Читать книгу Emergency Incident Management Systems - Mark Warnick S., Louis N. Molino Sr - Страница 17

The Big Burn of 1910 is considered, by some, as another incident that helped contribute to modern‐day IMS methods. As can be deducted by the name, this incident was an extremely large wildland fire. Many have called the Big Burn a major firestorm. This firestorm has been known by many different names, including the Big Blowup, the Great Fire of 1910, and the Devil's Broom fire.

To put the immensity of this incident into context, we first must understand the immense geographical area and the massive loss of life that is attributed to this fire. This enormous fire was so vast that it simultaneously affected the states of Montana, Idaho, and Washington, and in total covered a land mass of approximately 4700 mi², or approximately 3 million acres. This massive fire is credited with causing the death of 87 people (78 of them firefighters), and injuring countless more (Galvin, 2007).

According to historical accounts, the main firestorm burned over 3 million acres in just 36 hours. This occurred between 20 and 21 August 1910. While the main fire, which was driven by 70–80 miles per hour winds, the ongoing clean‐up operations and firefighting efforts to address the smaller fires related to the Big Burn lasted well beyond October 1910.

Prior to the firestorm, various laws and agencies were put in place to protect the environment from man as well as protecting the environment from various types of disasters. In 1876, the US Congress created the office of Special Agent, as part of the Department of Interior. The Bureau of Forestry was created in 1905 by President Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, and the responsibility for taking care of those forests were transferred from the Department of Interior, where they were originally placed, to the Department of Agriculture. The new forest service was named the Division of Forestry and the President Roosevelt appointed Gifford Pinchot as the new director (Williams, 2005).

One of the first goals of Pinchot was to decentralize the Division of Forestry from the Washington, DC bureaucrats. Prior to his appointment, almost all decisions about the forests and their ongoing health were made and based in Washington DC. This allowed decisions to be made by mostly uniformed politicians who were well removed from the forests they were charged with protecting. Pinchot believed that decision‐making should be done in the field. He accomplished this by creating forest districts and assigning District Foresters to monitor specific geographical areas (Williams 2005).

As part of his overall strategy, he hired and placed District Foresters in Denver, Colorado; Ogden, Utah; Missoula, Montana; Albuquerque, New Mexico; San Francisco, California; and Portland, Oregon. These District Foresters were charged with caring for these forests, based on the needs of the geographical locational, rather than using standing orders from a distance place. The previous method of standing orders inevitably protected some forests in the United States, while damaging others (Williams 2005). Pinchot believed that the newly formed districts would be more familiar with the unique needs of their geographical location, and those District Foresters would more familiar with local resources that could be utilized to meet those needs.

As part of the decentralization process, Pinchot built the forestry services first warehouse in a centralized location, Ogden, Utah. He filled it with a cache of equipment that might be needed to protect the forests, including firefighting equipment. Not long after creating the warehouse in Ogden, he began building other strategically located warehouses across the nation. He continued to build and fill warehouses in each of the forestry districts. In order, these additional warehouses were built in Ogden, Utah; Missoula, Montana; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Denver, Colorado; San Francisco, California; and Portland, Oregon. This ongoing strategy allowed the forestry service to have the firefighting equipment they needed within the district, and because they were located in locations with rail lines, supplies could be shipped to where it was needed in a relatively short amount of time (Williams 2005).

One of the District Foresters that Pinchot hired was William Greeley. Greeley, who was given the District Forester job in the Rocky Mountains, hit the ground running. Upon his arrival in the Rocky Mountains, he immediately tried to make agreements with lumber companies to help preserve and protect forests, much to the chagrin of Greeley's supervisor, Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot wanted to continue the practice of making verbal agreements with landowners in order to provide for the protection of forest lands, while Greeley wanted the forest industry to take a vested interest in protecting these lands (Williams, 2005).

Greeley continued down the path of trying to secure lumber company partners, and it did not take long before Greeley found a lumber company that bought into this strategy. George Long, who was running the old Weyerhaeuser Timber Company, was convinced that it was in the best interest of lumber companies to help preserve the forests. This decision by Long was partly based on the unbelievable loss of timber that Weyerhaeuser suffered a few years earlier. Because of losses, the company suffered in 1902. Long, and the company, were dedicated supporters of forging large private firefighting cooperatives. In June 1909, Long and Greeley made a formal agreement for cooperative forest management and firefighting efforts (Williams, 2005; “William B. Greeley,” n.d.).

To the best of our knowledge, this was the first formal mutual aid agreement for firefighting (other than landowner agreements) ever made in the United States. This campaign of mutual aid agreements soon spread across the American West. Oregon, Washington, and California soon began creating more forest protection associations, and they looked more at collaborative and cooperative efforts to protect America's landscape.

Greeley also worked to forge agreements with the train companies. Through his efforts, and partially because he tied some fires to trains, Greeley worked to create expedited delivery of firefighting supplies whenever forest fires occurred. Agreements were signed that essentially encouraged those operating trains to provide a quick response of equipment, and if need be, the personnel needed to fight fires. This allowed Greeley to place the equipment near rail lines, as Pinchot envisioned, but it provided priority service, so the trains could rapidly transport equipment to where it was need, much like (Pinchot) envisioned (Williams, 2005).

If another forestry district had an emergency, both manpower and tools could be quickly shipped by rail in a relatively short amount of time. In the grand scheme of things, Greeley felt that animosity should not be at the center of protecting forests. His goal was to protect forests through cooperation and communication among those that had a vested interest in protecting the forests, the stakeholders of the Great American West (“William Greeley,” n.d.).

Looking at IMS methods of today, it does not take much of a stretch of the imagination to see how these historical incidents fit into our modern‐day IMS methods. The first similarity is that Greeley incorporated stakeholders, those with a vested interest in the protection of forest. This is a common practice that is currently used to ensure that planning, response, and recovery is entirely comprehensive. Second, the five basic components include command, control, cooperation, collaboration, and communication. In the years prior to the Big Burn of 1910, Greeley took command and control of the resources he had at his disposal, and he used cooperation, collaboration, and communications to build a method of dealing with almost any major fire. In a nutshell, Greeley worked to provide for the basic principles that make up IMS methods, and he was preplanning for a major event. In times prior to this, the standard procedure was to wait until the resources were needed, in place of preplanning.

These preplans that Greeley worked on would become the key in saving many lives, and in preserving massive amounts of property. In the spring and summer of 1910, the Great American West was suffering a severe drought. According to Petersen (1994–1995), there were either 1736 or 3000 fires in Montana and Northern Idaho prior to 20 August 1910. Many of those fires were blamed on the embers of passing locomotives and various lightning strikes that had occurred over the previous months. Due to the unusual amount of fires, Greeley being desperate for help proceeded to hire everyone he could to work fighting forest fires. While some would question the ethics of his hiring process, it was reported that he would hire anyone capable of fighting a fire. According to reports, this included hobo's, bums, and criminals. In some instances, local felons were released from jail early, or used in a form of work release to assist in fighting the fires (Pollak & Ives, 2015). The fires that plagued the region prior to the Big Burn were so taxing, that all fire crews, including the lumber company crews, were becoming exhausted.

Because of the exhaustion from fighting hundreds of smaller fires, Greeley made the unusual request for soldiers from the federal government to assist with firefighting operations. A group of Buffalo Soldiers from the United States Army's 25th Infantry Regiment, also known as the “Crack Black Regiment,” were sent to the area to assist Greeley with firefighting operations (Pollak & Ives, 2015).

These soldiers were African‐American men who were given the name Buffalo Soldiers by Native Americans. The Native Americans coined this name because of the fierce, brave, nature in which they fought. The Buffalo Soldiers arrived on or about 14 August 1910, with Company G arriving at Avery Idaho, and Company I arriving in Wallace Idaho (Cohen, 2010; Pollak & Ives, 2015).

In comparison to modern‐day IMS Method, this request for soldiers mimics the request for National Guard troops and the military that is sometimes used in modern days disasters. We only need to look at incidents like Hurricane Katrina to see how the military can integrate into almost any disaster response. If we look at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, we also see that the US Coast Guard was the lead agency, and they too integrated other agencies into their response. The use of Buffalo Soldiers resembles federal resources (such as Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA], the military, the Department of Energy and more) that we use in many of the Presidentially Declared Disasters that we see in modern times. Much like modern times, Greeley was the centralized command that these soldiers reported to, yet they had their own level of autonomy to make the decisions of how orders should be ordered.

Turning back to the Big Burn of 1910, Greeley and his crews were working on many small fires that were still burning when hurricane force winds blew into the region, causing instantaneous mass destruction. These hurricane force winds caused the smaller fires to combine into a singular massive fire (Wilma, 2003).

When this fire became a singular massive fire, Greeley and others who were in charge of fighting the Big Burn, used some of the same types of incident management that we see in modern‐day IMS methods. Crews used the divide and conquer method, where some crews were sent to specific areas, while yet other crews were left behind to keep the peace. Additionally, certain select crews were charged with evacuating the towns to prevent the loss of civilian life. The agreements that Greeley forged only a year before were used to reduce the effects of the fires. Multiple trains were sent to various towns to assist in the evacuation of the citizenry. These organizing and actual operational actions that were undertaken were assumed under the direction of crews left behind to manage the evacuations, and those charged with setting backfires to save these cities and towns (“The Great Fire of 1910”, n.d.).

Much like modern‐day IMS methods, each crew was given a job that had specific duties affiliated with that job. This was much different from other responses during this time frame that usually required a crew to be responsible for multiple duties. The previously mentioned Buffalo Soldiers were one of those groups that had specific duties. They are accredited with saving many lives by managing evacuations and by specifically saving the town of Avery, Idaho. While some soldiers worked on evacuations, others set backfires to burn up any potential fire fuels that would in essence protect the cities and towns (Cohen, 2010).

According to historical data, it was recorded that over 10 000 men were utilized to fight this one massive fire. The area that was burned stretched from eastern Washington, into Idaho, and western Montana (Petersen, 1994–1995). It took extensive planning, probably much like what is done in modern IMS methods. In the planning phases, they had to dispatch and manage these firefighters (which included every able‐bodied man that could be found) in the entire region. Over a period of month, these individuals worked cohesively until the incident was over. According to Petersen (1994–1995):

Every able‐bodied man fought the fire. Most were Idaho loggers, miners from Butte, Montana, and skid row bums brought in on trains from Spokane. The pay was 25 cents an hour, plus a bedroll, sourdough pancakes, coffee and canned tomatoes

(para 25).

This too has similarities to the current trends in IMS. When major incidents occur, crews are brought in from multiple agencies. In most circumstances, they receive a pay for their services, and their nutritional needs are cared for. While most modern personnel are vetted, there are wildland firefighting crews on the West Coast who are serving prison sentences. This also is similar to the Big Burn because of the use of those who were in jail during the 1910 fires were used to help fight these fires. We also must recognize that crews on long incidents are provided a place to sleep, food, and pay, until the incident is over. In modern‐day IMS methods, Base Camps are utilized to provide food, certain amenities (showering, shaving, etc.), and a place to sleep.

While the impact of the Big Burn on modern‐day IMS is mostly supposition, one could say that these similarities, no matter how big or how small, could have played a role in helping develop current IMS methods. At the very least, the response to the Big Burn of 1910 played some part in the progression to the systems now in place.