The events of this narrative focus on what occurred during the afternoon of September 3rd, 2017, while on Division Whiskey of the Railroad Fire, an extended attack wildland fire, on the Sierra National Forest in California, Region 5 of the USFS. Serving as members of a single resource, Type 3 U.S. Forest Service engine, we had been ordered up from our home unit, the Descanso Ranger District of the Cleveland National Forest for the incident on August 30th. We began our first operational shift on August 31st and the events occurred on Sunday, September 3rd, our fourth operational period on this incident. The numerous safety issues we present now in this SAFEnet were addressed on this day with our supervisor/module leader, and in the subsequent days that followed we debriefed as a crew the events that happened.
The primary focus for the first three shifts on Division Whiskey were structure protection and preparation in the Sugar Pine community of residential houses, prepping roads, and some hose lays along dozer and hand lines in support of burning operations.
On the afternoon of the 3rd, we had been prepping some structures along Poplar and Locust roads, when predicted thunderstorms developed over the fire area, and an Incident Meteorological announcement came out over the command channel alerting all resources of the possibility of lightning strikes, erratic and strong downdraft winds, as well as an overall possible wind shift from prevailing Western and Southerly winds to winds being out of the Northeast with gusts up to 40 m.p.h. The weather update was acknowledged was known to all members of our module, and our module leader who was with us, copied the weather update when asked by our Division Supervisor. Our immediate concern for the approaching weather system was the strong winds mixed with the large stands of beetle killed pines in the community, but additionally that the community of Sugar Pine laid in a valley with a Northeast to Southwest alignment, similar to the alignment of the predicted wind shifts.
Having completed our assignment of prepping structures and upon hearing the weather update, we proceeded to walk back to our engine parked nearby at the community center. Our module leader consulted with other module leaders in the area, face to face, including a hotshot superintendent. Our module leader told us at this time they believed the fire had changed directions, was heading towards us, and there were reports of 100 ft flame lengths. At this time, the Division Supervisor ordered all resources, except for our engine and two other U.S.F.S. engines, out of the Sugar Pines community and back to the 41 road. The Division reported over the radio that they wanted to keep the three U.S.F.S. engines in Sugar Pine in case an emergency burn operation was put into action. At this time, our engine crew began to discuss a number of safety concerns with this plan. Elements of L.C.E.S. were scrutinized by the crew; communications in the valley had been spotty, Lookout was unknown by our module leader, the proposed escape route to the safety zone was in alignment with the winds and topography with a possibility of being cut off in the event of the possible emergency burning operation, no alternative escape routes were identified and there was no adequate safety zone in the immediate area. Additionally, we were not in direct contact with anyone that had eyes on the fire and no trigger points for evacuating had been identified. We, as a crew, advised our module leader/supervisor of these serious concerns, and that we felt it best to disengage and return to the 41 road until a solid plan, with good intel, was in place and these L.C.E.S. concerns were mitigated. We were met with hesitation and our concerns at this time were dismissed by our module leader with a “It’ll be fine”. We continued to press the issue of L.C.E.S., lack of clearly identified trigger points (there were none), knowledge of current fire behavior (or lack thereof), and we were unsure of what the fire was doing, and our module leader was unable to definitively answer these questions. Our module leader continued to use words like: Probably, Maybe, and Should. We were then told that our “job is dangerous”. We assessed as a crew that it was at least 12 minutes drive from our current location, back to the 41 road, and then another 10 minutes to Oakhurst, our reported safety zone, which possibly lay in the path of the main fire. |
