Brush fire near Getty Center in Sepulveda Pass, July 8, 2009
live video - Getty Center - Sepulveda Pass
anyone have a scanner feed?
live video - Getty Center - Sepulveda Pass
anyone have a scanner feed?
Los Angeles City Brush Fire
- Thread starter zerg901
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karldotcom
Member
LAFD has a pretty good handle on it...30-40 acres....if it goes north it hits the old dump which is brush cleared...then a golf course....before Mountain Gate Country Club.....
landonjensen
Member
Scanner Buff TS server has one.
karldotcom
Member
Santa Monica Convervancy demanding no bulldozers be used to cut a fire line. These ecofrauds will be the death of us! Let them fight it then...with their little rigs.
I have seen plenty of fires where the firefighting did more damage than the fire itself. I would be curious as to how the Conservancy addressed the LAFD on this. Could they have said something different, such as we would like to see bulldozer use avoided, until the fire looks like it may threaten certain developments or structures? In fire management we set all sorts of trigger points for particular actions. If this fire did not approach the trigger points for bulldozer use then maybe it was a non-issue.
Where did you see that the SMC demanded no bulldozer use? Most of the fires in that canyon that I have observed over the years, visible from the 405, have had hand line constructed around them.
As steep as those slopes are near the 405, combined with the unstable soil in the area, it may have been wise not to use dozers.
I don't know, I would want to hear the full circumstances before coming to any conclusion.
The aerial footage shows either pre-existing fire line on the ridge tops or newly constructed fire line. From this limited view I wonder where the LAFD wanted to use dozers. Other than the ridge tops the terrain looked steep enough to not allow the use of dozers and you don't use them to cut cross slope anyway. Normally fires in slopes such as this are contained at the ridge tops.
I would like to hear more.
I would like to hear more.
caused all sorts of traffic on NB 405 this afternoon. As if there isnt enough ....
karldotcom
Member
I heard it on the scanner in my office...the CP then made it very clear to only "strenghthen" existing fire roads, and cut no new lines per the SMC. It was really going at that point.....I have also heard "no phoscheck" orders turning loaded tankers around on their first run on a couple fires down here....
The biggest worry at that point was it making a run toward the gated Mountaingate.....isnt that one of the worst case scenarios for LAFD
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Fire was started by a brush clearing crew btw.
The biggest worry at that point was it making a run toward the gated Mountaingate.....isnt that one of the worst case scenarios for LAFD
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Fire was started by a brush clearing crew btw.
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Interesting. The difference between "demanding no bulldozers be used to cut a fire line" and "cut no new lines per the SMC" is a significant one. I found this quote on a KABC write up, " L.A. City Fire Department says they will need to fight this fire from the air, as the area is inaccessible." If the ridge tops were dozed, which it looks like in the KABC footage, then I wonder how this fire were that "inaccessible."
I've seen dozers used on steep slopes on the Klamath National Forest and they have to cut line up and down a slope, this in huge drainages without nearby ridge tops. Cutting parallel with the contour lines is impossible when the slopes are steep enough. The rehab of dozer line on steep slopes is hugely expensive and is difficult to do successfully. Once soil is disturbed on steep slopes, especially in the unstable soils of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel Mountains, it can open a real can of worms. Dozer use on fires is always carefully evaluated and the decision not to use them is not at all unusual. I could relate some stories in my experience but then I would ramble on like some retired fire dog and no one wants that!
As for retardant turned around, I wonder why that order was given. Could it be because of adjacent research gardens on the grounds of Getty Center? Retardant can result in some nasty effects and can sometimes be grouped into the old "firefighting does more damage than fire did" sort of scenario. I could also speculate that the wind direction and the distance from the 405 may have resulted in safety concerns for the freeway, either by drifting retardant or safety margins for aircraft.
Over the years of responding to and listening on the radio to fires, I learned that there are many decisions made by the command staff that don't make sense until all the information is in. Sometimes that information doesn't get air time or is printed in newspapers even when released by fire information folks due to length of story considerations and the like. I was qualified for and worked a few fires as an information officer and have seen that happen.
Then again there are some situations that the command staff makes that don't make sense even when all the information is in. They are trying to keep up with highly fluid situations with difficulties getting good timely information to base decisions on. Sometimes we tend to take those decisions out of that context and "hindsight 20/20" them to death. I've been on the command staff, in ops, planning, on the line as a crew boss, and have IC'ed a few initial attacks and some small extended attacks. It is amazing how difficult it is to pull it all together.
By the way, environmentalists lobbied for major changes in fire suppression and management policy starting in the 1950's and 1960's when the first comprehensive research about the disaster taking fire out of fire dependent ecosystems was causing and was going to cause. People responded with negative attitudes toward environmentalists then too, mainly from their misinformed "black is bad, green is good" perspective. When I joined the Forest Service in 1974 the "on the ground" fire management personnel I worked with all talked about the need to let fire burn wherever possible in agreement with the policy statements of the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and the Wilderness Society, among others. No one wanted to heed the warnings and we now have what could have been avoided.
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karldotcom
Member
Now when I said Dozer...I think this is what I saw from one of the helicopter feeds.... LAFD FS88 on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
not the giant county ones I have seen on the freeway....
not the giant county ones I have seen on the freeway....
Thanks for the picture of the dozer. On the first Ranger District I worked on we had a JD450 that was smaller. The small size allowed us to machine pile slash in fuel break thinning where we were targeting a 10' x 10' tree spacing. We had a Caterpillar that was larger also. We worked it on timber sale slash piling. The smaller cat worked better than the larger one on the fires we had on the flats and moderate slopes (up to 30%). It put in adequate fire line for most fires and that line was easier to rehab when the dust settled. When I transferred to New Mexico we had a small cat also for the same reasons. Smaller cats can be used on many ridge top fuel breaks and fireline construction that large cats cannot access.
Large cats used for fuel management and fire suppression are usually small. As I mentioned before rehabilitation of dozer line is problematic and it grows almost exponentially as the dozers and fireline width get larger. In forestry school we looked at a case where the erosion from a cat line was sufficent to remove soil down to the ground water table, resulting in nearby springs drying up, with the associated riparian vegetation and habitat destroyed. This in spite of some heroic efforts to stop the erosion. I have witnessed locations where off highway vehicle use did the same thing. In the case of some meadows I've observed OHV traffic has cut a road that results in a trench below the water table which drained the meadow. Serious stuff as the bottom line task for land management agencies is to make sure that the rate of erosion is not greater than the ecosystem evolved with, with this greater rate being called accelerated erosion. When this happens it really doesn't matter how well the other resources are being managed as the retention of soil trumps all other resource considerations.
The Caterpillar in the picture may not be large in size as those "giants" used for road work, but it is a D8R. My fireline handbook shows the D-8H and D-7H qualify as Type I dozers due to having a minimum of 200 horsepower. Those huge D-9's and 10's are not used as much and when this size is needed, contractors are generally brought in as wildland agencies usually don't have larger cats.
Typing for dozers is based on horsepower and not on blade width or size. Most line (hand or dozer) is built uphill due to safety considerations. Building line downhill is dangerous as the fire can hook around the end of your line, or well below you, then make uphill runs right at you. The power requirements reflect the power needed to build line uphill.
Downhill line construction in southern California Santa Ana conditions is a whole different ball game. I'm not as savvy on that as my crews were usually involved in back fire ignition at the bottom of slopes.
Large cats used for fuel management and fire suppression are usually small. As I mentioned before rehabilitation of dozer line is problematic and it grows almost exponentially as the dozers and fireline width get larger. In forestry school we looked at a case where the erosion from a cat line was sufficent to remove soil down to the ground water table, resulting in nearby springs drying up, with the associated riparian vegetation and habitat destroyed. This in spite of some heroic efforts to stop the erosion. I have witnessed locations where off highway vehicle use did the same thing. In the case of some meadows I've observed OHV traffic has cut a road that results in a trench below the water table which drained the meadow. Serious stuff as the bottom line task for land management agencies is to make sure that the rate of erosion is not greater than the ecosystem evolved with, with this greater rate being called accelerated erosion. When this happens it really doesn't matter how well the other resources are being managed as the retention of soil trumps all other resource considerations.
The Caterpillar in the picture may not be large in size as those "giants" used for road work, but it is a D8R. My fireline handbook shows the D-8H and D-7H qualify as Type I dozers due to having a minimum of 200 horsepower. Those huge D-9's and 10's are not used as much and when this size is needed, contractors are generally brought in as wildland agencies usually don't have larger cats.
Typing for dozers is based on horsepower and not on blade width or size. Most line (hand or dozer) is built uphill due to safety considerations. Building line downhill is dangerous as the fire can hook around the end of your line, or well below you, then make uphill runs right at you. The power requirements reflect the power needed to build line uphill.
Downhill line construction in southern California Santa Ana conditions is a whole different ball game. I'm not as savvy on that as my crews were usually involved in back fire ignition at the bottom of slopes.
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