This series of fires that occurred in Florida in 1998 overwhelmed the capabilities of state and local resources in both scale and duration. The fire control efforts, which continued for more than two months, from mid-May to mid-July, combined both wildland and structural fire fighting resources. Some of the fires that originated in remote areas eventually burned into built-up communities, jumping interstate highways and natural features that would normally be expected to contain a wildland fire. The battle eventually became a street fight, with fire fighters trying to protect individual structures in the coastal communities from an advancing wall of fire.
Beginning in May, both wildland agencies and structural fire departments faced a rapid increase in the frequency and severity of fires. Local fire departments, particularly in the rural areas, were occupied day after day, responding to new outbreaks and often assisting the Division of Forestry crews with fires that had already been burning for several days. This placed a tremendous strain on many of the rural fire departments that normally operate with minimal resources and rely heavily on volunteers. Some of the volunteers were released from their regular jobs and became “full-time” volunteers, while others had to limit their participation to maintain their employment. In the career and combination departments, off-duty personnel were called back on overtime to staff extra units.
Initially, the local mutual aid plans were activated within individual counties, often mobilizing municipal fire departments to back-up the rural fire departments. Water tenders and brush units were staffed and spent long days fighting fires, concentrating on keeping the flames away from structures and other valuable property.
As the number of fires increased, requests for mutual aid from other counties were directed to the Florida Fire Chiefs network. The EOC in Tallahassee assigned these missions to the mutual aid coordinators in counties that had resources available. Individual resources from fire departments within these counties were assembled into task forces and strike teams, which were dispatched to the counties that had requested assistance.
Assignments of strike teams and task forces from one county to another, often involving travel of 50 to 100 miles, became daily occurrences. In many cases the reinforcements were requested in the mornings and released in the evenings, when fires subsided, and new requests were initiated on the following days. As the situation progressed, the mutual aid resources from distant counties were often held overnight and operated for two or more consecutive days.
The mutual aid system was strained by the circumstances that several counties in a large region were simultaneously experiencing multiple fires and requesting mutual aid. During June, all of the 67 counties in Florida were at some level of emergency status due to the fire situation. In many cases a county that was able to send units out in the morning had to request mutual aid for fires in their own county later in the day. Units that were exhausted after spending hours on a fire in a neighboring county sometimes had to respond back to attack a new fire that had broken out while they were gone. As this went on, day after day, several counties determined that they would have to decline mutual aid requests and retain all of their units for local protection.
As the requests for mutual aid increased, units from more distant counties were assigned to fill the requests. It often took two to three hours for the first units to reach a county that had requested assistance in the morning. It could take even longer for reinforcements to respond to requests later in the day, as all of the resources in nearby counties were already committed.
The increasing number of fires also quickly exceeded the capabilities of the Division of Forestry. As the number of fires increased, Florida began to request assistance from other states, as well as federal resources. Assistance was initially requested from the neighboring southeastern states. As the situation continued to escalate, more federal and state resources from across the county were requested from the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, ID. This resulted in a gradual build-up of wildland forces through most of June.
An unprecedented number of aircraft were assigned to fight the fires in Florida. During the peak period all of the available fixed wing attack aircraft and large helicopters in the lower 48 states were committed to this operation. A total of 156 aircraft were assigned to six bases.
Next » Management Structures
Save to del.icio.us
