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.

Photo essay from the Wood River Valley area: http://d90.us/wooden_nutmeg/essays/Arcadia_2010/

A really great write up of managing fire in New England Pine Barrens, archive here.

In addition to those “natural community” issues, few active firefighters have seen truly severe fire conditions in New England.

Although rainfall alone doesn’t dictate fire danger (frequency of rain is likely much more important in New England in keeping fire danger to “high” or below), the following graphs show a very sharp difference between pre-1970 and post-1970 climate. You can get more data for different regions of the New England states here.

I strongly suspect that it is not coincidence that we haven’t had a serious forest fire problem in southern New England since the early 1960s. Before, roughly, 1970 we used to experience a deep drought about every ten years. Nothing since 1970 has matched those 10 year droughts.

Also I’m still researching the frequency rain events. Rain tends to “reset” the fire danger.

Let’s assume a cycle like this; while conjecture it’s not an unreasonable cycle based on my observations over the years:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: High
Day 6: High
Day 7: Very High
Day 8: Very High
Day 9: Very High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Now add in one overnight rain:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: Rain overnight (moderate)
Day 6: Moderate
Day 7: High
Day 8: High
Day 9: High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Most people wouldn’t notice a major impact from an extra shower or two in April, but it could be having a very large impact on fire danger.

Going far outside of New England, I stumbled on this interesting article:

At old ranches and on some remaining farms near the foothills, one can see old barbed-wire-fence “pitch posts.” These relics of a bygone era artistically reveal some Colorado history and provide an interesting forestry lesson.

Pitch posts were cut and split from the dense and heavy wood of live pitchy trees. Pitch is a resin found in evergreen trees and it forms when trees are injured. When the injury is caused by heat from ground-surface, low-intensity forest fires, and the fire has not killed the tree, more sap is made. This resin then concentrates in outer layers of sap-wood.

Long ago, forest fires were started from lightning and often times by indigenous people. Native Americans knew that a flush of new and tender vegetation that sprouts after fire meant well-nourished game and thus better hunting. With no human effort to suppress forest fires, they were frequent, and trees were often injured by fire.

In those conditions, a “relatively young,” 150-year-old tree may have received fire damage three, four, five or more times in its lifetime. A living tree exposed to that many fires accumulates high concentrations of pitch all the way from its heartwood center out to the bark.

…

Back then, many forest fires persisted for months. These long-lasting fires took on a variety of day-to-day behavior, depending upon weather, terrain and fuel conditions in their path. Some fires smoldered underground for a long time as root fires, only to be rekindled with a strong, dry wind. Over centuries of time, subsequent fires affected miles and miles of forest, covering a wide range of aspects and elevations.

Archived here.

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.

This same fire is described several times in various histories of the Yawgood Scout Reservation, such as this one:

The plateau was the place where Chief Williams and “Gus” Anthony had a dangerous encounter with the great forest fire, as described in the second edition of The Story of the Yawgoog Trails:

Chief Williams and Gus Anthony stood on this plateau on Sunday afternoon, May 3, 1930 amidst the blinding smoke and falling embers and heard the roar of the great forest fire that came sweeping down from the Beach Pond area six miles [10 kilometers] away. “The fire roared like an express train as the giant white pines exploded into flames like torches.” Chief and Gus ran for their lives back down the trail toward Rathom Lodge (Williams and Tracy).

(There may some exaggeration going on — Beach Pond is 3 miles due north of Yawgoog, maybe 4 to the far northwest corner of the pond. Or the origin was considerably behind Beach Pond, either north or west of it and Beach Pond was used simply as a convenient land mark)

From the August, 14 2005 Providence Journal:

Byline: John Kostrzewa

Aug. 14–HOPKINTON — AFTER 75 YEARS, THE GREAT FIRE’S LESSONS LIVE ON: The Great Fire of 1930 burned a terrible chapter into the history of Camp Yawgoog.

It was a tragedy and a natural disaster.

The fire destroyed all but 50 acres of the Boy Scout camp set deep in the woods of South County. The devastation drove the birds and ground animals from the blackened and desolate landscape.

The sounds of life disappeared.

While the story of the Great Fire is a dark memory from Scouting’s past, it also is a story about hope, turning disaster into triumph and rallying for a common cause.

Mostly, it’s about Scout spirit that today still burns brightly at Yawgoog.

Here’s what happened 75 years ago this summer.

The winter and spring of 1930 were among the driest on record. The lack of snowfall and rain reduced streams to trickles. The water level in Yawgoog Pond dropped several feet.

Back then, Scouting in Rhode Island was still in its infancy. Most people had never heard of Yawgoog.

But two early Scout leaders, J. Harold “Chief” Williams and H. Cushman “Gus” Anthony, envisioned the wooded area as a future summer camp for boys and began to develop the property the new organization acquired.

They cleared some land for tents and erected a mess hall and headquarters.

During the first weekend in May 1930, Williams and Anthony were leading a training session for Scout leaders at Yawgoog when the fire warden came into camp. He warned that a fire had broken out well to the west, in Connecticut, and was spreading. He told them to be on the lookout.

Williams and Anthony smelled the smoke the next morning, as soon as they poked their heads out of their tents. They sent a team of campers and local volunteers with buckets, brooms and rakes to set up firebreaks at the edge of camp.

They walked west through the campground until they saw three huge columns of smoke on the horizon.

The fire, whipped by strong winds, approached with a terrifying roar. The thick smoke overtook them. The heat seared the buttons on their shirts.

They were forced to retreat and decided the only parts of camp they might save were the main buildings.

Anthony climbed to the roof of the lodge at the camp called Three Point and sprayed the roof and walls with water from a garden hose. Other adult leaders pushed their cars into the pond to escape the embers.

The fire swept along Yawgoog Pond and through the campground. Flames surrounded them, but Williams, Anthony and the others saved the lodge.

The next morning, the fire broke out on the far side of Yawgoog Pond, across from the camp. The fire crept along the shore and then leaped to Phillips Island. The Scout leaders watched the giant pines and white birches on the island ignite like torches.

Still, it was not over. The blaze continued the third day along Wincheck Pond at the opposite end of the camp.

When the fire finally died out, Williams and Anthony hiked through what was left of Yawgoog. Tent platforms, several cabins, even the docks had been destroyed. Charred tree trunks and rubble, still-smoldering, were visible for acres.

It was Anthony who first noticed the silence that had settled over the camp. The wildlife had fled, seeking sanctuary from the fire.

Standing in the black ashes, a foot deep in places, Williams and Anthony looked out at what was left of their vision.

“It was heartbreaking,” Williams said.

But he also saw the opportunity. He saw the chance to pull together a fledgling organization of troops scattered throughout the state to work on a common goal.

The fire had been front-page news in the daily papers. With Rhode Islanders focused on the damage, Williams put out the call and began to build a network of Scouting supporters in business, industry, government and the media. They all agreed to pitch in.

“We began at once to think of reforestation,” Williams said.

Two weeks after the fire, on an early Sunday morning, 500 Scouts and leaders from 79 troops from across Rhode Island arrived at the gates to Yawgoog. Each troop was assigned a section of camp and given an initial batch of 50 seedlings purchased from a nursery in Maine.

In a single, long day, the Scouts and volunteers planted 25,000, five-year-old white pine seedlings over 250 acres.

When the Scouts finished, a light rain blessed their work.

“Mother Nature has begun to heal the blackened wounds,” Williams said.

Fourteen months later, in July 1931, judges, politicians, business executives, editors, benefactors, Scouts and adult volunteers gathered at Camp Yawgoog.

They were there to dedicate the Bucklin Memorial, the huge, stone and wood-beamed building that serves as camp headquarters. But the talk was about the trees. The softwood pines planted by the Scouts grew among the hardwoods that had sprung back to life.

Federal forestry agents said it was the single largest reforestation effort in the history of Rhode Island — a model for others to follow.

And walking through camp, they all heard the sounds of life again.

Since the Great Fire, Yawgoog has become a familiar name to Rhode Islanders and one of the premier camps in the country.

Scouting has grown, too. But there also have been more tragedies, especially this summer.

During the national jamboree last month in Virginia that attracted 40,000 Scouts, four leaders were electrocuted setting up camp. Later, 300 Scouts there suffered heat exhaustion. In a separate incident elsewhere, a Scout from Utah was struck by lightning.

And then, Yawgoog itself was closed for 12 days after a contagious stomach virus sickened more than 100 Scouts.

Last Sunday, after a fresh scrubbing, Yawgoog reopened. About 800 Scouts spent a great week earning merit badges, making friends, learning to live as a community and having fun.

On the same trail hiked by William and Anthony to inspect the devastation from the Great Fire, the Scouts may have seen the marker for the reforestation, or heard the story told around the campfire.

It’s a pretty good lesson for Scouts and for that matter, for all of us.

John Kostrzewa, business editor, spent last week as a volunteer at Camp Yawgoog.

To see more of the The Providence Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.projo.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Providence Journal, R.I.

Burned 8,000 acres in Exeter and West Greenwich Rhode Island. I drove this area today, man…so many good photos to take of woods ready to explode once again I have to plan a day for the photos I want to take! May need to wait till next spring before “green up” for maximum effect.

Another large fire was burning in the Massachusetts / Connecticut / Rhode Island border region as well.

Those who read this blog know a central event I like researching is the complex of fires lit on April 30, 1942 by Edward LaCasse which burned some 50 square miles in Eastern, Connecticut (Sterling primarily), and Rhode Island (primarily Coventry and West Greenwich).

I just found this nifty piece from the 28 April 1942 New London Day — in addition to numerous smaller brush fires in the region that were proving difficult to extinguish due to re-kindles (see this post), there were at least two very large forest fires burning in Eastern Connecticut in the days before LaCasse’s arson spree. One in Groton consumed 1,000 acres, while another in Voluntown, ignited by accident when gasoline spilled on a hot engine, consumed 2,000 acres as well as a house and several outbuildings:

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.

As other posts in the search talk about the 50 square mile fire that was centered on Sterling, CT and Coventry, RI…let’s take a look from the New London Day as to conditions in the region south of that fire that week.

The fires in that area began on Thursday, April 30th, 1942.

One common theme in these newsclippings is re-kindles of fires.

These clippings were found through this query: http://www.google.com/archivesearch?q=brush+fire+source:%22The+Day%22 (You can further define it by date ranges).

April 28th:

May 1st, mentioning Westerly firefighters who the morning after their own 350 acre fire left to help in Coventry:

May 2nd:

May 4th. That a “state pumper” came out of Lebanon is interesting. There aren’t currently any large DEP facilities in Lebanon. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen another reference to a fairly high up (or top) State Fire Warden living in Lebanon though.

May 4th. This is a different fire from the large Westerly fire mentioned above! If I have the timeline correct, the first article refers to a 350 acre fire between White Rock Road & Boon Bridge Road on Thursday, April 30th. This is north of downtown Westerly, by the Pawcatuck River. This article is for 300 acres off Shore Road, which today is Old Route 1 east of Watch Hill (I assume this is the road referred to in the article), on Saturday, May 1st. Over one square mile in two days…plus they had sent help to the large fire to the north!

From the New London Day, 19 April 1980:

Fort Shantok is no longer a state park — it was transferred to the Mohegans in 1996, following their federal recognition in 1994, and is adjacent to today’s Mohegan Sun casino. The Mohegans have a long history of friendly relations with colonial and later state authorities; in 1645 Uncas was beseiged at Fort Shantok by a force of Narragansetts until a relief force led by Thomas Leffingwell arrived.

South End Fire Department, in Old Lyme, also no longer exists. They were shutdown by their town, who took possession of the town owned station and apparatus. The department was left with the rescue truck they held title to, which was later sold to Eastford, and as part of that deal my company (Mortlake) purchased the Hurst tool and its gas-powered pump as a backup unit.

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.

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.

This is a great write up of the ’47 Maine fires, archived here (You’ll need to scroll down the archive version a bit to get to the article).

It was the worst disaster in the history of forest fire protection in Maine, resulting in heavy property losses and human privation.

The tragic results were: 215,000 acres of fields, pastures and forests burned, of which 180,000 acres were forested; the death of 16 people due to indirect causes brought about by the fires, but no loss of life in actual fire fighting; nine communities leveled or completely wiped out; 2,500 made homeless. Property losses were estimated at $30,000,000 of which $7,000,000 included millions of feet of mature timber, thousands of cords of cut and uncut pulpwood, and millions of board feet of sawed lumber stored in lumberyards. Suppression costs came to $300,000. It was heart-warming that many fire departments canceled fire bills for services and equipment to towns that were stricken by the fires.

And this quote particularly impresses me:

There were witnesses of crown fires racing through dry and shriveled hardwood leaf foliage.

Which I interpret as being the heat wave ahead of the main fire was so intense as to dry out the leaves on the already drought stressed hardwoods…then ignite them as it passed.

Some quick and dirty statistics gathered from here (archive).

Major Fires:
1930 — 34,700 acres in R.I.
1942 — 24,500 acres in R.I.
1951 — Acreage not specified

The 1930 and 1942 fires started in Connecticut.  1942 burned about 14,000 acres on the Connecticut side; unsure at this time how many burned in 1930.  From personal recollection of stories heard but not confirmed yet by research the ’51 fire burned generally the area between the 1930 and 1942 fires.

1935 — 63% of R.I. forested
1938 — Hurricane, eventually 80 million board feet of lumber salvaged
1953 — 64% forested; 281 million board feet standing
1998 — 59% forested; 1,316 million board feet standing

On a bit less land, the volume of trees in Rhode Island expand four fold in 45 years.  What that speaks directly to is the lack of “maturity” in the woods of 1953, which relates to forest fires.  Immature woods are brushier and more prone to hot fires and younger trees are more prone to lethal injuries to their bark.  As the forests mature, they become less likely to burn and more resistant to the impact of what does burn.

There’s been two interesting things to come out of the Halifax news.

Halifax was struck by Hurricane Juan on 29 September 2003 with 100mph winds, with unofficial gusts to 145mph.

Hurricane intensity in northern waters

While hurricanes this far north tend to weaken their cyclonic wind speeds, they gain forward speed. This is a graphic of that effect from the 1938 Hurricane.(1)

We know historically the hurricanes are one of the major disturbances of forests, probably matched in the degree and geographic area only by ice storms.  Other severe disturbances like tornadoes, straight line winds, and microburts tend to affect much smaller geographic areas.

Here a few comments from 1938:

The combination of soggy ground, strong wind and the sail surface of a full complement of leaves proved too much and many shade and forest trees were broken or blown over by the hurricane. … Practically all older stands of white pine east of the Connecticut River were partially or completely destroyed.  Governor Wilbur Cross appointed committees to make recommendations dealing with Forest Fires, Timber Salvage and Forest Rehabilitation.  Austin Hawes, Hurricane Damaged Forests still a valuable state asset

The fire danger from the downed trees was regarded as a great peril.   The New England Forest Emergency Office was created by the U.S. Forest Serivce to coordinate the effort to mitigate the fire danger and salvage the lumber. United States Forest Service.  A pictorial report on the New England forest emergency project with notes on its operation.

The photo below is from the Harvard collection showing an untouched Pisgah Forest (NH) four years after the ’38 Hurricane, compared to salvaged forests in Petersham, MA and was retrieved from this site.  Keep in mind when reading their perspective (against salvage) that Pisgah and even Petersham are fairly high, cool areas that keep their snow covers later in the year then areas further south and east in New England, and at least with Pisgah are fairly isolated from homes and business.

1942 -- Aftermath of Hurricane of 1938

This is a contemporary report, from 70 miles east of Pisgah, in Lee, N.H. of the conditions of 1941 and looking forward to 1942:

FOREST FIRE WARDEN’S REPORT
The 1941 fire season was the worst on record in the State of New Hampshire.

More fires occurred, more 25 area was burned over, greater damage was done to our woodlands, higher losses were sustained in other real property burned and the cost of suppressing fires was greater.

There will, perhaps, never be more ideal conditions for fire than existed in 1941. A scarcity of rain left the forests in a highly inflammable condition. The accompanying high winds spread fires with almost light- ning rapidity through the parched forest lands. These conditions, coupled with human carelessness, made 1941 outstanding in the state’s forest fire record.

As we approach the 1942 fire season, we wonder just what may be in store for us. The woodlands are in as critical condition as they were last year, if not more so. Blown down trees still clutter sizable acreages of our woodland areas ; the increased tempo in lumbering operations due to war demands are each day adding to the fire hazard an ever increasing number of acres of slash land; and we face the coming fire season with greatly reduced personnel, due to the shifting of men from our small communities into the armed forces of the country and into defense industries.

If, however, everyone will be careful, if they will follow the rules and regulations laid out for the use of fire in and around woodlands, much of our difficulties will be eliminated — our fires kept few in number with a consequent saving of expense to town and state. There are so many possibilities for trouble this year it will require the whole-hearted and patriotic cooperation of everyone concerned if we are to avoid serious difficulties.

Persons hostile to the best interests of our country and subnormal individuals affected by the excitement of the times may easily cause tremendous confusion and disruption of local activities by deliberately starting fires in our woodlands. Suspicious circumstances connected with every fire should be made known to the proper authorities. Wardens and Deputies are being instructed this year to investigate all fires carefully. Parties at fault will be held strictly responsible. With our forces weakened, it becomes more necessary for everyone to comply with regulations which have been set up to govern the use of fire in our woodlands.

These are briefly as follows :

1. Secure a permit from your local forest fire warden to burn brush or other debris in or near woodlands, or where fire may be communicated to such lands, once the snow has left the ground. Violation of this requirement makes the responsible party liable.
a. To a fine not to exceed $500.00 or imprisonment of not more than one year or both.
b. To the town for expenses incurred by the warden in attending or extinguishing such fire.
c. For damage to abutting owners if fire runs upon abutters’ property.

2. DON’T drop or throw from any vehicle while same is upon a public highway or private way and DON’T drop, throw or otherwise deposit on or near woodlands any lighted match, cigar, cigarette, live ashes or any other substance liable to cause a fire. Violation of these prohibitions penalizes whoever is found guilty with a fine of not more than $25.00.

3. DON’T fail to promptly notify your local warden of any fires you see.

The 1941 fire record for Lee is as follows : Number of fires 12 Acreage burned 118 Cost of suppression . . . $757.40 No. of permits issued .

FRANK I. CALDWELL, Forest Fire Warden [, Lee, N.H.].
Retrieved 6 May 2009 from here.

Allowing a forest to “naturally” recover, and that’s a difficult word to define in a southern New England landscape where fire from man has played a role since the glaciers retreated, at the very least requires preparation and defense.  A single careless or deliberate spark in a pile of debris like the Pisgah picture above would ignite a long burning, intense fire that’s likely to seriously damage the organic matter in the soil below.  Good and sufficient fire breaks are needed to keep fires from the outside out, and keep intense fires on the inside from escaping.

Which brings us to this picture from Halifax, whih was taken at a fire which started, in the general the area were the big fire started the next day (archive).   These conditions certainly could be found among the worse of the December 2008 ice storm.

29 April 2009 Halifax Fire

That picture probably illustrates two of the keys in dealing with fires in the ice storm area — hoses and helicopters.  I suspect a third part would be bulldozers to quickly re-open forest roads if necessary.  In my town, in the wake of hurricanes or other severe wind events, we will use a front end loader in conjuction with chainsaws to quickly re-open roads for fire apparatus to pass.  On a major fire you may even see a need for dozers to actually build fire line to push dead brush back into the black.

There was another incident out of Halifax that’s good to keep in mind:

House being investigated for arson

…the investigation began after firefighters arrived at the house to battle the rapidly growing wildfire.

Firefighters realized there was a fire inside the house and “they saw stuff that made them believe that this was a suspicious fire,” he said.

“It didn’t take the investigator long to confirm that it was, indeed, suspicious.” Chronicle-Herald

Some interesting video came out of the Halifax fire last week of a news crew that was almost over run by the rapidly moving fire.  Rapid fire development in wildland terms is usually called a “blow up” — when a fire goes from burning surface fuels and brush to suddenly involving all fuels.  It is a phenomena similar to a flashover in structural firefighting when a critical combination of oxygen, heat, and fuel is reached and all surfaces suddenly ignite.

At the 8 second mark events occur quickly — you hear a comment about “getting dark,” then the camera has a partial white out (I assume from rapid fire growth), then the still photographer observes they have fire to their left.  Press reports have stated, per Nova Scotia Forestry, the fire spread hit speeds of 36 meters per minute.  That’s 107 chains per hour, 1.3 miles per hour, or 118′ per minute.  In Connecticut spread rates over 30 chains per hour are considered Very High fire danger days, and over 40 are Extreme.

The above video is  reminiscent to me of this video taken in the New Jersey pine barrens on 16 May 2007 when several New Jersey Forest Fire Service vehicles were involved in a near miss:

I have the above videos archived in case they disappear from YouTube, under videos.

Those videos help fill in the mental picture when you see photos like this one from Cape Cod, which has forests like the pine barrens of New Jersey:

Forest fire on Cape Cod, from Capecodfd.com

Or this AP photograph of an October, 1947 fire crossing Route 1 in Arundel, Maine:

October, 1947 Arundel, ME

When the fire is in the crown like this they can not be fought.  In general the tactic is to leave these to burn and concentrate on handling the fire later when it has left the crown and is just burning the surface and brush, as these boys from Bates College are headed to do in ’47:

Boys from Bates headed to fight fire

At Bates, nearly 300 male students, volunteered for firefighting duty. A state disaster committee dispatched the volunteers to help fight the fires in towns like Bowdoinham, Kennebunk, Cornish and Richmond. Meanwhile, female students conducted watches on campus and at Thorncrag, raked leaves away from residence halls, and collected clothing donations for the Red Cross.

Clicking on the Bates photo will bring you to a page which recounts the tale.  In case it disappears I’ve archived off a couple of the tales here.

Even the brush breakers of southeastern Massachusetts aren’t intended to attack these crown fires directly, but instead to allow them to rapidly access deep into the woods to control the fire while it’s still in the brush and not a crown fire.

Fire storms like those pictured above are not survivable to those caught in the open.  In parts of the U.S. the “fire shelter,” an aluminized tent carried on your belt is common.  Australians tend to use their fire apparatus as shelters, specially equipping them with blinds to keep out the radiant heat from the cab and misting systems to wet the outside of the truck. A flame front like that is also survivable in a properly prepared home, which it doesn’t look like the Halifax homes were, when the occupants are prepared after the flame front has passed to come out and extinguish spot fires around their property.

From powering trucks to portable pumps, the internal combustion engine was one the major technological innovations that improved forest fire fighting, allowing firefighters to respond quickly over long distances to deliver large volumes of water.

Imagine trying to keep a fire small when depending on horses to transport your equipment, and without many of the improved tools of today!

This is a New Jersey fire warden from 1911 (from the book New Jersey Forest Fire Service) equipped with shovels, milk cans (used to carry water), garden watering cans, and some sort of larger tank.

New Jersey Fire Warden Victor Bush, 1911

From Britt Crosby’s CapeCodFD.com site we have an early fire wagon in Massachusetts:

Men filling soda acid extinguishers, Southeastern Massachusetts

Soda acid extinguishers required a recharge cartridge of sulfuric acid and sodium bicarbonate; inverting the extinguisher would produce carbond dioxide which would pressurize the extinguisher.  Each extinguisher held 2-1/2 to 3 gallons of water and depending on the fire intensity, terrain, and skill of the firefighter could knock down 50′ to 200′ of surface fire.

The Massachusetts Bureau of Forest Fire Control built specialized wagons to use instead of the adapted farm wagons above that were discussed in the 1918 book, “Forestry in New England.”  While in use throughout the eastern part of the state they were most common in the southeastern section.

A two horse model, like the one below, carried 14 soda acid extinguishers, 14 water cans and sufficient to refill 2 extinguishers each, shovels, rakes, mattocks, and chemical charges, along with 8 men.

Massachusetts two horse forest fire wagon

The one horse model below was carried a smaller amount of equipment and only four men. Basic apparatus economics held true even back then.  A one horse wagon cost $300, while the two horse wagon carrying twice the equipment and manpower only raised the price to $450.

Massachusetts one horse forest fire wagon

Another early option to either watering cans or soda acid extinguishers was the one and two man bucket pumps.   A one man pump, like the one below, carried four gallons of water and was considered adequate to knock down 50′ to 150′ of fire.  It was considered a little less efficient, but considerably cheaper to purchase and recharge, then a soda acid extinguisher.

One man pump

A two man pump carried eight gallons and took two men to carry.

Halifax, Nova Scotia experienced a major wildfire yesterday.  Wildfiretoday.com had this good post that alerted me to it.

Halifax, NS 30 April 2009

The statistics, per this CBC article, are:

2,000 acres
8 Homes destroyed;
7 Homes damaged:
450 Homes evacuated;
58 Firefighters(1)
5 Helicopters

Fires like this are not unprecedented in the northeast, however they are much less common then the western or southern U.S. and less common regionally then they were prior to 1955 (2).

In 1947 Maine burned.  The Portland Press Herald has this good remembrance (archive) of the fires.  As part of the reaction to that, the first interstate forest fire compact was established in 1949 — the Northeast Forest Fire Protection Commission.  This Commission expanded to an international agreement in 1969 when Quebec joined New York and the New England states as members, and later expanded to include New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

While today the states in the northeast can call for national assistance through the National Interagency Fire Center, through NFFPC manpower familiar and equipment appropriate for the typical terrain, fuels, and fire conditions in the northeast are directly available.  For example, member states and provinces have access to Quebec’s fleet of CL-215 and CL-415 water bombers, which are better suited to the regional fire situation then western style aerial tankers.

In 1951 the Commission held a major drill at Great Mountain, Norfolk, Conn., that you can read about here.

While much has changed over the last 60 years to reduce the frequency and size of typical fires, we still have woodlands that will burn ferociously in the right circumstances.

Those circumstances may not even be an extended drought; an ordinary dry periods combined with a major (or series of) forest disturbances can create serious problems.  As mentioned in a number of posts including this one yesterday, much of north-central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire are under the gun starting next year due to the ice storm this past December.  It seems a similar disturbance played a role in Halifax according to a CTV report:

The fire flared up yesterday but was thought to be under control, until winds picked up Thursday afternoon, sparking 15 metre flames that jumped from treetop to treetop.

Officials have yet to pinpoint an exact cause of the fire, but some said an abundance of brush and remnants of downed trees from Hurricane Juan in 2003 gave fuel to the fire.

5-1/2 year old dead fuels!  Hurricane Juan had made landfall at Halifax, with winds clocked at 100mph and estimates upwards of 145mph.  While downed trees in direct contact with the ground I presume would have been well on the way to rotting by now, tree tops and others that where hung up against tree trunks or stacked on top of other fallen trees and thus unable to wick up moisture from the soil would still be in decent shape to burn.

This report from the local newspaper, the Chronicle and Herald,  filed this afternoon provides some more details from the authorities:

Mr. Currie [Halifax Fire & EMS] said “the leftovers from hurricane Juan have been an issue. They’ve been an issue from the start and they still are an issue. It’s very difficult moving in and around this area with all the blow-down.”

Paul Schnurr, a forestry technician with the Department of Natural Resources, said Friday’s “wind conditions are somewhat the same (as the Porters Lake fire).”

“It’s a wind-driven fire, very fast moving, very hard to contain. It certainly moves faster than a lot of people can walk and that makes it very, very difficult.”

Fires can burn big and hot here.  Just this past Wednesday I walked a fire that was of stand killing intensity over about 60 acres back in 2006, something I will write up soon.  While I’ve seen such areas as a tourist in California, I’ve never seen an extended area in New England that had seen such intensity.  It gave me a new appreciation of how bad of shape our forests were in before modern fire suppression was well established and became effective in reducing what had been a common occurrence.  Earlier this month there was the 40 cottages lost at Alton, N.H., and now the Halifax fire.  Southern New England will experience the right circumstances again, and the level of fire activity will shock many people.

Halifax, NS 30 April 2009

(1) I assume this is probably just forestry agency personnel, and more municipal firefighters would’ve been involved.

(2) For reasons left to a future post to explain, 1955 seems to be a good demarcation point to mark when “modern” forest fire protection all came together and gelled into an effective system in New England and it was clear that frequent, major fires were on the decline.  A pioneering fire warden from 1915 would be amazed to see how things had changed by 1955; a fire warden from 1955 would recognize today as essentially the same as his time in organization, strategy, tactics, and tools — albeit tweaked and improved.

This is a fire that plays an important part in this blog, which you can read in my welcome post.

This post is not an exhaustive history, but the highlights of some articles I already have in my archives.  Someone mentioned this fire on another forum today, which inspired me to look at my notes again.

By the third day of the fire, some 3,000 men had been put to work on the fire with 400 more soldiers enroute from Niantic and Fort Devens.   It had already destroyed 13 homes.

New York Times article, 1 May 1942

The perils of the fire fighters were undergoing were reflected in countless stories.  One of these was told by Corporal Ralph Walsh of Woonsocket, who had become cut off from his fellow-Guardsmen and was badly hurt before being rescued.

He purposely bogged himself in a swamp when a raging burst of crown fire threatened to bombard him with flaming branches.

“I’ve been a woodsmen for a good many years,” he said, “But I never saw any fire as swift as this one.  The lieutenant sent me for water and I guess I got lost because of the smoke.  The next thing I knew, flames were rushing toward me in the underbrush.  I started running ahead of them.  It was terrible.”

“But you haven’t heard anything yet.  I happened to look up in the air and there above me the flames were leaping from top to top among the pines.  I had to keep going.  Finally I saw an opening in the woods.  I made for it and it was a swamp.  I waded through the mud and that’s the last thing I remember.

New York Times, 3 May 1942

This brief article from the Times said firefighters in Killingly (the town north of Sterling) controlled one fire that had burned one mile wide and three miles long.

Providence, R.I., May 3
With at least three forest fires still burning, although the worst was believed definitely over, Rhode Island State Police recorded today for the first time their convition that the outbeaks, which have spread damage in a sixty-square-mile area since Thursday, were incendiary.

New York Times, 4 May 1942

Hartford, Conn.  May 14 (AP)
The Connecticut and Rhode Island State Police announced jointly tonight the arrest of a man they said admitted starting forest fires which swept a wide area in both States two weeks ago, causing damage estimated as high as three million dollars.
…
Edward Francis LaCasse, 30, of Plainfield…was being held in Kingston, R.I. tonight and a … bench warrant charging arson would be sought in Superior Court at Putnam, Conn., tomorrow.
Arsonist Arrested

Justice moved swiftly in those days — only 8 days later he had been convicted and sent to prison.  He admitted guilt to lighting the Connecticut fire, although it seems he didn’t admit guilt for fires lit in Rhode Island.

I believe (confirmation from two sources now — my father and this post, but no news articles yet that I have seen) that three Rhode Island firefighters died on these fires in a burnover incident when their truck stalled in heavy smoke.  If that is true, it could explain his reluctance to admit guilt specifically to the fire which killed those firefighters.

Putnam, May 22.–(Special..)–Edward F. LaCasse, 30, volunteer fireman, of Plainfield, was taken to State’s Prison in Wethersfield Friday afternoon to begin serving a term of seven to 15 years imposed on arson charges in Windham County Superior Court here earlier…

Many fire ponds were constructed during the Great Depression to provide a ready source of water to fight fires.

Created to ease the financial strains of the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, employed over 3,000,000 young men* between 1933-1942.  The 21 camps in Connecticut provided barrack-style food and housing along with a small monthly stiped.  The men worked o a variety of conservation projects including forest road construction, recreation area development and fire suppression.

A system of fire ponds, each holding a minimum of 7500 gallons of water, served as the main water source for fire suppression in the state forests.  This particular fire pond was probably built by enrollees from Camp Connor in Stafford Springs circa 1936.   The goal of building one pond per 100 acres on state land and one pond per 200 acres on private land was curtailed by the onset of WWII and the closing of the CCC camps.  By 1941, the CCC had completed 404 water holes in the 80,000 acres of state forest and 269 holes on private land.

This fire pond, restored to the original conditionin 2001, illustrates one of several designs utilized by the CCC.

…

Many unrestored fire ponds can discovered along forest roads throughout Shenipsit and Nipmuck State Forest.

From this sign:

Sign at the Mountain Laurel Sanctuary, Nipmuck State Forest, Union, CT

This is the pond it refers to:

Fire pond at Mountain Laurel Sanctuary, Nipmuck State Forest, Union, CT

This is another style of pond:

Fire Pond in Natchaug State Forest, Hampton, CT

My observation is these ponds would have been most useful during the spring fire season, filled by snow melt and spring rains.  In a normal summer today these are dry by mid-summer, and thus not available in the summer and fall fire seasons during a drought.  I doubt this would have been any different seventy years ago.

They would have been useful for filling Indian tanks, as well as portable pumps and hose.

Today forestry agencies around the U.S. continue to improve rural water supplies, often under the auspices of the U.S. Forest Service’s Rural Community Fire Protection cooperative program they administer.

RI Rural Community Fire Protection Program
RC&D [Resource Conservation & Development] partnered with the DEM- Division of Forest Environment to provide rural communities with fire protection assistance. In 2006 RC&D designed, produced, and
distributed 200 Dry Hydrant Guidance Manuals to local fire departments, held four workshops across the state on the program and received 19 applications for dry hydrants from six rural fire departments. When installed these hydrants will improve fire protection for an estimated 13,000 residents of these communities.

Rhode Island Resource Conservation & Development 2006 Annual Report

These static water supplies are considerably larger then the old hand dug fire ponds of the CCC, designed to support both wildland and structural fire protection.  This is a representative dry hydrant installation:

[Photo of the Hampton hydrant will go here, once I find it...]

There is a couple ways to estimate coverage for the old water holes.

One is we can assume a square grid with perfectly even distribution.  100 acres would be approximately 2,000 feet square.  From the center of that square to a side would be 1,000′ while reaching a corner would take 1,400′.

Another is to use a circle centered on the water hole.  A circle 1,200′ in radius would cover approximately 100 acres, while a circle 1,650′ in radius would cover approximately 200′ acres.

* For perspective, the U.S. population in 1940 was 134 Million, of which 5.6 Million were males between the age of 20 and 24.  A proportionately sized program today would employ some 7 Million men, with about 2 Million in active service at any given time.

Connecticut Forest Fires
Norwich, Conn., April 20 [1892] — Forest fires are still raging in this State.  Late last night the flames approached the large manufacturing borough of Willimantic.  A force of railroad men was hurriedly called out, who kindled “back” fires, which stayed the onset of the conflagration.  Later, however, a fire burst out in the woods near the Roman Catholic cemetery, in the suburbs of the borough, and threatened the town, when Rev. Father Debruycker rang a fire alarm and the Willimantic Fire Department was called to the scene.
…
There has been no rain in any amount in Northern New England in six weeks, and the country is as dry as a powder flask.

New York Times

This fire was well before the organization of a state-wide system for forest fire control that began in 1905.  Railroads, however, had good cause to control the fires ignited along their rails since they were liable for damages — and were a frequent cause of them with their spark spewing locomotives.

Subsequent to the advent of the steam railroad in America laws imposing a special liability for damages resulting from a fire set by a locomotive or by the employees of a railroad were enacted in many American states as railroad construction extended from the Atlantic to the southern middle western and far western states.  Almost universally such laws made the fact that a fire had been set by a locomotive prima facie evidence of negligence, and placed upon railroad operators the burden of proving due care on the part of the corporation and its employees if it were to avoid responsibility for the damages suffered. In a few states the liability was made absolute irrespective of the question of due care.

Kinney, Jay P., The development of forest law in America

That made railroad crews (and their local bosses, the “section foreman”) a ready source of labor to work the fires.

Nifty article in the Boston Globe brought to our attention via WildfireToday.

On April 30, 1844, Thoreau started a blaze in the Concord Woods, scorching a 300-acre swath of earth between Fair Haven Bay and Concord.

This is a story I’ll have to dig into some more in the future.

Found this interesting 1927 Fire Weather Study (archive) recently, which included a couple interesting observations:

The fire records are for the following counties: Worcester County, the western half of Middlesex County, and the eastern half of Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden Counties.  The total area of the region is approximately 1,750,000 acres, the greater part of which is included in the so-called white pine region.

This is before the 1938 Hurricane, and it would be interesting to research further if it was still considered “white pine region” after that storm.

Of all the major forest types in the Northeast, the white pine type is inherently the most hazardous.  Its leaf litter is highly inflammable because of the resin content.  The size and form of pine needles produce a duff with practically no matting but with a great deal of porosity, so that the run-off after rainfall is extremely rapid. … White pine in New England is confined generally to the poorer soil types — those composed chiefly of sand.  … Daily rainfalls of one-tenth of an inch or less do not keep the duff above the danger zone.  Even with greater amounts of precipitation, the duff moisture content does not remain above 10 per cent for long unless the rains occur at short intervals.

That’s an interesting point about how quickly pine needles dry, and makes sense compared to broad hardwood leaves which would slow the drainage of water.

There is a table that shows the distribution of forest fires between April 11 and July 10, 1927 by relative humidity.  The size of fires are surprising my modern standards:

11-15%  45 fires, 7,643 acres = 170 acres average
16-20% 140 fires, 4,059 acres =  29 acres average
21-25%  90 fires, 2,123 acres =  24 acres average
26-30%  94 fires, 1,395 acres =  15 acres average
(Fires drop off dramatically above 30%)

100+ acre fires are now quite rare, perhaps three in a bad fire season now.

113 years ago tomorrow…

Big Forest Fire in Massachusetts
Sandwich, Mass.
April 15 [1896] -- A forest fire started in Cataumet this morning.  It has raged
all day over a tract of land between that place and Sandwich fifteen miles long
and from one to four miles wide, and is not under control. ... Over 100 workmen
from Sandwich are fighting the fire, but they have made little headway. ...
[The fire] is moving in a northeasterly direction, and is within about two miles
of the town.  Backfires are being built all along the main thoroughfares between
Cataumet and Coutuit...
New York Times (archive)

It is interesting sometimes trying to interpret these old news clippings.  Best I can figure the fire was burning northeasterly through the area now largely occupied by the Massachusetts Military Reservation.  Cataumet is southwest, Coutuit southeast, and the “town” — the village named Sandwich — is northeast of MMR*.  It’s unclear to me whether the backfires were being lit to the south to secure the heel of the fire on a line between Cataumet and Coutuit, or was they represent anchor points for backires being lit along the east and west flanks.

A couple other observations:

It was moving northeasterly, so it was being driven by a southwest wind.  Southwest winds are the predominant wind direction in New England in springtime, and are the warmest, driest winds we experience.

Also interesting is the “100 workmen” — a fire today would be measured in thousands of firefighters for an incident that size in that location.  Brett Crosby’s outstanding Capecodfd.com site has a special section that provides a lot of insight into the history of firefighting on the Cape and the peculiar fire problem they face.

But back then you didn’t have automobiles to rapidly assemble and move workers, and you didn’t have the organizations of trained firefighters ready to be called out.  Hiring laborers was a standard practice to deal with fires, something that also appears in this article from Connecticut:

Forest Fire in Connecticut
Middletown, Conn.
Nov. 1. [1897] -- A forest fire is raging on South Mountains, adjacent to the
Air Line Railroad tracks... Four hundred acres of woodland have been burned
over.  A gang of forty Italians have been at work fighting the fire since
Sunday afternoon...
New York Times (archive)

While it would be amusing if “gang of Italians” was an old term for a Type II hand crew, the more likely explanation is Italians at the time were frequently employed as laborers and construction workers.

* Since MMR was founded in 1911, covering 34 sq. miles, the population of the Cape has grown over 700%.(1).  MMR will factor into later historical posts, as it’s the largest piece of primarily open space left on the Cape and over the years some major fires have started in the reservation.

We’re almost leaving New England for this post to talk about the Federal Fire Policy — something that applies directly only to Cape Cod National Seashore within the southern New England area I normally focus on.  Western and Southern organization, strategy, and tactics are outside of my experience so I try not to go write often on them.

However policy is high level enough I feel comfortable commenting on, and it’s brought to us by the folks at FUSEE (Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology).  While I do think they’re a bit obsessed over their dislike for Bush administration — clearly the Obama administration didn’t just change the fire policy in nine weeks.  The new guidance was under development for about a year under Bush.  But overall I tend to agree with their opinions more then I disagree.

Here is a key section out of the old policy (archive):

1. Only one management objective will be applied to a wildland fire.
Wildland fires will either be managed for resource benefits or suppressed.
A wildland fire cannot be managed for both objectives concurrently.
If two wildland fires converge, they will be managed as a single
wildland fire.
2. Human caused wildland fires will be suppressed in every instance and
will not be managed for resource benefits.
3. Once a wildland fire has been managed for suppression objectives, i
it may never be managed for resource benefit objectives.

When I read that, one word comes to mind:  Pussies.

That was written by people who lack confidence, and in their fear huddle like helpless sheep holding up a sign, “Don’t blame me, I did this on advice of counsel.”  Zero tolerance policies have no place in society — in our schools, or in our forests, or in our unforgiving attitude to persons who straightened themselves out after earlier felonies.

What we need are confident persons who are willing to make and defend reasonable, rational decisions.  A boss at a R&D Center I worked at years ago once told me, “I don’t want to see you never fail, if you never fail it means you’re not taking risks to make things better.  Now, I don’t want to see you fail all the time either!”

The folks who wrote and approved that policy were afraid to fail, to ever get criticized for the rare fire that was wrongly allowed to get out of control despite an admirable overall record.

Yes, I believe in John Wayne.

Olivia Dandridge: [after the massacre at Sudrow's Wells] You don't have
to say it, Captain. I know all this is because of me; because I wanted
to see the West; because I wasn't - I wasn't "Army" enough to stay the
winter.
Captain Nathan Brittles: You're not quite "Army" yet, miss... or you'd
know never to apologize... it's a sign of weakness.
Olivia Dandridge: Yes, but this was your last patrol and I'm to blame
for it.
Captain Nathan Brittles: Only the man who commands can be blamed. It
rests on me... mission failure!

Better yet, a real life hero like Audie Murphy…but that’s a post for another day and maybe another day.

The new guidance represents, at least partially, re-adopting policies established back in the 1990s.  You can find the 2009 Guidance here (archive) .

6.  A wildland fire may be concurrently managed for one or more objectives
and objectives can change as the fire spreads across the landscape.
Objectives are affected by changes in fuels, weather, topography; varying
social understanding and tolerance; and involvement of other governmental
jurisdictions having different missions and objectives.
...
8.  Initial action on human-caused wildfire will be to suppress the fire
at the lowest cost with the fewest negative consequences with respect to
firefighter and public safety.

That’s a balanced approach that should let a manager take risks in order to gain the benefits of the beneficial use of fire and lowest control costs.  It remains to be seen how it is actually implemented in the field.

That is not, by any means, a new concept as this quote from 1912 indicates:

The cost of a fire line of this kind would vary according to the topography
the nature of the forest and the thoroughness with which it is made, from
$25 to $100 a mile.   The maximum expenditure could hardly be justified except
in the case of very valuable forests in extremely exposed situations but there
are few forest areas that it would not pay to protect with some such kind of
fire line.

Forestry in New England a handbook of eastern forest management

While the understanding of the science has changed a bit, even back then the literature was full of the pioneers of forest fire control balancing concerns over fire, costs, timber, and the environment.  I can’t speak for the other sections of the country, but on balance the aggressive suppression of wildfires have made a dramatic improvement in our woodlands in New England.  In 1915 Connecticut had one of it’s worse fire years — 115,000 acres out of perhaps 900,000 acres that was then forested.  An average year saw 3% burn — and much of this 3% was the same brush lands every few years, preventing the growth of an actual forest.  Remember many of the early forestry pioneers came from Yale Forestry School and other east-coast establishments, and I wonder how much of fire policy was an extension of their experiences around their own schools.