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Longstick
Social climber
Seattle, WA
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Ron, that time lapsed video you posted is the best example of what a catastrophic wind shift would do to push the smoke and embers down ...and create a carpet of fire ignitions. There would be spontaneous ignitions and torching....for up to a mile ahead ....seen it...
I am getting better... it just hurts. This has weather similarities to Storm King. Back then, though at a nearby fire with we had about three days of crew shut-down in the late afternoon... the same t-cell actions around 4-6 pm... as the condensing columns driven upward by the heat...finally cooled ...and crashed down sending piles of wind in a 360. I was a perched on rocks looking down and waiting it out on one of those days. I will never forget the feeling when in 10 minutes the wind shifted 180 ... with 40 mph gusts. Guys looked at each other with bug-eyes...yelling at each other cause the wind made so much noise... we knew this would have caught us if we were anywhere under that smoke. We understood... exclaiming....this is a lesson ...never forget...cause this is what happened yesterday at Storm King...and not boss was going to let it happen again.
Oh, but if you based the expected winds on what had gone on in the AM...and early afternoon...then you would be teased ... as the pattern was steady direction in wind...usual heat convection breezes upslope.... then the thunderheads loomed... and boom...it got squirrely.
And that call-in radio ... good on you... yeah...no retardant...would work... and I bristle seeing photos of retardant lines that are along the edge of a wildfire after ....dropped there after the conditions has quieted.. And the caption to the photo reads, "Fire retardant stops fire along southern edge of Yarnell.
... stopped the fire?!? Are you kidding me!!! It stopped a creeper fire line...not one which was moving and leap-frogging 1/2 mile at a gallop.
Please don't mislead folks into thinking as long as we got air attack over us ...we good....no...no...
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Radish
Trad climber
SeKi, California
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Just really sad and tragic news! So feeling for the families that have to go through this tragic event! We are on duty in fire right now and it was such a sad eye opener to all of us here in SEKI! We're praying for the folks in Prescott, our Brothers in Fire!
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ontheedgeandscaredtodeath
Social climber
SLO, Ca
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wow. I just came out of a backpacking trip with my kids and learned about this. I fought fires for 5 seasons in AZ, three on a hotshot crew in central AZ so this hits home a bit. So sorry for all involved.
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climbski2
Mountain climber
Anchorage AK, Reno NV
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bump for Heroes
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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The memorial service is today in Prescott.
RIP Granite Mountain Hotshots
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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There were some very brave firefighters who entered the burning Asiana plane
on Saturday. They definitely saved some lives.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
LA Times:
Asiana Airlines crash first responders still 'running on adrenaline'
By Kate Mather
July 9, 2013, 9:01 a.m.
San Francisco Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White hailed her department's response to the Asiana Flight 214 crash, saying she "couldn't be prouder" of those who "really put their life on the line" by climbing into the fiery wreckage and pulling out passengers.
Hayes-White spoke to The Times on Monday, after some of the first responders described their actions in an emotional news conference.
"Most of us that were out on the airfield Saturday have not had a chance to catch our breath," Hayes-White said. "We're still sort of running on adrenaline, I'd say."
As jet fuel streamed off the wing in the immediate aftermath of the crash-landing, firefighters ran up the aircrafts inflated escape chutes to get to those trapped inside. A police officer without protective gear joined them, entering through the breached tail section and clearing a passage by tossing out luggage and wrecked overhead bins.
Lt. Christine Emmons said she saw fire Lt. Dave Monteverdi run up the emergency chute of the airplane: I said if he can do it, I can do it.
Lanky, shy and admittedly nervous, Monteverdi told reporters that when firefighters realized our only way up was up the chute
thats what we did.
Hayes-White, as well as police officials, said their departments have encouraged those at the crash site to seek any and all assistance they may need to cope with the ordeal. "We have resources that will help us out and that's an important thing," San Francisco Police Lt. Gaetano Caltagirone told reporters.
"The first thing I did was brought my crew together and I told them, 'Yes, we wear the bulletproof vests, carry the guns, we try to save people's lives, we put our lives at risk. But we're also human beings, and we need to talk,'" Caltagirone said.
"In the days and weeks that follow, this will become less of a story," Hayes-White said. "But nevertheless, it still remains in our hearts and in our minds."
The fire chief was at her son's baseball game Saturday when she got the call of a hard landing at the airport. She anticipated broken bones, whiplash not an incident of this scale.
Usually if the Fire Department is called to the airport, it's "some mechanical issue, some landing gear issue," Hayes-White said, and the response team is pre-staged prior to the plane's arrival. "This time, we had no warning," she said, noting first responders were on scene about 3 minutes after the call came out.
Hayes-White rushed to the airport, lights flashing and sirens blaring. When she arrived about 20 minutes later, she said, she was "very impressed" by the response.
Doctors at San Francisco General Hospital have described the triaging that first responders did as life-saving. Hayes-White, who toured the hospital over the weekend, called that "very, very gratifying" to hear.
"We don't want to discount the fact that two lives were lost and there are still some critically ill patients that are fighting for their lives," she said. "But I do believe the work, the training and the team work -- all the hard work done ahead of time -- really paid off in this instance."
ALSO:
Asiana crash: Aviation experts question decision-making in cockpit
Doctor says he told AEG exec that Michael Jackson was a drug addict
Drug tests clean for Asiana responders who may have run over victim
Twitter: @katemather
kate.mather@latimes.com
SFO Firefighters' Bravery
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Jul 12, 2013 - 07:03pm PT
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An article from the LA Times a week ago. I have no idea of the accuracy of the reporting.
July 7, 2013, 6:00 a.m.
PRESCOTT, Ariz. Hours before the Granite Mountain Interagency Hotshots
climbed into the parched, craggy hills where they would die, one of them
woke his father with a phone call.
"We have a fire in Yarnell," said Kevin Woyjeck. "It's big and getting
bigger."
The lightning-sparked wildfire outside the tiny former gold-mining town had
spread to 200 acres, sweeping over deep canyons and big boulders, taking
fuel from chaparral rich with oils that burn hot and fast.
Still, the 21-year-old Woyjeck, the son of a firefighter, did not sound
worried.
Granite Mountain was an experienced crew, led by a supervisor old enough to
be Woyjeck's father he called the crew his kids and who was known to
turn down missions he didn't think were safe. The hotshots were supremely
fit and spoke with a swagger about their ability to absorb punishment. On
workouts they'd sometimes run a mile, then turn around and do 300 sit-ups
and 100 pull-ups.
And this wasn't a huge fire. It was what they call a Type III, not even
serious enough to call in one of the meteorologists who deploy on the big
blazes that can turn deadly with a turn of the weather.
Later that day, though, the winds would shift suddenly. The sky would
darken, the cool-headed supervisor would radio for help and, despite a
desperate attempt to use a helicopter to douse the suddenly advancing
flames , the Yarnell Hill fire would become one of the deadliest blazes in
the history of fighting wildfires.
None of this seemed possible when Woyjeck spoke to his father at 6:45 a.m.
June 30. The Prescott-based crew had fought fires across the West, and now
it would tackle one in its own backyard.
Woyjeck promised his father he would call that night.
*::*
As the fire advanced that morning, west of Arizona Highway 89 between
Yarnell and Peeples Valley, other members of the hotshots crew, 20 men
strong, were texting home about the task ahead.
"I think I'm going to be out here a while on this one," Andrew Ashcraft,
29, a father of four, wrote to his wife. He added later: "It's getting
really wild out here Peeples Valley is trying to burn down."
The crew established a safety zone at a large ranch near Yarnell,
authorities said, with a bulldozed path leading to it. If the fire took a
nasty turn, they expected to retreat there.
At 8 a.m., Yarnell's retired fire chief, Peter Andersen, watched from his
home in the town's Glen Ilah subdivision as one of the hotshots' squarish
transport trucks, called buggies, rumbled toward the blaze.
Andersen climbed a hill and saw air tankers drop loads of slurry onto the
fire. He figured the crews had it under control.
Then, at 1 p.m., with temperatures in triple digits, came a knock on his
door. Authorities were urging residents to evacuate.
"From what?" he said.
He refused.
Just 24 minutes later, hotshot crewman Wade Parker, 22, sent his mother a
text.
"We're on a 500-acre fire in Yarnell," Parker wrote. "Temps supposed to get
up to 116. I gotta pretty good headache. Pray for me."
Parker was a Prescott native and fireman's son who had ridden in the back
seat of his father's fire truck as a child. He was engaged to be married
Oct. 19.
Like others on the hotshot crew, so named because such teams descend on the
hottest part of a fast-moving fire, Parker wore heavy protective gear and
lugged 50 pounds of equipment. Temperatures peaked that day at 103 degrees.
At 2:05 p.m., the National Weather Service in Flagstaff called the Yarnell
Hill fire dispatch center to warn of an approaching thunderstorm. Prescott
got some rain, but not the fire zone.
"We could really use a little rain down here," Ashcraft texted his family
at 3:19.
Eleven minutes later, the weather service sent out another thunderstorm
warning.
At 4:04 p.m., Parker sent his mother a photograph from his perch on a rocky
ridgeline. Below, a massive wall of gray smoke was racing toward the town.
"This thing is running straight for yarnel. jus starting to evac. you can
see fire on the left town on right. DO NOT POST THIS ON FACEBOOK OR ANY
OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA DEAL!!!!" He didn't want to start a panic.
Around this time, Ashcraft's wife, Juliann, sent him another text. She was
worried because she hadn't heard from him in a while: "Are you sleeping
down there?"
No response.
*::*
Sometime after 4 p.m., as the thunderstorm raged overhead, the wind did two
dangerous things. It reversed course and blew north-northeast. It also
doubled in speed to 26 miles per hour. Rain evaporated before it hit the
earth.
Scrambling across granite hills, among the pinyon pine and thick
underbrush, the 19 hotshots were carving a fire break to stop the flames'
surge toward the town.
A 20th crewman, Brendan McDonough, 21, was positioned nearby as a lookout.
By 4:30 p.m., the evacuation order became mandatory in Yarnell. Andersen,
the former fire chief, grabbed his cat carriers and managed to herd six of
his eight cats inside. Stepping outside his house, he felt the hot wind
blowing in his face. "It felt like a convection oven," he said.
To the west he saw a swirling column of black, ember-spitting smoke. It
made him think of an approaching tornado.
The intense wind had "split the fire like a horseshoe," driving it toward
Glen Ilah, Andersen said. In his years fighting fires, he could not
remember a fire like this one, which he called "erratic ... crazy ... a
freak of nature."
He fled south in his car down Arizona 89, through miles of smoky haze.
It is unclear how many of the townspeople had joined him in fleeing by
then. Firefighters assumed there were holdouts, and it was later learned
that some homeowners had indeed stayed.
"There's always an assumption that people's lives are in jeopardy," said
Jeff Knotek, a retired Prescott fire captain who has participated in
briefings on the fire.
The crew had been fighting the fire from the back on a ridge, but the wind
shift apparently put the team directly in its path, officials said. Also, a
wind inversion occurred, meaning the wind was being pulled down toward the
ground, smothering the firefighters in smoke and creating what Knotek
called a "zero-visibility situation."
Wind gusted at more than 40 miles per hour, pushing the flames ferociously.
The fire "came around and hooked them," Knotek said.
The lookout, McDonough, following procedure, escaped to safety after
warning the others. "The lookout said, 'It's hot and heavy and I'm out of
here,'" said Dick Mangan, a retired fire investigator. "The message to the
crew was that they better do something too."
Wade Parker's father would later learn that helicopter crews had
desperately tried to spot his son's crew through the thick smoke. Sikorsky
choppers dropped water onto the area, but the pilots could only guess where
the trapped men might be.
Firefighter Todd Pederson heard the radio traffic. "I could hear the guys
trying to get a hold of [reconnaissance] aircraft to direct help from
helicopters," he said. "The guys wanted them to know where they were
because they were in trouble."
Officials have said the men lost radio contact at 4:30 p.m. But Colleen
Turbyfill, mother of Granite Hill crew member Travis Turbyfill, said she
learned from fire officials that the crew radioed in at 4:47 p.m. to say it
was trapped.
Prescott Fire Department spokesman Wade Ward said the crew's supervisor,
Eric Marsh, was "calm, cool and collected" when he relayed the
deteriorating situation.
At 4:48 p.m., Colleen Turbyfill said, the crew called back to say the team
was dug in. The firefighters were deploying their sleeping bag-like fire
shelters, which they are trained to do in less than 20 seconds. It was a
desperate measure.
Ward said Marsh, 43, remained composed as he radioed with this news. "They
were in a tight spot and everyone knew this was going to be a bitch," Ward
said. "But his voice was very calm: 'We're deploying.'"
The firefighters fell silent, lost somewhere beneath a roiling blanket of
dark smoke.
By 5:30, the radio traffic was speaking of downed firefighters.
They had been lost for an hour or two when the smoke parted enough for a
helicopter crew to spot the bodies. There were 19 of them.
*::*
The men were found huddled near one another.
The hotshots had grouped together in their shelters, a strategy that might
have allowed them to communicate "and give each other confidence that they
can survive this," said Mangan, the retired fire investigator. "The intent
is to reflect the radiant heat, and grouping together also helps that."
Ward observed that "They all stayed together. Nobody ran."
Some of them were in their shelters, some out. This suggested that they
didn't have time to take cover or that they abandoned the shelters because
it was too hot.
An observer from the helicopter and a team of local firefighters found
their way to the bodies and kept watch. The bodies were lined up in body
bags on the scorched ground and draped with American flags.
Officials debated whether it was possible to remove the bodies by
helicopter. It was deemed too risky. Patches of ground still sizzled. In a
matter of hours, the fire had spread tenfold.
Through the night, bulldozer crews plowed through hot topsoil, rocks and
thick brush to create a path to the bodies. They reached the bodies around
5 a.m. Monday.
Officials worked to identify the bodies, sometimes relying on dental
records and identifying marks such as scars and tattoos.
On Wednesday morning, a procession of the fire crew's buggies, nicknamed
Alpha and Beta, were driven down from the hill.
"They smell like fires and smelly guys," Ward said. "That smell is really
affectionate for us in a strange way."
He added, "It was very sad to see them come back without our friends."
*::*
Investigators from around the country have arrived to determine what went
wrong.
They will examine dispatch logs, weather records, radio conversations,
accounts of witnesses. They will have many questions: Who was in charge?
How good was the communication? Was there an order to pull back? When did
it come?
They will study the carbon monoxide levels in the fallen firefighters'
blood, which may help determine how long the men survived on the hill.
The Prescott-based hotshots had flown across the West battling wildfires,
but this one happened close to home. Five were born in Prescott; two more
grew up there. Lloyd Burton, a University of Colorado professor who studies
fire, wondered whether that influenced their approach.
"They probably had friends in Yarnell," he said. "They had close ties to
the land and the people who lived there. Maybe this led them to get a
little closer to the fire and they may have fought it more aggressively."
The 19 lost firefighters left behind 11 children, 10 widows and three
fiancees. Three were expecting children.
A few, including Kevin Woyjeck, left behind firefighter fathers whose paths
they had followed.
"Who was I to tell him he couldn't do it, when I did?" said Joe Woyjeck, a
Los Angeles County fire captain who raised his son in Seal Beach, where the
family still lives.
The father had helped the son select the Granite Mountain team. Recently he
had been urging Kevin to hop a flight to Los Angeles, to complete his
application for a local fire crew. But it was a busy fire season, and his
son would reply that he couldn't leave his men.
"You got to understand, Dad, there's nobody else."
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pk_davidson
Trad climber
Albuquerque, NM
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Jul 17, 2013 - 07:59pm PT
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For those of you interested, from a hot shot friend:
"Here's where you should give a few bucks: The Wildland Firefighter Foundation. http://www.wffoundation.org/
This is a private, non-profit group that was founded in the wake of South Canyon. Initially, they sold T-Shirts to help out the families of firefighters who are injured or killed on the line. They're magical. I've seen their magic first hand, and I think the world of this group."
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Sep 29, 2013 - 11:02pm PT
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rSin (Arson??):
This thread is to help us remember the brave men and women who have made the ultimate sacrifice to help protect our country and its' citizens. Can we talk politics and make personal attacks elsewhere?
Thanks,
Albert Newman
Flagstaff
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Sep 29, 2013 - 11:44pm PT
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rSin, or "our sin" or Arson wrote:
"staking out every mention of the losses as a memorial is bullsh#t
its little more than worship of the regiment which got em killed
enjoy"
rSin, the title of this thread is "R.I.P. to our fire-fighting brothers". If you have problems with the federal fire policy or how we manage public lands there are many threads on ST which discuss these issues. Is it too much to ask that you keep your ricin on other threads? These are men and women who have died serving this country.
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Sep 30, 2013 - 09:03pm PT
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Ron, I noticed that about the gps and wonder what the investigation team was thinking. I do know that a lot of air attack platforms and double pilot aircraft uses IPads to track weather, storm cells, etc. I'm not sure how practical the technology we have right now is for a handheld device like that to be carried by a hotshot crew on the move.
As difficult as it is to read, I've been studying this latest report.
Some sadly curious observations include, the smoke column ("pyrocumulus") reached an astonishing 40,000 ft that day. Investigators believe the crew had about two minutes from the time the fire first crested the nearby ridge and became visible to the time of their deployment, as the fire was moving 10-12 miles per hour with 60 to 80 foot flame lengths. Temperatures of the flame front were an estimated 2000 degrees F.
Two minutes, standing in brittle, ten foot tall brush, watching a monster wall of flame headed your way.
With absolutely no hope of escape.
RIP Granite Mountain IHC
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Nov 12, 2013 - 09:56pm PT
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A video account of the Yarnell Hill Fire. A 20 minute summary of the accident investigation report.
Worth viewing if you have been following this tragedy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSxSqjRmxIE
RIP Granite Mountain IHC
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the albatross
Gym climber
Flagstaff
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Dec 11, 2013 - 07:34pm PT
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http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-yarnell-fire-20131205,0,5748857,full.story#axzz2nDNMDKDa
Arizona agency fined $559,000 in Yarnell Hill firefighter deaths
An Arizona safety panel's report finds numerous management lapses in the Yarnell Hill blaze that killed 19 members of the Granite Mountain hotshot crew.
TUCSON The 19 firefighters who perished when 40-foot flames overtook them in a rocky canyon near Prescott in June were the victims of poor planning and bad communication, forced into a losing battle to protect structures and pasturelands that were "indefensible," a state safety commission concluded Wednesday.
The Arizona State Forestry Division, responsible for managing the Yarnell Hill fire, now faces a $559,000 fine, one of the largest such fines ever levied in the state.
A report prepared by independent consultants to the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health found that members of the Granite Mountain hotshot team were called on to fight the fast-moving blaze outside the town of Yarnell with inadequate briefing, no good maps and radios that left them without good communication with incident commanders.
"We found no evidence that a risk assessment for the strategies and tactics were examined," said the report, prepared for the state by Wildland Fire Associates. Fire overseers "reported flame lengths of 40 feet with rates of speed up to 16 miles per hour occurred, yet no one seemed to recognize these signs as trigger points that should have led to a change in tactics and relocation of [the crew]," it found.
Wednesday afternoon, the Arizona Industrial Commission voted unanimously to accept the findings of the report, which also called for payments of $25,000 to dependents of each of the 19 firefighters.
Arizona State Forestry officials said they had not yet reviewed the safety agency's report. Fire officials have 15 days to appeal the findings, said Abbie Fink, Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health spokeswoman.
The voluminous report found that a combination of safety violations including lack of critical personnel, incomplete analysis and hours-long delays took place during the fire, which burned more than 8,000 acres of wild land and destroyed over 100 structures.
Like a previous report prepared by state fire investigators in September, the new examination found that the Granite Mountain crew was caught off guard when a sudden change in wind sent towering flames suddenly racing toward homes in Yarnell and toward the crew, which had left its previous zone of relative safety.
At a meeting Wednesday afternoon, Marshall Krotenberg, the safety compliance supervisor for the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health, outlined myriad violations to commissioners.
Forestry officials failed, for example, to include safety officers in crucial coordination meetings because of unexplained delays, he said.
"Apparently the ball got dropped," Krotenberg said. He said safety officers during those gatherings would have made a difference.
On several points, he criticized what he called fire management staff's ill-advised decision to prioritize protection of structures over firefighter safety.
"After looking at all the facts, I believe it's just too risky to stay that long in an attempt to protect structures that have been deemed indefensible," Krotenberg said.
While fire officials had been given daily afternoon thunderstorm reports, there was never a plan to account for such a weather event, he said.
The safety agency's report is a departure from the September report that found no evidence of recklessness or negligence in the Yarnell Hill wildfire.
The earlier report, produced by a team of local, state and federal investigators convened from around the country, "found no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol," but did note some problems with radio communication.
That report was commissioned by the state forestry division, which is now subject to the workplace safety penalties.
Marcia McKee, the mother of Grant McKee one of the 19 firefighters who died called the previous state report a "whitewash" in a claim she filed against the state, the city of Prescott and Yavapai County officials.
"Its primary goal is to avoid blaming anyone," said the claim filed on Nov. 14. "As a result, a trusting, uninformed person reading the Yarnell Hill Fire Report uncritically would think that the death of 19 men was just bad luck and no one's fault which is false."
McKee's claim seeks $36 million.
Wednesday's report notes that there were management planning issues from the beginning.
An initial attack on the blaze on the morning of June 29 was delayed because a helicopter large enough to move the crew safely was not available, the report found.
"People with local area expertise did not tell [them] about local trails and roads that could be used to hike in to the fire. By mid-afternoon, on June 29, the fire jumped over the two-track trail," according to the report. "The initial attack forces had clearly failed to stop the fire and put it out in a manner consistent with firefighter and public safety and values to be protected."
Also at issue was the handing off of the initial fire incident command team to the one that took over on June 30.
The second crew took over command even though certain key members of the team hadn't arrived yet, the report stated.
The ultimate result was confusion and miscommunication, according to the findings.
Both teams "failed to convey a coherent strategic plan for suppressing the fire that was uniformly understood by ground and air resources from initial attack through the entrapment and burn over," according to the report.
The Granite Mountain crew was found to be appropriately rested and trained, but the area around Yarnell, thick with chaparral, was "primed to burn" after not experiencing a wildfire for more than 45 years, the report found.
A 20th crew member, appointed as a lookout away from the rest of the crew, was separated from his comrades and survived.
According to the report, the 19 firefighters all died huddling next to one another, sheltering in a 24-by-30-foot area as temperatures reached 2,000 degrees.
cindy.caramo@latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-ff-yarnell-fire-20131205,0,6692636.story#ixzz2nDSUGWbl
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