Incident Command Team Brings Order to Chaos: Liz Forster/Gazette Story

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Flint Cheney talks to the Rocky Mountain Type 1 Incident Management Team during a 6 a.m. briefing July 6 in the camp outside Fairplay. The briefing gives the entire team an idea of what to expect for the day based on the divisions and the fire’s progress. Cheney also led the group in a moment of silence to honor the 14 firefighters killed 24 years prior in Grand Junction during the South Canyon Fire. Cheney was the dispatch during this accident and makes sure to hold a moment of silence whenever he is working on a crew on July 6. (Photo by Kelsey Brunner, The Gazette)

I thought Liz Forster (currently a law student at University of Montana) wrote a great story interviewing folks on a Type I Team in Colorado in 2018 about what they do and why they do it.

When the call came June 30 to take command of the Weston Pass and High Chateau fires, the team had two hours to mobilize. Team members came from as far as New York and Florida. Many local resources already were deployed to other fires burning in Colorado and throughout the West.

From July 1 through July 14, Cheney and co-chief Steve Petersburg’s days started about 5 a.m. and revolved around a hefty Incident Action Plan — “The Bible,” as team spokesman Bob Summerfield calls it.

The document begins broadly, with the incident objectives and staff roster. From there, Cheney and Petersburg tap into the Geographic Information System specialist, fire behavior analyst, meteorologist, air resource adviser and others in the Planning Section who build the bird’s-eye view of the fire.

The Operation Section then outlines tactics: where crews need to dig lines, what communities need structure protection, where fire retardant and water need to be dropped, what safety precautions should be taken.

“We convey the leader’s intent to the people on the ground, then act as a voice for those out in the field,” said Ken Gregor of Planning Operations.

Package in the Logistics Section — facilities, food, ground support, supplies — and Finance, and the document usually tops 30 pages.

With Deputy Incident Commander Dan Dallas’ signature at the bottom, the document is ready to print and distribute. On average, the section makes 250 to 300 copies of a 35-page document. During the height of the 416 fire north of Durango, which the Rocky Mountain team also led, the action plan was pushing 50 pages and more than 500 copies.

“We have to have it, even if people are up until 2 a.m. making copies,” Cheney said. “It’s like in the military — if you have a platoon out there that doesn’t know what they’re doing at the start of each day, they’re a wasted resource.”

…

Many on the team started as wildland firefighters, digging line, sawing down hazardous trees and suppressing the fire in the field.

The past experience provides them with an intimate understanding of the experience in the heat of the flames, and many jump at the chance to get out of the office and onto the fire perimeter.

What doesn’t change from the office to the field is the sense of cohesion, that multitude of cogs turning in this complex operation.

“When I worked on the line, the guy or gal behind you is essential to your well-being and existence,” said Dallas, the deputy incident commander. “That basic human relationship is no less important as you go from the end of the shovel up to the incident commander position.”

For many, that means delaying retirement and flipping the switch to fire. For Cheney and about half of the command team, it means temporarily handing off the responsibilities of their full-time jobs elsewhere in exchange for 14-plus-hour workdays at a fire.

“It’s a lot to manage, but I keep coming back because of the excitement of it, the change of pace,” Cheney said. “I get out from behind my desk, come out here and do something meaningful on the ground.”

Extra income is a factor. But across the board, the command staff gets hooked simply on working with each other.

“If I couldn’t be with my natural family, this is the family I’d choose to be with,” Petersburg said.

Dallas struggled to articulate the bond he feels with those he leads. Instead, he referenced the signed football made of plastic wrap given to him by a camp crew on the 416 fire and a 3-by-3-foot box of cards sent to him by colleagues across the country when he had two craniotomies in 2015.

Dallas said, “I can try to package together neatly why I do this, but there’s just something different about this world.”

Federal judge removes acting Bureau of Land Management director after finding he has served unlawfully for 424 days

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Breaking news from Friday evening: William Perry Pendley, a self-described Sage Brush Rebel who questions the very existence of federal public lands, has unlawfully overseen the management of 250 million acres of federal public lands for over 400 days, according to Chief District Judge Brian Morris of the US District Court of Montana.

Federal judge removes acting Bureau of Land Management director after finding he has served unlawfully for 424 days

Washington (CNN)—A federal judge on Friday ordered acting Bureau of Land Management Director William Perry Pendley to step aside, blocking him from exercising any more authority after finding that he has served unlawfully for more than 400 days.

Chief District Judge Brian Morris of the US District Court of Montana ruled that Pendley has served unlawfully for 424 days, in response to a lawsuit brought by Democratic Montana Gov. Steve Bullock and the Montana Department of Natural Resources and Conservation. Morris additionally ruled Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt cannot pick another person to run the Bureau of Land Management as its acting head because that person must be appointed by the President and Senate-confirmed.

The judge gave both sides of the case 10 days to file briefs about which of Pendley’s orders must be vacated.

“Pendley has served and continues to serve unlawfully as the Acting BLM Director,” Morris wrote in his opinion. “His ascent to Acting BLM Director did not follow any of the permissible paths set forth by the U.S. Constitution or the (Federal Vacancies Reform Act). Pendley has not been nominated by the President and has not been confirmed by the Senate to serve as BLM Director.”

He added, “Secretary Bernhardt lacked the authority to appoint Pendley as an Acting BLM Director under the FVRA. Pendley unlawfully took the temporary position beyond the 210-day maximum allowed by the FVRA. Pendley unlawfully served as Acting BLM Director after the President submitted his permanent appointment to the Senate for confirmation — another violation of the FVRA. And Pendley unlawfully serves as Acting BLM Director today, under color of the Succession Memo.”

Read the full article from CNN here.

Trump Admin. Plan for the Tongass

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NY Times today:

The United States Forest Service, an agency of the Department of Agriculture, is scheduled on Friday to publish an environmental study concluding that lifting the roadless rule protections in the Tongass would not significantly harm the environment. That study will allow the agency to formally lift the rule in the Tongass within the next 30 days, clearing the way for the Trump administration to propose timber sales and road construction projects in the forest as soon as the end of this year.

USFS press release is here. Not much info there.

USFS documentation is here.

 

Practice of Science Friday: How To Make Fire Science More Useful in the Real World

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There’s much talk of what people need to do to live with fire, but so far I haven’t seen many social scientists quoted in the press, even though I know they have developed a substantial body of literature on the subject. In my digging into this, I ran across this workshop report from a National Academy workshop. “Living with Fire: State of the Science around Fire-Adapted Communities.” National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2017. A Century of Wildland Fire Research: Contributions to Long-term Approaches for Wildland Fire Management: Proceedings of a Workshop. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Kevin Hiers, a fire scientist at Tall Timbers, wrote this section and I agree with many of his ideas. I even think that many are applicable outside of fire science. I’ve bolded a few of his statements.

Fire scientists are a diverse group as well and come from disciplines as varied as meteorology, physics, forestry, ecology, and, increasingly, the social sciences. In an attempt to be relevant, fire scientists often are tool-focused and recommendation-focused so that they can tell managers how to better manage their land. The unintended consequence is that decision space is often constrained in this increasingly complex world. When mistakes are made by quantifying the obvious rather than focusing on what managers need to know, little science is translated into management actions.

Because Hiers has spent much of his career on this border between fire science and fire management, he emphasized a few characteristics that are important barriers to overcome. First, managers rely on experience as the currency of credibility. This experiential learning is different from structured learning. The scientific community, with its incentive to publish papers, has dialogs and arguments in the peer-reviewed literature; however, that conversation does not always translate well to on-the-ground experience. Second, managers have specific circumstances to deal with—the fire of the day that has a particular set of management objectives, topography of fuels, and atmospheric conditions—whereas scientists seek generality in their world view. Generalization changes scientists’ understanding of managers’ risks. Third, the complexity in fire management versus the orientation of fire science around specific disciplines increases the challenge of applying science to management. For example, when a prescribed fire is set in the WUI, the manager’s job is on the line and he or she has to integrate all of the different disciplines of fire science into that day’s burn. As fire scientists dive deeper into the depths of particular disciplines, the ability of managers to integrate the findings of research from these different areas of expertise and apply them to a specific burn becomes more and more difficult.

A different approach is needed. First, translational fire science, which is process-oriented not tool-focused, is needed. Hiers posited that solutions to the United States’ fire problem will come from long-term, shared experiences where scientists are on the fires with managers, providing the circumstances for each group to become fluent with the other. Second, fire science outcomes must begin to address uncertainty, he said, rather than what is already known, and focus on fires that can be controlled, like prescribed burns. Even for prescribed burning in the Southeast, tools are still needed to develop objectives and prescription parameters. Third, the disciplinary breadth of fire science needs to be expanded to social scientists. Many of the solutions discussed at the workshop were outside of the traditional realm of fire science expertise. Hiers commented how important it was to have social scientists present at the workshop and how their participation in fire science and management is absolutely critical. More incentives need to be provided for social scientists to participate in and contribute to solutions.

Many building blocks exist for moving toward this new approach, including prescribed fire councils, regional fire exchanges through the Joint Fire Science Program, and the Prescribed Fire Science Consortium. Hiers emphasized that when managers and scientists burn and manage fires together, they learn together. One of the premier National Interagency Prescribed Fire Training Center courses is an agency administrator course, which brings the line officers into a context where they see what managers face every day. Shared experiences like the one provided in the course are key, but such mentorship programs are lacking. Formal adoption of shared experience as a strategy has yet to occur, and agency leadership is needed to provide incentives for scientists to participate in an experiential way.

In my words:
Splinterizing disciplines leaving managers to synthesize in real time
Scientists rewarded for generalization, people encounter specific situations
Lack of shared experiences- real world experiential and discussion opportunities between scientists and managers
Management involves people ergo social science is critical

Oregon Public Broadcasting “Timber Wars” Podcast

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OPB has released most of its 7-part “Timber Wars” podcast.

The writer/director, Aaron Scott, spent a year on this impressive project, funded, in part, by an NPR grant. As in Bill Dietrich’s “The Final Forest,” the best book on this era, Scott sympathetically lets protagonists from all sides tell the story in their own words. [As one of those protagonists, Episode 3 — The owl, I’ll let my words on that subject speak for themselves.]

With the benefit of 30-year hindsight, however, Scott’s storyline sweeps more broadly than Dietrich could in 1992. Who could have anticipated that the Timber Wars would catalyze anarchist protests at the Seattle WTO? Or be the fuse that ignited science-denying, anti-government, class-based populism?

Scott’s production captures well the social paroxysms of those times and the indelible wounds they have left in a generation of northwesterners.

Grist: Wildfires and CO2

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Interesting article in Grist: “This Oregon forest was supposed to store carbon for 100 years. Now it’s on fire.”

Claudia Herbert, a PhD student at the University of California, Berkeley, who is studying risks to forest carbon offsets, noticed that the Lionshead Fire — which tore through 190,000 acres of forest in Central Oregon and forced a terrifying evacuation of the nearby town of Detroit — appeared to have almost completely engulfed the largest forest dedicated to sequestering carbon dioxide in the state.

The project, owned by the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, spans 24,000 acres. Before the fires, the state of California had issued more than 2.6 million offset credits based on the carbon stored in its trees. That translates to 2.6 million metric tons of carbon dioxide — or the equivalent of driving 560,000 cars around for one year.

As many of you are aware, the Lionshead fire is one of many fires to burn in Oregon this year, for a total of ~1 million acres.

An example of the U.S. Forest Service fanning fear?

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I couldn’t help but notice that 15 minutes ago the U.S. Forest Service’s official twitter handle posted this tweet:

Within less than five minutes, I was able to determine the simple facts that this dramatic image:

1) Is from 6 days ago (confirm for yourself here);
 
2) Is from an intentional Forest Service back-burn operation that firefighters started with drip torches 6 days ago (confirm here); and
 

3) The vast majority of this wildfire has burned grass, brush, sage, range and some agriculture land, not “forests.” (confirm here).

And check out the satellite image of the general wildfire area below.

Do any of these facts matter? Does the U.S. Forest Service have an obligation to share these types of facts?

 

Bob Zybach on Western Oregon Fire History

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Map 1. This map shows the specific counties in western Oregon in which major forest fires have occurred during historical time. The three subregions of primary concern are the western Cascades; the western slope of the Coast Range; and the Klamath-Siskiyou Mountains (see table).

Fig. 2. Kalapuyan man and eastern Coast Range foothills drawn in 1841 by Alfred Agate, a member of the Wilkes Expedition, near present-day Monroe, in Benton County. Regular landscape-scale fires set by Kalapuyan families and hundreds of generations of their ancestors on the land resulted in open grasslands and oak savannah – rather than forests — throughout most of the Willamette Valley and eastern Coast Range.

Many veterans of The Smokey Wire (or its predecessor, NCFP) may remember (Dr.)Bob Zybach, who was our resident expert on fire history in western Oregon (he wrote a book on it, and his doctoral dissertation).

He is knowledgeable about the time period when early non-Native settlers encountered Native American burning patterns and then recorded history. Since the 1850’s were only 170 or so years ago, and trees live (sometimes much) longer than that, what we see on the land today is still influenced by Native burning patterns as well as the transition, as well as activities of the 20th and 21st centuries.

I reached out and asked him for his historical views on the West Side fires. He sent me thisarticle he wrote for the Oregon Wildlife Journal. It’s too long to be a post, but take a look. Here are a couple of interesting things:

First, he broke the discussion down by county, including eastern Coast Range, western Coast Range, western Cascades and so on (see map above).
Second, he point out a couple of cases of reburning, including the Tillamook Fires and fires in the Kamiopsis Wilderness. Fires lead to dead dried out vegetation, which leads to more fires (I guess?). The figure above is a map of some fires in the Kalmiopsis.

Here’s his own summary:

The general information provided by the timing, extent, and location of these major wildfires should be of interest to western Oregon resource managers and US taxpayers — and to their elected representatives. Here are some basic conclusions that can be drawn from these events:

1) Each county has its own unique history of large-scale wildfires, with significant differences between them: e.g., Benton County has never experienced a large-scale forest fire; Tillamook County has had numerous such fires from 1853 until 1951, and little or nothing to the present time; while Douglas County had few major fires until 1987, and have seemingly had them on an almost annual basis ever since.

2) There were hardly any major wildfires in western Oregon between 1952 and 1987; a 35-year period in which these forests were the most actively and intensively managed in their history.

3) Almost all major wildfires during the subsequent 33 years, from 1987 to 2019, have occurred on federal lands – rather than private, county, or state — and were mostly ignited by lightning or arsonists.

2,000 tons of biomass per acre?

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From Smokey Wire member Roy Anderson, posted with his permission:

A week or so ago, I read the article linked below about wildfire in California.  In the first few lines it states, “The U.S. Forest Service estimates that dead stands in the Creek fire contain 2,000 tons of fuel per acre”.

2,000 tons of biomass per acre is higher than I’m used to seeing when looking at USFS FIA Data across other parts of the US West….higher by an order of magnitude for average stands.  For example, as a rough calculation, assume a stand averages 100 trees per acre and 24” DBH (pretty nice timber!).  This would mean that each tree in the stand has about 150 cubic feet of volume (bolewood) or 15,000 cubic feet of bolewood per acre.  Each cubic foot of wood weighs about 60 pounds (green weight), which translates into about 450 tons per acre green weight basis (100 trees/acre x 150 cubic feet per tree x 60 pounds per cubic foot divided by 2000 pounds per ton).  If you double that amount (which I think is very generous) to account for branches needles and all other vegetation it still only adds up to 900 tons per acre on a green weight basis.  An oven dry weight basis would be half of that.   It really makes we wonder if the 2,000 tons per acre figure is accurate?  If so, maybe its caused by accumulation of fuel from dead timber and other vegetation???

Anyway, I’m writing to see if you have an opinion about the accuracy of this?

https://www.latimes.com/environment/story/2020-09-13/150-million-dead-trees-wildfires-sierra-nevada#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Forest%20Service%20estimates,tons%20of%20fuel%20per%20acre.&text=As%20of%20Saturday%2C%20the%20fire,Huntington%20Lake%20and%20Shaver%20Lake

 

USFS’s Proposed E-bike Rules

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USFS press release received today is shown below. The Federal Register notice says little about the proposed regs, except:

The Forest Service’s proposed directive revisions align with the 27 States and DOI’s proposed e-bike rules in adopting a standard definition for an e-bike and a three-tiered classification for e-bikes and align with DOI’s proposed e-bike rules in requiring site-specific decision-making and environmental analysis at the local level to allow e-bike use.

In particular, the proposed revisions would add a paragraph to Forest Service Manual (FSM) 7702 to establish promotion of ebike use on NFS lands as an objective; [emphasis mine]

DOI’s proposed rules are here.

From BLM’s proposed rule:

The proposed rule would direct authorized officers to generally allow, through subsequent decision-making, Class 1, 2, and 3 e-bikes whose motorized features are being used as an assist to human propulsion on roads and trails upon which mechanized, non-motorized use is allowed, where appropriate. The authorization for Class 1, 2, and 3 e-bikes whose motorized features are being used as an assist to human propulsion to be used on roads and trails upon which mechanized, non-motorized use is allowed, would be included in a land-use planning or implementation-level decision. Such decisions would be made in accordance with applicable legal requirements, including compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). Under the proposed rule, where an authorized officer determines that Class 1, 2, and 3 e-bikes should be allowed on roads and trails upon which mechanized, non-motorized use is allowed, such e-bikes would be excluded from the definition of off-road vehicle at 43 CFR 8340.0-5(a) and would not be subject to the regulatory requirements in 43 CFR part 8340. Additionally, e-bikes excluded from the definition of off-road vehicle at 43 CFR 8340.0-5(a) would be afforded all the rights and privileges, and be subject to all of the duties, of a non-motorized bicycle. Under the proposed rule, authorized officers would not allow e-bikes where mechanized, non-motorized bicycles are prohibited.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

News Release     

Forest Service

Washington D.C., Office of Communication

Web: www.fs.usda.gov/

Media Contact:

Email: [email protected]

 

USDA Forest Service Issues Proposed Guidance to Manage E-Bike Use on National Forests and Grasslands

 

Washington, Sept. 24, 2020 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Forest Service is requesting public input on proposed updates to the agency’s internal directives on how e-bikes are managed on national forests and grasslands. These proposed updates are in alignment with the Secretary of Agriculture’s direction to increase access to national forests and grasslands, and would provide needed guidance for line officers to expand e-bike access while protecting natural resources and other forest uses.

 

“Serving our customers and honoring our multiple-use mission is at the heart of how we propose to manage e-bike use,” said Forest Service Chief Vicki Christiansen. “Developing consistent, straightforward guidance on this increasingly popular recreational activity will protect resources, promote safety, and increase access to national forests and grasslands for a wider range of users.”

 

The Forest Service currently manages approximately 159,000 miles of trails across the United States for a variety of recreational uses. An estimated 60,000 miles of those trails – about 38% – are open for e-bike use. Other land management agencies, including the Bureau of Land Management and the National Park Service, also allow for e-bike use on a combined 34,000 miles of trails.

 

The steady advancement in technology and the continued increase in popularity has led to an uptick in e-bike use on federally-managed land. In response, federal agencies are considering options for expanding access and facilitating their use. The proposed updates to Forest Service directives will generally align with proposed changes at other federal land management agencies.

 

The proposed directives would categorize e-bikes by class, allowing line officers at the local level to more precisely designate trails for e-bike use in a way that mitigates potential impacts on resources. The proposed directives also include e-bike definitions that are consistent with the Travel Management Rule (36 C.F.R. 212).

 

The public will have 30 days to comment on the proposed directives. The text of the proposed directives are available in the Federal Register. Instructions on how to comment are available at https://cara.ecosystem-management.org/Public/ReadingRoom?project=ORMS-2619. Members of the public may also contact Penny Wu ([email protected]) to make comments.

 

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