![]() ![]() On the other hand, prescribed burning is not a sport, it’s a tool, and it’s a tool that we should employ strategically – not for fun, or without specific objectives in mind. I am a strong and vocal advocate for the use of prescribed fire to manage both private and public lands. The planning, training, weather monitoring, equipment preparation, and black-lining were all done. Lighting the head fire of our prescribed burn last week. It’s sobering to know that something as mundane as extinguishing a torch led to injury, and that it could have been much worse than it was. Regardless of the cause, however, the aspect of the event that struck me the most was that our crew member was injured doing something he had done hundreds of times before. After the fire was wrapped up there was considerable discussion about what happened, and hopefully we all learned some things that will make us all safer in the future. It appears there were several things that contributed to the torch incident, possibly including some issues with the torch itself that caused excessive fuel to build up in the torch’s tip, making it particularly difficult to extinguish. After a quick trip to a nearby medical clinic, he was fine – though he had to shave off the remainder of his singed beard. Before he could get the bandana off of his head, he suffered small burns in several places. After trying and failing to smother the flame at the tip of the torch with a gloved hand (per protocol) the crew member then tried to blow the flame out, and some of the burning torch fuel splattered onto the cotton bandana around his neck. As if I needed a reminder of the danger, one of our crew was helping a partner organization with a fire last week and suffered some slight burns on his neck and face while trying to extinguish a drip torch. So far, I’ve never had anyone get injured on a fire I’ve been a part of, but that fortunate record certainly isn’t making me complacent. Between potential equipment mishaps and quickly-changing weather and fire conditions, there are numerous opportunities for someone to get hurt. The threat of injury is what makes prescribed fire especially stressful for me. No property was damaged and no one got hurt. ![]() Drip torch how to#Because we’d planned for each contingency, everyone knew how to react when the time came. In all of those cases, there were no serious repercussions, and our training and planning helped us deal effectively with unexpected circumstances. This spring, our first prescribed burn started out well, but the wind came up sooner than had been forecast, and we shut the fire down because a Red Flag Warning was issued. In another fire last year, I overestimated the strength of our blackline containing the fire, and the wind-driven head fire jumped it in one place, forcing us to quickly chase it down. Last spring, I wrote about a burn we did in which we ran into repeated equipment issues, and had to shut down for a while until we could get re-equipped and complete the burn. Unfortunately, even after all that planning, things still go wrong. How will we respond if someone gets hurt? For me, writing a good burn plan means thinking through all the worst case scenarios. What will we do if the fire gets away? What does the surrounding landscape offer in terms of safe areas and threats in the case of an escaped fire. Our plans detail the kinds of weather conditions and tactics needed to be successful, but also spend a lot of time on contingencies. Once we know what we’re aiming for, we write a burn plan that can help us achieve that in the safest way possible. That planning starts with setting clear ecological objectives (defining why we’re burning in the first place) which dictate the location, size, season, and even the tactics used during the fire. As always, we spend way more time planning our fires than implementing them. We’ve completed two prescribed fires so far this spring. Typically the fuel used is a mixture of petrol and diesel proportioned to a ratio of 30% to 70% respectively.A prescribed fire we conducted last week. (The spout and wick can be secured upside down inside the canister for storage or transport.)
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