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Stateside Comment FIRE’s US Correspondent Catherine Levin looks at the devastating effects of wildfire following the tragic loss of 19 firefighters in Arizona
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lready a six to seven hour flight from London, living on the east coast of the US opens up all sorts of opportunities for holidays elsewhere in the US without some awful long haul flight to get there. We are toying with the idea of Yosemite for next summer, but recent events make me wonder if this is such a great idea. Headlines like ‘massive wildfire threatens to shut down power in San Francisco’ are alarming at best. I know that the outer boroughs of London, like Havering, suffered from grass fires in the summer and more rural brigades in England would certainly have their fair share too, but the headlines in the US are startling. The Rim Fire in the Yosemite National Park area which started on August 17 was so bad and so extensive that Governor Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency for San Francisco due to threats to electricity and water supplies. Three weeks later, the US Forest Service reported it was 80 per cent contained. At its peak, nearly 5,000 firefighters were deployed and over 500 appliances were in use. It is
hard to imagine the scale of this in the UK, where the London Fire Brigade has 5,500 firefighters and less than half that number of appliances. And in the neighbouring
the toughest firefighter. With over 31 million acres of privately owned wildlands and over 7,000 wildland fires a year in California alone, these are a considerable drain
“It was hard not to be touched by the tragic events not that long before the Rim Fire, when 19 firefighters, members of the Granite Hill Hotshots in Yarnell Hill, perished attempting to tackle a wildfire” state of Arizona, it was hard not to be touched by the tragic events not that long before the Rim Fire, when 19 firefighters, members of the Granite Hill Hotshots in Yarnell Hill, perished attempting to tackle a wildfire. Hotshot crews are wildland fire fighters who are trained, according to the US Forest Service ‘to fight fires in remote areas with little or no logistical support in the most demanding conditions’. With Arizona temperatures often exceeding 1000F in the summer months and the hottest July on record coming in at 1210F, these are cruel working conditions for even
on resources. It will come as no surprise then, that the US Forest service has a budget of $4.9 billion, around 40 per cent of which is needed for fire-related activities. In their last budget report they bemoaned the continued increase in demand for firerelated resources looking back to 1991 when they required just 13 per cent of the budget. Wildfires are, however, a fact of life for many Americans, so much so that in the mid1980s the US Forest Service and the Department of the Interior came together with the NFPA to create Firewise, a preventative project to
FIRE’s US Correspondent Catherine Levin
change behaviour of those living in affected areas. The concept of the Fire Adapted Community has also emerged in recent years and encourages those living near wildlands to understand the risks they face and minimise them not only as individual householders, but as a wider community. The new Fire Adapted Communities Infographic is well worth a look. So, with the 2013 wildfire season at an end, here’s hoping those mitigation strategies are going to work, especially in Yosemite.
Keeping South Wales electric fire safe The dangers of overloaded sockets and overheating of electrical appliances was highlighted by South Wales Fire and Rescue as part of Electrical Fire Safety Week at the end of September
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irefighters along with their partners in the Electrical Safety Council raised awareness of one of the biggest causes of accidental house fires in the country. Electrical appliances have become a staple of modern life − from fridges and phones to toasters or the TV; it is hard to think of how we’d get by without a few electrically-powered essentials. However, last year there were
188 fires in dwellings that involved electricity. Faulty equipment or appliances caused 114 fires in dwellings, with 14 caused by faulty leads and the remaining 60 fires were related to the electricity supply. Chief Fire Officer, Huw Jakeway, South Wales Fire and Rescue Service said “Electricity is often overlooked as a fire hazard, perhaps because there is no flame but just because there is
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no flame, doesn’t mean there’s no risk − never underestimate the risk of fire from electricity.” In support of Electrical Fire Safety week and its messages the service will took to the road with their Electrical Safety ‘roadshow’. Locations of where the ‘roadshow’ was taken was chosen using sophisticated techniques and statistics to establish those persons and those areas most at risk of
having an electrical fire in the home. During each day of the roadshow SWFRS personnel gave the public electrical and wider fire and road safety advice as well as giving away free trolley coins, educational leaflets, bags, balloons, and fridge magnets. In addition to this, there was a free give away of three metre extension leads during ‘happy hours’.