The Wooden Nutmeg

Nice report on why British Columbia, the only province that used shelters, discontinued them when the new style shelters were issued. Archived here.

There’s only two LODD incidents I know of in southern New England due to the fire (and not exertion / medical problems). One is this 1938 burn over on Cape Cod which killed three firefighters. The other was in Rhode Island near the Connecticut line, possibly in 1942 although I still have to hunt down official documentation, which again killed three in a burn over of their truck. I don’t know if shelters would make a difference in the circumstances of these burn overs. It may be better to emphasize the Canadian / Australian model of better awareness and avoidance for the conditions in this area.

May, 1930 Fire Outbreak in the Northeast

The articles that follow are from the New London Day documenting a break out of wildfires in Connecticut and Rhode Island (as well as the rest of the northeast).

There were warning signs at the very end of April, with a large fire in Colchester, East Hampton, and Marlborough consuming 3,000 acres. Even by the standards of the day that was a fairly large fire:

A few days later Waterford had a woods fire.

This one only covered 100 acres, but something ominous was occurring:

Foreman Thomas B. Woodworth of the Quaker Hill fire department [said] some of the “new” fires broke out 1,000′ ahead of the firemen. He said that it was possible the blazes may have been started from blazing bits of dried chestnut wood.

Ok, so we’re also in the middle of the Chestnut Blight that put a very large load of dead fuels in the forests. But that aside, since the trees were dead the year before and the year after and we didn’t have these intense fires every year…they were seeing “spotting” 1,000′ ahead of the fire. In Connecticut. (This is the first documentation I’ve seen that gives a distance with what we can expect for spotting in our area in an extreme fire year).

Then all hell broke loose.

From The New London Day on May 5, 1930:

Six homes, thirty other buildings, and 3,000 acres in Westerly and Charlestown, RI that burned essentially to the sea:

250 homes in Nashua, NH are destroyed by a brush fire that turned into an urban conflagaration:

A fire in Glastonbury, later put at around 2,500 acres, would burn five miles in length from it’s origin, and at one point reach four miles wide. Being fought by 1,000 men. “Small” fires burning 60 to 150 acres destroyed buildings in Newtown & Windsor. Another 1,000 acres in Bristol. And a 2,500 more acres in New Britain / Southington / Plainville. So a 1,000 men…that’s what, a request for 40 strike teams today? And oh by the way, we have two more fires of this size within 20 miles of here, too…oh I’d love to be a fly on the wall when that request arrives at the DEMHS.

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, 1,500 acres was burning by Marlborough and 2,000 acres in Russel, two of the “20 bad and 75 minor” fires that day:

Niantic was busy trying to protect their cottages from a brush fire:

I only got the last half of this article on New London County…multiple fires in Waterford with hundreds fighting them, Gungywamp in Groton, 2,500 acres in Preston, Ledyard, and North Stonington:

On the sixth comes an article that would have folks throw a fit today:

Finally, at the risk of pulling a Ron Popeil and going, “But wait, there’s more!”

Connecticut’s first state forester, Austin Hawes, would later place the total acreage in Connecticut that burned in this first week of May, 1930 at around 25,000 acres. And they were actually kind of pleased by that — the last bad year of 1922 had seen 80,000 acres burn.

Washington County, RI would see some 30,000 acres burn. An article up above already mentioned the 3,000 acre fire in Westerly. North of Westerly there were two more fires that burned along the Connecticut and Rhode Island borders, in Rhode Island alone one consumed 10,000 acres and the other 12,000.

The worse of these ignited around Glasgo, CT (Griswold by the Voluntown town line) and burned all the way to Nooseneck Hill Road — today’s R.I. Route 3, or spitting distance from where I-95 crosses the state today. The proximity of the two big fires, along with the spotting that was occurring, it’s quite likely they were a single fire and/or merged along the way.

Connecticut started it’s Interstate Fire Crew in 1978, and this started become a regularly deployed unit after the 1988 fire season(1). That was the year of the great Yellowstone fires, and at least from my perspective as an east coast primarily structural firefighter seemed to mark the bend in a river, after which the spigot of funding opened up ever increasing resources to wildfire efforts out west.

It was around this time you started to see an increasing western influence in Connecticut as well as the rest of New England. Yellow shirts were far from universal even with state employees at this point, but they became more and more common.

If we turn the clock to 1990, the Interstate Fire Crew was well established but it, as it still does, depends on volunteers from outside the DEP to fill it out. Most major State Parks and State Forests maintained their own fire apparatus, and when the DEP was called to a fire the local Unit Manager and maintenance personnel would respond. I don’t know about the fulltimers, but the seasonal maintainers I worked with would simply receive on-the-job training from the fulltime tradesmen. (I worked a couple seasons during college in uniform as a “Park Aid” — i.e. security — for the DEP, my senior year I moved on and spent the summer doing conservation work for my town’s newly purchased conservation land).

The state still was operating it’s High School & UConn fire crews. These were phased out right around 1990, although I don’t know the exact year.

Yes, I said High School. In my region the closest was the Quaddick Crew out of Tourtellotte High School in Thompson, CT. These students who had received some basic training could be dismissed from classes and would meet up, if my memory is right, with the Unit Manager for Quaddick State Park and other DEP employees who would drive their apparatus. The UConn program was similarly run.

Here is a recollection from the Avon, CT Fire Department history about a youth crew from the high school their students attended in 1945:

I was a member back in 1945, at the age of 15 years old. I was on the State of Connecticut Forest Fire Crew that was made up of high school kids from the Canton High School. This crew went out on a minutes notice when the call came in on a forest fire. The state would call the high school and the principal would announce that the fire crew was excused to go out on the fire call. Our transportation was an old Packard four door with all our gear stored in a big wooden box on the rear bumper. Mrs. Fran Emigh was the driver and her husband was the State Forest Warden.

The good thing is these were organized crews, with some basic training and pre-existing leadership. It wasn’t unusual at the time for high school students to be “pressed” into service as this 1947 article from New York shows:

Even after the substantial modernization of the statutes governing Connecticut’s forest fire control laws in 2001 (Public Act 01-150), state fire control personnel retain the ability to summon the assistance of all able bodied residents between the age of 18 and 50 to duty to control forest fires.

Here’s an article discussing a fall fire that had the UConn crew respond:

These crews wound down around 1990, I’d assume from a combination of budget cuts (Governor Weicker was fighting to impose an income tax, so there was a lot of hanky panky with budgets going on(2)), increasing exposure to the “qualification system” used by the Interstate Fire Crews, and tightening up on the youth labor laws and general adoption of higher occupational safety standards. The continuing decrease in major fires from maturing forests, fewer sources of ignition (fewer cigarette smokers, better spark arrestors, less burning of yard debris and brush), more people traveling more frequently to detect fires sooner, 911, improved firefighter organization; tools; and notification systems, also likely contributed.

Since then, while fire qualified DEP employees seem to still be dispersed around the organization, the “Units” that respond to fires have also gone down. Natchaug State Forest and Pachaug State Forest remain the two units with apparatus, plus I believe the DEP Squaw Rock maintenance depot. Pachaug, in particular, is a major fire cache. The state parks at Quaddick, Mashamoquet, and Hopeville as far as I can tell no longer respond as units, although they may have individual employees respond. Fort Shantok State Park which also did fire duty no longer exists, having been turned back over to the Mohegan tribe.

Footnotes:
1) NYT article from September 15, 2002.

2) The state park I worked at in 1990 closed our more visible campground on a state highway. However we didn’t have any reduction in head count — fulltime or seasonal. It was simply the DEP political bosses ordering facilities closed to make it seem that we couldn’t afford to keep it open. As it was a rustic campground, the only marginal cost we saved was toilet paper and a weekly can full of lime for the pit toilets. The $6 or so we charged per night back then should have covered that expense.

The Springfield Republican has this nice photo essay up on the ’99 and ’01 Tekoa Mountain fires.

Added to the ’93 and ’10 fires, this mountain sure burns often!

Here’s the photos, from 1999 unless otherwise noted:



Connecticut Army National Guard flying a bambi bucket. I knew New York & Massachusetts Guard units would fly buckets, I hadn’t heard of Connecticut doing so before.











From the funeral of Deputy Chief John Murphy who died at the 1999 Fire.

From the 2001 fire.

From the 2001 fire.

Russell along with Bureau of Forest Fire Control and mutual aid are battling a hundred acre fire in steep terrain:

RUSSELL – A Massachusetts Army National Guard helicopter has joined efforts Monday to put out a wind-fueled brush fire that has been burning on Tekoa Mountain for several days.

Tekoa Mountain, steep and remote, is often hit by brush fires, especially this time of year when conditions can get extremely dry. A fire on the mountain in 1995 burned 587 acres. An even larger fire there four years later blackened more than 1,200 acres.

Russell Deputy Fire Chief John E. Murphy, 64, died of a apparent heart attack while fighting that April 1999 fire.

From MassLive, archived here. The video I have saved as tekoa_2010_video1.flv.

There are some nice night time shots from Sunday evening at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snO6Xgnu3u0, which I have saved as tekoa_2010_video2.flv.

The Exploring Western Massachusetts blog has a nice post on Tekoa with some good pictures of the terrain being faced (and pitch pines!).

4/14 Update:
Fire consumed 320 acres:

By George Graham, The Republican
April 14, 2010, 10:42AM

RUSSELL – A small plume of smoke wafted up from Tekoa Mountain Wednesday morning as firefighting operations against a large-scale brush fire that burned here for about four days wound down.

Russell Fire Chief Michael Morrissey said late Wednesday morning that the fire, which burned over 320 acres, is under control and confined to a small area across the Westfield River from the Jacob’s Ladder rest area on Route 20.

A group of about 20 firefighters, down from about 75 Tuesday, were at the scene Wednesday fighting hot spots, Morrissey said.

A firefighting command center, set up at the Jacob’s Ladder rest stop been closed down.

Elsewhere, firefighters in Granville said Tuesday they believe they have extinguished a smaller fire that burned up to 45 acres on Sodom Mountain.

In Russell, town firefighters worked with crews from Westfield, Agawam, Holyoke, West Springfield, Montgomery, Easthampton, Northampton, Westover Air Reserve Base in Chicopee and the state Department of Conservation and Recreation Bureau of Fire Control.

In all, a total of 75 firefighters and a helicopter apiece provided by state police and the Massachusetts Army National Guard battled the fire that cut a zigzag patterned trail of flames across Tekoa Mountain.

About 15 firefighters from Granville, Tolland and Southwick fought the Sodom Mountain fire until about 3 p.m. Tuesday.

Granville Fire Chief James Meadows could not be immediately reached for comment.

As a bonus find, the Russell Fire Department has a great wildland SOP posted on their website (actually, all the SOPs I looked at I liked — clear, concise, no BS, gave everything relevant without micro-managing or trying to address every conceivable situation):

WILDFIRE INCIDENT RESPONSE GUIDE
6.01 PURPOSE
To establish guidelines that will provide the incident
commander and personnel with a safe and effective way of
handling fires involving forest, brush and/or ground cover.
6.02 PROCEDURE
A. Upon arrival a report on conditions.
l. Determine actual location of fire (including size).
Use topographic maps or GPS for precise location.
2. Direction and characteristic of fire travel.
3. Type of fuel burning (light grass, heavy bush).
4. Exposures.
5. Action being taken by first arriving unit.
B. Request additional equipment.
C. Determine plan of action based on priorities and resources
available.
6.03 SAFETY
A. All members shall wear necessary protective clothing in
accordance with the hazard.
B. The use of a personnel accountability system will be
required and maintained by the incident commander or his/her
designee
C. Safety rules for operating vehicles “off road”.
l. Have a means of escape should your position be over
run.
2. Avoid commitment of units on narrow roads in heavy
brush areas.
3. It is not uncommon for heavy vehicles to become stuck
off road.
4. Before taking a unit “off road”, you must know
location and direction of fire travel.
D. Post a guard when advancing and manning lines in brush
areas. Some things to be especially cautious of are:
l. Spot fires below your crew and frequent spot fires.
2. Aircraft making retardant drops.
3. Heavy equipment working above your crew, i.e. falling
rocks, etc.
4. Changes in wind velocity and direction.
E. A means for escape shall be made known to all fire
personnel working in brush areas. Stay close to the burned
areas.
F. All personnel should know the location and direction of
travel of fire head(s).
G. Attempt to not allow fire personnel to become exhausted.
Provide rest periods. Frequency will be dependent upon topography and weather conditions.
H. Be alert to the possibility of downed electrical wires;
there may be energized fences as a result.
I. Do not go downhill to attack a fire.
6.04 CONTROL
A. Base all actions and strategies on current and expected
behavior of fire.
B. Structural protection and life safety take priority over
extinguishment of brush.
C. If offensive attack (direct attack) is indicated, choose
an anchor point and hit the head of the fire, if possible.
If that is not possible, establish an anchor point and
start on the flanks and work toward the head.
D. If the fire is a large, hot, fast moving one, then a direct
attack may not be possible. In such cases, an indirect
and/or parallel attack may be utilized by cutting a fire
line a distance ahead of the fire (or utilizing natural
fire breaks, such as highways) to halt the progress of the
fire.
l. This may require writing off losses (structures, etc.)
in the path of fire.
2. Indirect attack is commonly used in conjunction with
fire retardant drops and back-firing techniques.
E. Different methods of attack may be used simultaneously
according to the situation.
F. If assigned structural protection, keep hose lays flexible
enough to be able to quickly break away in the event of
being over run.
H. If additional resources are needed the Massachusetts
Bureau of Fire Control District 11 should be contacted. They have added supplies of hand tools, back pack pumps, tractors. The request for a county task force may be made through dispatch. The incident commander must provide the numbers for equipment type and personnel needed.

6.05 COMMAND
A. Fires requiring the coordination of two (2) units or more,
should have the Incident Command System put into effect.
B. Establish a Command Post
C. The Incident Commander has responsibility for the entire
operation. He also has responsibility for assigning (on
as “as needed” basis) the following positions during brush
fire operations:
l. Operations
2. Support
3. Sectors/Division.
4. Liaison positions between various agencies.
E. Radio communications should ensure the IC has the ability
To communicate with all functions and also the ability to
provide working crews with emergency information.

I’ll try and follow up in person to see if these layoffs did occur. My understanding is the fire patrolmen all had enough seniority they would be “bumping” — while the Patrolman positions would be eliminated, the actual worker would “bump” someone else and take their job causing junior employees to actually be laid off.

Checking the DCR’s website today, they are hiring seasonal tower operators in at least Carver and Sandwich, and a seasonal “fire laborer” in Leominister.

Mass. fire officials fuming over wildland staffing cuts
October 22nd, 2009

BOSTON — Fire officials are fuming that high-paid pals of Gov. Deval Patrick have kept their cushy Department of Conservation posts while the agency is axing more than half of the state’s 30 forest firefighters.

The layoff of 17 forest firefighters will leave just one per county and means the state’s 42 fire towers — perches used to spot flare-ups — will go unmanned, officials said.

“It’s going to be a big hit to public safety,” said Trevor Augustino, vice-president of the American Federation of State, County and Municpal Employees Local 2948, which represents the forest firefighters. “They’re cutting with an ax, not a scalpel.”

The Herald reported yesterday that the DCR terminated 91 workers, but kept Patrick’s campaign manager’s sister, Patty Vantine, and two other managers she hired. The three make a combined $251,000 annually.

DCR spokeswoman Lisa Capone said 57 of the terminations were voluntary while 34 were pinkslipped. Of those 91, seven were managers. “Those percentages reflect the proportion of union vs. management throughout the agency,” she said.

Orange Fire Chief Dennis Annear, president of the Massachusetts Forest Fire Council, said the cuts have “destroyed” an effective service that’s been around for 100 years. Annear said the DCR jakes are crucial in rural western Massachusetts where they often lead under-trained volunteers into dangerous blazes.

“We use these individuals to lead a crew,” Annear said. “Some departments don’t have the right protective gear to go out in the woods and they definitely don’t have that expertise.”

Annear said the cuts are particularly painful since the DCR has been aggressively promoting tourism at state parks.

“Tourism is great but somebody’s got to pay to treat these people or go rescue them in the woods,” he said.

Capone said the DCR is “maintaining our commitment to public safety.”

Copyright 2009 Boston Herald Inc.

By Dave Wedge
The Boston Herald

I also found this in the November 11, 2009 DCR Stewardship Council minutes:

Patti Vantine, Director of Administration and Finance informed the Council on/of the following matters:

The magnitude of the current (2010) operating 9c cut was between 4-8%, however the final
requirement for DCR is 5.2%.

Cuts have been saved by mandatory management furlough up to nine days, an unspecific cut,
and an earmark that was removed.

Voluntary layoff and retirements are being wrapped up, and involuntary layoffs are nearing the
end of the bumping process.

A final projection number will be tallied once the full bumping/retirement process is complete.

Our state revenue has slightly increased for October.
o DCR was able to maintain six firefighters, one Warden in each district.
o The overall budget for DCR is $78,348,984 after the 9c budget cuts.
o Environmental Police has taken a $1.5m cut.

(DCR also transferred many of their parkway and bridge assets from the “Emerald Necklace” system around Boston to the newly formed MassDOT … I wonder how that factored into budget cuts if at all? Later on in the minutes it reported 55 DCR employees transferred to MassDOT, but that DCR would still provide snow control for the current budget year.)

A January, 2010 presentation noted that the DCR had seen it’s operating budget cut by 23% from FY2009 to mid-year FY2010. In 18 months it had lost 171 full time positions, including 54 to voluntary layoff / retirements, 37 unfilled positions eliminated, and 29 layoffs.

Deerfield, MA experienced a 50 acre brush fire on Friday.

This television report found an interesting story within a story about some prep school students who volunteer with Deerfield:

By Matthew Campbell

Story Published: Apr 24, 2009 at 11:27 PM EDT

Story Updated: Apr 24, 2009 at 11:27 PM EDT

A raging brush fire burns 50 acres in Deerfield. 100 firefighters were deployed to the scene paralleling Upper Road, including some volunteer firefighters who were put to the test.

It’s the biggest brush fire in recent years, and it started in Deerfield. 50 acres were seen smoldering along the train tracks.

“We have approximately 80-100 firefighters deployed,” says Greenfield Fire Chief, Michael Winn.

Many on the Friday afternoon scene were volunteer firefighters, including four junior firefighters from Deerfield Academy.

“You got this horn. When it goes off, you sprint out of class and hope you have a spot on the firetruck,” says Cooper Magoon, a Jr. Firefighter.

“It was the first one I’ve been on that was an actual fire going on,” he says.

It started as a school-town partnership. Kids looking to explore fire training get real life experience, but Friday’s blaze was the biggest they fought, and the biggest they may ever see.

“I came in on one of the first trucks on the Deerfield brush truck and it was ripping. When we came by, there were flames all over the right side by the train tracks, I’ve never seen anything like it,” says Ryan Erf, a first year Jr. firefighter.

“Just the whole side was just covered in fire going all the way up the hill,” says Michael Mazur, describing the flames.

The fire extended and tore through the Deerfield woods. At no time were any homes threatened. That’s because the junior firefighters were dousing the outskirts, making sure, it didn’t spread.

“We’d be stamping out, or putting out the fire on the edge of the fireline,” says veteran firefighter Will Hickey.

It’s an experience they’ll never forget, and one, that makes them think about their firefighting future.

“I don’t know about their full time profession, but it’s something to consider,” Erf says.

The fire is out, but crews will be redeployed on Saturday and Sunday to recheck some of the hot spots.

The tuition and fees for Deerfield Academy currently are a bit over $40,000.

WWLP reported the fire took 3-1/2 hours to control and

Chief Yazwynski told 22News that the blaze was likely caused by a passing train. The  train sparked numerous fires in about 8-9 different locations along the track.

Trains also caused this blaze on Saturday in New Hampshire:

Published: April 26, 2009 12:30 am

Passing train sparks 3 town brush fire

By James A. Kimble
jkimble@eagletribune.com

NEWTON, N.H. — An army of firefighters spent much of yesterday afternoon dousing a series of brush fires in Newton, Kingston and Plaistow believed to have been started by sparks from a passing train.

Around 2 p.m., firefighters were called to the area of George’s Way and Cranes Crossing in Newton, a rural neighborhood near the Pan Am railways.

The train was coming from the state line, and traveled through Plaistow, Newton and into Kingston. The fires broke out in wooded and grassy areas along the tracks.

The four-alarm blaze stretched for miles, and brought out roughly a dozen fire departments from New Hampshire and Massachusetts.

Newton Selectmen Chairman Trisha McCarthy, who was manning the phones at the fire station yesterday, said the blaze appears to have started when a train coming from Plaistow through Newton to Kingston had its brakes lock up, sending sparks flying and starting fires in all three towns.

The fire claimed one trailer in the Whispering Pines Camping area in Newton, and one firefighter had to be taken to the hospital, according to Newton fire Capt. Dale Putnam. An update on the firefighter’s condition was not available last night.

Kingston fire Capt. John Merrill said his department sent at least a dozen firefighters to help, along with two engine trucks, a tanker and a forestry vehicle. The fire burned as temperatures topped 80 degrees, the warmest day so far this spring.

Merrill said the train was eventually stopped in Newfields to determine what had caused it to spark.

By early evening, firefighters were still on the scene, dousing hot spots along the tracks.

The Deerfield fire was also along a Pan Am railway.