Lower North Fork Fire Homeowners Commission Briefing
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Lower North For Fire Homeowners Presentation of Cause of Fire
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Lower North Fork Fire Homeowners Commission Briefing
- 1. Lower North Fork Fire Review August 13, 2012 Prepared For: Lower North Fork Wildfire Commission
- 2. Planning Monitoring Reaction Execution
- 3. “Only error was decision not to monitor third day” - Bill Bass, Review Team Leader Report conclusions are not complete. (Based on reported data)
- 4. • Prior approval of the Sheriff’s Department and Local Fire Department before a burn permit is issued. • 3 inches of snow on the ground • No bigger tha a 6’ by 6’ by 6’ pile • Final approval on burn day • Fire DEAD OUT (smokeless) by 4 PM of Burn Day Are these Precautions Consistent with CSFS Requirements?
- 5. High Risk Rating Definition: • Limited Containment Opportunities Exist • Additional resources (people and equipment) would be required CSFS Plan Rated this Risk “Moderate” and as a Result Assigned: • Day 2 - 1 person for 4 hours • Day 3 - Unmanned • Day 4 - Wildfire Breakout 3 people Are Burn Plan Risk Assessments Critically Reviewed?
- 6. CSFS Burn Plan Assessed Risk “Moderate Damage to Vegetation, Habitat or Improvements.” “No Residences Expected to be Involved.” No Evacuation Trigger Points Identified in Burn Plan Is there a Culture of Risk Acceptance?
- 7. October 15, 2011 Prescribed Burn Escape July 2008 Oct 2011 Mar 2012 Is There a Critical Process to Incorporate Changing Planning Assumptions?
- 8. High Risk Rating Definition: • High fuel loadings or concentrations present • Terrain encompasses a wide range in slope steepness, abrupt changes in slope, and several directional aspects that lead to . . . Unpredictable local winds and microclimate differences. • Resulting variations in fire behavior may present major control challenges. Was this Tragedy a result of “Freak Weather Conditions” or Poor Planning?
- 9. “By design mastication . . . increases surface fuels which are much drier and more easily ignited.” - Prescribed Fire Review 4/13/12) “A comparison of different treatment techniques showed that masticated treatments supported the highest rates of spread, fire intensity, flame lengths and levels of tree mortality.” Based on this Knowledge… Should Masticated Fuels be Burned in Hot & Dry Conditions?
- 10. Called to a smoke investigation in the area of Lower North Fork prescribed burn, Had dispatch contact CSFS they advised all the smoke is within the black their engine was in the area earlier, CSFS advised NF units could stand down. Curt D, Rogers, Chief - North Fork Fire Department Stand Down Report – March 24th, 4:30 PM • Fire was unmanned from 2 PM Saturday until 10 AM Monday – 44 Hours • NOAA Saturday March 24th Forecast called for gusts to 50 MPH by Monday afternoon • CSFS decides to send in 3 man Mop up Crew with no Back-up Plan or Resources Shouldn’t Changing Weather Conditions Modify the Monitoring Plan?
- 11. Very Dry Extreme • Issued March 21, 2012. Valid through Monday March 26, 2012 • Weather and fuel dryness (left) indicate widespread increasing winds and low humidity • Large Fire Risk Outlook (right) showed high to extreme risk Was Evidence Available Before the Prescribed Burn Indicating Extreme Caution Required?
- 12. Smoke seen from Kuehster Rd Saturday Afternoon NOAA Weather Forecast for Sunday March 24th “SW winds 19 to 20 MPH with gusts to 45” Weather was found to be the immediate causal factor in nearly 50% of the escapes reviewed. (Dether and Black, 2006) CSFS Decides to Not Monitor Burn Site on Sunday Are These Facts Consistent with the Decision Not to Monitor on Sunday?
- 13. • Problems with Communications • 2:30 PM Curt Rodgers (NFVD) Identified Need for Evacuation Trigger Points to CSFS • 4:50 PM Evacuation Notice Issued • 5:02 PM Reverse 911 Calls – Many Calls to Wrong Addresses • No Call Back from Previous 911 Callers as Promised, including Our 3 Neighbors that were Killed • Was Operational Testing of This Critical Capability Ever Accomplished? Why didn’t contingency planning and operational testing identify flaws?
- 14. Planning • Planning • No Useful Contingency Plan in Area of Previous Fire Escape Monitoring Reaction • No Change in Burn Plan after Escapement • Plan did not capture contingencies for a worse case scenario which became the actual scenario • Monitoring • CSFS Ignored Forecasted Increasing Winds and Did Not Show Up for 2 Days • CSFS Stood Down a Responding NF Fire Engine Saturday March 24 Ignoring Increased Fire Activity at Burn Site • Reaction • Incorrect routing of automated Reverse 911 and NO CALL BACK to previous callers who had been told it was “only a controlled burn”
- 15. Land Value has Decreased at least 15% for Stigmatized Property 75% for Total Devastation Reclamation Costs $2000 to $5000 per Acre for Nominal Damage $7000 to $1200 per Acre for Steep Slopes and Severity Tree Removal Costs $130 per Tree on Nominal Slopes $ 10,500 per Acre If Trees can be Marketed
- 16. • Waldo Canyon Fire - 1 Month Ago • Governor requested and received National FEMA funds for victims • High Park Fire – 2 Months Ago • State already spending funds to reseed/mitigate area • Lower North Fork Wildfire - 4 ½ Months Ago • No commitment made to victims • No funding support • No Mitigation/Reforestation support Accountability/Justness?
- 18. • No notification of nearby neighbors as required by CSFS Burn Plan (not in Brief?) • Ignored increasing predicted and actual wind speeds • Limited or no consideration of High Risk of burning Masticated fuels in this terrain • No contingency plan for fire escape and containment, leaving 100s of homes unprotected • Cursory or underestimated Risk Assessment using USFS checklists • Inadequate communications, resources and people to respond to contingencies • Delayed Evacuation Decision despite HIGH RISK to civilians • Incorrect routing of automated Reverse 911 and NO CALL BACK to previous callers who had been told it was “only a controlled burn”
- 19. “Forest thinning alone, especially when accomplished via whole tree (removal), reduces forest biomass and may be expected to ameliorate fire behavior and fire severity.” (source) (get a statement about cost of logging no tree cutting) Why does the forest service persist in dangerous and ecologically destructive (global warming) burn tactics instead of income producing logging and letting citizens remove trees? (picture of thinned trees)
- 20. Planning document ratings 3 Low 41 Moderate 1 High Sample definitions of moderate ratings taken from _________ “Potential for spot fires that can propagate . . . But can be held by Skilled and prompt holding action.” (emphasis added) “Residual burning may last up to 3 days with moderate potential for escapes.” (see mastication) Why did the Burn Boss release all personnel on the third day DESPITE observing smoke on the previous day with predicted wind speeds dramatically increasing.
Editor's Notes
- Intro: Thank you for volunteering to look at the LNFFAlso want to thank Mountain Resource Center, all the other volunteers who were there for us immediately after the fire, all our neighbors in the Mountain Community who have jumped in offering help and making donations and we especially want to thank the brave Firefighters and Police who risked their lives to try and protect us, nothing we talk about tonight is intended in anyway to minimize or denigrate their service: they are the hero's of story and the ones who have always been there for us in natural disasters and horrific mistakes like the LNFF
- We have spent the time gathering these facts despite the incredible turmoil in our lives trying to find new shelter and trying to figure out how to deal with the loss of loved ones, fears, depression, uncertainties, stress and anger caused by this tragedy, facing the insurance company demands to create inventories of a lifetime of memories and possessions that were lost due to the mistakes that were made outside our control, and repeated testimonies to State agencies to try to get the bureaucracy to step up to it’s responsibility in a timely manner.But most important we have done it to try and assure that our neighbors will never have to endure the pain we are going through.The information we will present is not our conjecture, it is all taken from the public record and we hope to show you how specific issues were ignored or underestimated in each of the activities we’ve depicted here
- Although the Governor’s IndependentPrescribed Fire Review, headed by Bill Bass, identified numerous issues and significant problems, the public summary of the disaster was as stated. Using the Review Team’s well documented report and other public records we will show you why that conclusion is completely inadequate!
- We also thought it would be aninstructive juxstaposition to review the requirements that private citizens must adhere to when doing a “controlled” burn for you to have in the back of your minds when you consider the activities that occurred during the LNFF wildfire. Roy Johnson
- The Definition provided on this chart is taken from CSFS burn checklists. This is the actual 3D topographic map of the area. You can see there are only 2 major roads in the area, and only one dirt road that might have been used to contain a “slopover” and then nothing but incredibly rugged canyons and gorges on increasingly steeper terrain until you reach Kuehster road. I know you saw it and I’ve personally walked the land from the burn site and it would be impossible for anyone to keep up with an escaped fire on foot without prepositioned assets including water to contain the fire, and yet the CSFS Burn Plan only rated the Risk, MODERATE! Furthermore, using that same mentality they only assigned the following people to monitor the still smoking site the following days and as you will probably recognize it was not 24 hours the site was unmonitored but nearly 44. Not astonishingly it was noted in several of the documents we reviewed that prescribed burns don’t escape on burn day!Furthermore, my line of business, building and launching rockets, while admittedly a high risk profession; from a risk perspective, it is not unlike the task of setting fires which historically do escape and threaten the homes and lives of the citizens who expect protection from these same agencies. When we go through even the most routine launch campaigns we develop detailed risk plans and contingency plans for all eventualities in a peer review environment and then have those plans critically reviewed by an independent review group to assure we have not ignored anything or accidently fallen into the trap of complacency or group think. We were not able to find out if such a process occurs in the forest service, but as we will show in the following slides it either doesn’t exist or is ineffective.
- Although the Forest Services assessment is correct for the burn site and the immediate vicinity, as we discussed in the previous chart a simple review of the topography shows the steep terrain, numerous gullies, and lack of roads to provide for contingency operations much less containment of an escaped fire. Furthermore, what passed for contingency planning in this plan included no strategies for containment beyond the first gully and as indicated in the quote since there was no prepositioning of water, equipment or firefighters. In fact, the nearest backup was at least ½ hour away and since it was volunteers probably longer. And as communications captured during the fire showed, there was not even a plan distributed showing the backup responding firefighters how to get to the burn site. As we say in my business, “Hope is not a Strategy!”But let’s talk for a moment about other cultures that have to deal with High Risk operations, they all have procedures and contingency plans to mitigate those high risks and make them low; they do not proceed with there operations with the majority of their risks categorized as Moderate or High as the LNFF Burn Plan did! Examples Rockets Airlines and Emergency rooms
- Add Beth’s taped recording of low probability (of what?) – Check second quote source with Roy
- The Rocky Area Daily Fire Potential Map rates fire danger based on fuel dryness, humidity, wind and Temperature. The map issued March 21, 2012 and valid for March 26, 2012 s fire danger of” High” to “Extreme”.
- 911 told Callers they would get back to them if any change. Some were told not to keep calling.
- (actual gusts 79 mph on Wildfire Breakout day while 3 people “mopping up”)(actual gusts 79 mph on Wildfire Breakout day while 3 people “mopping up”)(was there ever a live test of the system) (3 examples of moderate risk (pilot, rocket medical))