7 April 2010
467 Providence Pike, Hampton, CT

Fire Danger: Very High w/ Red Flag warnings
Actual winds were not consistent upon arrival, although they were erratic with occassional moderate gusts. They died down by the time most hand crews arrived on the fire.

My GPS measured 28 acres burned, split between Hampton & Brooklyn.

Fire was located over 1/2 mile from the nearest public highway.
Woods roads were still in poor condition in areas due to the flooding from a week ago; nearest access for non All Terrain Vehicles was 600' from the northeast corner of the fire.

Timeline & Departments:
1554 Mortlake, area of 79 Stetson Rd., Brooklyn for smoke investigation
1634 Hampton, Standby quarters
1640 Fire definitively located, 467 Providence Pike, Hampton
1720 Scotland, East Brooklyn, Canterbury, Chaplin, Atwood Hose -- Chief officer notification of possible assignment
1740 County Coordinator and Incident Dispatcher to scene
1819 Scotland, Chaplin manpower and forestry equipment to scene
1849 Atwood Hose manpower and forestry equipment to scene
1951 Under Control
2215 Command Terminated







Young and gung ho...DEP patrolman bearing three indian tanks...

Some nice line made. Once the first crews got in an indian tank went ahead making a quick knockdown where the fire was near where a line could be made, someone else raked away from the black. Just a quick and dirty line.

Lots of miserable places to build lines that the only thing you could do with the manpower around at the time was go way wide around. A place like this the indian tank just bypassed the fire since there was plenty of time to rake a line around the thick stuff.


This area had about 40 acres burn about four years ago. The Mountain Laurel is all low to the ground because of that burn, and you can see fire scares on the trees.


The two photos above were taken 4 seconds apart. Wind went from still, to a moderate gust from the southeast, then swung southwest.
That is how squirrely the wind conditions were. Fortunately they weren't sustained, and there tended to be long periods with little to no wind between activity.






Grunts arriving along with a DEP saw team.
I will live to see the day that yellow jackets are standard issue in Connecticut.
Today was near record warmth (high 80s) and even short sleeves are more appropriate PPE -- moderate risk of minor injury from an ember is still better then a high risk of serious injury from heat exhaustion from structural gear.




DEP giving a quick lesson how they'd like the line built.

Two of the indian tanks went off to knock down the flame front. The other two grunts & DEP cleared a containment line down to a wetlands area

On further review of the play...
Sometimes you can draw good lessons from a fire even if you couldn't apply it there.
Woods roads existed along most of the north, west, and south sides.

On a large fire with limited resources, try to use these roads to your advantage. This is the north side woods road, which had already broken through further up by the time it was initially scouted.
A backpack leaf blower could make a fast line along the woods road.
Light a burn out along that line then to speed things up by consuming light fuels between the main fire and the control line, and leave a firefighter behind every so often to guard the line against anything crossing over it.

This was the south side woods road. I believe this was already crossed when crews arrived.
As the unburned pockets of leaves attest though, these roads tend to naturally "not want to burn" which is one reason they're nice places to build a line across.
Certainly here, had they been available in time, a backpack blower team would've worked wonders in being able to build a line fast.

This is the west side woods road. The dry grass here would've made it a little more work.
Still a backpack blower could make a line, followed up by a burn out with the crew paying more attention to keep the grass from allowing the fire to cross the control line.