 Since 1926, more than 250 wildland firefighters have lost their lives. The hairline difference between life and death has often been luck. Luck is not enough. You need the knowledge to understand the importance of planning, the ability to remain cool in life-threatening situations, and the ability to recognize the watch-out situations. Most fatal and near-miss fires have common denominators. Most have occurred on relatively small fires or isolated sectors of larger ones. Some fatalities happened during flare-ups and deceptively light fuels. Others happened when fires ran uphill in chimneys, gullies, or on steep slopes. In some cases, fatalities occurred during mop-up. And fatalities are not limited to isolated areas. Firefighters have died in most geographic areas and fuel types, not just in widely publicized California brush types, but in the hardwoods of the east, the conifers of the west, the palmetto of the southeast, and in the sage and grasslands of the Great Basin. All fires, including prescribed fires under the right conditions and circumstances, have the potential to take your life. Anticipating, recognizing, and responding in time to these situations makes the difference between an orderly escape and a fatality. After completing this training, you will be able to recognize the watch-out situations and then, given various situations, apply appropriate fire orders to minimize the potential for serious injury or death by identifying positive alternative actions. The final responsibility for your safety rests with you. Let's review the watch-out situations. 1. The fire has not been scouted and sized up. 2. You are in country you have not seen in daylight. 3. The safety zones and escape routes have not been identified. 4. You are unfamiliar with the local weather patterns and the local factors that are influencing the fire's behavior. 5. You have not been informed on existing hazards or the strategies and tactics that are to be used. 6. You have not been given clear instructions and assignments. 7. You are not in communication with your supervisor or other crew members. 8. You are building a fire line without ensuring a safe anchor point. 9. You find yourself building a fire line downhill with the fire below you. 10. You are attempting a frontal assault on the fire. 11. You have a lot of unburned or flashy fuel between you and the fire. 12. You cannot see the main fire or you are not in contact with someone who can. 13. You are on a hillside where rolling material can ignite fuel below you. 14. You notice the weather is getting hotter and drier. 15. You notice the wind increasing or changing direction or both. 16. You find you are getting frequent spot fires across the fire line. 17. You notice the terrain and fuels would make an escape to safety zones difficult. 18. You find yourself tired and considering taking a nap near the fire line. Any of these watch out situations have the potential for causing serious injury or death. What you are about to see are the events that led to four fatalities on the Bass River Fire on July 22, 1977. The Bass River Fire occurred in the Bass River State Forest, located in New Jersey's Coastal Plain Pine Lands Reserve. The area burned by the Bass River Fire is in the same vicinity where five firefighters were killed while fighting a forest fire in 1936. The Coastal Plain is flat to gently rolling and the Pine Barrens Fuel Type dominate the area. Pitch Pine is the primary species found in this fuel type. Fire spread quickly in these fuels and crown fires are common as is long range spotting. Fire behavior exhibited by the Pine Barrens Fuel Type closely resembles that of Chaparral fuels in California. New Jersey had been in drought conditions for the first six months of 1977 and had been experiencing a prolonged heat wave since July 13. The afternoon fire weather readings on the day of the fire as reported by the Bass River Fire Tower were sky clear, temperature 91 degrees, wind 12 miles per hour from the northwest with gusts to 20 miles an hour. Relative humidity 27%, one hour fuel moisture 3% and the fire danger rating for the day was extreme. At 1459 hours the Bass River Fire Tower reported a smoke approximately three and a half miles to the north in the vicinity of Allen and Oswego Roads. This was known to be a bad fire area because of current fuel conditions and past fire history. The smoke was also picked up by several other fire towers. Five brush trucks with ten firefighters were dispatched immediately. The fire was approximately five acres in size when the initial attack units arrived on the scene at 1505. At 1516 they reported the fire at 25 acres and crowning. The local division fire warden arrived over the fire in an observation helicopter at 1537 and estimated the fire to be in excess of 100 acres. The first two brush trucks on the scene started a direct attack using pump and roll tactics on the flanks of the fire working from the point of origin toward the head of the fire. The incident commander was in the brush truck working the left flank. Two more brush trucks and a tractor plow unit arrived and joined the operation shortly thereafter. These additional resources concentrated their effort on the right flank of the fire. At 1536 Eagleswood Volunteer Fire Company Number One was requested to respond to the fire. They arrived on the scene at 1545 in engine 731, an Army surplus five and a half ton truck. The incident commander gave engine 731 the following orders. Hit the line and turn to your right. That would be south and try to catch her. We might have to move out to the other side. There's a tractor and plow there on the line. Meet him and follow him down. When you get to him, let us know. All communications between the incident commander and engine 731 were by radio. Engine 731 did not acknowledge the last transmission from the incident commander. Engine 731 was staffed with a crew of four and the company officer that day was the chief of the department. Engine 731 was operating on its normal county radio frequency. The incident commander was operating on the state frequency. He had to switch over to the county frequency to talk to engine 731 or any other volunteer fire department units. Initial attack efforts were suspended at 1547 due to very active fire behavior and the incident commander ordered all units to pull out and move to Cole Road. Engine 731 never acknowledged the order to pull out. In response to the rapid fire growth, the incident commander requested additional resources from the volunteer fire departments of the nearby communities of Tuckerton, Stafford and from Burlington, Ocean and Atlantic counties. The first three brush trucks that arrived at Cole Road began backfiring. This operation was unsuccessful. At 1612, the incident commander ordered all units to proceed to the Dansbridge Road. As units began arriving at Dansbridge Road, the division fire warden in the observation helicopter directed them to initiate a backfiring operation along that road, moving from north to south. Ground forces reported numerous spot fires across the Dansbridge Road at 1630 and that they could no longer hold the backfire. At this time, the observation helicopter estimated the fire to be 500 acres. Between 1630 and 1700, a number of significant wind shifts were reported. At 1630, the wind shifted from northwest to southwest. At 1640, battling winds were reported. At 1650, the winds were out of the northeast. The fire crossed Dansbridge Road and headed southeast into the Lake Absegami Recreation Area which had been evacuated earlier as a precaution. During this time, the fire displayed rapid lateral spread along the flanks due to horizontal roll vortex activity as it transitioned from wind-driven to plume-dominated. The fire moved two and a half miles in two hours. The forward spread of the fire was halted at approximately 1730 northwest of Lake Absegami. This was accomplished with a backfire during which firefighters were forced into the lake because of the fire's intensity. The fire was contained at 2,300 acres the next morning at 0830. During the hectic transition from direct attack to indirect attack, the status of engine 731 was unknown and no other resources had reported any contact with them. At 1652, there was a possible radio transmission from engine 731 but a tone-out by the Ocean County Control Center overrode it. At 1655, there was an attempt to contact engine 731 with no detectable response. At 1659, there was another possible radio transmission from engine 731. All that was heard were the sounds of static and the humming from an open microphone. At 1700, a third possible radio transmission was received from engine 731 but it was mostly overridden by other transmissions. Someone was heard saying, I don't know how to drive it. I've never driven it before. At 1701, the sounds of static and the humming from an open microphone were heard again. At 1702, over the sounds of static and humming, the following words spoken by a faint voice were heard. This is 730. The microphone remained open and the transmission tailed off with a word that sounded like help. After that, the transmission cut off and all static and humming ceased. The observation helicopter spotted the charred remains of engine 731 shortly after 1800. Engine 731 was found near the original right flank of the fire where they were initially directed to begin their flanking attack. However, they were not on the fire line or a road. The signature pattern left by horizontal roll vortex activity covered the area of the burn over. This would indicate that engine 731 was caught by the vortex along the flank they were working. An examination of the engine showed that the radio aerial was hanging on the left side of the truck cab. The ceramic fitting attaching the aerial to the truck was broken. Hose fittings were found on the ground on the right side of the truck. The pump handle was full open. It's possible that some of the crew members pulled hose and connected it to the pump in an attempt to create a water curtain for protection. The bodies of the company officer and one crew member were found 600 feet from the engine in a direction back into the fire toward the point of origin. The bodies of the other two crew members were found near the engine. You have just seen the events that occurred on the 1977 Bass River fire. The instructor will now facilitate a discussion about the use of fire safety guidelines by the involved personnel, the strategic and technical decisions that were made, and the human factors that contributed to this burn over incident. The original 10 standard orders came from as a result of the man-gulch fire in 49, when a group of people who had had their feet in the fire, who understood fire, what we'd call the old fire horse now, you know, they got their heads together. The chief of the Forest Service said, we need some orders that people can follow that would help them be safe on the fire line. And so these original orders came out and they were called the 10 standard orders. And they began in a logical sequence, I think of importance in the minds of the people who developed them. And they said, first we want to start with fire behavior because that's the enemy. We want to know what the fire is going to do, what the enemy is going to do. And then they went to fire line safety because we want to keep our people safe from this analysis that we've made of the fire behavior and plan our actions according to what we think is going to happen. And then they said, we need some organizational control. So the last three orders dealt with organizational control. And then they came up with that 10 standard order that in the fire orders has become the first order, which everybody remembers, no matter whether it's the 10 standard orders or the fire orders, people remember fight fire aggressively but provide for safety first. And in a course of our conversation here, I'd like to change that a little bit after we've gone through the three fire behavior, safety and organizational management phases of things. I'd like to tell you how I'd propose changing that last 10 standard order. But the first of the standard orders dealt with fire weather. And it was stated like keep informed on fire weather conditions and forecasts. Now when we think of fire weather, we always think, well, we've got him. The meteorologist is going to provide that. But the way that order was stated, it said imperative, not stated, but you keep informed on fire weather conditions. Look at that word conditions a minute. The meteorologist is not going to give you those conditions. That's something that you see. That's the cumulus cloud that's building out there that you can observe that's not observable. That tells something about stability. That's the use of that belt weather kit, which tells you what the temperature, but especially the relative humidity is doing in the area. So these are observable things. And the forecast, keep informed on fire weather forecasts, that's the responsibility of the meteorologist to make the forecast, but it says you keep informed of the forecast. It doesn't say the meteorologist, the dispatcher or anybody else has got that responsibility. You have that. And so having looked at the weather and the influence that that has, you go then to the second order which says, know what your fire is doing at all times. Observe personally, you scout. Well, that's pretty self-explanatory, but it's a little hard to implement sometimes when a fire gets large. And that's where some of the other orders come into play about communications and about lookouts and the likes. So the third order, then again related to fire behavior, but now we're talking about tactics. We say base all action on current and expected behavior of the fire. It's real important there. Now you can see how those work together. When you think of fire weather and how in the morning, humidity is high, how in the afternoon it's going to go down. So if your fire is sort of just smoking and smoldering around in the morning, you expect that. And then you expect some changes to take place in the afternoon as the humidity drops, the temperatures rise, and usually the winds go up. So that's the first three orders dealing with fire behavior. The next three orders deal with safety. And the first, and I might not get these in exactly the sequence they had them, but that's not important. The sequence isn't as important as the grouping. When you think of fire safety, maybe you think of escape routes right away. So it says have escape routes for everyone and make them known. Just having escape routes by themselves doesn't do any good unless people know. And so if you're one of the persons that has to plan to escape route, that's one thing. You let people know. If you're one of the persons that's going to use those escape routes and haven't planned it, then you have to say, hey, where's our escape route? So it's a two-way street all the time. That comes with communications and organizational control when we get to those three orders. But then the next one says post a lookout when there's possible danger. And that just means any kind of danger. But of course, one of the primary dangers in firefighting is fire behavior. Now we've examined that, so you post a lookout with those concerns. That person might be taking the weather just as a sidelight. And the third one says be alert, keep calm, think clearly, and act decisively. Hey, that has a lot to do with safety. But that's very difficult sometimes after a 24-hour shift to be alert. Keeping calm, I think, comes from the fact that you've already analyzed the fire behavior. And so that helps to keep calm. Thinking clearly again refers back to what you've done and what you've documented and how as a group, I don't care whether it's a two-person smoke chaser outfit, jumpers. What we look at there is that you have some consistent way of monitoring fire behavior so that being alert, keeping calm, thinking clearly and acting decisively comes as a methodology as much as anything else. And that leads us to the next three which deal with organizational control. And we talk about maintaining communications, maintain communications with your men, your boss, and adjoining forces. It's important, you know, that have several ways to do this. You can be innovative. I know in other training courses you talk specifically about communications. But now we're talking about organizational control in this 10 Senate Order. The next one we talk about is maintaining control of your people at all times. Again, going back again to the fire behavior, the first three, you maintain that because you've analyzed the situation you're looking at. And that gives confidence both in the people that you're supervising and in yourself to say, hey, I can maintain control because we've done this analytically. We've looked at this. We know the situation we're in. And the next one there says, and I have to glance down here to take a quick look, is to give clear instructions and be sure they're understood. Now, I know, Ted, when you're thinking about instructions, why you give clear instructions. And I give clear instructions, but are they understood? Now, this is where the people have to feedback. If I give an instruction to somebody and it's not clear, they have to ask. And of course, that prompts that communication. It's just so important. And then we come to the last of the 10 Senate Orders, the original 10 Senate Orders, which says fight fire aggressively but provide for safety first. And here's the change that I would make in that, Ted. Say fight fire aggressively having provided for safety first, having looked at the fire behavior and all those things around it, having looked at your tactics and going down to your safety and then down to your organizational control leads to safe action on the fire.