Issues faced by fire crews being transported to fires

On June 20, 2002 a van ferrying firefighters from Oregon to Colorado's worst wildfire in history swerved off a highway and spun out of control, killing four and injuring seven others.  The driver had been awake for 20 hours and had fallen asleep at the wheel. The passenger van was carrying 11 members of a crew from Grayback Forestry in Oregon, to the 137,000-acre fire southwest of Denver when it drifted toward the median near Parachute.  This crash was not an isolated incident.  As a matter of fact for the last decade 20 to 25% of firefighting annual fatalities nationwide have been caused by motor vehicle accidents.

U.S. Fire Administration, Fire Fighter Fatalities in the United States 2007 caused by motor vehicle accidents.  (2008) Retrieved September 23, 2008 from http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/downloads/pdf/publications/ff_fat07.pdf

After stress or overexertion, the perennial cause of fatal injury resulting in the most firefighter fatalities is vehicle crashes. This has been the case for a number of years. In many cases, these deaths appear to have been preventable.

After the crash in 2002, fire teams have been limited on time of travel, and an increased work/rest ratio has been instituted.  But as you can see from the graph above this attempt although valid and necessary, has done little to bring down the fatality rate of fire crews dying in cars.

Issues with time of travel for crews

Since the work/rest ratio rules have been enforced, the time needed for the travel of crews from their home base to fires has increased.  I have spoken with friends on fire crews that have told me it has taken them up to 5 days to travel just to California from Colorado, which would normally be a one day event prior to work/rest ratio rules. So because of a need for increased safety, the response time for fire crews has increased considerably.

Issues with crew swapping

The normal way that tired fire crews that have reached the end of their on fire deployment time to swap out for a fresh crew is the crew must drive all the way back to their home base, and the fresh crew then drives all the way back to the original fire if it is still active. For example if the fire is in California, and the crew is from Colorado, with a worse case scenario travel time of 5 days one way would cause a total of 15 days that a fire crew will be off a fire.  And with fire danger increasing by the year because of beetle kill, and drought, this inefficiency of how tired crews swap out for fresh crews is a recipe for disaster.

Logic dictates that the faster a crew can be on a fire, and the longer and more consistent the pressure on the fire by the fire crews, the shorter the life span of the fire will be.

"I look at Colorado as the Katrina of the West," "We are simply not doing enough."  -  Sen. Ken Salazar