It’s been 20 years since the tragedy at Storm King Mountain in western Colorado.
Fourteen firefighters were entrapped by a fire and killed.
Since those events of 1994, a lot of research, analysis and training have gone into the issue
of entrapments and burnovers. It’s fair to say lives have been saved. But it also
true that lives continue to be lost when firefighters are trapped by wildfire.
Experts at the National Interagency Fire Center looked into the statistics and records related
to wildland fire fatalities. We have discovered a few insights that we think will stand as
solid reminders as you head out to the fireline this year.
Fatalities, Entrapments and Serious Accidents are tracked by the National Wildfire Coordinating
Group. Commonly called “Safety Grams”, these statistics have been tracked annually
back to 1987. Unless otherwise noted, the following information came directly from these
Safety Grams. This refresher module delves deeper into the
statistics of fatalities resulting exclusively from burnovers and entrapments as opposed
to those resulting from motor vehicle accidents, aviation, medical, and other fatality categories.
For brevity purposes, we will reference all direct fire contact and exposure fatalities
as “burnovers.”
Burnovers and entrapments are not the leading cause of line-of-duty deaths of wildland firefighters.
In fact, they’re not even in the top three. Of the 448 line-of-duty deaths, 88, or 20%,
were a result of burnovers. Categorically, vehicle accidents, aviation accidents and
medical incidents each account for more fatalities than burnovers. As you can see, burnovers
are the fourth cause, followed by hazard trees and other.
Due to the loss of 19 firefighters
on the Yarnell Hill incident in 2013, Arizona has recorded the most burnovers since 1987.
Colorado has the second highest amount at 14, all of which were the result of the Storm
King Mountain incident in 1994. California is next with 13, then Idaho, Washington and
Kentucky with 4 each. Utah is the next with 3. The other highlighted states have had 1 or 2.
The numbers shown here, dating back to 1910, have
been derived from historical fire reports, official agency documentation and Safety Grams.
Due to changes in definitions over time and how data is gathered, there are likely gaps and
some variations in numbers. However, this information is still informative. Of the
states shown in blue, we have found zero burnover fatality records.
Of the following groups, which has had the most burnovers since 1987?
* Federal * State
* city/county * contractor or
* volunteers Are you surprised by these results?
There may be plenty of reasons for these numbers,
but in all reality, a contractor, with the lowest statistics, isn’t any safer than
a Federal employee on the fireline. We compiled data from as many burnover fatality
fires as possible, going back to 1930’s and focused on 2 specific pieces of information;
Time of Blow Up and Time of Burnover. Sixteen burnover fatality fires blew up between 1400-1630.
On 15 of those fires, the burnovers occurred during the same timeframe.
The average time span from blowup to burnover, after removing anomalies, was 24 minutes.
What do all these numbers mean? Looking back, we already know what these mean.
Looking forward, what should these numbers mean?