 Now we're going to introduce you to the Cedar Fire which took place in Southern California. This fire can be looked at from several different aspects including situational awareness, human factors, command and control issues, or fighting fire in the wildland-urban interface. However, for the purpose of this module, we're going to focus on effective communication during complex and extreme fire behavior conditions. Let's take a look. On October 21, 2003, a series of fires began in Southern California. The Cedar Fire began on October 25, burning under Santa Ana wind conditions and spread in all directions, but mainly to the west. Despite an aggressive firing operation on October 28, the fire jumped highway 78-79 and was burning northeast up the San Diego River drainage, which coincidentally is the location of the 1956 Inha fire that claimed the lives of 11 firefighters. It is a long, deep canyon that is famous for erratic, turbulent winds and extreme fire behavior. It's important at this point to understand how local weather patterns in Southern California affect fire behavior. Dennis Baldridge has spent his career in Southern California and is currently the superintendent of the Laguna Hot Shots. Let's listen to him briefly explain the typical wind patterns they face. Normal wind patterns for San Diego County are west to southwest winds from 5 to 8 miles per hour with gusts of 10 to 12 across the ridges for most of the fire season. The direction may vary from the north to the south, but predominantly west or southwest. The wind is routinely affected by the topography as it moves inland. The wind tends to break up and in some cases will decrease in speed as it crosses ridges in the broken topography, but tends to stay the same speed or sometimes increase as it gets channeled through the drainages, especially those in alignment with the wind direction. This is the case with the San Diego River drainage which runs from the southwest near the coast to the northeast, ending in the Julian area of the Cuyamaca Mountains. On the east side of the Cuyamacas is the Anza Borrego Desert. The wind pattern on the east side is one of slope and canyon winds caused by the heating up of the desert. Normal daytime winds are upslope up canyon, basically out of the east, that meet up with the west-southwest winds coming from the coast, causing mixing and turbulence along the crest of the Cuyamacas. The nighttime winds are usually stronger than normal on the east side due to the west-southwest winds, helping to increase the downslope winds above the normal diurnal speeds. Another normal weather pattern for us in Southern California is the Santa Ana winds. These are caused by a pressure gradient difference and cause extremely strong winds to occur coming from the north and northeast. The greater the pressure difference, the stronger the winds and usually the shorter the duration of the event. It is not uncommon to have winds up to 50 miles per hour and sometimes higher. Again, the San Diego River drainage channels this wind and it increases in speed as it heads towards the coast. As the Santa Ana winds subside, there is generally a lull or short period of calm before the normal wind flows return to the area with winds changing direction by as much as 180 degrees. This is a critical time for firefighters and situational awareness needs to be a priority. Fire history in the San Diego River drainage shows that this is a recurring issue when the fire is in a drainage that is in direct alignment with the winds. The Inaha fire fatalities occurred approximately two miles down canyon from the Cedar fire fatality. Both the incidents occurred when the winds changed during waning Santa Ana winds. Keep these weather patterns in mind as we continue on with the Cedar fire scenario. On the morning of October 29th, the fire was over 230,000 acres, 15% contained and burning east and northeast now under the influence of onshore winds. The air attack on scene was unable to contact ground resources and temporarily grounded all aircraft until the problem with the communication plan could be resolved. Ground resources attempted to contain the fire that jumped the highway, but due to erratic fire behavior they disengaged. The fire continued to burn north along the west ridge of the San Diego River drainage. On the morning of October 29th, the Nevada Fire District Engine 6162 was assigned to a task force of various type engines and staged at Gillespie Field in El Cajon. At Gillespie Field we had a safety briefing at that point down there, prepped our engine, made sure everything was good and then we headed up this direction. We made it here to Santa Isabel and we stopped on the side of the road just up around the corner here where our strike team leader or a task force leader got into another safety briefing and discussed what our plans were going to be. We saw some column, most of it was just like little smoke here and there, but nothing that indicated major fire behavior. It was just a nice day, it wasn't real hot. I believe that later on that day the temperature was 78 degrees. It was just a nice day just like today, a nice sunny day. No real wind, just a light breeze, occasional light breeze. Everything was pretty uneventful up to this point. We hadn't really seen any extreme fire behavior. In fact when we watched as it skipped across the road and onto the hillside it was just pretty much skunking around. It was not really doing a whole lot. At about 10.20 the task force was briefed in Santa Isabel by the division supervisor and assigned to do structure protection in the Riverwood Estates area. While en route they drove right past the Inaha Memorial. The Inaha fire took the lives of 11 men at 8.05 p.m. on November 25, 1956, approximately two miles down canyon from the Riverwood Estates. On the Cedar fire the Novato engine crew 6162 arrived in the Riverwood Estates at about 10.30. Firing operations around the structures had been completed and mop-up operations were occurring. By 11 o'clock the division supervisor redirects the task force including engine 6162 to Orchard Lane. When we first drove up this road we didn't see any fire until we got past the LIS residents and that's when the fire started sweeping across those two little nulls right there. It was going across there and moving in the northern direction. We hadn't seen anything real radical up to this point and we were thinking we'd just drive right over a fence like this if we needed to and we'd be out in a stubble field and we could just sit in the engine and watch it for an hour with the height of the grass that we had if we needed to. Was the grass real similar to this or even lower? Oh, it was way lower than that. It was stubble. It was two, three inches deep at the most. I believe that's probably why it didn't really burn that well. By 12 o'clock the task force leader had sized up the structures and assigned the engines to various structures along Orchard Lane. He did not assign an engine to 902 due to narrow access and too much preparation needed to defend the structure. 914 Orchard was an unapproved building site with a driveway but no structure. One engine was assigned to 915 and engine 6162 was assigned to 920. 930 was determined to be too risky and he left it unstaffed. The third engine was assigned to 1038. 1126 was skipped and another engine was assigned to the next house to the south. The last engine in the task force remained unassigned but staged on Orchard Lane. As the engines are deploying to their locations, a CDF captain and a fire apparatus engineer arrive in a utility pickup truck. They were not assigned to the division or the incident but have been in the area most of the morning scouting and offering suggestions on potential firing operations to the division supervisor. They drove north past the engines to 902 Orchard and observed the fire burning past their location flanking across the slope to the north and west. The fire captain instructs the engineer, who does not have a radio, to fire out around 902. The captain drives down to Orchard Lane tells the unassigned engine in the task force to help with the burning operation at 902 and makes face-to-face contact with the task force leader. He states his intentions to burn out and his need for the engine. The task force leader tells the captain they are communicating on Tactical Channel White 3. Later, after unsuccessful attempts to contact the task force leader, the captain realizes that it was White 3 on the 800 MHz radio and he only had a VHF radio. The task force leader believed the captain was going to coordinate and work with the engine at 902. He tells the engine crew to support the firing operation. At about this time, a federal hotshot crew and two bulldozers arrive at the north end of Orchard Lane. One bulldozer and part of the hotshot crew start direct perimeter control near 902. The task force leader sees them arrive and assumes they are coordinating their efforts with the firing operation. Engine 6162 back their engine up the driveway at 920 and conduct a safety briefing. They then begin to prepare to defend the structure. From their vantage, the predominant fire is flanking from the north near 902. The first thing that we did when we got up here was we discussed where we were going to go, where our safety route was and where we were going to go in case things blew up. And that determination was made that we were going to use the house as our safety area. We put an axe at the back door, we all walked down to make sure we knew where we were going and we even put a chainsaw towards the back of the structure so that in case we couldn't get in, we absolutely would have a way to get into the house. There was a burn pile that was probably four or five times more than what you see back behind me and we decided that we needed to get that taken care of before we did anything else because we didn't want that much heat right next to the house if we didn't get fire here. There was also a wood pile, just firewood that was stacked. We just dispersed that wood out so that there wouldn't be any big heat sources. Yes, his instructions were he said, I'm going to have engineer Rucker take care of the burn pile. We're going to get the burn pile taken care of and he said, I want you and Barrett to start stripping this out. I want defensible space. I want this whole entire area that you see here black. After firing around 902, the captain and the engineer drive down Orchard past 920 to 930. He instructs the engineer to fire out from south to north and then take the line of fire north to the next house, which was 920. The firing operation quickly generates fire spread to the east and is knocked down by a helicopter bucket drop. The engineer discontinues the burning to the north. They drive back down Orchard Lane and drive part way up the driveway at 920. The engineer then takes fire from the north end of 920 to the north towards the unimproved building site at 914. The captain does not communicate his firing out intentions or actions with the division supervisor. Meanwhile, the superintendent of the hot shot crew who was in the meadow east of Orchard Lane observes unexplained fire on the ridge between 920 and 902. He contacts his crew on the crew net frequency to see if they are firing out. When they tell him that they are not firing, he makes the decision to disengage and directs his crew to return to his location. A CDF helicopter flies over the location and observes the winds at his elevation blowing hard out of the west and beginning to change to the northwest. He cannot reach any ground resources on the air to ground frequency and returns to base for fuel. The captain of 6162 saw the engineer firing out north of 920, but the fire captain and the captain of 6162 never make contact. The captain of 6162 tells his crew that a CDF firefighter is burning out north of the house and instructs his crew to burn out the grass below the driveway. Captain McDonald then decided what we were going to do and we met up. We all got together and discussed the plan and he instructed us that there was somebody burning, doing a burning operation and that we were to meet up with them. And so that's where we initially started was we headed over that direction. We got over there and we found no one, but we found a little bit of fire on the ground. And at that point, I made the assumption that the fire had just kind of skunked up to that point. I had not seen anybody there putting fire on the ground and so I just made the assumption that we were just getting a little flanking fire up there. As the engineer continues firing to the north of 920, the fire captain returns to Orcher Lane and contacts the task force leader. He asks why he doesn't have an engine at 920 Orchard. The task force leader states that he does and now concerned with the whereabouts of 6162 and proceeds up the driveway to 920. At about 1235, he met the crew of 6162 and discussed their progress. The task force leader notices the crew conducting their strip burn and observes the main fire backing down from the north about 300 yards away. The crew is about to throw fusees further down into the brush. The sky overhead is clear and winds are moderate, up canyon, up slope. When we drove up the road to Orcher Lane originally, we saw a large body of fire at the end of the road, which is why we turned around. When we got back down into here, we were just basically watching it on that little ridge over there. We were just watching it kind of skunk around. No extreme fire behavior. It wasn't making any runs. It was just really creeping along. Sometimes the manzanita would kind of torch up a little bit, but for the most part it was just a ground fire just kind of skunking around. We were watching it kind of go, you know, just kind of making its way up that direction, and that's pretty much the only fire behavior that we were seeing at that point. We believed the main fire to be well on its way, well north of us and heading that direction. As we were doing our firing or our burning out operation, I was down towards the bottom of the drainage and then I kind of looked off towards the south and saw a couple little flare-ups. At this point, let's get into our groups and complete the next exercise in your student workbook.