November/December 2001. Why is the U.S. Forest Service ignoring a new fire shelter design? Shasta-Trinity National Forest geologic dispute finds resolution.

Gimme Shelter

On July 6, 1994, fourteen wildland firefighters died inside their aluminum-skinned fire shelters on a mountainside in Colorado. Seven years later, almost to the day, four more firefighters perished when their fire shelters were burned over in a remote forest in Washington state. During the last twenty years, on average, three wildland firefighters have died annually as a result of being burned over by fire.

The aluminum shelter is the last line of defense when everything else goes wrong. But inadequate firefighter training, the replacement of more experienced firefighters with young recruits and the increased severity of some wildland fires as a result of past fire suppression have combined to ensure that things do go wrong. And when they do, firefighters deserve the best possible fire shelter protection.

Fire shelter design has not changed substantially since the late 1970s. But the U.S. Forest Service has known about problems with its shelter since at least 1990. The shelter is notorious for coming apart under flame and exposing the firefighter within to flammable toxic gases. Nonetheless, the Forest Service has no performance standards for its shelter. Instead, manufacturing specifications force producers to make shelters using outdated materials and a poor design.

Jim Roth, an aerospace engineer, took up the challenge of designing and manufacturing an improved fire shelter after his brother, smokejumper Roger Roth, was killed at Storm King Mountain. Comparison testing shows Roth’s design, the Storm King Mountain shelter, to be dramatically superior to the Forest Service’s shelter.

When subjected to direct flame, the Forest Service shelter breaks apart within twenty seconds while the Storm King Mountain shelter maintains its integrity for more than three minutes. In actual forest fire burnover conditions, inside air temperatures remain survivable—about 200 degrees—within Storm King Mountain’s shelter while the Forest Service’s shelter reaches lethal levels—peaking at 800 degrees—within seconds of a burnover passing. Under both laboratory and field conditions, the Storm King Mountain shelter outperforms the Forest Service shelter by a factor of three or more in reducing inside air temperatures.

So one would think the Forest Service would be jumping for joy that a new product that can save lives is now available. Think again. The agency has decided that since the Storm King Mountain shelter was not designed by the Forest Service, it cannot be purchased for use by firefighters. Instead of relying on the entrepreneurial private sector, the Forest Service intends to take several more years to design for itself a new shelter.

Inexplicably, the Forest Service claimed in an update of fire shelter development published in April that it cannot switch to a better performing shelter because it has not developed shelter performance tests: “The key to selecting and approving a new fire shelter has been the development of an appropriate performance test … Until now such a test has not been available.”

In field tests conducted by the University of Alberta during a crown fire modeling experiment, the Storm King Mountain shelter survived intact while most of the Forest Service shelters burned to a crisp.

The Storm King Mountain shelter weighs four pounds compared to the Forest Service’s three-pound shelter. And it is much more expensive—more than $300 apiece, about the cost of a good pair of firefighting boots.

Nonetheless, the Forest Service remains intransigent. Remaking the wheel is a favorite government exercise and the Forest Service is no exception. Whether it is tree-marking paint (the Forest Service steadfastly refused to buy regularly available commercial marking paint in lieu of its special formulation that was making its employees sick and was implicated in miscarriages) or fire shelters, the Forest Service has a long tradition of shunning whatever it does not create itself.

Congress, however, need not cater to the Forest Service’s whims. Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics is encouraging citizens who care about firefighter safety to contact Washington Senator Patty Murray at (202) 224-2621 and ask her to direct the Forest Service to buy the Storm King Mountain fire shelter. Murray, a member of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, is in a position to make a difference by making sure that firefighting dollars are spent on a better fire shelter. Our firefighters deserve no less.—Andy Stahl

Bad data plagues Shasta-Trinity

A longstanding dispute between the Shasta-Trinity National Forest in Northern California and one of its employees, a soil scientist who has since retired, is close to being resolved.

In 1996, the Shasta-Trinity’s forest soil scientist contacted Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics with a concern. He had tried for three years to convince his superiors that the forest had collected inadequate and inaccurate geologic information during an ecological inventory of portions of the forest. The soil scientist believed that unless the faulty information was corrected, it would be difficult, even impossible, for forest managers to design projects, such as timber sales and new roads, without undue risk of sedimentation and erosion problems.

Given the technical nature of the soil scientist’s concerns, FSEEE recommended to Shasta-Trinity Forest supervisor, Sharon Heywood, that an independent panel of geologists review the work. The forest supervisor did not respond to this recommendation, so FSEEE arranged its own informal review by a registered geologist from Humboldt State University. After examining maps and other documentation, the geologist agreed that the soil scientist’s concerns carried considerable merit. He found serious problems with the geologic data, including mistakes in the mapping and photointerpretation of landslides and rock types.

In 1997, the Shasta-Trinity soil scientist further informed FSEEE that the forest was remiss in its duties to evaluate the degree of risk, particularly from a geologic and soils perspective, associated with individual timber sales. As a result, FSEEE intervened in an administrative appeal of one such sale, the Beegum Corral Regan timber sale. The most noteworthy thing about this sale was not so much the environmental risks associated with it—the risks may actually be relatively minor—but rather the forest’s documentation of its geologic analysis of the sale. That documentation was scant, almost nonexistent. As a result, the forest had little basis to state that its decision had been informed by a reasonable analysis of the geologic risks, even if the risks were not believed to be extreme.

The U.S. Forest Service’s regional office upheld the timber sale decision but recommended that the forest collaborate with the interested parties to address the soil scientist’s concerns about geology and soils. Soon after, the Shasta-Trinity National Forest contacted FSEEE and expressed its readiness to arrange for the geologic review. Following lengthy negotiations about the scope of the review and who would participate, FSEEE and the Forest Service agreed to conduct a geologic review that took place this summer.

The review team’s report includes findings and recommendations that validate concerns expressed by the soil scientist. For example, the review team found that the forest geologist had underestimated the number of areas in at least one portion of the forest “underlain by bedrock at or close to the surface.”That finding led the team to conclude that “there are probably fewer areas of mappable soils capable of supporting revegetation than are presently mapped”in the forest’s database. Sufficient other mistakes were found such that the review team concluded that the geologic work “was less accurate and, therefore, less useful than the originally available data”prepared by the U.S. Geologic Survey many years earlier.

Regarding the Beegum Corral Regan timber sale, the review team found reason to be confident that the forest could “reduce the risks and mitigate potential impacts associated with the timber sale”based on what the review team described as “the experience and professionalism of field staff and contractors.”It was not based on the available documentation for the timber sale, which the review team found “not adequate”for project-level decision-making.

For example, the streams to be protected by riparian reserves couldn’t be located using the maps in the environmental analysis. Maps given to the review team had been plotted using digital models that overlooked existing stream channels and wetlands. The review team also found that soils survey mapping units were based on incorrect descriptions of soil parent material, a mistake likely to result in incorrect erosion hazard ratings.

Based on the findings and recommendations of the review team and any changed circumstances since the environmental assessment for the sale was first prepared, FSEEE has asked the Shasta-Trinity National Forest to revise the Beegum Corral Regan timber sale. At this time, we don’t know how the forest will respond, but we expect that the forest supervisor will accept and comply with the review team’s findings and recommendations since she arranged the review jointly with FSEEE.

This cooperative arrangement between FSEEE and the Shasta-Trinity National Forest has been significant. Our recommendation is that whenever the agency finds itself party to a disagreement of a primarily scientific nature—either with one of its own employees or with outside interests—it should consider arranging for an independent panel of experts to review the dispute. —Bob Dale

Forest Magazine | FSEEE