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Plain English ??????
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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Hmmm... Not trying to be condescending at all Don, at least not purposely. Maybe my writing style sucks? You have to keep in mind that when I write here on the FFN, my assumption is always that you are not writing to the individual person sometimes, but instead, to the FFN membership. Most folks don't comment, but read to learn. Anything you and I say, including our typical station house sparing will be used as a learning experience for others to see how men resolve their differences and about the subject matter.
What I like about you Don is that your not afraid to call bullshit when it's needed and you can back it up with life experience and common sense. You may have a different perspective of me and just might have misread my intentions, but regardless, you have my respect.
Thanks to you, I now know about MARBA and how you use mutual aid. Not much different than what we have, except we just call them mutual aid agreements that are coordinated through the state.
Funny what a small world it is sometimes... My best friend passed away one-year ago and now his godson is moving in with us from his house in Pleasant Prarie, WI. Isn't that close to you?
So now your questions... and my answers... hopefully in a new and improved Mike reply version...
EXACTLY: All new homes are required to use non-combustible materials and routinely provide the required clearance. No one wants to loose their homes right? That's not the mindset. Some folks want the more natural woodsy appearance that includes hiding their addresses making locating these structures difficult without pre-plan maps that are kept up and stored on the engine. Couple responses with it being dark and it's close to impossible sometimes to locate some of the places in the mountains.
Homes with fire resistive roofs, in fact, clay spanish tiles that don't burn still result in the homes burning down, and in some cases, with over 300-foot clearance provided. Yet, the house is burned to the ground with the tile roof on top... Poof... the house is gone. That is what you see over and over again, prompting your question and others asking WTF?
I had the opportunity to work on a masters degree program project exploring why these homes burned down the foundation, even with mitigation measures in place.
Here's some of the reasons why:
Tile Roof Bird Stops: The lack of bird stops under the tile scallops enabled bird and rodent nests to be built, which served as a willing host for fire brands / embers to make intimate contact, starting a fire and communicating into the structure interior. When I worked as an arson investigator, the teams assessed many structures with this as a cause and origin for the structure fire.
Ornamental Vegetation: There are no rules for ornamental vegetation and homes. People are free to plant whatever they want and this includes juniper bushes for example that burn at the same BTU rate as gasoline. The vegetation up against the house often times is a contributing factor to things on the other side of the windows catching fire, resulting in a total loss of the structure.
Fire Protection Systems: Fire protection systems were quickly overwhelmed due to the intensity of the fire if they were reliant on water sprinkler systems. Couple high winds and water spray dissipates very quickly. Application of wildland foam did make a big difference and works but requires boots on the ground, and there is only so many fire engines available. Even with mutual aid, ours and everyone else's resources are quickly overwhelmed and response times for other agencies takes hours.
How Hot?: Here's an analogy Don. How hot do you have to get silica sand to melt it to form glass? That's how how the flame front was and typically is when dealing with the combination of chapparal / oak with flashy fuels to create the fire ladder that has a see saw affect with wildland fires. Down canyon sundowner winds push the fire downhill at the speed of a freight train. It doesn't matter what you built your house out of in many cases. The heat is so intense that the entire house literally blows up. This happens in canyons and is called area ignition. This is what took out five federal firefighters in the Esperanza Incident.
Reference: October 26, 2006,
Esperanza Fire: The fire overran the crew of U.S. Forest Service Engine 57 as the men tried to defend an unoccupied home at the top of a steep hill. Three firefighters died there and a fourth died soon after at a hospital. The fifth died five days later, the same day Oyler was arrested.
The blaze, known as the Esperanza Fire, also destroyed 34 homes and 20 outbuildings and charred nearly 70 square miles of terrain.
Deputy District Attorney Michael Hestrin told jurors during the trial that in their final minutes the firefighters faced flames that were 70 feet high, winds up to 40 mph and temperatures that reached 1,300 degrees.
Witnesses testified that footprints and a trail of dropped gear at the scene indicate that at least one firefighter tried to run from the flames and fled for about 30 seconds before he was overcome.
Article: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525225,00.html#ixzz1cg4CTw2S
Water Resources: Available water resources are typically rendered inoperable because so many people are tapping from the resources (hydrants) including home owner sprinklers, garden faucets, etc. This demands use of water tanker/tenders to resupply engines supporting hand crews building line to contain the wildfire. As mentioned previously, it's a given that as a Fire Captain, you are going to have two radios on your person. One for air ops and the other for ground ops. We live in a world of planes, helicopters and fire apparatus including dozers.
Dozer Tenders: Just a note on how screwed up we are, the vehicle that is driven by the dozer swamper is called the dozer tender... Just sayin' :D
USFS Federal Government. Role In ICS Nomenclature: It's really hard for me to defend a system that is contradictory. I just had to keep re-memorizing what to call things and continually found it frustrating, just like you Don. And with a little more research and review, the Firescope Task Force that developed ICS was comprised of several USFS personnel representing the federal government. From what I understand, the decision to make the change for aircraft was from the feds... not SoCal fire departments. Go figure...
So, as you can see, it's not a simple thing to regulate folks and expect nothing but a positive outcome. People continue to build homes in the mountains that have only stored water systems coupled with bad roads and access issues. It's not getting any better with more people moving to California. Up until just this last year, we were experiencing a severe drought that is causative toward these disasters occurring over and over again.
Post Fire Glassification: After these wildfires, and the glassification of the soils, where the silica in the soils has been melted and fused, forming an impermeable layer in the soil. This causes horrific mud slides which just adds to our list of things we get to deal with.
TCSS,
-Mike aka CBz
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Permalink Reply by Don Catenacci on
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Well Mike,
As I said perception is everything. I will take another look and see what I see.
I have always been a straight shooter and my BS detector is quite strong.
MABAS is replacing our normal county mutual aid pact. We have had signed county MA contracts for decades. MABAS expands that to multiple state mutual aid.
Pleasant Prairie is in the far south east corner of the state. My career FD is a suburb of Milwaukee, where I live is about 30 miles north of Madison.
Let me just say this about your repeated wildland interface fires. The repeated loss of homes in the same areas year after year after year is most certainly preventable, or at least more containable. How? FORCE people to have fire breaks around their homes. Stop risking firefighters for homes of residents who can't comply with the most basic fire prevention needs. Stop paying out state and federal disaster aid to people that won't help themselves by complying.
To me the truest tragedy is killing firefighters in wildland fires that are trying to protect abandon homes built in the path of these interface fires with complete disregard for safe fire practices..
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These before and after photos illustrate an area in Oakland, CA, that had more than enough defensible space still lost their homes...
Even if homes have sufficient defensible space with provided fire breaks, the fact that fire loves to travel up hill (slope driven fire) makes protecting homes impossible sometimes.
What gets house after house started many times are traveling embers (firebrands) that as mentioned previously, get into things that support combustion. This includes homes over one-mile away! And we are talking housing tracts, not wildland built homes with the necessary defensible space, but suburbia...
I know that other parts of the world are having to deal with overpopulation issues that forces people to build and live in what was once upon a time considered remote. Now we call it urban wildland interface fires, and when all the planets line up, there's nothing anyone can do to stop the forces of nature. All we can do is try to save as much as we can and use available resources as wisely as possible.
The fire service has gotten smarter as years go by to reduce the number of fatalities. Tactics such as "trigger points", where a pre-determined geographical location, when the incident reaches it, triggers evacuations, and a change in firefighting tactics. These incidents are huge, and typically, the large incidents are handled by Type I management teams, that contain firefighters from all over the country, not necessarily including West coast firefighters. I had the privilege of working a couple of incidents with a Type I team for complex fires in Glacier National Park and the San Bernadino Mountains in SoCal. The number one concern is firefighter safety, and as mentioned a change in tactics when the potential for area ignition or rapid uphill fire movement, weather changes, etc. are "trigger points" for having firefighters retreat to a safe location to stage until the hazard abates.
This does not always happen, but in cases as I pointed out where fire embers travel deep into the city limits, igniting homes, many times ends up with entire neighborhoods going up in flames.
Vehicles, stuff on the other side of the window that is combustible, ornamental vegetation against the house, low water pressure, all factors that contribute to so many homes being lost. And remember, there are only so many fire trucks and firefighters to go around...
I hear you about the outpouring of state and federal disaster funds but again, having lost a home in one of the infamous Santa Barbara fires, if you didn't have insurance, then you were screwed. Period. No handouts that I heard of... or qualified for. Santa Barbara has a long history of major wildland fires along the front country that poses both unique geographical and weather related factors that lend to the severity of fires all the way down the coastal range. These fires are typically HUGE, and easily overwhelm IA resources.
The adage that the good lord helps those who help themselves still stands true. I learned and now have earthquake insurance, just in case... And in the case of homeowners the same applies. With the right landscaping and defensible space, homes can be saved like this one.
- Mike
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Again, just because people have rebuilt in the same place over and over for years, in exactly the same way, doesn't justify it, OR make it right.
Fire resisitive construction doesn't matter? How about that lone stuco house with the Spanish tile roof that survived while every house for blocks around it burned down? I believe that was also in the Oakland fire.
To me the bottom picture in your post speaks volumes. Proper fire break saved that home. Seems so simple.
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Again, just because people have rebuilt in the same place over and over for years, in exactly the same way, doesn't justify it, OR make it right.
Ok... you still need more convincing here I can see. First off, let me qualify that I was involved with both helping residents change how they have been doing business for years, making their properties fire safe. We both are in agreement and I have seen it first hand that things can be done to make your house fire safe in the urban wildland interface.
Post fire properties that have been leveled to the ground always rebuild. And when they do, the requirements for reconstruction, including how the structures are built and the types of materials used are very stringent. Coupled with earthquake standards, I would venture to guess that the building code requirements were more restrictive than many places in the country.
It should be noted that the above homes were no where near the wildland urban interface, they were in city limits, what we call suburbia. The problem is that wildland fires miles away creates convection columns that carry burning embers to areas far away from the fire. I think I know what you are envisioning, which is the true wildland urban interface fires, that have homes built in the brush, right? Unfortunately, as the provided graphic shares, there are lots of reasons that are causative for homes to be lost in a wildfire.
And yes... These structures are a nightmare, and engine companies have the ability to make the call whether the structure is a loser or worth the risk to save. There is a reason why so many of these houses burn to the ground.
Having assisted both friends and homeowners with the rebuilding process, I can assure you Don, people rebuild on their property, but not the same way and sans any ornamental vegetation. It's gone. These homes typically don't have to worry much about wildland fires, unless, as pointed out in the provided graphics that outlines reasons why some fire resistive homes still burn down no matter what you do unless you construct a concrete bunker... like some people have successfully done. If you live in the foothills of California, wildfire is a way of life, just like earthquakes, drought and overpopulation.
- Mike
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Mike, that's easy. The term "tanker" was around long before NIMS.
In fact, NIMS now uses the term "tender/tanker" to describe a large mobile water supply apparatus.
The reason - the original NIMS terminology committee had a lot of FIRESCOPE guys on it and they got the left coast terminology adopted. Regardless of how it developed, when NIMS uses the term "tanker" to refer to the relatively tiny number of water-dropping aircraft compared to the thousands of mobile water supply apparatus that use that same terminology, it's a giant case of the tail wagging the dog.
The reality is that NIMS uses the terminology as you state the facts, and the additional reality is that this particular terminology makes no sense.
Example: Large tank trucks that previously hauled fuel, milk, or non-potable water have been converted to fire service mobile water supply apparatus. They are termed "tankers" when built, then suddenly become "tender" when converted for fire service use.
Example: When fire apparatus operators obtain the DOT Commercial Driver's License endorsement required to drive mobile water supply apparatus, they obtain a "Tanker" endorsement.
Example: The large, liquid-carrying compartment on a mobile water supply apparatus is called a "tank", not a "tend".
...sometimes facts are facts while being nonsensical. This particular piece of NIMS terminology is one example.
"Tanker" for mobile water supply apparatus and "Air Tanker" for the water-dropping planes would make more sense.
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Actually Mike, my department has a mobile refueling apparatus that was a fuel delivery "tanker" before we purchased it and painted it red.
Now it is termed "Fuel Tender 1". That identifier is lettered right on the...tank.
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I could not agree with you more. Changes are made all the time to the ICS system, why not NIMS? Seems that anyone with common sense could figure out that we need terminology that is acceptable because it makes sense.
Hmmm... Your closer to Washington D.C... Is that where one would start?
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Permalink Reply by Olivia Jones on
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Don, I couldnt agree more. We fight the same fight in my district with dispatch using ten codes and we will repeatedly ask them by radio and phone what exactly a code whatever is and why should I care. Now when they dispatch for an accident with injuries we all know what to expect.
However I feel what Mark said getting everyone away from 10 codes can be hard. A few years ago I came across a call report that was written entirely in code. I was floored that anyone thought that was ok in todays fire service.
It has been said and I will confirm I am firmly planted in the camp of if you do it right all the time you wont have to question yourself at any time. In the military they tell you all the time "Train like you Fight" and there have been times when all of us have heard some intructor in a class from department level to state fire academy When you test you dont do it this way Im just doing this cause.........
If WE dont collectively take a stand and start setting a higher standard in fire service where will we end up?
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