This first case study fire, tried to set you up for reasons why to:

1. Use controlled fire to burn off light fuel calories, the dragon needs to kill you.
2. Think  DRAGON RINGS!  The beauty of circular control lines is . the wind always blows in the right direction to form an immediate, BLACK, “SAFETY HARBOR AREA”.
3. Think beyond fire suppression, beyond, “Defensible Space “.  Think in a 360 defensive, military manner.  Expect to be burned over >>> , from any direction.  Climate change has changed everything. Do not expect someone else to come to save you.  Strive to get on to the Darwin side of survival earning evolution.
4. Earn your own survival.  Via Universal Wildfire Mitigation Blueprint and Scheme.
5. Install the “Universal Wildfire Blueprint”, have fire raising tools on site with good fire hand tools and backpack water pumps for after the fire passes.

In 1996, Texas had a really bad fire season.  They lost over 1,000 homes to wildfires.  Governor George W. Bush called a meeting to be held with all the State of Texas Forest Service, and the quite large numbers of Volunteer Fire Departments.  He addressed the group and said he wanted to thank everyone for doing what they did, but he wanted to make sure this sort of emergency losses from wildfires never happens again.  The question is: “Do we know how to prevent the losses from all this ever happening to the people of Texas again?” “How do we fix this?”

The answer was yes.  We know what has to be done.  We just need money to set up a modern way to get fire resources and to implement what has to be done.   

The governor wanted everything laid out.  The estimated funds needed were sent to him as soon as possible.  The request was for many millions of dollars.  At the next meeting the Governor showed up with double of what the original budget called for. 

The Governor thanked everyone for the efforts, and everyone got up to start leaving,   “Before you go, is there anything that came up, between our last meeting and  now, that you might need?”  Everyone said they had more than enough.  In fact they had received far more than they ever expected.  Gov. Bush’s final words were: “OK then just don’t ever let the people of Texas down”. “ The people of Texas should never have to go through losses from wildfire like this, ever, ever again”.

What Texas did was create more permanent fire leadership positions,  Give increases in pay to existing fire people.  Hired more firefighters.  Purchased all kinds of new fire trucks and equipment.

They also invested in a Wildfire Outreach program with fire prevention techs preaching the, “Defensible Space”, Concept.

Dragonslayers was invited to their Wildfire Academy to give a demonstration on Mitigation.  A way to prepare every home to be saved by the owner. 

It was beyond “DEFENSIBLE SPACE”.  Granted it was to display and show our wildfire hand tools, but the main contribution was the Idea of a,” UNIVERSAL WILDFIRE BLUEPRINT & THE USE OF OUR DRAGON WIZZ WHEEL TO AUGMENT AND ENHANCE DEFENSIBLE SPACE. 

It was simply an idea, and scheme of fire management ; Just an idea, nothing to buy.  It was a way to not need four fire engines to be needed to save each home, but rather to make each firefighter from an engine able to save several homes.  Normally it takes 4 engines to save each house.

However, only a few volunteer fire department people showed up, and none of the Program leaders or Members of the State of Texas Forest Service was interested in hearing or listening to anything beyond “Defensible Space”. 

They were totally convinced they knew everything that they needed to know, and what they were doing made them the world leaders in how to run a railroad or fire protection service.

In 2011 they had a severe drought, and wind event that took out over 4,000 homes. 

Remember that is 4 times as many losses as they had, on their last big, serious Fire Season.

Right after that horrible fire season The Texas State Forester showed up at the First week of February 2012, at the annual WUI (Wildland Urban Interface) Conference, In Reno Nevada.  The Annual WUI meeting is an event always held in Reno.

The Texas State Forester gave a tremendous slide show of their devastating, 2011, fire season.  It was a, “This happened to us”, talk.  He described the event as a once every 500 year drought scenario. 

There were no, “LESSONS LEARNED”, in his presentation.  He showed lots of slides of empty water tanks or bone dry ponds, and hulks of what used to be homes.  None of the fire experts could tell the State Forester why they lost so many homes other than high drought codes and super strong regional winds, that TEXAS has always been famous for.  All the common sense money spent after the 1996 firestorms failed.

Anyone who knew the slightest thing about fire, should have been able to see most all the hulks shown in the slide show, had plenty of, “Defensible Space”, around the remains.  Clearly, most all the homes lost were set in grass. Plenty of “Defensible Space”, just no one stayed there to quite easily do what Wagner Dodge was able to pull off.  The lesson not learned was to BLACK-LINE systematically all calories around what you engineer to plan to weather the power of a full on diagonal reaching flame front.

The Reno Fire Department, and a lot of U.S. Forest Service people told of a fire that occurred right in a subdivision right outside the City. 

A homeowner cleaned out his wood stove or fireplace ashes.  He shoveled them into a metal bucket then brought them outside, and dumped them on the ground just off his porch .  It was really cold the first week in February so he went back into his house to start a fire in his just cleaned out fireplace.  Problem was, the wind was blowing 80 miles an hour and where this guy dumped the ashes was atop very dry, brown, short grass.  The embers stoked flames & fire took off and burned down an enormous number of homes.  After it burned through an entire subdivision it ran into a sheer cliff and the fire department was able to put out the two flanks after the head of the fire smacked into the cliff.

This lightning caused a fire, which went to 8, 400 acres, but it was notable as 19 young Hot Shot Firefighters were burned over and killed.

This was a Type (1), Crew.  Meaning it had attained  the highest level of physical fitness,  & training standards, that exist in the rankings, and were qualified to be assigned to the most complex and difficult missions in federal/state/private Incident Command System for emergency & wildfire operations.  They were a Crew formed and owned by the City of Prescott, Arizona. 

This was an elite crew, very unusual, because most non-federal crews fall into the Type (2) or Type (3) rankings of skill set levels.

The Prescott Shot Crew had been working on the fire for several days, and a new Overhead team had just come in and were taking Command of the Fire.  This is always a bit of thrash, as the new team tries to get orientated.

At this particular time thunderstorm activity had moved in over the general area and caused drastic changes in wind directions and the fire had hooked around and was now heading back toward the town of Yamhill, Az.

The Prescott Crew heard chatter on their radio about the wind change and got to a place where they could see the fire, and sure enough the fire was headed toward the town and toward them.  So the Crew Leader told his Crew to get up into the Black where the fire had already burned off most of the calories.

Meanwhile the new Operations Chief did not know where the crews were, especially a concern, since the fire had changed direction. 

The Ops. Chief contacted the Prescott Crew, got their location, and asked them if they could come down and somehow help do something to save the houses.

The Crew Boss told the Ops. Chief he was in the Black, and could see the fire, and said once he came down slope he’d be in the brush and not be able to see the fire again, so he declined to bring his Crew down into the unburned fuels.  The crew needed to stay in the Black.

The fellow who used to be the Crew leader was now the Division Supervisor, and he was in charge of two Crews one of which was his old Crew.  So they both knew each other really very well. 

The old Crew leader (now serving as The Division), gets on the radio, and tells the Crew leader to take his Crew down and try to help the Opps. Chief.

So, there is this argument between the Crew Leader of the Prescott Hot Shots, and the Division Supp. Who is really upset and ordering the new Crew Leader to do something he believes is unsafe.  Finally, the Crew Leader goes ahead and leads the Crew down into the brush.  They get hung up and can’t move as fast as they needed to.   They call for an emergency retardant drop.  They are in real trouble,  trying to cut brush to deploy fire shelters as they hear the freight train noise of death closing in on them.

The old Crew Boss, realizes he really made a mistake, feels bad, and runs up to the Crew in some useless effort to try and help.  He get there only to die with the old Crew he got to push into it’s Type (1) elite status. The lesson learned in death to pass on to all fire crews.  Let the person on the spot make the safety call, when they see and know best what needs to be done from their vantage point. 

There was a cover-up, secrets are kept and nobody learns a damn thing.

WHAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN LEARNED

1. IN DANGEROUS JOBS LIKE WAR FIGHTING AND FIRE FIGHTING LET THE LEADER WHO IS IN THE FIRE FIGHT AND RESPONSIBLE FOR LOCAL LIFE AND MISSION STAY IN COMMAND OF LIFE AND MISSION.
2. REGARDING THE 130 LOST HOMES OUT OF THE 150 OF THE TOWN. Neither the Opps. The Chief nor the Hot Shots had any training, the right tools, time or know-how regarding how best to save the houses.  It will take some humility to admit we all need to learn new skills in order to not have the same situation happen again. 

Think about it the Operations Chief was a top trained and experienced professional in the Incident Command System for managing and running fire operations on complex incidents. He had nothing to revert to in order to protect those houses in town. 

1. SOLUTION IS: Local fire department learns how to advance into A Wildfire Mitigation Blueprint.  Encourage all homeowners in their jurisdiction to set in a Universal Blueprint, and know how to use fire raising tools with a Dragon Wizz Wheel to be always ready and able to “BLACK-LINE” THEIR HOLDINGS AND PARRY A FIRESTORM, MAKE IT PASS, & DO NO HARM.
2. CREATE AN INCIDENT COMMAND TYPE, “UNIVERSAL WILDFIRE MITIGATION SYSTEM “,  Have a National S-101 – UWMSC - Universal Wildfire Mitigation & survival Course.   So then, ALL FEDERAL, STATE, LOCAL FIRE DEPARTMENTS KNOW HOW TO RECOGNISE, &  EXECUTE BLACK-LINE OPERATIONS ON THE UNIVERSAL WILDFIRE BLUEPRINT.    

This was caused by a downed power line.  They had well over six hours notice that the fire was headed their way. Nobody thought to call Smokejumpers.  This was on private land under Cal Fire Protection, but so what!  There are always mutual aid fire protection agreements between Federal and State fire Agencies.  Federal Govt. spends 70 percent of their fire money trying to defend non-federal ground, because their first-priority is protection of life and property.  Cal Fire should have called for Redding, Smokejumpers via the Federal Fire Dispatch Center in Northern California, when they knew the roads and terrain was going to cause problems getting fire resources in there.

The supposed experts in Paradise, Ca.  realized their fire threat.  They had a fire plan on what to do, but it was so complicated nothing worked.  Too many people tried to all go out the small, remote, mountain, evacuation road out of town. All at once.

The people were lucky that the wind was not blowing harder, because if it had been, trees would have fallen and trapped more as they have in other places with steep, wooded evacuation routes.

There are enormous numbers of small towns, settlements, and inholdings set in wild fuels, that have been destroyed throughout America.  Using this one last example, we will try to warn our society that we have been given enough warning orders and loss to try and present something to prepare a possible solution beyond just trying to escape in areas where there are complicated barriers to safe survival.

In the West things are easier than in the Deciduous Eastern hardwoods, where even if you have permanent, circular, control lines or Dragon Rings around what you want to protect, you still have to make provisions to clear fallen leaves off your covered Dragon Rings.   

If Paradise had set in two large, asphalted, permanent, meandering Dragon Rings 4’-6’ wide with a 600’ wide, shaded fuel break in between the two rings that could have been black-lined to form a black donut around the entire town in a bit over an hour.  If the town was for sure going to have a huge fire storm blow through more ground could have been stripped even more toward the approaching fire storm to strategically consume enough calories from the fuel, so that the fire would bypass the town.

The people inside the town could have their own defensible space and blueprint for their own dwelling and stand by to tend to spot fires landing in the town.

I have several old smokejumper pals who lost their homes to wildfire storms.  One fellow had an extraordinary Mountain home built at 7,000 feet in a Colorado,  mixed conifer forest.  Simply an extraordinary place.  He asked me what I thought about all the Defensible space he had worked hard at preparing.

I said Skip great job at setting in, “Defensible Space”,  but you could buy yourself more protection by putting in 3 “DRAGON RINGS”, Then if an unstoppable firestorm comes your way simply black-line your Universal Blueprint and stay with your house or evacuate, but left as is; if no one comes all that ground cover is left there the, house will be destroyed if there is any wind happening.

Sure enough he had a deputy Sheriff show up and said you have got about 6 hours to take what you can and evacuate.  My friend asked if there were going to be any fire crews showing up to try and save all the houses in the area and the guy said doubt it and left.

My friend said he sure wishes he had taken my advice, but he just did not get around to try what I told him to try.  Said if he had it to do over again, he’d do the Blueprint thing.

Another dear friend who spent his entire career smokejumping, and actually parachuted in on a couple of my wildfire mitigation projects in Alaska.  He built an incredible homestead in a short grass meadow in Eastern Washington.  Well, he did not think he’d ever need to have dragon Rings around his holdings.   Just like those Texans, and so many Westerners, he lost two great structures to a grass fire.

In the early 1980s while a Smokejumper in Alaska, while on patrol flights following thunderstorms;  we could watch the lightning hit the ground and start a fire.  Usually with lightning storms there were strong local thunder head winds, but not steady, long lasting, strong, regional winds.  On this particular situation there were long lasting winds.  We jumped all 16 jumpers immediately, and could not touch the fire.  We had another load of jumpers come in, and retardant ships just, everything we had thrown at it; nothing worked and nature just dominated what all the king’s men and all our gadgets just would not allow us to control it.  Luckily the land mass is so large that seldom is there a village in the path of such a situation, where smokejumpers don’t have the capability of stopping a just ignited fire.  This led me to the idea that really, maybe we ought to start setting up these remote villages to be able to endure a huge fast moving fire storm, that can’t be stopped.

Around 1987 we started realizing wildfires were getting harder to stop before burning down just too many homes and towns.  Still no one knew what to do.  Still don’t know what to do.

In 1996 I was invited to a United Nations Wildfire Delegation to be held in Russia.  We flew all over the vast wild Forests of Siberia.  We flew over isolated villages totally small and remote with no roads.  These places were just carved out in the wilderness.

I presented a scenario that even though Russia had over 6,000 smokejumpers and huge air tankers, that with the way Global warming was advancing they really ought to set in circular control lines around these little settlements to be intentionally burned out with a true Universal Wildfire Mitigation Blueprint to save the people and all their dwellings if a huge unstoppable fire storm were to sweep over so many of those small remote towns.  I even tried to explain the Dragon Wizz Wheel that had come from my wildfire management efforts in Alaska with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska.  Immediately after my presentation a U.S. Forest Service Official from the Washington Office took the stage to announce clearly that there is no such thing happening in America like what a private company from America is advocating.  Clearly trying to explain, there is no merit to mitigating strong wildfires as the previous speakers tried to explain. 

I bit my tongue and did not cause a scene of two idiots from America arguing with each other in front of a baffled Mostly Russian speaking interpreters trying to relay two different points of view.

Several weeks after returning to America I heard on National Public Radio that 16 Russian Smokejumpers died trying to defend a Russian settlement from a raging wildfire.  I could almost picture the entire thing happening to one of those very vulnerable towns we flew over while to different areas in the Russian landmass.

Proof that this firestorm problem is world wide.  Canadians fed up with their own inability to do anything effective about control of giant wildfires.  Many unreported numbers of homes destroyed and public unrest about authorities insisting on people not being able to stay and fight to defend their own homes.  Canada, America, Australia, and the rest of the world really does need a Mitigation aspect to the world wide problem of wildfires progressing beyond the capabilities of traditional suppression agencies proving they really cannot manage these new mega extreme, fast moving killer fires and they need Simple, Systematic, Mitigation Skills to join with the Interface Dwellers to mutually add their energy and power to a Mitigation Scheme to revert to when Wildfire Storms become too dangerous to try to stand and suppress. 

There really does need to be an option to revert to for survival of structures, citizens, and Fire Fighters.  There is ample evidence to prove we just can’t have firefighters, and interface dwellers trying to evacuate, and getting stranded on clogged roads from fallen trees and vehicles in each-other's way, trying to flee. 

We are in a new era.  We have to adapt and become Mitigators, when at a certain point; nobody knows what to do.  Mitigation Skills have to be learned, prepared for and with confidence, used in order to prevail, survive and eliminate loss. 

What more can I say.  Pretty easy to set in a few Dragon Rings and learn how to use a DRAGON WIZZ WHEEL AND A SELF STARTING PROPANE PLUMBERS TORCH, AND SAVE YOURSELF A LOT OF HEARTACHE. 

My strongest suggestion is contact your local, state and federal wildfire agencies and urge them to read this website.  Also contact the FBI and put them on notice so that it is clear you intend to sue the hell out of the fire agencies for negligent homicide if they don’t start adopting these common sense Strategic Survival/Mitigation Methods, when it would be so damn simple to put a couple, three DRAGON RINGS around their home and train the kids how to instantly fire-proof their home. 

Demand that Homeland Security people, Wildfire Suppression people, and the Military Forces that guard our country actually become Wildfire Mitigators.

Make it a basic habit if one intends to live around land with wild vegetation.

UNIVERSAL WILDFIRE BLUEPRINT 

This shows positioning of all natural fuels thinned and pruned to separate 

Aerial fuels from ground fuels, and isolate leave trees away from each other.

3 circular, permanent, control lines around what is to be protected.  A shaded

Fuel break or a Savanna.  Prepared to receive a firestorm from any direction.

DRAGON WIZZ WHEEL TRAINING DEVISE & REMEMBER GUIDE