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65. Lessons from the 1977 Honda Canyon Fire & the 2016 Canyon Fire at Vandenberg AFB - Mark Smith
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In 1977, the Honda Canyon Fire swept across Vandenberg Air Force Base—now Vandenberg Space Force Base—becoming one of the most significant wildfires in the installation’s history and reshaping how the department approached wildland firefighting.
Nearly four decades later, the 2016 Canyon Fire once again challenged the installation, reminding firefighters how complex a wildfire at Vandenberg can become. During the incident, crews faced challenging conditions and a dangerous situation that ultimately resulted in a fire shelter deployment.
In this episode of the FireDawg Podcast, Matt sits down with Chief Mark Smith, who has served at Vandenberg since the early 1990s and has spent years studying and briefing these fires.
Together they discuss:
• The wildland fire environment at Vandenberg
• The events of the 1977 Honda Canyon Fire
• The creation of Vandenberg’s Hotshot program
• The 2016 Canyon Fire and shelter deployment
• Lessons learned that still apply today
Recommended
Transcript
Sponsorships and Introductions
00:00:00
Speaker
This episode of Fire Dog Podcast is supported by Roll Call Coins, founded by a 24-year Air Force firefighter veteran. They understand that a coin represents more than just an event. It represents a story.
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Start your design today at rollcallcoins.com and let your coin stand out in the stack. This episode of the Fire Dog Podcast is supported by AOS Services, the one-stop shop for firefighting equipment compliance built for the DoD.
00:00:36
Speaker
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00:00:50
Speaker
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Significant Wildfire Events at Vandenberg
00:01:00
Speaker
This is the Fire Dog Podcast. The views and opinions presented on today's episode are those of the speaker and not necessarily represent the views of the Department of Defense before the United States Air Force.
00:01:12
Speaker
Welcome, my name is Matt Wilson and thank you for listening to episode 65 of the Fire Dog Podcast. Every fire department has incidents that shape its identity. The calls have become part of the culture, the stories that get told to every new recruit, the events that fundamentally change how a department trains, equips itself and prepares for the future.
00:01:28
Speaker
At Vandenberg Air Force Base, now Vandenberg Space Force Base, that defining moment came in 1977 when the Honda Canyon Fire tore through the installation became one of the most significant wildfire events in the base's history.
00:01:40
Speaker
Nearly 40 years later, another major wildfire would again challenge the installation, the 2016 Canyon Fire, demonstrating the immense scale and complexity that wildfire can bring to even the most experienced departments. Today, we're going to walk through both of those incidents, the magnitude of the events, the leadership lessons,
00:01:57
Speaker
how they shape the department, and what they still teach us about leadership, preparation, and survival on the fire ground.
Chief Mark Smith's Insights on Vandenberg Fires
00:02:04
Speaker
To help tell that story, we're joined by someone who has spent decades studying and sharing these events. It is my pleasure to welcome to the podcast Chief Mark Smith.
00:02:13
Speaker
Well, Chief Smith, good morning. Thank you for joining us. morning. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's my pleasure. Thank you so much for agreeing to come on. I know that you've given your brief on the 1977 Honda Canyon in two thousand and the 2016 Canyon fires at Vandenberg.
00:02:33
Speaker
I believe you've done it at the Senior Fire Officer Summit. I know that I was in a briefing where you, I was in a talking crash where you'd given the brief. And I'm glad that we could get you on to record this.
00:02:48
Speaker
um Maybe not the entire brief. You know, we're not going through slides. But, you know, just to to talk about it so that we can archive this conversation. Because, man, some really... really cool perspectives that you have. The fact that you were in the department in 77 and in 2016, when these two fires happened and of course the fatalities in 77 and then the near miss in 2016, a lot to go through. So I'm excited to talk to you today.
00:03:13
Speaker
I'm excited to put this together or to be able to do this for you. um Just to clarify, um I was not in the department in 77. We, we extensive time, um,
00:03:26
Speaker
studying that fire. Once I got on the, the but was had the opportunity to run the Vandenberg Hotshot Crew, it was kind of one of our missions to study that fire, utilize that fire as a teaching tool.
00:03:41
Speaker
That presentation at Crashing Tops and at the Senior Fire Officer Summit was accumulation of years of study books a book written and even a documentary that's out now i'm not that i put those two together the book or the documentary but um it's a part of that development so to be able to make sure that The lessons of that both of those fires are not forgotten.
Paradigm Shift Post-Honda Canyon Fire
00:04:04
Speaker
It's very important to me.
00:04:06
Speaker
It's kind of a career, a highlight of my career to make sure I can pass that on. Certainly a large body of work. And sorry for mistaking that. i I don't know why I thought you were there in 77. I think i I thought I heard you say that in the talking crash, but maybe it was at some time shortly after.
00:04:23
Speaker
I got assigned to Bannenberg in 91. 91. Okay. As a buck sergeant when that rank existed. Nice. That's cool. You might be our first buck sergeant. um Yes.
00:04:34
Speaker
um Okay. Well, either way, there's a large body work, as you've mentioned. There's a lot of studying of that event. I think, do you think that, so it was really kind of a paradigm shift from kind of what I've gathered and how Vandenberg and maybe even the state of California, because I know that was ah as a big decade for the state of California and there was national and national incident management and things like that. And then there's these fatalities at Vandenberg. So would you characterize that event as kind of a paradigm shift for
Challenges and Adaptations at Vandenberg
00:05:06
Speaker
Vandenberg?
00:05:06
Speaker
ah mate Massively so. um it It changed the how the department... looked at wildland fire, embraced. Today, we're air Force Fire Protection recognizes wildland fire as that's a competency of our firefighters. But when I came in in 86, 85, it was 86, it was just, I think it was a one-day lesson at the tech school. And it wasn't looked at as ah as a core competency
00:05:41
Speaker
They're really recognized. And, you know, Vandenberg, over 100,000 acres, vegetation that is is is meant to burn. it's a part of It's a part of the um nature and the way it's designed.
00:05:55
Speaker
And um then we're trying to launch launch rockets and have electrical lines and infrastructure all embedded through these canyons. And Vandenberg's not a flat piece of dirt. We have mountains to the north and mountains to the south.
00:06:07
Speaker
And but that's where we're doing all of our our rocket and missile launches. What a unique place Van is. So the department transitioned recognizing it needed a crew. It actually hired University California, Berkeley, and they came down and did a study. And their recommendation out of that was to um a wildland hand crew that was doing vegetation management and trying to prevent future large-scale wildfires through prescribed fire.
00:06:35
Speaker
Yeah. what ah What a unique place and reading through your brief and some other things and talking to some talking to some folks there. it is much more geographically large than what I had, what I was thinking. It's a very spread.
00:06:52
Speaker
It's a big place.
Chief Smith's Career and Contributions
00:06:53
Speaker
It is. And of course, not a lot of that is inhabited, which means there's a higher risk profile for wildland fires. And then of course, the challenging the challenging terrain.
00:07:06
Speaker
As you mentioned, it's not a flat piece of land. And then you have the ocean that you border, which I imagine brings some winds and some other weather events that makes things more challenging. Yeah. the One of the meteorologists that was, that I dealt with when i was doing the prescribed fire program, that when I'd call California Resource Board to talk to, to see if we'd have a burn day or not a burn day, he says, you know, predicting weather at Manenburg is extremely difficult because we do jet out Vandenberg is located in that corner of California, that little elbow, that entire coastline above and below that elbow, 42 miles that is Vandenberg.
00:07:42
Speaker
So jetting out into the ocean, you could have, it could be raining on North Vandenberg and sunny on South Vandenberg around that corner. ah That's pretty rare and unique. And we only get rain in the winter months. The summer is completely dry.
00:07:57
Speaker
Okay. It doesn't seem, i don't know, it doesn't seem like a good mix when you when you put space launch rockets next to and an environment like that. but ah And then they put it right next to a canyon. So their their flame buckets don't just go out into flat ground. Their flame buckets go right into a canyon.
00:08:18
Speaker
Perfect. Yeah, so when something does flying out of that flame bucket, it's going to other side of the canyon and then it's running uphill. Man, what a unique place. And I know I've said that, but it it really is it really is unique and and it's the wildland risk there. And then, of course, the capabilities of
Evolution and Resilience of Vandenberg's Hotshot Crew
00:08:35
Speaker
the department. Because of that, I do want to get into those capabilities. But before we start, I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself, tell the listeners. kind know you've already alluded to it, how long you've been in, positions you've served, maybe other places you've served, whatever else you'd like to share about your career.
00:08:49
Speaker
Okay. Yes, i said ah I grew up in Ohio and in high school, aspired to be a firefighter and joined a local volunteer department. all the I was the young kid in the department and was encouraged by those members to join the military to be a firefighter if that's how I truly wanted to do it. It was very difficult to get into any fire department back in 85. So I joined the Air Force. My first assignment was to Castle Air Force Base in California.
00:09:15
Speaker
was there for two years and then i volunteered to go remote being single went into hearing about alaska and the different remotes they had at the time clear shimmy and then there was one other king salmon i believe it was i thought it'd be really neat to do that and my ultimate goal was to go over to england i wanted to see europe but Being young and naive, i wanted to go to English speaking country, so I didn't feel that far out of place. I got assigned to Shimia, spent a year there. At that point, I was a senior airman.
00:09:47
Speaker
Then went to R.F. Bentwaters as a follow-on. And it's two years there. Met my wife, who was in Force as well. yeah got married. We were trying to put in for the East Coast. We're both East Coasters. And they gave us Vandenberg. So we're back in California. She so she was at March, and her first base.
00:10:06
Speaker
Then you're here at that point I was a buck sergeant and made staff while I was here. I was, um, my rescue was kind of my, my dream job.
00:10:18
Speaker
I think a lot of firefighters, it is, um, loved it. loved did it our bent waters, especially with the A-10s. Um, that's where, you know, when I was at our bent waters, desert storm broke out.
00:10:29
Speaker
um So get this to Vandenberg and within about a year and a half, I was asked, do I want to go over the crew? I asked, our assistant chief at the time was asking me, what does that mean? Am I going over just for the academy for the two weeks or three weeks?
00:10:44
Speaker
Am I going over for just the fire season or I going over, know, as a permanent member of the overhead of the crew? he goes, um once you go over, you'll never come back. Because the folks that go over love the job so much, they never want to come back and did not realize how true that statement was.
00:11:01
Speaker
because i went over, worked the initiative of getting the crew from laborers to actually GS firefighters, because there was no promotion, pretent from them from the crew to the department.
00:11:13
Speaker
The duty certification system wasn't in place at that time. We converted, i ended up getting orders short notice to, um well, they weren't short notice, just the MPF. Our orderly room wasn't picking up the orders, so they'd been sitting for a while. So I had orders to Goodfellow.
00:11:27
Speaker
And when I got a call from my sponsor, not knowing I had orders, I asked him, I going to the fire school or am I going to the department? He goes, I take it you're a non-vol. So they didn't have anybody to take over the crew.
00:11:38
Speaker
You know, i was a staff sergeant running the crew with other and another military member, and most of them either got deployed or PCS, so I didn't have a number two. And the rest were all seasonal firefighters.
00:11:50
Speaker
So they converted the position to civilian. I applied for it. um At 10.30 in the morning, I was asked if I wanted the job. At 3.30, I was re-enlisting for six years and going to Goodfellow. um So I turned down that assignment and took that civilian position, continued to run the crew up until 2006. So got out in 98 and then 2006, left the crew, lateraled from that position, running the crew to battalion chief on South Vandenberg.
00:12:19
Speaker
Um, and then promoted to assistant chief and retired in that position and was brought back out of retirement to help with succession planning our department. We had a massive turnover of all our chiefs and nobody ready to step up. ah Quite the, quite the career path there. And a lot of times been at Vandenberg.
00:12:37
Speaker
When you'd mentioned crew, and I'm sure we're going to talk about it here soon, you're talking about the hotshot crew The hotshot crew. Today, it's ah um we call it a um the hand crew. We don't use the term hotshot. That certification was lost when with sequestration. We lost a crew for seven years.
00:12:55
Speaker
And then bringing the crew back, they have to go back through a recertification process. i understand. and And it's very difficult. You have to maintain certain standards within the crew. And a portion of that is overhead.
00:13:07
Speaker
And until we can rebuild that overhead and consistency and the crew's out, has the the crew technically has to be out on fires to get to meet that standard.
00:13:18
Speaker
Exactly. So it's a type 2, what they call IA, initial attack hand crew. Okay. Very well respected in in within within their peers.
00:13:29
Speaker
Yeah. And many hot track crews, when i worked i when i was on the crew when we were a hot track crew and I was running the crew, there were only 28 crews in the country. And they, I mean, it was um
00:13:44
Speaker
well respected. And then when there was a need for more crews, they kind of gutted those 28 and those some of those captains and squad bosses went to help develop those other crews. So now there's a standard where a hot track crew could be hot track crew one year and next year they're They're type 2IA because they don't meet the standard.
00:14:04
Speaker
So for listeners understanding, type 1 would be the hotshot crew, right? Yes. So that that name is associated with the type 1 crew, type 1 hand crew. Yes, it's associated with type 1 crew. The CAL FIRE um and other agencies will...
00:14:19
Speaker
designate something a type one. it' just It's a capability. right But the title hotshot crew is based on a stringent requirement that you meet to get that title and put that title on your crew.
00:14:30
Speaker
And we're talking about physical requirements, abilities to do your pack test in a certain amount of time and different exercises, different kind of activities, right? Digging a line with time requirements, correct?
00:14:45
Speaker
Yes. So to to explain what a hotshot crew or even a hand crew is they're um they're put together to be a fire asset no different than an engine no different than a ah you know bulldozer or a tractor plow for the east coast and so they're just they're they're a tool it's um you can the mindset not to sound elitist or anything but a hotshot crew is like a special forces crew in a sense right that as firefighters we we multi-disciplined we're
00:15:16
Speaker
Hazmat, you know, rescue the Sentinel. The crew focuses solely on their mission. So they're very, very good at it. And they have many tools that they can bear to the fire, burning, know, putting fire to fire, that kind of thing, and working in a very extreme terrain and doing it safely and making sure at the end of the day, everybody comes out.
00:15:36
Speaker
Because we've all, if you haven't seen Only the Brave, it's a couple of glorified Hollywood things. It's a very, very excellent movie that... that really, I think, did justice to what a crew is.
00:15:50
Speaker
Yeah. And that Prescott crew, is they they perished in a fire in Arizona. and They were also a type one hand crew. They were. And they were, they like us, that story is very, very similar to our story in the sense of when, again, like I mentioned, our our crew was was actually embraced by the Los Padres hotshot crew, Mark Lenane.
00:16:12
Speaker
ran that crew. He was one of, I would consider him one of the godfathers of, of wildland firefighting and every crew superintendent highly respected him.
00:16:22
Speaker
And he kind of brought it, well, didn't kind of, he brought me under his wing and helped us, you know, develop our crew and also brought us into the fold of, you know, working alongside those other crews. So we were respected from that aspect of, you through, through him, he mentored me,
00:16:40
Speaker
on But again, not to sound elitist, that the crew does a very specialized um aspect of wildland fire, that their physical fitness has to be top-notch.
00:16:51
Speaker
um They're working in extremely arduous terrain, 16-plus hours a day, sleeping in the dirt. Many times they call it coyote tactics where you're staying on the fire line and you're being resupplied either by— um A vehicle bringing stuff out to the fire, a helicopter flying, slinging in additional supplies to to sustain us for multiple days.
00:17:14
Speaker
Even pack mules bringing stuff in, depending on where we're at. I did seven days of coyote tactics on a fire that it was a highlight of my time with the crew, where every day we'd pack up our sleeping bags into a sling. And they'd haul them off, and as well as the meals we had just eaten.
00:17:32
Speaker
And then that night, they'd sling it into wherever we were going to bed down for that night. So and again, working extreme heat, stream up close to the fire, and and very, very arduous train.
00:17:46
Speaker
Yeah. I'm glad that you're going through the details of what it, what being a hotshot crew type one hand crew entails, because I don't, I think that people that don't maybe understand while in firefighting, no fault of their own, maybe they haven't been exposed to it, may not understand. It's hard to put in perspective.
00:18:02
Speaker
Right. what it takes to get to that level. This is, it's incredibly special. It is. Because like you'd mentioned, 28 crews in the United States, that's unbelievable. You know, in some of those, in some of the bigger states that have a higher risk profile for wildland firefighting, maybe there's a couple. I was in Alaska. I think there's two. that's That's pretty, and and we're not talking about We're talking about, what, 30 guys maybe in some cases? um they They have up the numbers, and I ah i want to say they're like trying to push 24, 25, or even 30. But the the official number back in the day was no less than 18, and then most crews ran 21.
00:18:43
Speaker
um There are type 1 crews. Cal Fire considers their crews type 1, and they run and for We run 10 and 10 in each you know crew crew buggy and then the superintendent. But they're trying to up those numbers for one for rotation of maybe members and keeping that crew intact and then giving some time for R&R and also be able to stay back and serve their home station.
00:19:11
Speaker
Those 28 crews were managed through the National Energy Fire Center that they kind of owned them, even though they were stationed at, like, let's say in Los Potters. So if they needed to move them they'd move them. We were never a part of that.
00:19:21
Speaker
We stayed mostly in California. It was hard to sell our crew going out of state when we're really here to take care of Vandenberg. Right. But going out to those agencies is what made us capable of handling what needed to be done at Vandenberg. It was kind of a delicate balance that I had to manage as a crew superintendent. I can completely understand that.
00:19:39
Speaker
But to to tie it back to the fire, my time on that crew, we wanted to know what happened in 1977. We started studying it. And it was a huge epiphany to me when we were showing the documentary on the 77 fire and As I was introducing Dennis and Joe Valencia, Dennis Ford, he put the documentary together. Joe Valencia wrote the book, Beyond Tranquiline Ridge. As we were introducing that to our department, I said that the study of this fire is what prepared me as the IC and made me capable of kind of handling an out-of-control fire that we couldn't do a thing to, which was the Canyon Fire in 2016. So I was like, wow. I mean, all that work that we did.
00:20:25
Speaker
um you know paid off for that day that now I have that fire scenario. yeah And that was the goal was to make sure that if we had another fire scenario, like we had in 77, how would we manage it to make sure that didn't happen again?
00:20:39
Speaker
Right. Gosh, there's so much that I want to get into. And I look forward to the stuff that we do get into. I i want to before before we do start highlighting 77. I figure we highlight 77 first. It just chronologically it makes sense, right? And then 2016. But before we do that, can you you talked about the hotshot capability that Vandenberg once had, and they're working their way towards maybe doing the same thing. But they are a type 2 handker, which is, again, highly respected. right There's a whole lot of experience in that department, in the state, in the area for wildland firefighting. So, you know, nobody's questioned the capability of Vandenberg, but I want to talk about the wildland capability, the broader wildland capability of Vandenberg.
00:21:18
Speaker
Can you talk about that a little bit? Sure. um So the crew was, was birthed out of that 77 fire. Like you have a need, you have to manage the vegetation. You need to do this. so they started off with the fire,
00:21:32
Speaker
doing wildland training for the entire department, but then they took members of the department and said, if we have a fire, you're going to be Within a couple of years, right around, I think, 81, they started hiring overhires.
00:21:44
Speaker
So every year we have an academy. And back in the day, Don Perry taught that academy. He was the battalion chief. And if you so if you read Beyond Tranquillian Ridge or you watch the documentary, you'll learn more about him. But he was very pivotal in becoming portion of running to 77 fire when we lost our base commander fire chief and assistant chief so he started helping us teach that academy and i don't know that every member in our department went through that academy the crew certainly did when i came on um or got assigned to vandenberg in um when was that um
00:22:23
Speaker
91. went through when I was asked to go to the ah crew. I was asked. I went through the Academy for the first time. We would send members over, not necessarily every single member. Once um we adopted the and NWCG standards and those court those courses became more you know the robust the way they are today, the 130 wildland firefighter, 190 fire behavior, we adopted all that.
00:22:48
Speaker
I was going to classes all over the California and we took those classes and redeveloped that academy. We call the Hotshot Academy, we called it Wildland Academy. Every member from our newly assigned military deputy chief In our department, we'll go through that academy.
00:23:05
Speaker
it's you know We consider it the basic fundamentals of making sure that you're safe on Vandenberg, because if you're even going out to a fire, and there's the risk of the fire overtaking you. So we run everybody through that every year.
00:23:18
Speaker
of course, we changed tools that we put on the engine, and making sure we have shovels in the clouds and Pulaski's. I think those were already on there back in the day. But um we teach firefighters how to use them. It's not just that one hour or know whatever it was in Goodfellow that... So it not so And there is a concern we have of newly assigned military member, or even we pick up a civilian that doesn't have wildland training, that if we get a fire, so we'll leave them at the engine if that's the case.
00:23:45
Speaker
If they haven't had those that core fundamental training and have help the engineer and wouldn't help resurface the engine, but not take them out in the fire line if they don't have, they haven't done shelter training. this whatnot um We have over the years acquired, um for me it was a challenge trying to acquire the right vehicles to transport our crew. There's pictures in the documentary and and such of what we had as crew buggy. And then i finally got those. And then we have two, we were the one of the few departments, I think Canon did the same thing. Back in the day before, there was an actual wildland engine
00:24:19
Speaker
that was acquirable through the Air Force, you know, fire protection. So we went out and got two Type 3 fire engines, which is a wildline capable engine, 4x4, a little more compact than our Type 1 engines that we use for everyday structural firefighting.
00:24:35
Speaker
So we have that. on like We also, um and you we had dozer operators that would help on fires in the past. even before 77.
00:24:46
Speaker
But again, it was the approach to the fire, not that they weren't trained and everything else. It just wasn't as robust as it is today. We just, I don't want to discredit pre-77 firefighters that they didn't know what they were doing.
00:25:00
Speaker
That's not the case. It just was the mentality. learned a Right. We just learned a lot collectively as a fire service probably. Right. and it was a Cold War era. So we had commanders and our whole thing was the war, you know, and and being postured.
00:25:13
Speaker
But we also had this vegetation that we're trying to do. what We're trying to do we' to do our mission in. So we got the two Type 3 engines. And then we've been we've been a part of the development of, we went to Cannon, we helped them, they were losing 13 firefighters and they had their range.
00:25:30
Speaker
And how we do wildland fire in the Air Force is is very unique. You go East Coast and, you know, it's the environmental Jackson Guard. um Those folks are managing and dealing with the vegetation wildland fire. You come to the, more to the West Coast,
00:25:44
Speaker
The West Coast bases are the firefighters are taking care of it, not the environmental flight. And even the middle of country, I've been around the world with for Guam, um you know, and such to where it's it's a little unique to where you go and how you fight fire.
00:26:01
Speaker
But the department as a whole, know, You know, I don't want digress too much from our topic, but when when we lost the crew through sequestration, when we when they killed all the overhires throughout the Air Force, um so we had seven funded positions. So we kind of had this caretaker status of what are we going to do? just We kept fighting the fight to get them back. And the the canyon fire in 2016... was a nexus to bring them back. But we had several fires where we had some near misses where the fire turned and somebody could have been hurt or we could have damaged and burned equipment.
00:26:34
Speaker
And as I'm looking at our our roster for the day, and night this is where I really got our commander's attention. and he's like, you I get it. I can sell this. we What would happen is we hire these crew members. They go on the crew. They fight fire around the around the state. They build up that that experience, not just the training, but the experience. And then they promote into the department.
00:26:58
Speaker
And now they're a firefighter, an engineer, and even a captain. um And for me, are the assistant chief, and battalion chief with and umm ah also a operations section chief ta um i'll type two team.
00:27:12
Speaker
They don't have type two and one teams anymore, but but that I've served in that capacity and have that qualification. It's only because of my time through that process. So we were losing... that experience. And we were getting back to kind of 1977 capability where you got firefighters that have no wildland experience and now they're going to go out and experience something they never experienced in their life.
00:27:35
Speaker
And fast moving fire pushed by wind and potential that could kill them. And um on that fire that when I showed, I took the commander out there and show them where we had a near miss and I showed them the roster. There were only three of us out of 20 some firefighters or initial attack on that fire that had any real large fire experience.
00:27:56
Speaker
So we turned that tide and we have our crew back and it's a concern when we when we hire and it's a concern and in making sure through succession that we continue to feed our department with members with experience.
00:28:10
Speaker
It's a, it's an unfortunate problem as old as time, you know, it takes tragedy to ignite change. Nope. I'm not intended, but you know, 77, we learned from that. We build up through the eighties, nineties, two thousands and Hey, it's hasn't been a problem for a while.
00:28:27
Speaker
You know, what right i I, haven't seen anything happen. Why do you need these people? We're concerned about Vandenberg, not the greater California area. maybe you don't need all this. We're dealing with that right now even with our launch tempo. They want to increase the launch tempo. We were saying, okay, we need a certain number of firefighters on duty, to a certain and amount of time to reset from one launch to the next launch.
00:28:48
Speaker
And they're like, what is the big deal? Because the recency. And then I remember we had a conversation yesterday. I said, like, let's go back. I said, the problem is we're 10 years from 2016.
00:29:00
Speaker
yeah We were 10 years from the Canyon Fire. So not the Canyon Fire shut down our launch capability for six months. We can't afford that. And when our our posturing for launch is not necessarily protect the not gonna be able protect the rocket. If something happens to the rocket, it it happens. It's making sure that we then are able to respond and take care of whatever happened with that rocket to make sure the infrastructure Personnel first, obviously.
00:29:30
Speaker
And not to get into our so all the space business, but how we do launches has changed and there's a life threat. And life threat in the sense of, you know, we're not doing high risk operations since we're threatening people's lives. But if a fire occurs, we got to be postured and be able to respond and mitigate that situation in a very timely manner.
00:29:52
Speaker
Because the canyon fire was in one of those places that we, when it started and I was driving, I knew immediately this was going to go for days. It was in a canyon. It's inaccessible.
00:30:02
Speaker
And it's going to develop before we can even get to a point where we can get to the edge of this fire. And there's areas on the base like that that's kind of like, a you know, we're we're in for a long haul. Because you can see where smoke's coming from.
00:30:17
Speaker
It's, again, a problem as old as time, and it's just the, I guess, the never-ending job of ah a chief officer, executive officer to articulate that risk and just drive home the importance of this stuff and to help others understand, external stakeholders understand.
00:30:33
Speaker
That just because it hasn't happened, the law of recency, you know, we as humans like, hey, if it hasn't happened, then it's not a problem. Just because it hasn't happened doesn't mean it won't happen. It won't have a huge impact. And there couldn't, you know, there there may be loss of infrastructure in life. And so we kind of constantly have to beat that drum, unfortunately. But that's just kind of the nature of the business. um Yeah. And then space operations has just since 2016, I would assume there's a larger emphasis. I mean, now we have the Space Force.
00:31:00
Speaker
there's There's a whole lot more things going on in the space domain. and so I'm sure the mission set at Vandenberg has probably expanded to a degree or at least launches have expanded. I mean, i don't want to talk about the specifics of that, of course, but...
00:31:14
Speaker
the risk profile, you know, potentially. It's extreme. It went from a launch every month or every other month to every four days.
00:31:26
Speaker
We're doing over a hundred launches a year and it's going to increase. That's all know public knowledge. okay So it's the tempos increased dramatically and the entire way we do business has changed significantly just in the last two years.
00:31:39
Speaker
You know, we used to do this massive standbys, all sit in one location for three hours prior to launch. And we can't afford do that anymore. It depleted the entire department to support that. so we have to be extremely strategic and extremely smart in how we do it, but not let our guard down to make it seem like it's your routine, like it's an aircraft taking off and landing.
00:31:58
Speaker
Because it's it's not. it's When something does go wrong, and it does, I mean, recency, if you look at the CAPE, You know, a Falcon 9, you know, blew up on the pad.
00:32:09
Speaker
We haven't had that here, thankfully. But we have had major, and just in the last 10 years, we had a Minotaur explode on the ground as it was trying to take off. And we had a Firefly where they did a destruct and it didn't cause any wildfires on the base, but it rained down debris within what they expected, the ILL, the impact limit the line area.
00:32:32
Speaker
So we we had, it's not if, it's just when. Right. We're pushing, we're we're not, wouldn't say we're pushing the limits, but we're we're challenging ourselves to to to change the technology. and space And SpaceX has done a great job of that, of bringing technology to barrier to whole new level that allows us to do what we're doing today. we're land I mean, as a kid, I watched Splash Gordon. Do I ever imagine that as an adult, I'd be standing watching the first landing at Vandenberg look just like Flash Gordon. The legs came out and the rockets set down on the pad. That was amazing. It is. So anyway. Well, we certainly set the scene, Chief Smith. We talked a lot about the capabilities of Vandenberg and, you know, your history. Let's get into 1977 Honda Canyon fire. Start wherever you think is appropriate. Talk to me about that. Okay.
00:33:18
Speaker
So it's 77, right before roll call. So you got crews are ready to go home and crews coming on. It's right before Christmas. The high wind event, which happens here, um,
00:33:31
Speaker
Typically April, the timeframe we're in right now is our high wind time where the stream winds blow. But they had a very interesting thing where they um they have a high pressure system, low pressure system set up. And as we're familiar with certain areas of the country, the Santa Ana, as you hear in California, up north, the mono winds and stuff like that. Those don't typically hit us at Vandenberg.
00:33:54
Speaker
they're They're further south. They start like in Santa Barbara and work their way all the way down to San Diego as they get into the sundowners and the Santa Ana winds. But that had happened. And then as that was breaking up, it set up the perfect storm for us. And we are again in the corner of el ah the of California. Bakersfield is to the east of us.
00:34:14
Speaker
Got hit with gale force winds. And those winds recorded over 100 miles an hour, hundredth i can't remember the exact number, 130, whatever, when the wind vein thing that is tracking the winds at Trans Peak broke.
00:34:29
Speaker
Well, Powerline, PowerPole, was sheared off from the winds and started a vegetation fire um in Honda Canyon up near the ridge top. And it started off shelter. And I've been out there before on a windy day where you could be kind of sheltered from the wind. doesn't feel like windy day, but you're up on that ridge and you can't even open a door without getting of the vehicle without it getting ripped out of your hands.
00:34:53
Speaker
So I believe that's kind of the scenario, what they dealt with when they were doing initial attack on the fire. So that they're responding out. They immediately called for San Barbara County's response as well. So that brought Don Perry, who was a battalion chief and some a strike team of engines, which is five engines and their hanker. The power pole is broken. There's a fire. There's an engine trying to fight the fire. We didn't have progressive host line packs at the time. They're trying to catch the fire and we have our first burn over on the fire. The winds change, they turn and that pushes the fire up the back uphill. and they took shelter on the backside. Nobody was hurt, um but the engine was severely damaged. The fire then is down in the canyon.
00:35:33
Speaker
Chief Perry is now met up with our, I'm going to keep it really short. If folks want to know like all the real specific details, get Joe Valencia's book, Beyond Tranquil and Rich. I think it's available on Amazon. I'm not here to try and push book sales.
00:35:47
Speaker
And also watch it. Also on all this major streaming is the documentary. Yeah, I noticed it was on YouTube. so Yeah, Firestorm for um for free is the name of the fire name of the the on the documentary. Firestorm 77.
00:36:03
Speaker
Firestorm 77. Yes, thank you. and keep Kind of keep the whole scenario, but we had seven, ah believe it was seven burn over incidents. like Each one of those incidents would be what you call an incident with an incident. would be a traumatic event on any fire, but we had seven of them. And then one was of obviously fatal. So the incident commander, the the but fire chief, the installation commander at the time, the um the base commander, he'd already done his change of command, but it's like, this is my base. I'm leaving it. but i've
00:36:36
Speaker
So he comes out and he meets up with Chief Bell. And they're trying that they're concerned because there is a hazardous storage facility in Honda Canyon near the mouth of it where comes out near the ocean. But so it's a far enough back in that they were trying to drive in to see if it's going threatened by fire. So fire's up on a ridge.
00:36:55
Speaker
They're a mile and a half away near the ocean, just up above the ocean. And that fire gets works its way down into the canyon, and they had a lookout that said, hey, that fire's making a run.
00:37:09
Speaker
So at this point, the Joe Lineman, who ran the San Barbara County crew, is there. They're at Chief Perry. A dozer just got offloaded. They're getting to try and widen the break on the other side of the canyon from where it started.
00:37:24
Speaker
That dozer transport gets stuck. So the dozer helps push it out of the way, but they realize they need to evacuate where they met. That's the part that always puzzled me. It's like they're a mile and half away from the fire. How could they, when the fire starts to moving, how could they get caught by that fire? It's like yeah they were leaving as soon as they knew that that things had changed.
00:37:44
Speaker
That fire just shotgunned out of that canyon um towards the ocean. And the path that they needed to take to get down below, it was a gravel, um asphalt, broken up kind of road that was drivable, bit sand on either side.
00:38:01
Speaker
Chief Perry was the first, the dozer transport was the first one to get out. And the dozer operator's in the dozer, so he's coming out. But so the order of events was the dozer transport goes flying out. The whole strike team of engines from San Mara County, a whole bunch of folks are down below. They see a dozer transport come out, tractor with a trailer, and all the hydraulic lines are burned off of it. It's smoking. And then Chief Perry's coming out and he can't see the road and his vehicle gets stuck on the side of the road in the sand.
00:38:31
Speaker
Chief Bill and the base commander and um the assistant chief all pull up alongside, maybe went a little bit past them, and then backed up because they couldn't get out. The fire was overrunning the road now.
00:38:47
Speaker
Their vehicle was found further up the road, closer back to the camera pad where they were all met up. Um, when it was found, it was in drive parking brake set doors open.
00:38:58
Speaker
That's how it was found. And it was in fairly good shape. The grill looked had been melted, which I believe is when they pulled up towards the fire and the, the, the gumball lights back in the day, um, that were up on top of the, um, if the emergency lights on top were melted down a little bit, but the rest of the vehicle was in perfect shape because where they were at, the fire burned over the top of the vehicle.
00:39:19
Speaker
um Because they're kind of in a cut bank, which is one the we look at we're looking at survivable sites. And we use that as a lesson. That's like if you were caught by a fire, where's a good place to to take shelter and possibly deploy? it So, again, using that kind of as a lesson.
00:39:36
Speaker
Well, no one will ever know why they got out of the vehicle, why they went where they went. But where they were at, you could see the road down below. It's a long haul. It looks close. It's kind of that deceiving thing, right? The ocean's right there. There's a road right there and I'm up here.
00:39:49
Speaker
It looks close. It's not. they They traveled that way. But where we found them was there's a fence line that came off 45 that went into another small canyon. And so they went down they went down this break. There's no way they went straight to where they were found because the vegetation was way too thick.
00:40:07
Speaker
Because when we started looking for the fatality site, because nobody knew where it was, that was lost over the years. But there was a picture that showed this fence post that was burned and it had this weird, um were and it was angled and you could see the ocean see its topography. So we found the fatality site.
00:40:24
Speaker
So we believe they went down that that break, the three of them, they caught that fence line because the fire turned. As soon as it got out to the out of the canyon, it's now all the coastline, still a little hilly, but it's shotgun south and north.
00:40:40
Speaker
So now it's running in front of where they're going to be able to go. So they followed, the we believe, followed the fence line. And that's where they were found, burned over. on The bodies were found. But it was quite a while before it was realized that they were gone. So you now you have the incident commander that's running the incident, deceased, assistant chief that was helping support fighting the fire. And then the base commander all gone.
00:41:02
Speaker
There's nobody running the fire anymore. Don Perry it has to be rescued, deployed. So the dozer supervisor was in his vehicle, Joe Lindemann, and he were all in his vehicle. They had fire shelters. We did not have fire shelters. They weren't mandatory. They were not bought for the department at that time. But the crew had, San Barbara County's crew did, so that they deployed a shelter and survived in the vehicle. That vehicle was massively burned over. Tires burned off.
00:41:27
Speaker
It was a steel vehicle. It was survivable to stay in. Another lesson learned. We talk about survivability vehicles. Our engines are made with plastics, this, that, and the other. You sit up high. So we again, we use that as a lesson learned as well.
00:41:41
Speaker
So fast forward, they they rescue them. They're looking for the dozer up there because he was the third one out. They did see him try and get off the dozer as the fire's burning him over and try and take shelter. And the dozer's walking away.
00:41:53
Speaker
And that's the last they saw him. They did ropes. use ropes it's Imagine it's, you know, it's it's the winds are still howling to a point where they're taking sand And they're blowing sand up against what just burned, and it's sandblasting the scar off of it. So where the wind's blowing, you have completely ashen skeletons of brush and trees and such that it's now white on one side because the wind is blowing out. The power lines are basically doing jump rope circles. So Smoke, they're trying to find him. They they do find him. He's in the dozer tracks, and he's taken on to Walter Reed.
00:42:30
Speaker
Burn center, flown out, medevaced. I always get the number days, but he he did pass days later, nine i believe nine days later in the hospital. So we lost our dozer operator, Clarence McCauley, Assistant Chief Eugene Cooper, Chief Bell, and Colonel Turner, our base commander. Don Perry ends up kind of running things to the south of that incident, and Chief Holmes, who's inspector,
00:42:57
Speaker
Starts running the north side. And they're being now challenged by General Gray. Doesn't want fire on the base. You know, we got enough fire and Chief Perry's like, we have to burn around all this infrastructure. SLIC-6 at the time, which was the space shuttle complex, we were ready launch that here back in the 80s, was the mole project back then. So it it was an active launch site with all the chemicals that go along with that launch.
00:43:21
Speaker
And they're worried that the fire is going to impact that. So he managed the south side, Chief Holmes managed the north side. They're bringing in Army Navy Seabees with massive amounts of dozers. We're trying to do a stand to keep this fire from going to the north part of the base. Two days later, starts raining. Essentially helps put the fire out.
00:43:39
Speaker
um But there were, again, other burnovers. Crews fighting fire, fire jumped the road that flashed up and the burn injuries and impalement were trying to to protect the Titan launch complex.
00:43:53
Speaker
highly, highly sensitive, you know, Cold War, we're launching out Titan. You had to do a retina scan, you had to do PIN and had to have a line batch to get into that site. You know, it's for all intents purposes, top secret site. um That's the culture of the base at the time too, that we're dealing with. You're bringing off base firefighters on and they're So they're in that site trying to protect it and ah rescue a member of an engine.
00:44:17
Speaker
They're trying to go out, trying to save themselves as the fire is overrunning that site. And he's on the side of an engine. They're all just jumping on the engine to get out of there. And the driver's trying to time the exit through that gate as the wind's blowing it open and closed. And that big lock locking hatch that goes around the pole and slides down in the hole, that impaled him in the leg, peeled him off the engine.
00:44:41
Speaker
So we had that injury. So again, there were seven of those occurrences. The dozers being over Charlie Moore, who was our dozer, um ran our dozer program for years and was overran by fire. It wasn't killed, wasn't hurt, but a lot of burnover incidents occurred. and Eventually there was cabin management, Chief Perry being the most instrumental, most experienced, helping get that fire under control.
00:45:03
Speaker
but ultimately what put the fire out, it rained two days later. Yeah. Wow. Unbelievable. Um, thank you so much for walking us through that. I know that it's probably tough every time you do. It's just, man, what a dramatic event for seven burnovers and palement fatalities, just unbelievable. But so many lessons learned from that event.
00:45:25
Speaker
So let's, let's talk a little bit about that. Like what, um, I caught that you know now there's a more of an emphasis on training. Of course, in 81, the hotshot crew was established, more of an emphasis on equipment, shelters, communications, even fuels management.
00:45:40
Speaker
I read there was one other thing that I found interesting was that the, and I know it's it's just a consequence of the era that base commander being involved. And I'd read also that that base augmentees were oh yeah leveraged for for Wild and Fire back in that day. And that ceased in about 95. I was the one still training them. And I was like, why are we doing this? We we would bear we bring mutual aid to bear. We would never use this program.
00:46:05
Speaker
Can we please terminate this program? Yeah, it's just too high hazard to to expect to throw somebody with a shovel that has no idea about wilder behavior or anything like that, right? So going back to again, Cold War era, right? this This fire in the minds of the the general General Gray and the the leadership is this is this is no different than war. We're going to fight this thing. and We're going to put it out.
00:46:27
Speaker
They rounded up people and put them on buses. They rounded up our military members, went to the dorms, knocked the dorms, put them on buses, handed them these tools and told them to – And part of the the documentary of Dennis Ford putting it together is he was never a firefighter. He was an airman.
00:46:43
Speaker
He was sent out there and he was traumatized. His group of, I think, 10 folks were just left. They ended up hiking out the next day, many miles to get back to one of the fire stations where they got picked up.
00:46:56
Speaker
And so when he retired, he went to Allen Hancock and was looking for something to do and decided to go into film. And they had to do a project and he wanted to do this story.
00:47:08
Speaker
That's what kind of led to that. And then I met him for coffee one day because somebody told me he was, that he was looking for this and there was many firefighters they were interviewing that were still dealing with PTSD from 77. So not to there begin to digress off of our topic, but what was really cool about that whole meeting was on we brought all For lack better word, and probably a good statement, the survivors of that fire that they were interviewing all back.
00:47:39
Speaker
And part of the documentary is um filming us. Taking what we learned from that fire, we created staff ride. So we'd been doing the staff ride.
00:47:50
Speaker
Dennis didn't know we were doing that staff ride, nor did many any many of the people that were impacted by that fire. we brought them all back and ran them through staff ride. And so they contributed to the storytelling of what happened. And the staff ride is not meant to be a storytelling, a history lesson. It's meant to make you feel like you were there.
00:48:07
Speaker
But, okay, now you're posed with this problem. What would you do today? not Not criticize what they did then, but what would you do today? But through their storytelling of what they experienced,
00:48:18
Speaker
It just made that tenfold better, but it was also a great peer support intervention. Yeah. Yeah, and it connected them.
00:48:29
Speaker
So they now have a connection to their folks. Yeah. And they were there and can and offer able to offer peer support to one another from then on. So yeah it was it was pretty powerful, a very, very powerful day.
00:48:43
Speaker
Yeah, incredible stuff. That's right. I forgot about the staff writing. You mentioned that in the brief that I sat through. So what an awesome thing to do. Yeah, just a lesson learned, not to criticize what's going on, but to learn from it and to not repeat history, of course. You know, that's why we we review events like this, incidents like this. What's interesting is Joe Valencia wrote the book Beyond Tranquilion Ridge. He's not a firefighter.
00:49:03
Speaker
He was a reserve firefighter back in the day, but that wasn't his career path. Dennis Ford did a documentary Firestorm 77, he was not a firefighter.
00:49:14
Speaker
So both of them contributing very much to to something very, very needed for for firefighters that deal with wildland because they're they're not just lessons for us here at Vandenberg.
00:49:25
Speaker
They're out there. They're in the um leadership, um the Wildland Leadership Lessons Learned site, like the the information's out there to be used. And I've done staff rides for entire forests. Their district comes out, their leadership, and I've ran them through. it We've done, i couldn't tell you how many staff rides we've done, but we don't do them just for our department. We do them for everyone in the fire communities. And we tie them to some of the classes, the safety officer class and such.
00:49:50
Speaker
Yeah. Um, man, I just think about using augmentees and what a coordination nightmare that has to be. yeah They're being dumped on the fire captain. So imagine you're a captain on an engine. You're not, you're not an assistant chief, not battalion chief.
00:50:04
Speaker
And like, here's these 10 people. Well, the captain's looking for leadership on like, well, what are we doing with this fire right now? Because nobody's on the radio, you know, telling us, directing us. There was a lot of independent action going on all around the fire because nobody was coordinating a leadership effort because they were killed early on the incident. Right.
00:50:23
Speaker
And now these buses are showing up and these, you've got these untrained people. And we all, the cultures change. You don't typically have commanders coming out to a fire and getting involved in the firefight, but you had them all over the place. And yeah they're now like, here's a bus full of people, go do something with them.
00:50:40
Speaker
what what ah What a contrast between now and then. the the approach in the military and in the fire service was so hands-on. And I remember reading in Alan Brunicini's book, Fire Command, he talked about the s SOP in the 60s and before, in maybe 70s, was that you showed up as a battalion chief, at least on the East Coast. I believe he talked about the East Coast. You go into the fire. you know You're the first one there and you're going in and you're you're a tactical practitioner at that point. And now it's like...
00:51:07
Speaker
You know, we've learned that that's not the best approach. And of course, you know, we instituted an entity command system and it's just so much better to have somebody outside coordinating everything ah because then, you know, things are safer and even more efficient.
00:51:22
Speaker
But yeah, interesting to look back in that history and just to see how people approached things like that, you know. Yeah, definitely. was That's one of the key things. Cheap Renison was very instrumental in my career as well is is that making sure I stayed as an IC, I stayed strategic level.
00:51:41
Speaker
yeah Decentralized, yeah. Strategic level, tactical level, task level. right right keeping Keeping those from that perspective of where am I right now. Because if you're if you're anything but strategic, you don't have eyes on the big picture. Exactly.
00:51:55
Speaker
Yeah, detachment. Detachment is the key word. It's just so important to be detached because it's very hard and it's easy to get tunnel vision laser focused on a problem. yeah you You need somebody who does physically and you know mentally take a step back and kind of look around. and What other problem sets do I have? What other risks are here? How do I mit mitigate those risks? What kind of resources do I throw out? Different problems. You need that resource. But ah yeah, it's kind of – it's interesting to hear this story and then you know connect that with Alan Brunacini's perspective on firefighting prior to the And tying that – we're right now to the Canyon Fire
00:52:38
Speaker
is the The key takeaway, and it was also a battalion chief who ran crews down in L.A. County, that I had the fortune of getting a hold of a lot of his videos on on a track cassette, if you believe that.
00:52:51
Speaker
Not a track, a VHS cassette, right? VHS, yeah, yeah, yeah. Really dating myself here. But i had I had this library of stuff, and one of the things he was showing was firefighters – watching this fire burn and he's asking the LA County firefighters, you know, what it what what are they doing wrong and what are they doing right?
00:53:10
Speaker
And it's like, what what are you what are you getting at? Well, they're not doing anything. And that was his key takeaway is sometimes there's nothing we can do. e And that's not our nature. That's not the firefighter's nature. Adrenaline kicks in We're trained. We know what to do. We're going to go after it. And yeah when you see fire, you want to go attack it. You want to start engaging it.
00:53:31
Speaker
And to not engage at all is very, very hard. And that's what I had to do in 2016. I literally drove vehicle to vehicle to each of my resources I had assigned. We'd already been in the fight for a while and the the fire and hadn't come to us yet.
00:53:47
Speaker
It hadn't reached the road. It was going to come up out of this canyon. It was going to jump over and go into Honda Canyon. Now this is burning, you know, close a containment area in what we call Lompoc Canyon and Honda Canyons over the ridge.
00:54:00
Speaker
So I knew it was going to jump and go into Honda Canyon. um Hoped maybe we could hold it at the road. It's a major asphalt two-lane road, but it's near the ridgetop too, which is advantageous to us.
00:54:11
Speaker
But when it did make its run, I knew it was going to it wass going to run up these different drainages. And one of our fire stations was in the threat of it. And once it developed and became big, i was like, we need to evacuate that station as far as let's get all the vehicles out of there, all the personal property, and whatever government equipment we think is salvageable. And somebody said, are you serious?
00:54:29
Speaker
I'm like, this is the day we talked about this. We're going to lose this station. It's sitting in a chimney. It's in alignment of the canyon. It's coming up that canyon. So I need to go down and and start talking with, we're we're calling in the Type 3 incident management team and I'm a part of it. Our deputy is the planning section chief on it.
00:54:47
Speaker
I'm one of the operations section chiefs, um so but I'm the IC running the incident. And Woody Enos, one of our retired Santa Barbara County, he was the IC. going coming in and we're going we knew we were in for the long haul.
00:55:01
Speaker
But I need to disengage at a strategic level, will go down. But I'm not leaving until I briefed every single engine. We don't have an anchor point. We don't have a place we engage the fire. It's going to jump the road and you're going to try and pick it up.
00:55:14
Speaker
Whatever you do, make sure you have an anchor point. Make sure you you can fall back to safety because it's going to jump on again in other places. And there's a high potential you could get trapped. Just make sure no matter what, you're on the edge of the black or you're in a safety zone.
00:55:27
Speaker
So we had a parking lot to a key infrastructure building that we were trying to protect. We had our fire station, which I didn't think we'd be able to protect. They did. When I came back up, it was a firestorm around the entire station. 50-foot flames all the way around, engulfing the perimeter of the station and There's a picture of hose. Like I've never seen a hydrant with so much hose coming off of it. Gated, gated, gated.
00:55:50
Speaker
And an engine and embers are slamming against the helmet. Everything they could to protect it. Yep. Save the station. But again, i was making sure every single firefighter knew. there we we We don't have the typical anchor point flank this fire mentality. It's coming at us.
00:56:06
Speaker
We can't get below it. We can't catch anything. Even if we catch it on the road, you still fire behind you. So it's going to jump again. So it's going to outflank you. So it's just we got to hunker down, be safe, and we'll pick it up on our terms.
00:56:20
Speaker
We're not picking it up right now. And those are all the lessons I learned from 77. It's like there was nothing you could do without fire. There was nothing. Just protect infrastructure where it's safe and get out of its way until the conditions change to make it conducive to fight fire.
00:56:34
Speaker
That's a tough thing to do because every spot fire that jumped the road, the guys wanted to attack. They wanted to get it, but there could be a spot behind them, a spot alongside them that could have overtaken them. And they did it safely. Nobody was hurt or injured there.
00:56:48
Speaker
But then we fast forward. You want to keep going with 2016 cannon?
00:56:53
Speaker
or is i Yeah, one yeah we can we can get into it. I do want to, before I forget, highlight that point. I think it might be one of the more important ones that you brought up today is that strategic patience, tactical patience even. Like you had mentioned, we have this inclination to want to do stuff. We're doers, we're helpers, right? like That's why we're in the fire service and we're trained to be doers and helpers. You see the same thing on the structural side too. you know Maybe going into places that aren't that there's no livable space, right? No survivable space. And putting firefighters into positions they shouldn't be in, right? Yes. Because we we have this, we're protected by ensemble that's rated up to 500 degrees. And we just kind of feel as if we're Superman, we're protected, we have...
00:57:36
Speaker
SCBAs and everything else. But it's so important as a chief officers, company officers to really, yeah, to study these and events and incidents and tell the guys, hey, hold back, you know, build the reins back on them because there's, they's especially with wildland fire, like you're not going to compete against 50-foot flames. Like there's nothing that we're going to do. Putting that into perspective, especially with wildland fire is so important.
00:58:00
Speaker
Yeah, and I don't know how I would handled that fire had I not spent All that time, along with, you I got to give Brandon Page. He's a battalion chief now down San Barbara City. He was my captain. He was instrumental in developing and finding the fatality site and developing the staff ride. He introduced me to Joe Valencia. Joe was writing his book.
00:58:21
Speaker
But had we not spent all that time studying that fire, um and then I was posed with that fire, I don't, I still think I would have been, i wouldn't have been hard charging at it and expecting my firefighters to kill it.
00:58:35
Speaker
You know, had chiefs that I dealt with in the past that were like, we're going to bring everything we have to bear and we're going to kill this fire. Well, that was a 77 mentality. It's not a safe mentality.
00:58:46
Speaker
You know, there putting fire on the ground is a very uncomfortable thing if you don't understand the dynamics of doing that. So adding fire, burning things out, some are... And even been doing that, yet you got to be extremely careful. You could get firefighters trying to do that when it's not appropriate.
00:59:04
Speaker
It's a tool and things. And, you know, I'm getting into kind of more of the tactical level thing, but that's what's really interesting about this particular staff ride when We were developing it. Mark Lenane brought that up, the superintendent time of LP Outshots. He goes, this is one of the very unique staff rides. It could be a 500 level incident management team training environments because what do you do when you lose the entire leadership that's running incident? You lost all strategic leadership.
00:59:34
Speaker
It's gone. Now what? And you have all these resources out there to bear that are some engaged, some still come out. Because there's so many lessons that can be learned off of this incident from that.
00:59:44
Speaker
So everything from task level up to strategic level to at high level 520 incident management type class, the lessons learned from Vandenberg could be learned. Yeah. Yeah, it's good thing you were there in 2016 to impart that wisdom. And you guys worked up, of course, ahead of that. But to be there for that event and to to remember those lessons learned from 77 and how it informed your decision making, it's really incredible how those two connect. So, yeah, let's talk more on 2016, whatever else you know you like to share, you haven't shared up to this point.
01:00:16
Speaker
Yeah, I just had a ah thought too, just to make sure this is put out there is – You know, what you talk about Vandenberg being unique and it's ah it's a tough sell to continue to try and sell what we do. It's like, okay, there's Vandenberg again asking for this, asking for that. It's unique. And because most installations, you can have the same approach to every single installation. So all of our doctrine, and everything that the way we do business is based off of that kind of yeah know installation.
01:00:43
Speaker
Then you bring all the complexities we have here and where we are the only, at the time, Air Force Base. that did launches to keep this contract so no other fire department air force fire department does launches like we do so all that unique hundred thousand acres that's unique and there's there's other bases eglin but again eglin different approach all that vegetation is not the fire department's concern so um being involved and the lessons learned to take it to the whole next level. You asked like, what did, you know, what, what, how did Vandenberg um evolve in regards to this being involved with those incident, being, having the crew doing the training myself and others have taken the time to get certified, qualified to be,
01:01:32
Speaker
myself operations section chief our deputy chief plan section chief we got involved in incident management teams and went out and traveled we had folks that did base camp manager it's like well what base camp manager like what value is it the that for the fire department oh it's hugely instrumental for vandenberg because in 2016 we had over 800 firefighters come to help us fight the canyon fire from california and as far away as florida NIFC's ordering up resources because it went through the local dispatch to cell zone to NIFC to get us whatever we needed to help put this fire out.
01:02:08
Speaker
It was, I think, the number three priority for the nation to put out. So again, even myself, i took ah I took a time when I left the crew, one of the few years break from going out on wildfires because I had a kid i'm sung and most summers.
01:02:26
Speaker
I'm fighting fire. So I didn't want to go out. So I got involved in GIS, which was really cool because got a chance to see the planning section and get a chance to understand that. But we had folks that learned knew how to do mapping.
01:02:37
Speaker
And that's very instrumental when you're dealing with all of our install installation. Mapping is all kind of kept secret to a certain extent. There's not they don't give out all that. Most of it now is but infrastructure, that kind of stuff. That's important when you're fighting a big fire in 2016 and all the infrastructure that's being threatened.
01:02:54
Speaker
So our departments involved, we we were embedded into a Type 3 incident management team, which is really cool. Myself as operations or deputy. So deputy's called in, he's working the forms in the 209. The 209 is very instrumental in getting you additional resources.
01:03:10
Speaker
So being involved in those teams just opened our mutual aid beyond just the neighboring department. Most bases are can deal with just one mutual aid agreement with a local department that helps them because you get a vehicle of clocks outside the highway or you need them to come in to help you fight a structured fire. You need that.
01:03:27
Speaker
Well, how do you get 800 firefighters from across the nation to Vandenberg? It's through what we have built up, and that's mutual agreements with Los Padres.
01:03:40
Speaker
They're our ordering point for massive fires, and we've got mutual aid issues throughout. All of DOD right now, that does not allow us to go beyond Los Padres anymore. And we're still trying to fix that. It's affecting our crew. It's affecting everything we do. And the future of large fires on Mendenberg. We can only get the local resources, what Los Padres can offer and what San Marvillia County can offer.
01:04:00
Speaker
That's scary. Because 2016, it wasn't just what Los Padres or San Marvillia County could give us. We had l LA County. So then, anyway, so we had that fire.
01:04:12
Speaker
where I go down to our crew quarters, we have a classroom there, and we're building the incident action plan for the next day. And we're built we're bringing in the Type 3 team, what we could, because some of them are already committed. Because even as a Type 3 incident team member, I'm also on a Type 2 incident team, and many of our other members were as well, and they were off on other fire assignments.
01:04:31
Speaker
So we got as many as we could together, got logistics going to get meals and this side and the other, and we're ordering a bunch of resources for tomorrow. What does tomorrow look like? we' and We're trying to now create divisions because i normally you get on scene, initial attack, right flank or left flank is division alpha, right flank is division Zulu. And then we create a division Mike that is out forward looking at what's threatened.
01:04:58
Speaker
and we start anchor and flank at the fire. Well, we weren't doing them this fire, so we don't even have divisions. We just have firefighters up on a road in front of the fire with the fire burning around them and they're trying to just pick up the pieces.
01:05:11
Speaker
Never been on a fire like that before. um Usually get there and you're left flank, you're right flank, or you're out. You know, it's a couple days later and we show up the fire to help out. So anyway, trying to develop the plan The Type 3 team, and so the next day we're doing a briefing. At 6 o'clock in the morning, we have a bunch of crews standing out in front of the building. We've got a map up on the wall, and we're doing a formal incident briefing, like many of us have seen, with an incident action plan.
01:05:37
Speaker
We're now looking at where the fire's gone. It's already been in Honda Canyon. After I was done with that, I went out, drove up and around the ridge on the other side of Honda Canyon, saw it was down in the canyon. It's like it's going to come up over the top here tomorrow. So we have the resources the next day. at this point, a now on I'm operations. Woody Unis is the IC for next operational period. And we all get together midday and we run a complexity the complexity analysis on the fire.
01:06:02
Speaker
It's far exceeded the Type 3. Type 3 team can handle up to about 300 firefighters, maybe a little more, but logistically supporting that many firefighters is very difficult for a Type 3 team. the complete all the other complexity factors of where the fire was burning what was going how long it take to put out all pushed that we need to order an instant management team so we're the federal and some management team type 2 team now they integrated them all together they're just one team when you go above the type 3. but we were a type 2 team that brings in known 57 some folks
01:06:34
Speaker
and now they're running the incident on the day two. so Well, at day three. Day one was pretty much late afternoon and through the evening.
01:06:45
Speaker
Day two was type three team running it. Fire's down in the canyon. It's in two canyons. And what I didn't mention is during that night, The next morning, next day, I'm not sure the time that would have launched, the Atlas that had an NRO satellite, an NRO, National Accountants Organization, that's a military asset, Department of Defense asset, very vital to are what we do, um is the Atlas rocket's on the pad. It's supposed to launch tomorrow.
01:07:16
Speaker
So the middle of the evening, 11.30 at night, The installation commander, we're still so we're still Air Force. Space Force had been not been um created you yet. um the The base commander is asking, are we launching tomorrow?
01:07:33
Speaker
And so to launch, we're not going engage the fire for two hours prior to launch. We're going to have a single firefighter lamp. We can't put the people out that have to be out to where they need to be because they could be in the launch of the fire area to support that launch.
01:07:50
Speaker
So the determination was made to not launch. It wasn't safe because we'd have to leave the fire unchecked for four or five hours before we can engage firefighters again. We already had probably, um we probably already had 3,000 or 4,000 acres burning, maybe less. But I don't remember the exact number at that particular time. But there was it was it was everything was out. There was no containment at this point, 0% containment. No lines that were viable were put in that we could say were secure. So the terminal system was not made to launch.
01:08:22
Speaker
Six months later, they were able to launch. that We lost so much infrastructure in power lines and this, that, and the other. um So the next, now the tight-to-end management teams come in.
01:08:35
Speaker
that night they took it the next day so that's a watch out situation that's not really written but we all in wildland fire is a watch out situation is that transition a team transition so you have a team transition and we for whatever reason we had a mix of heli-tac crews and county engines all up on a ridge and they're going to do a burnout operation to try and keep a portion of fire checked in honda canyon instead of going towards that atlas It's already in another Canada that's kind of working its way towards the Atlas. and So there's a different division handling that.
01:09:08
Speaker
The Atlas being SLIC 3 on launch facility. And around the corner, Slick 4, which is SpaceX. They're burning across that ridge. I'm driving out this point now. I'm just an agency rep. I'm kind of the liaison for between the EOC and I'm attending all the share takers meetings and all that kind of stuff. I'm just kind of floating through the incident to to just to be ah Vandenberg rep and such. Or one of our assistant chiefs was unified IC along with the ins incident management team.
01:09:38
Speaker
So we're not an incident management team run things, but we're embedded with it. We, at this point, are building up to 800-some firefighters. We have a massive camp, incident command post up on the main containment area. And for all of us Air Force firefighters, how do you bring an incident management team into a base, and how does that integrate and integrate with your EOC c or dispatch and then the CAT, right?
01:10:01
Speaker
Is it still called the CAT, Crisis Action Team? Yeah, Crisis Action Team, is up yeah that what? Yeah, that's the base. Yeah. yeah That's where the basic commander kind all the the base commander and all the key people, right? Because they're they're looking, um especially if it was affecting a flight line for ah a flying base. They're thinking a military operations mission. Their strategic sustained mission, right?
01:10:21
Speaker
So strategic mission focus. Well, we have a fire burning that's kind that ends up burning 10,000 acres. It burns most of South Vandenberg, right? Like, what does that look like? So you have the CAT still stood up through the nine days of this fire. You have the e the EOC stood up. But what do they do with when you have incident management team? What was really, really cool that I saw was the incident commander took one of his liaisons.
01:10:46
Speaker
And liaison position is is an awesome position. So when I was going through all my training, the liaison, what they do for the IC is the IC stays strategic focus to the incident objectives of why they're there.
01:10:58
Speaker
So you're going to have all kinds of distractions to fighting the fire, political distractions, military distractions, right? For us, this that's affecting timber. Well, that the timber harvester, that company wants to know what you're doing to fight the fire and how it can impact their operations and when can they go to work.
01:11:16
Speaker
So all those people are coming at you as an IC. Your liaison handles all that. yeah You need to close major roadways, this, that, and the other. The liaison's handling all that. for the IC. He embedded one of his liaisons into the EOC. So liaisons in the EOC, he's hearing what the cat is concerned about.
01:11:33
Speaker
So when an incident management team takes a fire, they they get, this is the list of what our expectations are you as an incident management team. This is what we're giving you as authority to go, just go, go do and put this fire out.
01:11:45
Speaker
And here's some concerns, environmental concerns, this concerns military mission to send you on. Well, 10,000 acre fire involving commercial space launch, military assets, this, that, and the other.
01:11:56
Speaker
There's a lot of that that they're still figuring out. So the EOC is hearing all this from the CAT. Like we got this building now threatened, and these concerns, that building needs to generate. We cannot have no power at that building. So we got to get folks out there to fuel it. We were having our prevention folks escort them into the fire area to make sure that they were able to service that.
01:12:15
Speaker
But what was running is the EOC was had a liaison to the instant management team that knew what was going on, what the concerns were on the base, and was able to take that back to the IC, and then they were able to put that into their strategic picture of how they managed the fire. Huge success. So getting
Complex Fire Assignment and Challenges
01:12:29
Speaker
back to the fire. So they just took the fire.
01:12:32
Speaker
So your leader's intent, what you're supposed to do in a division, a newly assigned division supervisor just certified has now probably got one of his most complex assignments he could ever have.
01:12:44
Speaker
And they're going to try and burn out this ridge. There was a captain from Sanlora County that was very vocal that you guys need to understand this is not your atypical fire. You're at Vandenberg Air Force Base.
01:12:57
Speaker
There has been a fatality on this base from fires. It burns differently than where it burns inland. We can have fires burning with a higher RH, more extreme than it would 10 minutes from here.
01:13:10
Speaker
So he's trying to articulate all that, and they're burning this entire ridge line. And as the day warms and that canyon is now being filled with all this heat, we go from a very benign, low flame lengths to, and there is a if you go to the Lessons Learned Center or you just do a search, Honda Canyon Fire 2016, you will find a video that tells what I'm about, the story I'm about to tell. so I'm going to keep it short. Yeah, I'll share that link. I've watched that video yesterday. I'll share that link on our website, fire.us, along with this episode and on Facebook as well.
01:13:44
Speaker
So I won't spend a lot of time on this, but I want people to go watch it because i I'll just tell you that I was on the other other side of the canyon. I drove up, i I looked in the canyon, they're across, I didn't know what they were doing because i I didn't have everybody, what everybody on the fire is doing at this point. I'm an agency rep and I'm looking at what infrastructure was damaged.
01:14:03
Speaker
So we have an Indian Chumash painting on the side of of of this rock that's like, I mean, what do you call it? oh Archaeological site that's very pristine. It's that was it impacted it minor impact, but yes, went up to Trans Peak, very critical peak with communication equipment. It was impacted. so I'm taking pictures.
01:14:23
Speaker
I turn around and what was just some minor smoke in the canyon, low flame lengths is now a massive column. The entire canyon's on fire and we couldn't get off of the ridge.
01:14:36
Speaker
And we had black, we were safe, but we're trying to go from the black to the green to a road to get back out. And we go down the road we came up and we're not going that way. So we took a different evacuation route that comes off of that and had to wait a while until things got benign and we were able to drive out. And I was able to go past Slick 6 and seeing it's coming down Slick 6, it's now going past the fatality site. I didn't know at this point that we had a whole division worth of folks that are trying to flee for their lives.
01:15:03
Speaker
Two sheltered appointments.
Near-Miss and Safety Measures
01:15:05
Speaker
Depending on where you were at on that ridge, it was, wow, that got they got a hot quick. To, oh my gosh, I'm in hell. It's pitch black, dead night. Embers slamming the sides of the engines. They're all trying to to get off the ridge. I'll i'll leave it at that.
01:15:21
Speaker
Two shelter deployments, smoke inhalation. No, I don't think there were any burn injuries from that. but um But it was a near-miss that changed everything. the lives of some of those people that were affected that day. There's also a report that will be on the website, firedog.us, too, that highlights that event. And I remember reading in there that some of the some of the folks, the firefighters that they had interviewed, described their scared level, I guess is the way to say it, as a 9 out of 10, 10 out of 10, that they literally were feeling for their lives. but And there are pictures, and if it's okay, I'll share those as well, please of the conditions, the visibility conditions. They couldn't see in front of their face because the smoke was infelic. It was midnight.
01:16:00
Speaker
And it was dark out. Okay. i know No, no, but it was midnight for them. It was hell on earth. It was true. I mean, watching that video, it was, yeah, it was, but I'm trying to say, ah paint the picture. no I understand. it's it's It's hell on earth. They're in midnight conditions, black with fire on both sides of them, embers.
01:16:20
Speaker
And it is a sunny, partially cloudy day when I say partially cloudy just talking little tiny few clouds in the sky there's it's a beautiful day if you're on North Bandenberg you can be at the beach and you got people that are on this ridge right now and that that's like hard to comprehend is that you're like for them where they are right now on our installation they're fighting for their lives it's hell on earth it's pitch black But it's that's not that's not what the environment around them is. It's it's a nice sunny day.
01:16:52
Speaker
So yeah, we had a near-miss burn over, two feet two shelter deployments, no fatalities. think smoke inhalation was the basically what happened. They were transported.
01:17:03
Speaker
So now the insurmountable team has to brief that. The Lesson Learned Center folks came out. that They were able to put that together. Thankfully,
Tragic Loss of Firefighter Ryan Osler
01:17:11
Speaker
I was a part of the the local cooperators meeting that we had to have because they called it an investigation.
01:17:17
Speaker
And of course, now you got unions, firefighter unions like, whoa, stop. We're not doing this. We're not allowing you to interview our folks. An investigation leads to fault. So there was that little moment of like, are we going to allow this to happen?
01:17:31
Speaker
So imagine we're trying to deal with this now while we're fighting a fire. And they're like, we apologize that that's the term, but this is. And so thankfully, everybody was willing. That's where they captured, which has probably never been done before, the level of footage, photographs, interviews that occurred to to capture. Everybody was there to put what you're going to, the link you're going to put out. An after action review, essentially. Yeah.
01:17:55
Speaker
it's's it's um It's an outstanding after-action review of it really is capturing, being able to bring us into what they dealt with. of the time you get a picture. Well, a picture doesn't, that video, the video is really. Yeah, there's videos from engines up there. Some firefighters with their phones. You can hear the fear in their voice.
01:18:16
Speaker
Oh, yeah. So they dealt with that. And then, again, multiple days of fighting the fire. And I don't know the exact day, but I think it was the next day is when Ryan Osler in a water tender. So imagine 800-some firefighters, you have a camp on base, but then you also have folks that supporting the helibase, which is down in Lompoc Airport, which is close to us, but it's not on the installation.
01:18:41
Speaker
So they're a water tender supporting that, and they were staying out in Beulton. And in our drive-in, foggy morning in the Lompoc Valley, in a newly constructed roundabout on the edge of town that was a fatality site of multiple vehicle accidents, they built this roundabout.
01:18:56
Speaker
They were coming in forgot about the roundabout, hit the roundabout, rolled the tender, and Ryan Osler, firefighter, was killed. You would consider that an incident fatality. i mean, it was awful. The incident it was in the local community, but still.
01:19:08
Speaker
support um it's Highly, highly impressed with the incident. is I learned peer support of how the incident management team kind of used those peer support tools. They, we had, so he was from Ventura County Fire.
01:19:22
Speaker
They brought all of the Ventura County firefighters that were assigned to the incident because it wasn't just him on that water tent or the Ventura County firefighters. think there was a strike team of engines from Ventura County, I believe, and others that might have been part of the division. soup I don't know who all was there from Ventura, but they brought them all to one location, briefed them all what was going on, and then released them.
01:19:43
Speaker
Again, know, there could have been delays. They were quick in how they handled all that. It was very well done in how that the incident management team handled that, um you know, rough situation.
01:19:56
Speaker
Yeah. So,
Multiple Fires and Infrastructure Challenges
01:19:58
Speaker
um go ahead. If you got more on the 2016. Well, what just to kind of close off the 2016 fire. So, we have this fire, 10,000 acres, and some managed team running it. Those were the key events. So, what happened?
01:20:11
Speaker
Did we learn from 77? Yes. Because we had had multiple burnovers this side and the other. or hot We didn't have our crew. We literally only had, I think, three people on the crew at this point. And much of what the crew had done, I'm digressing, but I'll come back to the fire in just a second.
01:20:27
Speaker
Much what the crew would have done was brushing roads, making sure some the access roads that we would have accessed the fire were more survivable, less, you know, where it's safe to be on that road versus you got brush and vegetation high. We probably would have been able to access a set access the top of the initial attack fire because we would have, that road was one of places we trained. We'd go out and park on the knoll above where the fire started, which was down on the canyon. And we would cut line through the timber because it's only place on the base that has timber that gives us that feeling that we're up on north where, how do you post a lookout in timber?
01:21:03
Speaker
But we couldn't even get to that point because my plan was let the fire run up to that. Then we can then catch the flanks. I'm hoping to get some air tank you know air tanker drop and a helicopter drop to kind of slow the fire down.
01:21:15
Speaker
There's issues with that. So it's inaccessible and we had to wait for it to come to us. But in the course of the next nine days of fighting that fire, the incident management team, we had seven other fires on base. Your infrastructure on South, I mean, what another one uniquenesses of Annenberg is your you're NCE. You work on electrical power lines.
01:21:34
Speaker
Well, you work on just a standard one pole to one pole to one pole in a residential area. We have infrastructure that spans the entire base that's almost you like your high voltage long strings and all that's being impacted.
01:21:47
Speaker
So they're diverting power from one substation to another substation over different lines. And that shift and that additional load going through those lines is stressing those lines.
01:21:59
Speaker
And so we had lines that were burning through insulators or wires that held them to the insulator and then it drops onto the pole. The pole
Investigating the Cause of Canyon Fire
01:22:06
Speaker
catches fire, drops. So we had seven other initial starts.
01:22:10
Speaker
and What was really interesting is what caused so this 2016 canyon fire? We don't know. I mean, there was one theory that was at white phosphorus that finally surfaced and got air and sunlight on it. And it just ignited because we have, you know, UXOs across installation, this being Camp Cook.
01:22:30
Speaker
We trained for the Korean War on this base, but it was no hunting because of the Atlas launch. It's not a place that that a person would ever hike. You couldn't hike to where that fire started.
01:22:42
Speaker
It was just in a place where you like you couldn't lob something down there to to start a fire. So we don't know what started it. So the the base is concerned because like, well, what caused this fire? Was it done to, know, you got to think that way. Was it done to prevent this launch?
01:22:57
Speaker
Well, then they're like, okay, so then we have a fire that starts that now runs through the entire installation, the Washington fire. That was challenging. Oh my gosh.
01:23:08
Speaker
You got half of the incident, not half, because a little less than half, because the night shift is a little less than the day shift, right? So you got the day shifters all in camp, the night shifters out on the fire.
01:23:19
Speaker
And we have this fire within a mile of where all these people are are in camp. And they all start getting on their engines and start going to bear on the fire. What do you do when everybody just empties and just dumps on top of you? Then the calm frequencies that they assigned for initial attack. were weren't working because they were forced frequencies and they weren't hitting the repeater.
01:23:39
Speaker
So what was assigned for initial attack wasn't working. So now we got this fire that was started. I believe it's it's still considered undetermined. But there was an area where if you drive to work every single day and you smoked, that would be where you flick your cigarette out the window. There were hundreds of cigarette butts in this one area.
01:23:58
Speaker
So somebody that had a routine of smoking would flick their cigarette butts out. We had, which is very, very unique for Vandenberg, during that nine-day period, we had the lowest RHs we would normally ever have, relative humidity, very, very dry conditions. We're we're near the ocean. Normally our relative humidity is 50 to 80%. We're talking 15%?
01:24:17
Speaker
Like in the, yeah, single digits in 10 and 15%. That's when a cigarette butt can potentially start a fire. A cigarette, not butt, but a cigarette could. Most of the time, it's not going to start a fire unless it's tender, dry, and there's no moisture the air.
01:24:31
Speaker
Well, we had very little moisture in the air. And we believe, believe that's what started the fire, but it ran right through the contaminant. They were, so we're running, that's where most of our base infrastructure is. And some of our key infrastructure,
01:24:45
Speaker
one of the One of the missions Vandenberg that came from Cheyenne Mountain, that building, that that mission that came from Cheyenne Mountain now in Vandenberg is sitting in the path of this fire. So this fire is raging through eucalyptus groves, throwing eucalyptus leaves. It's going right through the education area, which is our our space force today, space command training center. We call tech schools.
01:25:11
Speaker
and Their compound, it's burning through there. Large V-lots, very large air tankers, 747, is dropping retardant right across all these buildings and through our installation. Helicopter, one of our our water rescue captains went to the pool, pulled all the buoys out for the lanes so that the helicopter can dip out of the pool to start dropping.
01:25:31
Speaker
um We caught that one, i don't remember how many acres, a couple, like a hundred some acres. Well, what it did is it threw leaf litter way out. And so now they're like, okay, now we had a but a fire that's ran through the containment area. We had a fire that's now that's that's delayed a launch.
01:25:47
Speaker
Where would they start another fire if somebody were doing this? So we started looking at our infrastructure. Well, it would be this power line or this substation. So now they're watching these areas. Two days later, some of the leaf litter that was smoldering and Jesse, our crew superintendent, had picked up multiple fires out in that area that that night.
01:26:07
Speaker
He stayed out all night. because that's where a bunch of spot fires had occurred. And two days later, a fire takes off right near that power line that runs across that area. Again, is that a threat to try and take these power lines out?
01:26:22
Speaker
And then the next day,
Fire Ecology and Management Strategies
01:26:23
Speaker
ah fire right next to that substation. Interesting. All of them, all but the canyon fire, i can tell you what started the fire, in my opinion, okay? I mean, again, we yeah if they could not prove a cigarette started that fire, but it was likely, right? They leave it as undetermined. But when we got to the fire by a substation, I was initial attack on that with one of our engines. The power lines were hitting the eucalyptus trees that were right next to it. And it was still raining embers down from it touching it. That's what caused that fire.
01:26:56
Speaker
But again, so we postured the installation to feel like we were under threat of an arsonist. It really did. And most of my comments about, I know it's all hindsight, right? At the time, it's like, wow, this this this is interesting.
01:27:11
Speaker
Seven starts while we're fighting this. Seven to include the main fire. Wow. What an incredible, yeah, series of events.
01:27:23
Speaker
That's got to be probably... Is it one of the worst fires is that Vandenberg has The 16? I mean, in terms of the the acreage and impact of infrastructure and things like that.
01:27:37
Speaker
Yeah, since the 77 fire, it's the worst fire we've ever had. We've had the the Harris fire, which was a huge success, lesson learned. crew crew was I was on the crew as crew superintendent, no injuries, burned 9,000 acres.
01:27:50
Speaker
So not to get too deep in the weeds of fire ecology, but we're in an area where typically fires stay small. It's moist, it's wet with the marine moisture, that, and the other. But whether it's salt curing, whatever you want to call it, that allows the grass and vegetation to burn with a higher relative humidity, moisture in the air, it does burn and it burns. But a typical fire in Vandenberg on a typical day will pick up as a small spot. or it'll run to maybe 500 acres if the wind and topography allow it. That's like a typical fire on Vandenberg.
01:28:25
Speaker
and And the season how long? Well, we now say there there's never no fire season. It's low or it's high, but um yeah it's typically um June or May timeframe to November, December, the first, not the first rains, but the first three inches of rain. Spring default. We declare a count over. But the the thing about that is – Again, not to get too far into fire ecology, but the brush and vegetation does not start taking on moisture as soon as it starts raining. The grasses do when they start growing, right? We get green grass. So your grass fires will It takes lot sustained water, right? Right. I learned that Alaska.
01:29:04
Speaker
Yeah, so what happens is the brush stays dormant. It's not pulling any moisture. It can rain and then the leaf litter and the stuff that's tender dries out. You could have a fire and burn through brush, but it hits the grass. The grass is green and it kind of goes out, right? So if you have a brush field, you could still have in the middle of a winter a good couple hundred acre fire if it's all sustained dried out brush.
01:29:27
Speaker
What happens in the spring when the rain starts to die off and the sun starts coming in gets warm is now all that brush, like, okay, I'm not going to be dormant. i'm going to suck the water up out of the out of the soil and start flowering and budding. And now the fuel moisture comes up. And now that brush is no longer conducive to burning.
01:29:43
Speaker
And then that takes our fire season to where the grass is start to dry out. Now we're going to have fires. Now the fire will burn to the grass and hit that brush that still has a little bit higher fuel moisture. And it just doesn't want to burn as rapidly as it does when it dries out.
01:29:58
Speaker
Okay. So that's kind of our fire ecology. But one other lesson I want to just pass on real quick in regards to like our department and what what we learned, especially from the Cannon fire.
01:30:09
Speaker
is how do you how do you integrate into an incident management team and you got your fire resources, but you still have to then respond to the base, to the rest of your installation. And in the past, we would rotate firefighters one shift to the next shift to put them into that incident.
01:30:24
Speaker
It was very disruptive to the incident because our roll call is 7.30. And now got the next shift coming on, but the incidents timeframe is six to six, briefing at six, out on the line at seven.
01:30:37
Speaker
yeah And so you're seven to seven, but the the you're messing up the entire process. Even if you bring the other shift in early to be there for it, and we did, they have to be there for the – then you're rotating a crew out.
01:30:50
Speaker
Now, what it did it created a crew for both 24-hour shifts. But this incident clock is 12 hours. Many CAL FIRE incidents are 24, but ours were twelve So what what i propose from then on is anytime we have an incident that goes to a Type III incident, those firefighters that went initial attack, if they're capable to sustain themselves, to they're they attached to that incident.
01:31:13
Speaker
And the rest of our firefighters just do what they do. And if we can build up a stronger force and put them and assign them to the incident, but they're assigned to that incident like it was off base. And then we keep a force on base, like we have a regular department, but maybe it's stripped down a little bit. We have a station closed or or whatever.
01:31:29
Speaker
That was a huge change from 2016 and integrating into the incident without the disruption of, well, the names changed today. And then there's a whole side of this that but you know we don't need to get into, but how do you fiscally track all this?
Leadership and Incident Management
01:31:45
Speaker
how Who pays?
01:31:47
Speaker
So there's ah there's a whole lesson there and all that has to be tracked. And then when we start doing what we do, it makes it even more complicated. So that was one thing, the lesson learned for us. Yeah. Gosh, we could talk, I feel like, ad nauseum about this stuff and the lessons learned. I mean, just incredibly complex events that you don't see on Space Force bases or Air Force bases. Right. Just integrating 800 people. Yep. And then an incident management team on top of that.
01:32:13
Speaker
And then, you know, just the cyclical nature of an incident and matching that. And then all the military infrastructure and commanders that are concerned about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Incredible stuff. Chief Smith, thank you so much. I want to give you an opportunity to but talk about anything else or just mention anything else that, uh, maybe you've would have liked to mention that you didn't get a chance to, and just give us kind of your final thoughts.
01:32:37
Speaker
I think in closing one, I want to highly recommend folks, if this is an area of interest to you, or if you have a while in, don't read the book. Um, I don't know what order I'd do it in, probably read the book and then, would probably read the book and then watch the document and documentary. documentary's more on the human factors and what they experienced.
01:32:56
Speaker
Reading the book takes you deep into much of what I just did the wavetops on. And one other thing is, you know, for senior leaders in fire, one of things I learned early on, thanks to Chief Tom Stevens, fire chief, that I'm here today a civilian because of him,
01:33:15
Speaker
um taught me is you really have to work with your wing leadership your base leadership you know when you have these special things you can't wait until and for any any leader you don't wait until the day that instant happens to get to know the people that you're going to work alongside the success of the 2016 canyon fire is not just the success of the vandenberg fire department obviously it's the mutual aid providers that came to help us but it's also team vandenberg and that's one of the things i love about working on this installation We have had some of the best commanders from our own personal commander, but all the way up to even today, our SLID commander. Because of the relationships, we make sure that we maintain.
01:33:56
Speaker
Chief Stevens taught me, like, I will capture that installulate the new installation commander, now SLID commander, the Space Force, within you know his first 24 hours, because we may be dealing with another fire that i can't I can't be getting to know him and what his expectations are when I have the incident. I got to brief him on that threat.
01:34:15
Speaker
So, but that's even, it's it's not just commanders, it's your finance folks. It's, you know, all these folks, those relationships and partnerships we have with them, when this happened, they all have to integrate in with the finance folks for the incident and learn how to do that. And the integration, the EOC to, you know, not many installations will experience large catastrophic events that test your ability to understand and utilize the ICS system.
01:34:45
Speaker
But I think what plays the most is relationships. says you know The relationships we have through our mutual aid, through our and some involvement in some management teams with our local battalion. I know all the local battalion chiefs. I know the local fire chiefs.
01:35:01
Speaker
Knowing them not the day we need them, but just maintaining that relationship is huge. And that's something that we've been very successful at. Yeah. Great lesson, sir. Daughter screaming in the background. I can hear. ah um Yeah. so's So unique with military commanders. So they're equivalent to city managers and mayors, right? But they don't have, I mean, they know how to lead. they' they're They're not incapable people, but it's different than being a mayor, city manager, right? They're they're worried about military missions and Executing them. So getting them right when they start and kind of driving home those expectations and the history of of the base and the kind of complexities that Vandenberg presents or any kind of base presents is just a great point on establishing those relationships early and so that they can understand what responsibilities they have under their command. so and One of the challenges being a chief officer is understanding the dynamics of changing from that tactical level focus on your folks.
01:36:00
Speaker
and their ability to do their job to the strategic level that's beyond the fire, right? For me to know that that the SLID commander's number one concern on this installation is assured access to space.
01:36:11
Speaker
In our current world climate, is that's extremely important for our national defense that we continue to be able to have that capability here at Vandenberg. And if I didn't know that as a chief officer and I'm trying to go out and execute and I'm losing that vision,
01:36:27
Speaker
And that's that's the importance of it. And every installation has its uniqueness. And that's part of what you were saying, getting to know the commanders and and understanding.
01:36:37
Speaker
Because that your strategic objectives when you're fighting a fire is you know we're going to contain it to this box, right? and we're going to protect this infrastructure. But this is something that is the utmost of our concern.
01:36:51
Speaker
know, people first, obviously, but the mission You highlighted an excellent point is it's a two way relationship too. So don't, I think that maybe we can sometimes and in your respective functional ah responsibility, air responsibility for us, the fire service, no matter what you do, you kind of get, you get tunnel vision within that function. You think that it's the most important thing and it's not that it's not important, but there are a lot of other demands exactly that those commanders are in charge of. And so understanding their perspective and the demands that they're up against, the pressures that that they're up against is going to help you communicate the message, you know shape the message in a way that they understand, and but also appreciate the other demands that they're up against too. yeah
01:37:34
Speaker
And if you're one of those chiefs that are dealing with and an incident at your base that's affecting something, sometimes those phone calls that are coming to Insulation Commander are coming from the Pentagon or even the White House. And that's amazing to me to to know that I'm on a fire and – I've been on several fires on the base where we knew phone calls were coming because is this infrastructure still intact?
01:37:55
Speaker
Well, Chief Smith, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today and sharing the 1977 and 2016 fires and the capabilities of Vandenberg. Thank you for the body of work. like Thank you for everything that you poured into this and the fact that you're willing to share. I mean, we need folks like you to you know to do these kind of things so that we can remember those lessons and apply them to future incidents and and not just for wildland fire at Vandenberg, but for any kind of structural or other all-hazard response that we have. just I really appreciate what you've put into this and sharing it on the podcast today.
01:38:27
Speaker
Well, thank you. Thank you for reaching out because, again, it's been a like a career work with many partners, like I mentioned, know, through the podcast that to make this happen. But for me, it's it's been my passion.
01:38:39
Speaker
And I definitely want to share it. I don't want these lessons ever lost. And when I say the lessons, they're not they're beyond Vandenberg. They are totally beyond Vandenberg. And I hope I articulated that well for its value added to some of the other and chief officers and even fire chiefs out there that may have to someday deal with a large scale incident that
Closing Thoughts and Resources
01:38:57
Speaker
on that some of the lessons that we learned and how we did it will help them through that.
01:39:03
Speaker
Thank you. Well, thanks again, Chief. Have a good day. You too. Thank you. right. If you've enjoyed this conversation, you find this episode and many more on our website, firedog.us or wherever you listen to podcasts.
01:39:14
Speaker
You can also follow along with us on social media, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn at the Fire Dog Podcast. That is the Fire DAWG Podcast. This episode was supported by Roll Call Coins, telling the story of fire departments and teams through premium custom challenge coins. Learn more at rollcallcoins.com.
01:39:31
Speaker
It was also supported by AOS Services, helping fire departments stay mission ready with worldwide firefighting equipment compliance. Find out more at aosservicesinc.com. If you like what you're hearing, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you found value in this conversation, consider sharing it with a friend, a coworker, or someone around the firehouse.
01:39:50
Speaker
This is Matt Wilson with guest Mark Smith. Until next time, stay safe.