 To get an appreciation for the challenges you may encounter, if you find yourself on assignment in the southeast, let's look at the Golden Gate Fire, which occurred in one of the many fast-developing, wildland-urban interface subdivisions of Naples, Florida. During mid-January 1985, the fuel conditions in South Florida were extremely dry. A series of dry cold fronts had passed through the area with winds that caused unusually intense fire behavior. Beginning January 26th, tractor plows and engine crews worked in arson fire for several days before containing it at 10,000 acres. On the morning of January 30th, the fire rekindled on the north flank. Fire crews dispatched to initial attack the rekindle, considered this a routine fire since the previous day's weather had been humid and they saw the return of normal diurnal winds. Weather at 10 hundred showed a temperature of 67 degrees, relative humidity of 54%, and winds out of the south at 14 miles per hour. The fire was burning in what locals called the blocks. The road system in the subdivision divided the area into rectangular blocks that were one-quarter mile wide by one mile long. The one-mile-long roads going into the subdivision are narrow, dead-end roads with very small turnouts. The subdivision had a few scattered houses, but was mostly heavy and mature wildland fuels which consisted of palmetto-gullberry under a southern pine overstory. Suppression action on the rekindle began south of the canal when four tractor plow units arrived and began plow lines across the head of the fire. By 1130, two of the tractor plow units were overrun by the fire, and the operator suffered burns and smoke inhalation. The third unit became stuck in the ditch while the fourth unit continued on the right flank. As the day progressed, additional tractor plow units were ordered. At 1430, the IC ordered Ranger Marco Miranda to proceed to the fire with his tractor plow. Miranda had been with the division of forestry for ten months and had been on twenty previous fires. Just after 1430, the fire spotted over the Golden Gate Canal into four blocks between 9th Street on the east and 17th Street on the west. A county road grader in the area put a quick line around a spot fire between 11th and 13th Street and then moved on. Pushed by southeast winds, fires quickly moved north through two block areas between 13th and 17th Streets and another block between 9th and 11th Streets. Getting to the other side of the canal was not easy for firefighters on the south side. In order to cross the sixty foot wide canal, the firefighters had to drive approximately five miles across the only nearby bridge over the canal. Frank Smith, a mechanic with fifteen years prior experience as a firefighter, was leading an out-of-district tractor plow unit into the fire. Smith led the crew along the two-track north of the canal trying to place the crew at the head of the fire before it bumped Golden Gate Boulevard. Looking for the west flank, Smith drove to 17th Street and proceeded north believing this to be the western extent of the fire. Halfway up 17th Street, however, he found that the fire had already jumped 17th and was moving toward 19th Street. At 1455, Miranda drove east on Golden Gate Boulevard to 11th Street. The IC decided that the air-attack pilot would direct Miranda into position on the left flank. The air-attack pilot directed Miranda south on 13th Street when he noticed that the block between 11th and 13th was beginning to burn. This was a rekindle of the spot fire initially suppressed by the road grader. Smith then got on the radio and said that he would escort Miranda into position. According to Smith, the fire was about a quarter of a mile from the offload point and was not very intense. Miranda unloaded his tractor plow by 1505 and the transport truck left. He was instructed by Smith to plow back and forth across the block. Smith stated that as he walked back to his truck, a big gust of wind snatched a rag out of his hand followed by another gust that picked up dirt and sand. Looking south, he could see a wall of flames moving north toward their location. This was less than five minutes after Miranda started his plow line and he had progressed less than 250 feet from the road. Smith immediately called Miranda on the radio and told him to get out. As Smith backed down the road to get away from the fire, he saw the headlights from the tractor turn towards the road. Less than a minute later, the fire overran Miranda's location. After the fire passed, Smith tried to walk to the line looking for Miranda, but the intense smoke and heat forced him out. Later, two firefighters with air packs went down the line and found Miranda's body next to his tractor plow unit. The peak rate of spreads at 1505 were estimated to be 20 chains per minute. Observers noted significant fire behavior observations which would indicate a plume-dominated fire event. When the two fingers of the fire pulled together and made the run that entrapped Miranda, nine other firefighters on three different sides of the fire received burn and smoke inhalation injuries. The Golden Gate fire happened 20 years ago and many of the lessons learned from this incident have paved the way for improvements in communications, training on fire behavior, and the unified command structure for interagency cooperators. This fire also reminds us to continuously assess our situational awareness. The firefighters began initial attack on this rekindle as if it was a routine fire. Nobody expected it to escalate to a plume-dominated fire event. At the time, we didn't realize we had learned it, but one of the big items we've learned, we couldn't afford it at the time, but everybody wore bunker gear, structural bunker gear during the event. Forestry folks had lighter weight NOMACs, and that was considered luxury if you were able to get a shirt from somebody, that was a big deal. But today we have everybody in the lightweight gear. We're carrying shelters on the vehicles. We've gone from strictly using water to using class A foams. We have one truck that has a CAF system on it. We've tried to learn from the folks out west, whether it's the boys activity, the learning centers and the labs out there, and fortunately we had a local vendor that worked with us to supply us nozzles and different things to learn using foam, and that's graduated into foam applications and structure firefighting now. Communications, we've gone from having one portable if we were lucky on the vehicle, that we don't have everybody fitted with a portable, but generally majority of people have a portable radio. We've gone from a portable that had for the most part two channels in it. Some VHF radios had four channels in them, but we've gone from a two channel VHF system to an 800 megahertz system. We've gone from working on the hood of a vehicle or a tailgate to trying to get people, all of the command staff into one spot. Sometimes we're still working on tailgates, but in some cases mobile command vehicles are still a luxury, but I think that's changed over the time. From the early 80s forestry had their command set up, the structural guys had their command set up, and sometimes just in the structural groups you had different departments had their own command set up, and then you had emergency management from the county was probably in another spot to now in law enforcement had their group. Today we still have to work on it, but certainly not as hard as we had to back then. Everybody has learned the importance and the need to keep everybody into one spot. One of the big pieces that comes out of any major event in particular with Marco Miranda's event with his passing I think is the accountability issue tracking people that regardless of how big or small the event is, you've got to make sure that you know where everybody is. You've got to make sure that you have some backup way of communicating with those people. With the Golden Gate fire in mind, let's get into our groups and complete the next exercise in your student workbook. This exercise will ask you to read a short article written by Jim Payne. Jim recently retired from the US Forest Service as a fire operation safety specialist. He reviewed official fire investigation reports from three significant fatality fires and then noted the similarities or common threads found on all three fires. Let's look at this article and then see if any of these common threads were also present on the Golden Gate fire.