Okay, I will admit it up front. I stole this title from Chief Alan Brunicini when he said it is not okay to die in a structure fire. In fact, it is not okay to die in any kind of fire, but I recently received a report of a firefighter fatality from the Cedar Fire in San Diego, California, during the 2003 siege. The timeline of events that led up to Steve Rucker’s death has once again prompted me to get involved in the fray. The final report is from the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF), the agency that was primarily responsible for management of the fire at the time.
Once again, I am not going to poke holes in the actions of the engine company at the time of the burnover or the other collateral actions that occurred throughout the burn period. I will try to pass on some ideas of how to go home after you are done. Understand that the incident commander at the time is a dear friend of mine and has been my mentor; I will go on record stating that he is probably one of the few out there who could have taken on the perfect storm. In fact, I fear what might have happened without his presence on this fire.
 1 Photos by author. |
The lengthy report focused on a backfire operation started by some personnel not involved in the planned action for that particular location. We tend to refer to that type of action as “independent action.” The philosophy of how to deal with independent action on fires of this nature is better left to others wiser than I. What I want to focus on is, How do we keep an engine company and its crew alive regardless of what happens to the fire environment, predictable or not? With that thought in mind, let’s review some of the things we should be doing when we are beating on the red devil as it burns in and around homes.
PROBLEM RECOGNITION
To better understand the environment into which you are going, you need to look at the typical I-Zone (the wildland urban interface zone, where homes and wildland meet) situations again. You find that many structures are threatened with very few or limited recourses. This, of course, heightens the anxiety of firefighters, managers, politicians, and citizens.
There is very little discretionary time to plan and organize. Stealing from Gordon Graham, a guru in the change-process area, if you have very little discretionary time and you are sliding in to that high risk/low frequency on the experience scale, the risk to your personnel is extremely high.
There will be little water supply available as a rule simply because it is usually rural or everyone is using the water up deploying master streams, sprinklers on roofs, and garden hoses. You must keep in mind that this is a wildfire, not a structure fire, and that should drive all your tactical considerations, but nonwildfire problems will be of great concern.
Now pay attention here: A key concern is that you will be fighting the fire where you normally would not attack a wildfire-the head of the fire (the front of the fire, generally the hottest portion, which moves in the direction of fire spread). This many times places your personnel in firestorm-like conditions (photo 1) that you try to avoid on a typical wildfire.
Finally, if it is a bad boy like the Cedar Fire, there will be despondency among your personnel and a tendency to give up, especially after getting whooped on for three days.
TACTICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Hopefully, there will be an overall strategy, and you will be deploying tactics to complement the strategy. Before applying any tactic, place special emphasis on Fire Order No. 2: “Initiate all action based on current and expected fire behavior.” I don’t want to elaborate on this too much, but one thing rings loud and clear to me. If you are going to send equipment and personnel to fires like this, then the personnel must have the training and experience to understand the fire environment and make judgment calls about the current and anticipated situation.
Oddly enough, in California, although it takes many months of inspections and training to get a heavy rescue certified under the USAR process for master mutual aid, there is no inspection of training and the capabilities of fire engines that might travel hundreds of miles to another fire environment involving urban interface conflagrations. These are first-line units of all types that will be sent out of their normal area of responsibility to assist. For example, the engine company that experienced the death came from Novato, California, about 450 miles from the fire. They may be structural or wildland engines, depending on the type of request.
Let me clarify. There is a process, but it is up to regional coordinators, and that is usually left to the chief overseeing the fire department’s operation. Although many of our chiefs are very diligent in this process, some are not, and there is the weak link. Too many times, as an incident commander, I have seen engines with improper equipment, servicing, personal protective equipment, communications, and training show up on these fires. By the way, wildfires activate the mutual-aid system in California hundreds of times during the summer and USAR about as often as the passing of Halley’s Comet. Where are our priorities? The lesson for chiefs is, it is very high risk and you don’t have to send them if they are not ready. But back to tactical considerations.
This fire had been burning very aggressively under Santa Ana conditions (very strong winds that blow from the California desert to the Pacific Ocean, characterized by low humidity, high temperatures) and had just switched to an on-shore flow (winds that blow from the ocean inland, pushing the fire in the opposite direction of the Santa Ana winds). The brush was still dry, the slope was just as steep, and the only real change was the direction of the wind, which was now up slope instead of down slope.
When you are getting ready to deploy, consider the life safety of all assigned personnel and any civilians first. One of the tools I use is LCES: Lookouts, Communications, Escape Routes, and Safety Zones. It is not enough to talk about these four things. Ask yourself: Do they truly exist, and are the choices valid for current and anticipated conditions?
Finally, when you are deployed and fighting fire, always be aware of the distinction that must be made as to whether you are engaged in perimeter control or straight up structure protection. Perimeter control is by far the best way to protect homes because you are putting out the wildfire. The point is this: If your crew is engaged in perimeter control and you decide to back off to do structure protection, they all need to know that because you have already laid out a plan to that effect and they will all go to predesignated locations to make it happen. Ah, once again experience raises its ugly head. You ask, “How do I know when this transition should occur?” Well, you should not be in charge of an engine company in this environment if you don’t.
ENGAGEMENT CRITERIA
Before you jump into this mess, ask yourself, When do I engage or disengage during this firefight? After you have the answer, share it with your staff. It relates directly back to perimeter control transitioning to structure defense or vice versa. You should have some trigger points that indicate disengagement or engagement. It might be based on relative humidity, winds, temperature, topographical boundaries breached, time and distance to safety zones relative to the fire’s orientation, loss of specialized support (such as aircraft), any operational considerations that hamper your actions (like fatigue), or just plan mission failure. The whole crew should know what the trigger points are. If you plan on a change of tactics based on a trigger, what will the change be? It might be to hold in place, change tactics, pull back to a safe area, or retreat and halt all actions. Once again, everyone should be on the same page.
If you are any type of firefighter, while talking about disengagement triggers, you will also talk about re-engagement criteria. Perhaps when the winds die down, the fire behavior decreases, more resources arrive, the fire reaches some barrier in your favor, or new tactics are agreed on and relayed up the chain of command. Once again, all members of your entourage need to be on the same page.
If you are a company officer, you have some responsibilities in this process. You must communicate the changes to all your subordinates and any affected adjacent forces. You must always account for your personnel, and you must ensure everyone follows the plan. Try to have a radio for all your crew or at least the most experienced of the group. Finally, you are a risk manager, and you must always reevaluate the situation constantly, since it is very dynamic, volatile, and violent. If you are given an assignment and you want to employ a risk-management process, try these options. You can drive up, assess and leave; assess, back in, and stay in the engine; assess, back in, flake out some hose, and locate your heat shields to protect the crew and the engine. Finally, you can back in, flake the lines, put some water in them, and work behind heat shields to attack the fire as it offers opportunities. We will talk about assess and leave more in this article.
UNSAFE ENVIRONMENT INDICATORS
This section is very general, but I am going to list some situations that alone or collectively might indicate a situation too dangerous that might make your efforts unsuccessful. The first is obvious but is ignored for so many reasons. There is no real safety zone or refuge available based on current or anticipated conditions. There is no place to safely park the fire engine. The fire is making sustained runs in live fuels such as brush or timber with little or no clearance between the fuel and you or the structure. You are observing extreme fire behavior with significant fire runs and active spot fires that are taking off as well. Your water supply will not last as long as the threat, and the fire intensity dictates you should leave right now. Concerning the structure itself, if more than one-quarter of the roof is burning well and it is windy or if there are broken windows with interior fire, move on. Finally, if you cannot safely remain at the structure and your escape route will be compromised, get out.
Let’s get back to experience here. I have been involved in wildfires since 1972. My interpretation of the situations listed above may be different from that of a less experienced municipal firefighter. In that case, always operate on the side of caution, risk managers, and assess and leave. You can always come back after the heat wave passes.
REFUGE CHOICES
After you have gone through the checklist above, recognize the unpredictability of I-Zone fire situations; the Cedar Fire is a classic example. You must have a mental understanding of refuge choices prior to deployment.
The best form of refuge is simply departing, if time allows. Yep, it is okay to leave and come back after it passes. I use this as much as possible by simply driving down the street to a location away from the main heat, let it blow by, and drive back in. Works great.
If you have planned well and the situation goes south and you are stuck, consider the structure as refuge. Prior to the fire’s arrival, have an entry location; prepare the house by closing windows and such, as indicated in I-Zone training; and enter before the fire hits. Lie below the windows, have a charged line available outside, and go back out to extinguish the home after the heat wave passes.
Third, consider using your vehicle. Make sure you place it in a position that protects it from the radiant heat, since you might need it.
FIRE SHELTERS
I won’t elaborate too much on fire shelters, as I have found that they are very difficult to use during an I-Zone scenario; and, frankly, leaving the area or using the structure or vehicle is my first choice. That being said, make sure your shelters are serviceable. That means take them out and look at them now and then. Make sure they are stored on the web gear where you can reach them-like a gun for a police officer, on the hip. Carry extra shelters in each vehicle so they can be used in the cab to reflect radiant heat, and train with them under real conditions, not just on the apparatus bay floor. Set up exhaust fans and deploy under heavy wind conditions, for example, or after running 100 yards first.
UNDERSTAND SAFETY ZONES
The Northwest Coordinating Group (NWCG) guidelines define a safety zone as “a preplanned area of sufficient size and suitable location that is expected to prevent injury to fire personnel from known hazards without using shelters.” My description is a location where you are not discovering what is under the seat of your vehicle while simultaneously calling out for your mother. In all seriousness, when considering a safety zone, consider the flame height at the location and the separation you will have from the flames. The theory is, radiant heat is your enemy in a safety zone, so base your separation distance on radiant heat. To help, try to get a separation that is at least four times the flame height, and it should be on all four sides if the fuel surrounds you. If you have 10-foot-tall brush, it will probably have 20- to 30-foot flames. Therefore, you will need at least 80 to 120 feet of separation to diminish the impact of radiant heat.
ASSESS AND LEAVE
I will best set the stage for this final section with a story. Last summer, I was on a fire that had been burning very aggressively in brush and timber. It already had some six homes to its credit. It was the second day, and the fire was ready to get around nine more. Engines were setting up in a subdivision on a west-facing slope with brush and timber. The roads were paved, and the homes were of the upper crust with fair clearance. As the fire established itself in a draw below and parallel to the homes, it started to really burn well. I was observing it from a road above it, and it started to talk to me, saying, “I don’t care about your safety zones, your personnel, and the homes in my path.” I did not feel a need to carry on this conversation, so I called the division supervisor and told him he should get everyone off the hill, drive down the road about a quarter mile, turn them around, and wait. I found a very safe place at the top and observed the fire as it burned through. At the moment it passed, we moved the engines back and extinguished numerous fires around the homes. Seven homes burned; many more are there today. The best thing is no firefighter was hurt.
As I get older, I resist the temptation to follow tradition. The tradition in this scenario is to fight the fire at all costs because homes are in the way. Unfortunately, we have injured and killed firefighters trying to save homes or forest fuels because of misplaced priorities or following tradition. In the story above, it was apparent to me that engines placed in each driveway, facing out with lines flaked, would have done nothing other than compromise the safety of the crew. They would have been in the engines or structures seeking refuge. We probably at best would have sucked an ember into an air cleaner and ruined an engine, which happened on another part of that fire, incidentally. The conditions were such that firefighting as the fire passed was not going to happen.
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Contrary to popular belief, fires do not typically just envelop homes in an instant. The photo of the home burning was an hour after the fire passed. There simply was no water to put it out, and other homes were threatened (photo 2). The external ignitions were easily put out as the engines arrived moments after the fire passed. Those that burned were from ignitions in attics or because of excessive fuel accumulations on the exterior that precluded safe suppression anyhow.
So what is the point in all this? you ask. Well, it is not okay to die on any kind of fire including an I-Zone fire. Folks, you do not need to be at the head of every fire burning through homes. Here it is in simple terms. Continue perimeter control using the traditional flanking action to suppress the wildfire, and attack the head when conditions allow. Spend time ahead of the fire preparing homes should time allow. Finally, approach the fire from the interior behind the head of the fire, and clean up the ignitions as you find them. I will say it one more time: There is no reason to be setting in front of a fire of the Cedar Fire magnitude waiting to see if your plan is a good one. With that said, I am not taking shots at the Cedar Fire management plan. This fire was no different from any I-Zone fire I have been on involving firefighters defending homes in the fire’s path. The odds just got too far on the side of the fire. What I am trying to do is offer an alternative based on what we should be learning every time a firefighter is hurt. That way, they all come home with pictures, stories, and the pride of a job well done. ■
■ MICHAEL S. TERWILLIGER is chief of the Truckee (CA) Fire District. He began his career in 1972 with the California Department of Forestry, where he served for 24 years in the following assignments: division chief of operations (South) in the Nevada-Yuba-Placer Ranger Unit and operation section chief and planning section chief on a Type I team from 1988 to 1996. He is a certified fire behavior analyst. Terwilliger was incident commander for Sierra Front Wildfire Cooperators Team, which operates along the eastern California/Nevada border. He also instructs operations section chiefs, division group supervisors, and strike team leaders.
