Valley Interview : Fire Chief Stresses Communication, Precautions in Heat of Battle

Los Angeles County firefighters are gearing up for what could be another tough wildfire season in the Southland this fall.

It is coming only two months after 14 firefighters died July 6 near the center of a wildfire in western Colorado. Federal authorities later concluded that human errors contributed to the disaster. The errors included a failure to set up adequate escape routes and safety zones and a lack of communication among firefighting organizations.

Los Angeles County last year had the biggest fires in the area’s history. They raged from the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains to the Malibu hillsides overlooking the Pacific Ocean. This year, county firefighters will bring some new equipment into the fray, including the CL-215T, usually referred to as the Super Scooper, an airplane that can scoop up to 14,000 gallons of water in a single pass as it flies a few feet above a large body of water.

Even with the latest high-tech aids, firefighters’ fate can be decided by a barely noticeable shift in the wind or a garbled or slightly misunderstood communication, county Fire Chief P. Michael Freeman explained in an interview with staff writer Chip Johnson.

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Question: About two months ago, a Colorado fire killed 14 firefighters. Will you be looking into that fire? What kind of precautions do you take to guard against that kind of disaster?

Answer: We will be looking at the Colorado report, and we will share the information we learn with our employees.

What is always primary is to allow for safety margins. In a wildfire situation, the fire can be so easily and quickly affected by the weather, the subtleties. A slight shift in the wind can turn a lazily burning fire into an inferno.

What we do is teach, we train, we drill on the basic rules of engagement. We talk about the types of situations that we should watch for, and we rely heavily on good communications. When a crew is out working on a wildlife fire, there are many other resources, crews and equipment working on the fire, and it’s crucial that they talk to each other and stay in good coordination.

Given all of that, a situation can occur that can cause a fire to blow up, and we train to have a safe refuge area, a point everyone can get to safely that is adequate for their safety. We use aluminized protective shelters. In the worst-case scenario, you have to deploy that shelter, which takes about half a minute, and it takes practice, practice and more practice.

Q: What about communications with air support and men on the ground?

A: We basically have three layers, communications on the ground and ground to air helicopters and a line of communication between the helicopters and outside agency tanker aircraft. What we have to do sometimes to is bridge communications between the air tankers and the commanders on the ground. Sometimes the commander will talk to the helicopter and then relay that information to the air attack. But generally where most of our communication occurs is between ground forces and our own helicopter force. Sometimes the helicopter crews are talking to hand crews, supervisors and foremen in many cases.

Q: Why is that?

A: In a brush fire, without structures being threatened, the crew is doing the real work, trying to cut a line around the fire. The helicopters drop water in front of that line. Crews keep one foot in the black area and one foot outside the burn. There is some degree of safety in the burn area.

I have to qualify that because the steepness of the terrain may have a bearing as well as the intensity of the fire. It sometimes isn’t humanly possible to stay there because of the sheer heat. You’re so close to where it has burned, the ground, the rocks are so hot you couldn’t touch them. If you had to stay on the ground for more than a minute, you would probably get burned through your suit by the radiant heat. You’re as close to the fire as you can get. The idea is to scratch the line around the fire. In combat, we try to cut a sufficiently wide line to stop the fire but not as deep as when we improve the line once we get a line around the fire.

Q: What happened in Altadena last year, when two firefighters died?

A: This was the fire that ultimately came down and burned 155 homes and burned for several days. It was the first major loss fire of the year in L.A. County.

The crews had to deploy their shelters. It was a critical situation. It was a case where the wind and terrain gave them no choice other than to deploy.

Basically what happened is a fire had burned up a side of the canyon rapidly. We didn’t have high winds, but it was a combination of topography and light winds. It ran up one side of the canyon, and a crew was working its way down from the top. They had cut a line from the head of the fire, working with helicopters. The crew appeared to be safe, but their vision was obstructed by the nob of the hill that stuck out. The terrain was very steep, and they had a lookout in position to try and look around the nob. But it turned out in retrospect that the lookout’s vision was cut off as well.

A small, undetected amount of fire was below them and around the nob. They were on a west slope, and the fire came up the east slope, and as the fire made its run, and it was intense, part of the fire hooked around the nob and came toward them. They had one foot in the black, and they were cutting a line below fuel, and there was just instantaneously a wall of heat and fire across the crew. They were advised to retreat and they did, but four of them were trapped and caught by the flames. Two of them were seriously burned, and two others, due to smoke inhalation, succumbed to their injuries.

Q: Have there been more or fewer prescribed burns this year?

A: We burned less this year than last year, because of all the hot weather. We’ve had more than 12 days of prescribed burns canceled this year because of the weather. I was at one of these prescribed burns, and they had to call it off because of high temperatures and low humidity.

There is no guarantee we will meet our goal, which this year was between 3,000 and 5,000 acres. One of the things we are looking at is, are there other ways to crush this fuel. One way is to change its configuration to make it burn less rapidly and easier to control. The way the fuel is arranged when it’s straight up allows it to burn at its strongest configuration.

Q: What about the areas hardest hit by fire last year?

A: In those areas, the hazards of big fires would be substantially less. Some rejuvenation has begun, but it will be many years before there is fuel like there was a year ago. There are still thousands and thousands of acres that remain as a serious threat to homes and businesses.

Q: Are there areas this year that are being closely monitored?

A: Well, all of the brush areas that expose homes and structures--the La Crescenta, La Canada-Flintridge areas. Parts of Altadena, the Santa Monica Mountains including Malibu, Calabasas and the Agoura Hills area. Santa Clarita and certainly parts of Antelope Valley, which have been spared, but about three weeks ago we had the Leona Valley fire.

Q: What kinds of conditions exist this year for another round of major wildfires?

A: We’ve had a number of fires already. The fuel is dry. The live fuel moisture is at a lower level than it was at this point last year, which is not surprising when you consider the repeated heat waves we’ve had this year.

On the positive side, we have been working closely with communities that are close to the brush and have been advising them of the dangers and encouraging them to help us clear brush and fuel. We’ve done massive mailing reminding them about defensible spaces around their homes.

Q: What is new about dispatch practices this year?

A: When a fire is reported, when anyone requests a second alarm, our dispatch center makes a call to a fixed-wing tanker. That was not automatic last year. The best thing we can do for safety is to knock these things down fast, and I’m looking for new ways to deploy old tools. The newest thing we’re looking at is the CL-215T. It’s commonly referred to as the Super Scooper. It’s our newest tool. The idea is to get this plane and its crew and the helicopters to the scene within 20 minutes. The aircraft can scoop up to 14,000 gallons of water, moving at more than 100 m.p.h. within 10 seconds. But they cost $17 million.

Q: What other precautions have you taken this year?

A: We formed the Wildlife Safety Panel, which was commissioned by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors last year. It is made up of professionals from all over who looked at structures, water supply, brush clearance and other safety measures. The study made 40 recommendations, and we have implemented a number of them. We also have implemented Operation Firestop, which is primarily members of my staff that I put into a task force to deal with operational departmental procedures, training, updating an attack plan, accessing swimming pool water better--a whole host of things, including the helicopters and first response.

We’re trying to improve ourselves from what we’ve learned and do our damnedest to do better. We stop more than 90% of most brush fires before they get rolling, but those aren’t the ones that make the news.

The majority of the ones we handle aren’t the ones that made headline news.

The ones that made the news were the ones pushed by Santa Ana winds, and this year we’re trying to do everything humanly possible to look Mother Nature in the eye when she brings that Santa Ana and win that battle.