There are no Hotel Vendomes in Forest Fires.
On my walk this afternoon, this thought formed in my head:
There are no Hotel Vendomes in forest fires.
On June 17th, 1972 the Boston Fire Department responded to and extinguished a fire at the Hotel Vendome.
During overhaul part of the building collapsed, killing nine firefighters.
In analyzing the tragedy, it was determined that renovations to build a ballroom years earlier had put the load of five stories onto a single cast iron column. Additional renovations in 1972 installed duct work along the beam supported by that column, creating new forces. Water from firefighting added more load to the structure. The column that failed hadn’t been exposed to the fire.
The firefighters that day could not know the cumulative effects of the improper renovations on the structure’s integrity. Without much more extensive inspections then normally conducted by code enforcement and engineering analysis, the danger was unknowable to the public authorities.
That day there were no questions the Chief could have asked, no decision by a company officer, no action by a firefighter that would have been reasonable and would have changed the outcome.
Wildland firefighters don’t face such unknowables.
There may be a lack of knowledge, but if so it is a failure of education and organization.
Weather is known, or can be found out, along with things like predicted times for wind shifts.
Terrain can be seen and reviewed on maps. Our locations, especially with today’s GPS handhelds, can be ascertained with certainty.
The fire location can be seen, or scouted to find out.
The fuels it is burning in are known, and we can make good assumptions on how they will behave based on past experience and knowledge of recent weather patterns (1 hour / 10 hour / 100 hour fuels), climate (droughts), and disturbances (insect damage, ice storms, etc).
Unlike the structural side of the world were we must accept that certain events are unforeseeable, the challenge on the wildfire side is to make sure we impart the knowledge of where to gather the information needed and how to apply it to decision making.
That does not mean we can eliminate deaths and injuries on the wildland side; we can and should still take risks. Wildland situations are still complex, and people will make earnest judgement calls that sometimes turn out wrong simply because humans are fallible beings. But the elements that go into making good decisions that usually turn out well are there for us to see or find out.
This becomes even more challenging in a place like southern New England where the vast majority of our wildland fires are pretty benign and simply not dangerous — a breeding ground for complacency, lack of experience in critical situations, and putting training for handling such situations very low on the priority list.
