Aggressive firefighting tactics cited in death, serious injury at 2 blazes

helicopter dropped water on a smoldering tree, causing it to fall on him and two others, records show.

The incidents underscore the danger that thousands of firefighters are facing as they try to control some of the biggest and most unpredictable blazes in California history amid extremely dry, hot and windy conditions.

As Cal Fire prepares for more dangerous weather starting Sunday, the episodes also raise questions about decisions made by the state agency and its crews, said wildland fire experts who reviewed the reports for The Chronicle.

“Aggressively fighting fires is inherently risky, dangerous duty. As a society, we better make sure it’s worth it trying to stop a fire from reaching the top of a remote, empty mountain,” said Tim Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology, which advocates for what it calls scientifically sound fire management.

The investigative reports, obtained through public records requests, describe the two accidents in harrowing detail. While the reports provide an account of missteps that led to the two incidents, they stop short of affixing blame or stating who was responsible.

A Cal Fire spokesman declined to comment on the documents, which include the agency’s findings, the safety concerns raised by the episodes and the lessons learned.

‘ Get out of there!’

Jones, 63, had traveled to California to fight the August Complex with her son, a captain who worked with her at the Cresson Volunteer Fire Department in the small town southwest of Fort Worth and owns a company contracted to fight wildfires in Western states in recent years.

She was the boss of Engine 1, a threeperson unit assigned to the southern end of the Klamath Mountains, west of Corning — then the northern tip of the fire. She oversaw a driver and firefighter on the truck.

On Aug. 31, Jones’ team was tasked with constructing and protecting fire lines, taking out trees that could threaten containment and setting preemptive backfires along a logging road to burn away fuels, according to the state report.

The first half of the burning operation began that morning. By 11 a. m., the team called in two helicopters for water drops after observing increased fire behavior.

About two hours later, the second half of the burn mission began. The strike crew planned to burn along the 25N09 Road for a little more than a mile to increase the depth of the firebreak on the downhill side of the road and slow the fire’s progression, according to the report.

At about 2: 05 p. m., when a spot fire ignited above the road, Jones’ engine, with her in the front passenger seat, backed up to spray water on it. However, the spot fire quickly grew and a supervisor directed dozers to try to corral it, the report said.

“The compounding effects of fuel, weather and topography intensified the fire in the drainage and pulled it up at a critical rate of spread,” Cal Fire said in the report.

Flames began to breach the narrow, 20foot wide roadway a second time, this time below the road at the drainage elbow, prompting Jones’ driver to move the engine forward. Jones and her crewmate jumped out of the truck and blasted water on the advancing flames, while their supervisor called for help from another engine, which turned around and drove toward the flareup.

“There came a point where there was no wind, and then it just flared up!” a firefighter on

Jones’ truck told investigators. “The flames came over the truck, were completely swallowing the road.”

A supervisor on the scene told Cal Fire investigators the flames grew from 8 feet high to 50 and then to 75. At that point, as Jones and her partner doused the fire with water, the two engines faced each other, blocking escape routes for both on the onelane road, the report said.

At 2: 10 p. m., the commander radioed “Get out of there!” to Engine 1. The driver yelled the evacuation order out the window and honked, but Jones and her crewmate could not hear. The driver ran out and told his crew to get into the truck, opening the nozzle of an Engine 1 hose and throwing the hose toward the fire in a desperate attempt to tame the encroaching flames, the report said.

Jones jumped into the driver’s seat and a crewmate yelled for her to “follow me.” The colleague ran toward Engine 2’ s headlights, attempting to lead Jones that direction, but Jones instead went in reverse. The crewmate yelled “Stop!” but was knocked to the ground by intense heat.

As the engine’s backup alarm beeped, signaling the vehicle was in reverse, Jones’ right wheels inched closer to the edge. The commander yelled over the radio: “E1, stop, stop, stop, stop ... stop!”

The engine tumbled off the dirt shoulder, the report said, slamming into a tree about 15 feet below.

“Vehicle over side, in the fire,” a commander radioed, asking for air support.

The firefighter in the backseat tried to pull Jones out of the engine, as windows popped and shattered from the heat, but the temperature became too intense. The firefighter exited the driver’sside rear door and crawled to the road with burns to the legs, arms, hands and face, the report said.

The task force leader put on breathing apparatus to search for Jones and the engine operator, but Jones suffered “fatal thermal injuries due to the engine burn over,” Cal Fire concluded. The report does not indicate whether the preemptive backfire or the larger conflagration ultimately burned Jones.

‘ Really pushing the crews’

Mark Grissom, a firefighting veteran of more than two decades who worked for the U. S. Forest Service and other agencies, reviewed the report on Jones’ death and questioned the decision to light a backfire under those conditions.

Backfires are commonly lit with drip torches and used to burn off brush, starving an oncoming inferno of fuel and creating a buffer of defensible space. But they carry significant risk and must be planned carefully.

“With the current and expected weather they should not have put fire on the ground,” Grissom said. “You don’t want to put fire on the ground in the afternoon when the fire has been spotting a third of a mile.”

Spotting describes when a fire spits embers and molten projectiles ahead of the main blaze.

The location of the road, carved midslope into the mountain, made it a dangerous position, Grissom and Ingalsbee said, because fire, especially when driven by afternoon upslope winds, tends to spread quickly uphill.

Ingalsbee said Cal Fire

“You’re kind of asking for it. It doesn’t seem to be prudent. You’re really pushing the crews.”

Tim Ingalsbee, Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology

Photos by Leslie Johnson / Cal Fire Cal Fire photos from before, top, and after the blaze show where a Texas volunteer firefighter died. Firefighters in Engine E1 were struck by a burning tree as it fell, engulfing the vehicle.