but if your escape routes are cut off then you know, where does your safety zone go from there is it safety zones, is it plural or is it singular do you have one escape route to one safety zone or do you have multiple escape routes to multiple safety zones you need to really bide your time, do you spend more time initial attacking of fire, or do you spend time following a procedure and setting yourself up properly so you can have adequate safety zones and escape routes if you prepare for the worst and you're geared up for the worst case scenario but it doesn't turn out to be that way, then you're a winner if you gear up for the worst case scenario and it does turn out to be the worst case scenario but you survive that then you're a winner as well so it's a win-win situation hoping I'm gearing up for the worst case scenario unfortunately we put ourselves in that situation where we have to deal with those things not enough time to at least for me to have prepared myself in a safe way to go in the shelter as far as facing the correct direction getting rid of your pack facing the shelter I went in from a prone position I'd never trained I trained from a standing position only I deployed from the ground so that was something I didn't know how to do what I did it I didn't do it as good as it could have been done the shelter itself didn't fully extend I was rolled up into a fetal position rather than a fully extended position therefore I had less of an insulation barrier in the shelter and that feeling of being curled up in that ball I think makes you feel even more just more trapped that intensity is just kind of heightened so like anyone will ever tell you for me it was the most afraid I've ever been in my life everything that you've read about people thinking about you're going to die feeling the presence of death or darkness in there felt all of that fighting the urge to pull off the shelter and make a run for it or get out because you feel so trapped went through that but then I mean for me one of the other things I'd say as far as a recommendation of firefighters also is which most people already do is to carry a tool on their belt for one thing carry a leather man or carry a knife or some sort because what became my way of coping through it was I fumbled around and was able to get my leather man out and started to dig into the dirt to make a better breathing space and I would dig a little bit and then get as close as I could to the ground to get the cleanest air that was cooler and just take a breath and then come back up and start digging again and then breathe, dig and breathe and that was my way of staying focused and staying calm and finding the good air and as far as I'm concerned that saved me I think now would be a good time for a quick break so we can stretch our legs and collect our thoughts