Wildfires in cities: An operational gray zone

We have entered an operational gray zone: Wildfires burning in cities. It’s the jurisdiction of urban fire departments – but they rely on wildland firefighters to get the job done (as the The Washington Post points out). And wildland firefighters are increasingly being called to fight “wildfires” in urban environments.

During the breaking news frenzy, I rarely say what I really want to say – it’s a game of responding to sensational and reactionary questions. Just like how we approach fire itself. So here’s what I’ll add to the discussion about the L.A. fires:

There will be a lot to learn. And some officials and organizations are going to need to take some responsibility. And certainly residents in a fire-prone landscapes need to contemplate their own responsibilities. But these are the two fundamental questions I see that we need to address:

1. What will be collectively required of us to prevent such a disaster in the future?
2. How will we respond to similar disasters when they occur again?

LinkedIn is swirling with lots of great propositions to these fundamental questions: more prescribed fire, fire-hardened construction (hempcrete!) and landscaping, better urban planning, building codes, budget priorities, public utility SOPs, fire-tech, etc,. I think the answers to how to address question 1. are relatively straightforward – experts have been sounding the alarm and offering solutions on these issues for decades. Answering question 2 is more challenging. In looking at the long list of things to address to prevent such a disaster from happening again, we quickly realize the changes, motivation, bahavioral shifts, policy response and funding needed…means we will likely have many more devastated communities long before these changes are addressed. This brings us to question 2 – the burden currently on the conscience of the response community. At the end of the day, we all still expect firefighters to respond.

Firefighting is siloed – there are maybe a dozen types of firefighters from volunteer to industrial, maritime, to ARFF. To oversimplify in the CA context, there are wildland firefighters and urban/structure firefighters. And some that do a bit of both, especially in California, famous for its wildland urban interface. Cal Fire is an example of an agency that evolved to do both. Los Angeles County Fire is another example. But fundamentally, wildland firefighters are trained and equipped differently and operate tactically and strategically different than urban fire departments. I’m not knocking one group of firefighters – I'm just saying we don’t expect a smokejumper to run into a burning building. But we do expect urban fire departments to effectively tackle the most complex and extreme wildfires. Take even Cal Fire, a crucial part of California’s wildfire response – according to their own statistics, of the total of 3,613,182 total reported incidents handled by Cal Fire in 2023, only 18,925 were wildfires. That’s 0.52%. The national statistics show that approximately two-thirds of all calls fire departments handle are medical related and approximately only 4% of calls are fire related (both wildfire and structure fire). In L.A., a standard response to a single house on fire involves about 8 vehicles with firefighters, EMS, and incident command. If over 12,000 structures are on fire, under perfect conditions (no fire hurricanes), SOPs would commit about 265,000 firefighters and command/support personnel. Completely overwhelmed is the understatement of the century.

But telling an urban firefighter not to extinguish a burning building goes against every instinct. This was apparent in the recent fires – urban firefighters pumping massive quantities of water through large-diameter fire hoses on fully-involved structures. In other words, valiantly using the equipment they have to do exactly what they were trained to do. They are a “stationary” firefighting force where the objective is to tap into the nearest fire hydrant, the fire truck serves as pumping platform and the firefighters’ objective is to be committed to this effort until the structure is fully extinguished. This is obviously an untenable approach if a sea of structures are on fire during a wind event. Houses and cars, businesses and schools—all on fire. Instead of trees and bushes, it’s a jungle of petroleum products and biomass.

Devastatingly overwhelming situation. We can also throw up our arms and say “no firefighter can stop a fire in 100mph winds” – and I agree with this. BUT, stories have also emerged about people with little or no training who used garden hoses, a portable pump and a lot of diligence to save their home and their neighbours homes in these same extreme conditions. These courageous residents were under no illusion of extinguishing a fully involved structure fire, but even using very little water (comparatively) they correctly identified the need to remove or wet the fuel to make it unavailable to burn and extinguish every tiny flame before it became the next inferno. In other words, they used wildland firefighting tactics in an urban environment.

Wildland firefighters are trained not to fight a house on fire, but stop it from from spreading to the surrounding area. Wildland firefighters operate very differently. Their initial objective is not to extinguish a fire but to rob it of available fuel to eventually contain its spread. This is why they are very mobile, and move with the progression of the fire, often doing so without relying on water, or at least very little water. In a mildly comparable scenario some years ago, I’ll never forget seeing over a dozen Type 1 urban fire trucks retreating. It was a weird and confusing moment: an urban conflagration and all the “red” trucks were retreating and the “green” trucks and hotshot crews going in. We lost hundreds of homes and two people, but 80% of the community survived. Looking back, it wasn’t bravery or determination that made the difference (some of those firefighters lost their own homes that night), but how we framed the problem and responded tactically. An overwhelming scenario for our urban counterparts, was still a wildfire to us. Our equipment, strategy and tactics proved highly effective, even though it was houses instead of trees on fire. Of course it was a luxury to have hydrants, but ultimately we saved more houses by moving quickly, working with chainsaws, handtools, garden hoses, and the 500 gallons we had in our tanks.

Back to LA. Im not saying been there done that. Or that firefighters could have done more or better. Those firefighters faced a nightmare scenario and gave it their 1000%. My unconditional respect. Looking ahead, I believe the response community does need to think outside the box when it comes to this new operational gray zone. Firefighters will be called into these scenarios in the future, and to answer that second question, adaptations in our strategies, tactics, and use of resources need to be addressed. Maybe we can learn a thing or two from the wildland fire community – after all, the Washington Post Exclusive has laid bare that LA has long been over-dependent on wildland firefighting agencies like the U.S. Forest Service to handle fire in the city and county’s jurisdiction. ?

Any of the operational folks out there have something to contribute regarding firefighting tactics in this gray zone? What are the changes needed in the response community?

As for the role of #technology, I'll have to follow up with a separate post.

#losangeles #LA #wildfires #firefighting #fire