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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:45:01 PM EDT
How exactly did the fire shelters fall short when the 19 Hotshots lost their lives in the Yarnell Hill fire?
I believe they are rated for 2,000 degrees F. I realize that particular fire was incredibly intense.  Only the Brave (2017) - The Sacrifice of American Heroes Scene (8/10) | Movieclips |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:48:17 PM EDT
[#1]
Seriously OP, did you not research this before posting? Fire shelters can only do so much. Have you ever thrown an aluminum can in a camp fire and watch it melt?
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:49:00 PM EDT
[#2]
You're nothing more than a baked potato at that point. Try breathing super heated air.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:50:06 PM EDT
[#3]
You serious Clark?
Its not hard, fire shelters are not magic. They are a best hope when ALL else is lost. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:50:45 PM EDT
[#4]
Too F'n hot.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:52:00 PM EDT
[#5]
Quote HistoryQuoted: You're nothing more than a baked potato at that point. Try breathing super heated air. This. Fire shelters only work for short duration, near misses. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:52:55 PM EDT
[#6]
Shelters require time to get to bare dirt and then you wait till the last minute and trap good air in it with you. If you're real lucky and the fire is fast moving you have a last ditch chance.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:53:12 PM EDT
[#7]
Wss the official cause of death burns or asphyxiation?
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:53:13 PM EDT
[#8]
Quoted: How exactly did the fire shelters fall short when the 19 Hotshots lost their lives in the Yarnell Hill fire? I believe they are rated for 2,000 degrees F. I realize that particular fire was incredibly intense.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cre1DOpQFx8 Attached File |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:54:39 PM EDT
[#9]
Quoted: I believe they are rated for 2,000 degrees F. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:55:15 PM EDT
[#10]
Move to where the fire has already burned. Those little blankets won’t do shit is sustained heat and won’t keep your lungs from getting fried.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:56:14 PM EDT
[#11]
Quote HistoryQuoted: You serious Clark? It's not hard, fire shelters are not magic. They are a best hope when ALL else is lost. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:57:09 PM EDT
[#12]
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Posted: 5/7/2023 8:57:26 PM EDT
[#13]
Why didn't they have a water bomber nearby to douse them?
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:04:59 PM EDT
[#14]
I remember watching that movie for the first time. I hadn't heard of the Yarnell Hill incident before. I had heard of the foil blankets. I thought they were going to be fine once I saw the shields coming out. When I realized they were dead, it hit me like a cinderblock to the face.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:06:15 PM EDT
[#15]
The scene in that movie when all the families are gathered waiting to find out who the sole survivor is
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:09:51 PM EDT
[#16]
Quoted: How exactly did the fire shelters fall short when the 19 Hotshots lost their lives in the Yarnell Hill fire? I believe they are rated for 2,000 degrees F. I realize that particular fire was incredibly intense. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cre1DOpQFx8Fire shelters require a burn out zone to work. A sordid analogy is the aluminum foil you see on jiffy pop when popping over a campfire, keep the right distance and you get nice fluffy popcorn, get too close to the flame and the foil melts and burns the popcorn. Before deploying shelters the crew ideally gets on "black", either by getting to already burned area or burning out a perimeter around them. Unfortunately the hotshots at Yarnell were separated from their crew chief and in a slot canyon with limited visibility and communication. By the time that they knew that they were in trouble it was too late to get any sort of space. Additionally being on the move apart from their chief really confused their exact location. I can dig up the report on it in a bit. The whole thing was a perfect storm / SNAFU, and a good example of why the 18 wildfire watch out situations should be treated like the 4 weapon safety rules. RIP to those invovled https://the5ftfirefighter.com/10-standard-firefighting-orders-and-18-watch-out-situations |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:10:21 PM EDT
[#17]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Why didn't they have a water bomber nearby to douse them? It was reported that one (VLAT, a DC-10) was directly overhead when they died, waiting for information on their location that it never got because everything happened so fast and the crew had moved from their original location. They also had some radio issues. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:11:16 PM EDT
[#18]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Why didn't they have a water bomber nearby to douse them? The IC didnt know exactly where they were, and they didnt know they were screwed until it was too late. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:13:51 PM EDT
[#19]
I’ve trained with them, but bear in mind that temperatures from wild lands fires are incredibly intense.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:14:47 PM EDT
[#20]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Move to where the fire has already burned. Those little blankets won’t do shit is sustained heat and won’t keep your lungs from getting fried. If the were surrounded by fire or it was coming extremely fast that would be pretty difficult. I'm fairly certain the last thing they wanted to do is go out like a baked potato. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:17:13 PM EDT
[#21]
Here is a write up compiled mistakes / stacking tolerance leading to failure
https://wildfiretoday.com/2014/06/27/what-have-we-learned-from-yarnell-hill/ ETA this as well https://wildfiretoday.com/2013/12/15/holes-in-the-yarnell-hill-fire-swiss-cheese/ Another write up on the weather shift that day that doomed the hotshots https://wildfiretoday.com/tag/yarnell-fire/ A sort of AAR write up https://www.iawfonline.org/article/the-yarnell-hill-fire-a-review-of-lessons-learned/ Looks like the Wildfire Lessons Learned website is down, but they have some great reports on a whole plethora of incidents, including Yarnell |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:17:41 PM EDT
[#22]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Fire shelters require a burn out zone to work. A sordid analogy is the aluminum foil you see on jiffy pop when popping over a campfire, keep the right distance and you get nice fluffy popcorn, get too close to the flame and the foil melts and burns the popcorn. Before deploying shelters the crew ideally gets on "black", either by getting to already burned area or burning out a perimeter around them. Unfortunately the hotshots at Yarnell were separated from their crew chief and in a slot canyon with limited visibility and communication. By the time that they knew that they were in trouble it was too late to get any sort of space. Additionally being on the move apart from their chief really confused their exact location. I can dig up the report on it in a bit. The whole thing was a perfect storm / SNAFU, and a good example of why the 18 wildfire watch out situations should be treated like the 4 weapon safety rules. RIP to those invovled https://the5ftfirefighter.com/10-standard-firefighting-orders-and-18-watch-out-situations |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:20:19 PM EDT
[#23]
Never had to use my shake n bake thank god. They aren't magic shelters and you'll die if you screw up on a fire.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:27:09 PM EDT
[#24]
Until we started buying brush trucks and hiring off duty FF for some of our work I always knew how dangerous it was but having them talk about a few incidents is nuts. Even some of the controlled burns we do in areas when they go well seem a bit nutty.
If you own land in Texas they’ll also likely reimburse you for controlled and planned burns up to $35/acre I think. Texas A&M is a fantastic resource to partner with in that reguard |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:29:32 PM EDT
[#25]
Did the hike into the memorial site a few years ago. Pretty mind blowing. If you get the chance, it’s worth it. Can’t imagine what they went through.
ETA..fire blankets are a last hope and prayer. That’s like saying anybody that wears a seatbelt should never die in a car accident |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:31:45 PM EDT
[#26]
Never knew about that movie or heard the story. Really sad stuff
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:34:08 PM EDT
[#27]
I'm in N.AZ, in fact today we cleared dead ponderosa from our property. We have had extreme winds and things are getting pretty dry even though we (Flagstaff) had an extreme wet winter.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:35:07 PM EDT
[#28]
My son was one of the replacements for that crew. He came home wearing a team ballcap that had a "19" on the back. My wife thought it was great they let him have his old lacrosse number....
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:36:57 PM EDT
[#29]
I spent 34 years as a firefighter. I would rather run into burning buildings than do that wildland stuff any day. RIP
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:42:08 PM EDT
[#30]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I'm in N.AZ, in fact today we cleared dead ponderosa from our property. We have had extreme winds and things are getting pretty dry even though we (Flagstaff) had an extreme wet winter. I'm just a few miles from where the Crooks fire burned last year. Funny thing about those extreme winds is that the USFS seems to find an awful lot of abandoned campfires on the mornings of forecast extreme winds days -- even during the week when the amount of campers is low -- and strangely enough they're usually directly upwind of either developed areas or heavy forest. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:43:49 PM EDT
[#31]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Here is a write up compiled mistakes / stacking tolerance leading to failure https://wildfiretoday.com/2014/06/27/what-have-we-learned-from-yarnell-hill/ This sums up pretty much all LODDs whether it’s fire, police, or even non-combat military. Everyone knows past mistakes, we fail to learn from them. No one ever thinks it could happen to them. We do a poor job of being able to realize the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:46:16 PM EDT
[#32]
Always stay in the Black.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:47:12 PM EDT
[#33]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I'm just a few miles from where the Crooks fire burned last year. Funny thing about those extreme winds is that the USFS seems to find an awful lot of abandoned campfires on the mornings of forecast extreme winds days -- even during the week when the amount of campers is low -- and strangely enough they're usually directly upwind of either developed areas or heavy forest. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Quote HistoryQuoted: Quoted: I'm in N.AZ, in fact today we cleared dead ponderosa from our property. We have had extreme winds and things are getting pretty dry even though we (Flagstaff) had an extreme wet winter. I'm just a few miles from where the Crooks fire burned last year. Funny thing about those extreme winds is that the USFS seems to find an awful lot of abandoned campfires on the mornings of forecast extreme winds days -- even during the week when the amount of campers is low -- and strangely enough they're usually directly upwind of either developed areas or heavy forest. I'm sure it's just a coincidence. There is a huge population of methhead / lunatics living in the woods. They usually dont get the memo on fire restricitons. Like the guy who started the big fire near flagstaff that burned a bunch of forest and a couple of homes, Out of state expired plates and he was burning his shit paper and throwing it in the woods. ETA link https://www.azfamily.com/2022/06/13/man-who-allegedly-started-pipeline-fire-burned-toilet-paper-claims-he-didnt-see-no-campfires-signs/ |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:52:01 PM EDT
[#34]
GD gonna GD
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:52:48 PM EDT
[#35]
that movie gets really dusty at the end. RIP to those guys,
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Posted: 5/7/2023 9:55:25 PM EDT
[#36]
Quote HistoryQuoted: My wife and I were on vacation and took a zodiac for fun in Canada. We stopped for lunch and two other couples in our boat were fire fighters and their wives on vacation. One worked in Chicago and the other out west fighting forest fires. They talked shops a little and both said they wouldn't do what the other guy did because it was too dangerous. My brother was a hotshot and he would not go into a burning building. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:02:09 PM EDT
[#37]
Quote HistoryQuoted: I spent 34 years as a firefighter. I would rather run into burning buildings than do that wildland stuff any day. RIP Yea, in general we have a sure safety zone- outside and out of the collapse zone. There are no luxuries in wildland firefighting. I do some wildland. I am lucky to live in an area where wildland fires are not near as extreme. A western wildland firefighter would laugh at most Kentucky wildfires. I just had a wildland class friday (4hr- Awareness level). My instructor suggested this movie. I just finished it about an hour before I read this. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:03:51 PM EDT
[#38]
Quote HistoryQuoted: This sums up pretty much all LODDs whether it’s fire, police, or even non-combat military. Everyone knows past mistakes, we fail to learn from them. No one ever thinks it could happen to them. We do a poor job of being able to realize the situation we’ve gotten ourselves into. Yes, but also no. I am painfully aware of a plethora of mistakes made before I ever joined the fire service. Sometimes a situation turns shitty. Most of the time the men on the job do it anyway. Cops and military are the same way. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:10:51 PM EDT
[#39]
This site and storm king are bucket list places I have to visit. RIP granite mtn hotshots
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:17:43 PM EDT
[#40]
I saw the the Storm King mountain fire from my front yard. Those fucken things move fast.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:20:44 PM EDT
[#41]
Career wildland firefighter - I hate that movie honestly.
Wasnt at the yarnell hill fire but have met many that were. A fire shelter is pretty much 8lbs of dead weight and only us americans carry them. Too aggressive firefighting with bad planning, communications breakdown, or unpredictable weather change (wind) is usually common denominators in shelter deployments Sometimes people live and the shelter was crucial to their survival, but more likely it included other factors such as where they deployed at - Other times they die. Much more likely the deaths are due to asphyxiation from breathing in hot gasses but who knows because I’m sure it wasnt a pleasant recovery for the first DPS air unit trooper on scene. All that danger and suffering work for an average of $16 and hour - Criminally underpaid and not even considered firefighters by the .Gov - FORESTRY TECHNICIANS. (although granite was the only Interagency hotshot crew through a structure fire department vs USFS/BLM/DOI) |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:21:13 PM EDT
[#42]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Wss the official cause of death burns or asphyxiation? I read the autopsy reports and most died from thermal injuries, many with 4th degree burns, exposed intestines and missing limbs. All were found in pugilistic form from the heat, it was not pleasant. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:27:55 PM EDT
[#43]
I worked for and with the USFS, NPS and BLM as a COML/COMT, and was qualified as a wildland firefighter and swiftwater rescue tech, also a Volunteer firefighter for the local community. We did Structure and wildland fires and know full well the dangers involved. I have great respect for these Hotshots, sometimes they (Wildland Firefighting Community) should step back and just say let it burn not worth losing lives over.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:32:28 PM EDT
[#44]
Quote HistoryQuoted: that movie gets really dusty at the end. RIP to those guys, Same here. I can't imagine being the only survivor and walking into a room of the other families. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:42:28 PM EDT
[#45]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Wss the official cause of death burns or asphyxiation? Quote HistoryQuoted: Wss the official cause of death burns or asphyxiation? most firefighters' deaths are from inhaling hot gases |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 10:53:52 PM EDT
[#46]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Seriously OP, did you not research this before posting? Fire shelters can only do so much. Have you ever thrown an aluminum can in a camp fire and watch it melt? Some reporters called Senator Smith stupid and the British press called Senator Smith “Watertight Smith” because he asked witnesses if the watertight compartments created to keep the Titanic afloat had been meant to shelter passengers. He asked Fifth Officer Harold Lowe about the composition of an iceberg. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 11:14:04 PM EDT
[#47]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Career wildland firefighter - I hate that movie honestly. Wasnt at the yarnell hill fire but have met many that were. A fire shelter is pretty much 8lbs of dead weight and only us americans carry them. Too aggressive firefighting with bad planning, communications breakdown, or unpredictable weather change (wind) is usually common denominators in shelter deployments Sometimes people live and the shelter was crucial to their survival, but more likely it included other factors such as where they deployed at - Other times they die. Much more likely the deaths are due to asphyxiation from breathing in hot gasses but who knows because I’m sure it wasnt a pleasant recovery for the first DPS air unit trooper on scene. All that danger and suffering work for an average of $16 and hour - Criminally underpaid and not even considered firefighters by the .Gov - FORESTRY TECHNICIANS. (although granite was the only Interagency hotshot crew through a structure fire department vs USFS/BLM/DOI) What the movie doesn’t talk about is the death benefits in the aftermath. Apparently there weren’t very good benefits as part of their contracts. The lawsuits against the city from the families got really ugly. |
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Posted: 5/7/2023 11:14:45 PM EDT
[#48]
Fire was too hot and too fast, they were trapped in a box canyon. I'm a wildland firefighter/bulldozer(tractor plow) operator. I've never seen the movie but we've studied the incident several times at school and at work. RIP Granite Mountain Hotshots.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 11:29:12 PM EDT
[#49]
I may go visit the memorial tomorrow, I was there a month before they got burned over.
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Posted: 5/7/2023 11:33:05 PM EDT
[#50]
Quote HistoryQuoted: Seriously OP, did you not research this before posting? Fire shelters can only do so much. Have you ever thrown an aluminum can in a camp fire and watch it melt? Dude, read his other stuff. This is par for the course. It's uncanny. |
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