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IAFF president slams Calif. 'stay-and-defend' plan
From Firerescue1
http://www.firerescue1.com/fire-news/449011-iaff-president-slams-ca...
LOS ANGELES — If stay-and-defend is the best idea California's fire chiefs can come up with to do a better job containing the state's wildfires, my frustration is exceeded only by my concern for the state's residents. Stay-and-defend — outlined in several Times news articles, most recently in the Jan. 13 story, "Southern California fire chiefs debate stay-and-defend program" — should make people run and hide.
Exploring new ideas to protect Californians from the state's increasing number of wildfires is commendable, but stay-and-defend would be a failure. The program includes asking homeowners to pretend that a government education course on fire risk would provide them sufficient training to protect themselves and their property during a wildfire, thereby requiring fewer professional firefighters to be deployed.
Hearing anyone suggest that homeowners should not get out of harm's way is appalling. Hearing a public safety professional make the suggestion is shameless. Stay-and-defend is clearly a half-baked idea from people who believe that saving money is more important than saving lives.
Further reading is available at the LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-schaitberger23-2009jan23...
Hearing anyone suggest that homeowners should not get out of harm's way is appalling. Hearing a public safety professional make the suggestion is shameless. Stay-and-defend is clearly a half-baked idea from people who believe that saving money is more important than saving lives.
Stay-and-defend has had limited success in the Australian bush, where the tactic has been used for some time. But it has also led to disaster, and the homesteader program would not translate to a state as populous as California.
I'm not sure where they're getting their information from, but the stay and defend programs in Australia are far from being a disaster.
Most fatalities are not from the stay and defend- they're from people blindly trying to escape after it's too late and have been caught in firestorms or blindign smoke and crashing their vehicles.
The Australian public is being very clearly taught basic principles that they can adopt to make their home safer (Block downpipes and fill gutters with water, blocking doors, radiant heat safety, etc, etc).
They're also being taught (very clearly and loudly!) that just because you call 000 (Same as the USA 911 system), will not guarantee a big red truck arriving.
They're being taught to evalauate their safety and make an early decision to evacuate or to stay and defend.
Here's a link to some of the information being made available to the public:
http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/residents/index.htm
Feel free to check it out and make your own, informed decision....
http://www.firerescue1.com/fire-news/449011-iaff-president-slams-ca...
LOS ANGELES — If stay-and-defend is the best idea California's fire chiefs can come up with to do a better job containing the state's wildfires, my frustration is exceeded only by my concern for the state's residents. Stay-and-defend — outlined in several Times news articles, most recently in the Jan. 13 story, "Southern California fire chiefs debate stay-and-defend program" — should make people run and hide.
Exploring new ideas to protect Californians from the state's increasing number of wildfires is commendable, but stay-and-defend would be a failure. The program includes asking homeowners to pretend that a government education course on fire risk would provide them sufficient training to protect themselves and their property during a wildfire, thereby requiring fewer professional firefighters to be deployed.
Hearing anyone suggest that homeowners should not get out of harm's way is appalling. Hearing a public safety professional make the suggestion is shameless. Stay-and-defend is clearly a half-baked idea from people who believe that saving money is more important than saving lives.
Further reading is available at the LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-schaitberger23-2009jan23...
Hearing anyone suggest that homeowners should not get out of harm's way is appalling. Hearing a public safety professional make the suggestion is shameless. Stay-and-defend is clearly a half-baked idea from people who believe that saving money is more important than saving lives.
Stay-and-defend has had limited success in the Australian bush, where the tactic has been used for some time. But it has also led to disaster, and the homesteader program would not translate to a state as populous as California.
I'm not sure where they're getting their information from, but the stay and defend programs in Australia are far from being a disaster.
Most fatalities are not from the stay and defend- they're from people blindly trying to escape after it's too late and have been caught in firestorms or blindign smoke and crashing their vehicles.
The Australian public is being very clearly taught basic principles that they can adopt to make their home safer (Block downpipes and fill gutters with water, blocking doors, radiant heat safety, etc, etc).
They're also being taught (very clearly and loudly!) that just because you call 000 (Same as the USA 911 system), will not guarantee a big red truck arriving.
They're being taught to evalauate their safety and make an early decision to evacuate or to stay and defend.
Here's a link to some of the information being made available to the public:
http://www.cfa.vic.gov.au/residents/index.htm
Feel free to check it out and make your own, informed decision....
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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I went searching to see where the drive was in California for the stay-and-defend or leave-early program. I found and read a couple of articles, one of them I thought especially good, from the Los Angeles Times:
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wildfires3-2008aug03,0,1422...
Have a look, it also includes a story from a family who decided to stay. The story is one of hard work, bloody hard and bloody scary. But they survived, as did their home.
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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on
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EVERYONE PLEASE READ THE ARTICLE THAT TONY LINKED TO!!!!
Here it is again
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wildfires3-2008aug03,0,1422...
And again
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wildfires3-2008aug03,0,1422...
And again
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-wildfires3-2008aug03,0,1422...
It gives a great insight to the Aussie Stay and Defend program....
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Permalink Reply by Jay Nicholson on
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Part of the LA times article has confused 'Stay and Defend' with 'Shelter in Place.' Another article from the LA times is found at www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-poway26oct26,0,3420539.story . One of the guys in this article is a friend of mine. I keep telling him how stupid he was. But they did save many homes. Their story was to have been in the Reader's Digest but it was put on hold. The editors didn't want anybody playing copy-cat.
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Jay, the actions depicted in the article you linked to are not what we teach. That is having people play at being firefighters, a bad move, very dangerous.
We teach simple techniqes to allow people to defend their own home, to maybe defend a couple of homes. The only water an individual is to use is that which is on their own property - there is no need to access the hydrant system (which is a big NO here). The equipment we talk about is a mop and bucket, a plastic garden spray, a garden hose.
Simple tools, simple techniques - not pretend firefighters.
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Which is why I called him an idiot.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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If you are going to get people to leave their homes in the path of a wildfire, you need an excellent PIO/salesman, and you have to be able to convince the residents that either a) you can protect their homes or b) that their homes are unsavable, and that they need to save their lives by being somewhere else.
We have the same issues with hurricanes. What we've found is that a voluntary evacuation is voluntary, and a mandatory evacuation is a voluntary evacuation with less time and a lot more traffic. Mandatory evacuation orders are legally suspect, even when the populace respects them. In the U.S., people have the right to defend their property, even at the risk of their own lives.
I've experienced people that refused to evacuate because they were property-rich but cash poor, and couldn't afford to rebuild if they lost their homes. To these people, their homes literally ARE their life. They have an arguement that they're entitled to their share of the firefighting water - after all, they paid for it. This is especially true if they have a swimming pool portable pump, and some of the other defenses a few of the smarter SoCal folks have.
The U.S. is a nation built on individual and family rights, including property rights. We can make them clear and maintain defensible space, but we can't really make them leave if they don't want to go.
Ben
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Capt, have a good read of the postst that Tony P and I have put up- this works well (amazingly well!) here.
The fires in California are not small, they are rather large.
My friend, ours are just as big, if not bigger. That's why each year each country is sending FF's across to look, learn and help.
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How about if the state just equips the homeowners with this: http://www.barricadegel.com/
There are better things than water for home protection, and they don't require big fire pumps or lots of water.
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There's a similar one floating around here in Oz, but it doesn't seem to have really taken off. No one really seems to push and promote it.
I don't see why it couldn't be used though...
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Permalink Reply by Mick Mayers on
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I spent six weeks in Australia on a job study with various fire services (Queensland and New South Wales) and although I was skeptical, I saw it in action, and became less skeptical. Most of the success I saw was that people were educated to the dangers, they made efforts to "safe" their homes and property, and they understood when to get out of the way. In the time I spent there, I also saw several rural areas where they simply needed to come up with a solution because the nearest help wasn't going to be coming in a timely manner, so they equipped small pickup trucks with pumps and that kind of stuff.
I was there the year after the infamous Christmas Fire Season and when I say that these guys were handling some serious fires, I can't even begin to describe what they were dealing with. The fuels they were dealing with were way more dangerous than what we see on the US Eastern Seaboard, but similar to those found on the West Coast.
Conversely, these areas in California where this discussion has centered around have dissimilar terrain to what I saw in Australia and are WAY more populated. I'm not discounting my Aussie mates' experiences in Melbourne or anything, but some of the places where Californians seem to build, well, they're crammed in tight with lots of uphill and canyons and LOTS of wind. And not having made it to Melbourne, I can't say if it is the same there or not. It wasn't similar in Sydney or Brisbane.
I think that dismissing the Australian approach without studying its benefits is selling our Aussie brothers short. Would it work in the US? Some of these people can't even figure what lane they are supposed to drive in, and we're expecting them to make good decisions under stress? I think there is, however, some ideas we can take from their experiences and do a better job of enlisting the public to protect themselves ahead of time, like some of what is being done in Colorado Springs.
Peace, out.
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Mick, the education is the key component. Understand the issues, understand how to safe guard, etc. It's not about front line firefighting which is where I think this is getting mixed up with (I'm not clear if that is what is being pushed in the California area).
I'd suggest that NSW has the most extreme fires in the continent- you probably couldn't learn from a better bunch with their experience. (Though they're constantly calling the Victorians to come on up and save their butt!!!!)
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Thanks Mick. A nicely reasoned response! As Luke said, education is the key!
What year were you out here? "the infamous Christmas Fire Season" isn't a term used in my part of the country, we all place names on seasons to match the way they affect us! Having 'Christmas' in the name indicates that it was probalby in NSW? Their fire season is earlier than the more southern season, our worst time is normally in February (oh shit, that's where we are now isn't it?).
It's a pity that you couldn't also have come down to Victoria and South Australia, we're the ones that were behind the push for a change to the way people should respond to a bushfire threatening their home. The northern States were quite resistant to the change. In early days it was thought that houses 'exploded' when a firefront reached them - this attitude was strongly held throuout the country. A lot of research was done after a particularly bad season - this research showed that it was ember attack starting small fires that burnt most houses. Many people refused to believe this. It was possibly the way our national capitol, Canberra, was severely affected by wildfire in Jan 2003 that finally convnced a lot of people. Yes, the basic concept of 'prepare and then stay and defend or leave early' has been around for a long time here. But in no way was it a nationally held belief!
A side story to the thread. In the summer of 82/83, there were two US fire scientists out here, they were working with one of the principal Aussie fire scientists. The Aussie happened to live in an outer area of Melbourne, his house was set deep in amongst the trees. The three men were at the house when one of the worst fires in our history blew up. They were in the middle of it. The house and surrounds had been prepared, and these scientists saw what happens and what can be done to mitigate damage. They lived the theory. They and the house survived. It was estimated that day that the heat energy from the fire in the worst areas was greater than 100,000 kW per lineal metre. For this, a metre and a yard are close enough to be considered the same.
That fire, on the 16th Feb 1983, is known here as 'Ash Wednesday'. In Victoria alone over 200 fires started on that one day, 15,000 volunteer firefighters were involved in the firefights, 2,090 structures were destroyed. 47 people died. 13 of the fatalities were volunteers in the same service I'm in, the CFA.
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