Scary because everything that evolved on that fire seemed fairly routine and largely sound compared to other fires I have seen or been on. Granted a wind shift was known and geographically put resources on the right flank in a precarious situation. But a similar thread keeps popping up in these though which is best described as 'we have never seen fire do "that" before'. Fire behavior seems to be surpassing what we ever thought possible. God bless my brothers and sisters that went through this and still deal with days like this.
Just found this video and the story is riveting! I had camped in this same area (camp#7) the season before and noted that it is now still closed to this day. I'd often wondered what the area was like during the fire to have that site still closed. Now have heard from someone who was there! I've also seen Nancy Moundalexis numerous times on the series of BWCA pre-trip required-viewing videos but had no idea she had this experience in her background. Thank you all so much for sharing and so glad you were blessed with survival and able to tell the story!
Huh makes no sense tell those people to get in the damn lake/water if the flaming front is coming at them... doesn't take long for the flaming front to pass.. so many experience Wild land firefighters have said it is survivable being in the water.. dude in the red t shirt is a complete moron and would never go into the wilderness
I will tell you if these guys asked for a helicopter. There is a good reason. I have worked with hotshots, repell teams and strike teams, and they are some tough individuals. They will leave nobody behind and if they could have packed him out they would have. Tough situation.
Excellent job making this video! Im not sure what is done differently up here in Canada, but we have some big ass fires up here in British Columbia, and there just isn’t the same history of so many lives being lost over the years? I guess it must be the lesser populated areas. Not nearly as much urban interface to deal with. What’s been changing lately, is we’re seeing more fires begin to encroach on cities up here. My home town of Williams Lake almost burnt up just last week. Thankfully, we have a regional tanker base at our local airport, and the air attack crew did an incredible job holding the fire into the river valley it swept through. The winds somehow went from an outright storm that was blowing for trees over, to no wind at all, just at the moment of truth. I believe god intervened and helped the firefighters save our city! RIP to all the heroes lost over the years. I hope one day the technology allows for a time when we’re seeing zero deaths on wild land fire fights!
Lessons learned. Maybe someone warn the forest service workers in the area on their radios, so they have a fighting chance to get out? Total incompetence by their superiors; lead to a near miss, and a major incident in just 3 days. I literally would have told them to get bent after the first day shitshow took place, and transferred out of there. Instead the end of the video chooses to point out the dangers of deploying on the water, when they had no other option.
Thanks for the briefing. I am always thinking what if. Where is safety? What is the risk? How intense can it burn? How much do I know of the situation? Always maintain board situational awareness, if you loose it go back to safety and rebuild your situational awareness. Never watch a video like this and think it can't happen to you. Some of the most experienced people in the world of fire have died when they have lost that situational awareness.
California does one thing really well 100% of the time.....trains completely reliable fire fighters who always communicate everything you have to know in 5 seconds or less.
They should have never been there in the first. This was a sad, sad story. A lack of situation awareness by the IMT put these folks in harms way to do a task that was later going to be done by heavy equipment anyway. I have walked walk more canyon and seen the crosses. It will break your heart. It was an transition day for the IMT and nobody was paying attention to the fire behaviour. There were indicators that this was going to happen and the only person who picked up on it was Paul Gleason who pulled his crew out. He was unaware there was anyone else in there.
Quite a few, actually! In my experience, there tend to be a lot of women in (fire-related) aviation in general. At least in the Park Service. On one of my crews men were the super minority, on another crew it was a pretty even split among seasonal employees.
People need to see this. Most don't understand the violence, intense heat of a wind blown bushfire/wildfire. People cant comprehend that this much heat creates its own weather. Stay safe all firefighters. 🔥❤❤❤
I couldn't tell from the video, but the right side of the column looked like one half of a counter-rotating vortex. Which means extreme fire behavior. Already obvious by the flame length.
As a Navy Corpman among a group of Corpsmen our praactice was, when we failed to start an IV or draw blood with two tries we would turn the task over to another Corpsman. Two strikes & out. DOUG out
This is merely a USFS sponsored feel-good video. The Perryville Crew fatalities were due to their Crew Boss leaving the Crew without proper supervision during a critical period. And we could have easily saved Zane Grey Cabin if allowed to continue our firing operation. Zane Grey Cabin burned from the top down due to embers based on the unburned trees left behind. The IMT lied about us foaming it down! We moved to the Tonto Creek Fish Hatchery and successfully fired that out with minimal structure loss.
I remember watching this as a stupid kid in the notorious 'California Conservation Corps' 🐻 and when they showed the white, glowing hand tools, I was like hooooly crap this shit is electricccc!! 🔥🌲🪓
Maybe not for this event, but from my little student's chair it looks like Firefighters need their own hand signals to communicate when all they can do is see their target. Radio out, Locomotive fire sound, across the gorge/draw/ etc. [Not fine hand configurations ... but arm and hand signals. Military Special ops have theirs for close in contact ... Look at the Indian Sign Language and the sign language for the deaf as a start point ... but get set signals to communicate standard messages in deployment situations.
I hope the fire shelters now have versions that keep their structural integrity in water and wave action. I wonder if some sort of chain mail material made of { ?] might keep things together
It seems like 9 out of 10 times a line of vehicles gets stuck like this because vehicles in the front of the convoy take their gd time. You'd think "moving with a sense of urgency" when the fire is coming wouldn't necessarily need to be taught, but apparently it does.
That’s crazy. I was literally in Kohl’s Ranch when that happened. We were woken up and had to evacuate into Payson. Raining ash was exactly what I saw too. 9:03
It was only one strike that started the fire. I literally watched it happen from diamond hill. We were with the wildlife department working on a fire line for a planned future controlled burn.
as a burn survivor of a house fire when I was a baby, I have always respected all firefighters of all types. from the pilots and dozer operators all the way to the smokejumpers and line peeps. thank you all.
Clear, observant minds are required to assess and react constructively to hectic situations. Being able to clearly describe the situation as it unfolded is a sign of such a clear mind and enables teaching. Yes, people do think, write and talk like that.
