Yosemite National Park and the entire Sierra Nevada range is covered in feet of snow. This snowpack is important for the state water supply and will have an impact on the coming fire season.
Have a look at the Yosemite webcams here!
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Texas Team Geared Up For Haiti Told to Stand Down
Unbelievable! The Houston Chronicle’s Dale Lezon reports tonight;
A Texas search and rescue team and other similar units mobilized to help earthquake victims in Haiti have been told they are not needed.
Members of Texas Task Force 1 have been on standby in Houston since Thursday to head to the devastated island nation.
But the United Nations mission in the country has declared the search and rescue teams already in the nation are sufficient to handle to the task and the Texas team and others prepared to deploy would not be needed.
The Texas unit, which has been on standby at Ellington Field in southeast Houston, was made up of 80 members including doctors and engineers. Four dogs were also part of the team.
?? I don’t get it. These crews are geared up and ready to do what they are trained to do. It is obvious there is a need for persons with skills these crews possess. Just today more people were pulled out alive from the debris and even those not alive deserve the dignity of being unearthed for the sake of their families. Not the least of which public health is now a concern with thousand of cadavers decomposing within the ruins of Haiti.
To the Texas crews affected, I hope the powers that pulled your rescue and recovery trip reverse their stance.
The good people of Texas are lucky to have you folks on the job back home. Be safe!
Posted in Fire Rescue Topics, Mass Casualty Incident, Rescues
El Nino Slamming West Coast (animated NOAA map)
It’s rare to see the entire states of California, Nevada, Oregon and Baja covered completely by rain and snow.
Posted in Weather
Port-au-Prince Should Be Evacuated (Updated)
First responders from around the globe are descending on Port-au-Prince Haiti to search for trapped victims and render first aid and medical assistance to the injured. In the couple of days the rescue effort turns to recovery. This is when the true extent of the disaster will start to sink in.
Two million people (or more) live in Port-au-Prince and at the moment there is no municipal water or sewer system. Electric power is at best spotty if existent at all. As an island nation Haiti presents obstacles not present in the Sichuan China earthquake in 2008. Residents of Sichuan Province had the resources of the central government of China responding from many directions. Port-au-Prince can only be supplied by air and sea.
The airport has one functional runway, the port has only a few usable docks. Today there were 11 scheduled relief flights from the US but only 3 were able to land due to runway congestion.
In a matter of days the estimated 2 million homeless, with no clean water or sewer facilities will face the possibility of contracting highly communicable diseases like measles, dengue fever and dysentery.
Fewer than 10,000 United Nations contracted employees police the city. A hundred or so US Marines are on the ground now, mostly to operate and secure the airport. Soldiers from the US 82nd Airborne are en route and will add to the security effort but this is a meager force considering the task at hand. Desperation caused by hunger and thirst is already driving some to loot and riot.
Residents should be relocated to other cities in Haiti or moved into tent cities outside Port-au-Prince away from temptation to occupy buildings that still stand but as yet not inspected. Potentially severe aftershocks will be a reality for weeks to come.
A relief effort on the scale of the Marshall Plan needs to be initiated. To get the C-5’s and C-130’s on the ground someone needs to clear the airport of media types flying in for a look see in their corporate jets.
I was watching ABC tonight and was appalled at the sappy picture the pop journalists tried to paint. After thinking about it I realized these reporters have have no inclination of the breadth of this tragedy. If they did they would not have been so trite.
The only efforts that count now are those that will save lives, not story telling. What is needed is 200,000 tents, 4 million bottles of water a day, food for 2 million and medical teams to treat the sick and wounded. The airlift has to start yesterday and it will have to be round the clock for the coming weeks.
I cannot think of a similar scenario. Even the Christmas tsunami of 2004 that killed 200,000 was not as unique. The coastline was affected but survivors had help a few miles inland in addition to international aid.
God help the people of Haiti and God bless the helpers, our friends and neighbors, our brothers and sisters that went into this environment to do what they do.
Update 1/21–The Haiti government intends to relocate 400,000 homeless Port-au-Prince refugees outside the city into tent camps citing concerns about “sanitation and disease outbreaks in makeshift settlements like the one on the city’s central Champs de Mars plaza”.
Posted in Major Incidents, Mass Casualty Incident, Rescues
LODD, Hugh Monroe of the Tolmie & District Rural Fire Brigade
From CFA Direct;
Tolmie & District Rural Fire Brigade member Hugh Monroe died yesterday after the tanker he was driving was involved in an accident on the way to an incident in Victoria’s North East. The accident happened about 14 kilometres from Tatong.
Mr Monroe, 62, had been a volunteer for nearly 11 years and was a much loved member of both his brigade and community. A dedicated firefighter and brigade 3rd Lieutenant, he was involved in the 2006 campaign through Victoria’s high country and the Black Saturday fires last year.
Mr Monroe was a Vietnam Veteran and retired to Tolmie after working as a protective services officer in Melbourne, guarding the Shrine of Remembrance. Handy with a pool cue and a keen fly fisherman, which he wrote about for his local paper, Mr Monroe ran fishing and tourism trips. He was also a passionate gardener and opened his property to visitors as part of the Open Garden Scheme.
An active, community-minded man, Mr Monroe will be deeply missed. CFA extends its sincere condolences to Mr Monroe’s family, friends and fellow brigade members.
Chief Officer Russell Rees described the accident as a tragedy and said it “reinforces once again the dedication and commitment of our people across the emergency services.” He said work protecting Victoria’s communities would go on today and into the week “under a shadow of loss as we mourn Mr Monroe’s sacrifice.”
Chief Executive Officer Mick Bourke joined Russell in expressing his condolences to Mr Monroe’s family and friends, and the wider CFA family. “When one of our own dies in active service, it deeply affects the whole organisation. All across the state, CFA members are sharing this pain and sending their condolences to those involved.”
Mr Monroe is survived by his wife of 27 years, Kathy, and his children.
Deepest condolences to Firefighter Monroe’s family, friends and his Brigade members. RIP Hugh Monroe.
Posted in LODD
Major Earthquake Strikes Ill Prepared Port-au-Prince Haiti
Hard to believe but the 2 million residents of Port-au-Prince Haiti are served by a single fire station. The video below, highlighting the efforts of Lt Nate Lasseur of the West Palm Beach Florida Fire Department profiles the needs of fire professionals in this impoverished country.
There is nothing on the Internet pointing to any information on fire or rescue services in Haiti. By contrast the city of San Jose California, with a population of nearly 1 million offers individual websites with images for each of their 35 fire stations.
Something is wrong with this disparity.
Video: Lt Nate Lasseur Helping Haiti Firefighters
Montgomery Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Service training Haiti firefighters in 2009.
First images from Haiti earthquake (via TwitPic, links embedded), the nation needs help ASAP.
Australia Fire Services Advise “Flee Before Wildfire Starts”
The South Australian Country Fire Service or CFS takes a proactive approach to fire safety. In cases of extreme fire weather they advise rural residents to flee or relocate to predetermined safe zones before a bushfire starts.
Calling for people to leave their homes before a fire starts is extreme but CSF’s recommendation smartly raises attention to the seriousness of fast moving fires. As we see time and again not everyone living in the “bush” or rural wildlands are fully aware of the danger fire presents. CSF also knows not everyone has an action plan for when the event occurs.
CFS is mindful as is all of Australia of the tragic events of February 7, 2009, Black Saturday when 173 persons died and more than 3,000 structures burned north of Melbourne in Victoria State. Weather forecasts preceding Black Saturday predicted 80 miles per hour winds with temperatures in excess of 120 degrees. The towns of Marysville and Kingslake would still have burned but the dozens of residents that died that day would still be alive if they had followed the advice of CFS.
Will residents in the Aussie bush move to safer ground before a fire starts? Would Americans evacuate their ranches, neighborhoods and towns in the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI)? I’m guessing not but at least the CFS has set guidelines for those that wish to.
Here is the relevant text from the bulletin from the link above.
WHERE TO RELOCATE TO ON DAYS OF SEVERE, EXTREME AND CATASTROPHIC FIRE WEATHER
If you live, work or travel in an area where bushfires can occur, and your Bushfire Survival Plan is to leave early, on or before a bad fire day, you need to be aware of where you can relocate to.
CFS has developed a hierarchy of places that can offer relative safety from bushfire. They are broken into three categories, and are called Safer Settlements, Bushfire Safer Precincts and Refuges of Last Resort. It is important that you know what each of these are, where they are, and what risk you may be exposed to if you use one of these options during a bushfire.
Safer Settlement
A Safer Settlement is a place of first resort for people who have decided that they will leave their home early on a bad fire day.
A Safer Settlement is considered to provide the highest level of safety of the three options because it is in an area of low bushfire fuel levels and sufficiently distant from continuous bushland or forest. Inner suburbs of the Adelaide metropolitan area have been listed as Safer Settlements.
Bushfire Safer Precinct
A Bushfire Safer Precinct is also considered to be a place of first resort for people who have decided that they will leave early on a bad fire day.
A Bushfire Safer Precinct is defined as any area that is further than 500 metres from continuous bushland or forest, or more than 200 metres from continuous grass land.
Refuge of Last Resort
A Refuge of Last Resort is a space or building which could be used as a place of last resort for individuals to access and remain in during the passage of fire through their neighbourhood.
A Refuge of Last Resort is intended to provide a place of relative safety during a bushfire, but does not guarantee the survival of those who assemble there, and should only be accessed when a personal Bushfire Survival Plan cannot be implemented or has failed.
Posted in Australian Bushfires, Wildland
The Hike; A Fire Story By Retired Fire Capt. Frank Morales
The Hike:It was in Arizona, late 1980’s. I was a member of The Sierra Blue Cards assigned to Tuscon Arizona from Fresno California in a Greyhound bus, an 800 mile trip. Once there we laid out on the tarmac of Tuscon International Airport for deployment instructions.
We were assigned to a fire burning in the Rincon’s northeast of Tucson at approximately 8500 ft. elevation. We went to base camp and slept for the night anticipating a helicopter flight in the morning for our shift on the mountaintop.
The temperature at base camp was extreme, 109 degrees in the shade. We received our instructions and flew 11 miles to the fire. Our assignment was for 24 hours so we packed heavy with food and water. The day went well as the fire was more or less contained before we got there. We were sent there to mop up the remaining hot spots and keep the fire from crossing existing lines which had been put in the previous day.
We worked all day and except for my friend Kevin losing his helmet off a huge rock (he had to hike down a steep hill to retrieve it) it was uneventful. We continued working through most of the night with a couple of hours nap and began preparing for our flight back to base camp for rest and re-supply. That was when a storm approached.
We found out that an Arizona a summer monsoon is something to behold. The rain came down in buckets and the lightning struck down all around us. It rained for what seemed to be an hour straight. It literally washed any remaining hot spots off the hill. Scared by the lightening and soaking wet we hiked to the helispot and waited for our ride back to base. That’s when we got word that the storm that just hit us had started new fires on nearby mountains and we wouldn’t be getting a helicopter ride down after all. We were going to have to hike out.
We all acted nonchalant to this news and prepared ourselves and our gear for a long hike out. We started the hike mid morning and left the beautiful pine trees and soft duffy ground and soon realized that this would be no ordinary hike. After about a half an hour we started to feel a sharp increase in temperature as the shade of the pine trees was leaving us. The ground became harder and more rocky. We walked and walked trying to make steady progress so that the hike wouldn’t last all day. Some of the members of the crew began to feel tired due to the lack of sleep and ever increasing temperature of the approaching lower elevation. Crew members began running out of water and needed to take longer breaks to regain strength to continue hiking.
Snakes and other desert animals started to show themselves and we knew that this place was very different than where we were from. The pines were replaced by cactus and soon all of us were out of water. We hiked for close to 7 hours straight. This hike down the mountain took so long because it wasn’t just walking downhill. We went through many ups and downs, peaks and valleys. The hike was 11 miles all total but the worst mile was saved for the last. We walked the last mile across the Tuscon valley to base camp. It was brutal. Every man on our crew agreed that it was the worst hike that they had ever been on.
After a deserved shower I was very pleased to see my brother Mike and his wife who lived in Tuscon had come to visit me. I ate the great cookies his wife made for me and accepted the new socks my brother had brought. I couldn’t visit for long as I truly felt like I was near to falling asleep just sitting there talking.
I’ll never forget that hike realizing that today fire crews aren’t put in situations where there is a good possibility they could go down and possibly die from heat related emergencies. Many men came close on that day. It was a testament to true firefighter brotherhood in how we all shared our water with each other and looked after one another once we realized that this hike was different.
Note: Captain Morales is now retired and living in Arizona. As his brother I was priviledged to follow his eventful career. Now that he has time to reflect I hope to be able to post more stories from his amazing career.
Posted in Wildland
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