Myself and a firefighter watched two overhead personnel walk down a fire line at least 100 yards and then walk through the burned area to get back to there vehicles on day 3 of a prescribed fire while fire crews were aggressively in mop up and patrol. The potential of the incident was getting burned/fire weakened tree strike. The concern was that the two overhead personnel were not wearing all the proper PPE (hardhats, fire shelters, or full nomex).The prescribed burn was in timber under story with oak leaf litter and pine needle cast with heavy fuels scattered about. Total acres for the units was 90. The weather was cool, terrain was flat on ridge top, fire area had burning stump holes, fire weakened trees, 100 and 1000 hour fuels still smolding. The objective for the day was for fire crews to achieve 25 feet mop up of cold black up to 50 foot. The line where the overhead walked, the crews were still working mop up from the line to 25 foot. My concern was the burn area had fire weakened trees. The day before, it was reported on the radio that a couple of fire weakened trees had fallen to the ground and everybody needed to keep up situational awareness. Also, there were numerous stump holes still very hot and burning and the potential was high to step in one. |