Anatomy of Disaster - Season 1 Episode 1 - Firestorms

a raging brush fire turns a canyon paradise into hell on earth and all of a sudden is like a tsunami just just engulf just a blazing forest fire devours a beloved National Park fact yesterday we got burn out of line so they have had a a taste of fire courageous firefighters risk their lives against the unstoppable forces of fire storms I knew I was being burned but I didn't feel the pain fire managers try to prevent conflagration by fighting fire with fire but there still can be a terrible price for living in paradise people have to take some responsibility as we're really tired of killing the rescuers the savage fury of fire storms nature at its fiercest [Music] [Music] panic in the streets in Oakland California flame sweep with terrifying speed down hillsides dense with vegetation and expensive homes the fire is fed by brush parched by five years of drought pushed by hot sixty mile an hour winds many of the homes are mansions but no amount of wealth can stop a raging wildfire for Oshima or Nagasaki I've never I've never seen anything else that compares you know just pictures of the atomic bomb blasts in a single day 25 people are dead and 3,000 homes destroyed [Music] half a world away in Australia brushfires plague a populated region on the southeast coast on the outskirts of Sydney a lethal mixture of high temperatures strong winds and dry vegetation creative turbulent Inferno behind a half by the help guard the hell about the half everywhere I'm gonna live through it again my up two hundred homes go up in flames but it's not fun so I'm not dead thousands are forced to flee four people are dead two epic disasters thousands of miles apart with haunting similarities both of these brush fires occurred in places where people and wild vegetation coexist both demonstrate how wind can whip fire into a speeding wall of flame that can even trap brush fire veterans the cars watch it cameraman Mike Conway has filmed many fires but this one is so hot and consumes oxygen so fast that his truck won't start my truck died oh when the fire suddenly turns on them firefighters head for safety but Conway believes it's too late to run he leaps into the bed of his truck as the fire roars overhead his camera still rolling Conway screams are of sheer terror more than pain he survives with only minor burns but his close call shows how brush fires can burn with blinding speed faster than a man can run Southern California owns the title of urban brush fire capital of the world in the past half-century dozens of massive fires have scorched the hills of Los Angeles and its neighbors in 1961 an inferno fan by hot winds nearly wiped out the wealthy suburb of bel-air narrow unconnected streets hampered firefighters access to the hillside community we need please have been prepared to evacuate eight people 3,500 residents fled in panic thanks to massive rescue efforts no lives were lost but in a day and a half the fire destroyed five hundred homes three decades later the fire-prone hills around Los Angeles have swelled with population Hills are threaded with fire roads that allow access to firefighting equipment Battalion Chief Don Pierpont systematically assesses the fire danger of vegetation that's programmed by nature to burn every twenty years I have maps that I carry with me that tell me how long it's been since the fires have burned so I know how old that vegetation is I'll walk out into a brush field to get a feel for what's there and how it's going to burn in the fall of 1993 Pierpont's expertise tells him that conditions are ripe for another catastrophic fire dry brush and devil winds known in Southern California as Santa Anas these winds actually begin hundreds of miles to the east over the great desert basin the winds flow west over mountain ranges heating up as they descend toward the Pacific Coast reaching speeds of 70 miles an hour or more they flow into the los angeles basin a crucible for fire ringed by mountains on three sides and the ocean on the fourth the dry brush is like a powder keg waiting for a spark on Tuesday October 26th the spark is delivered within 30 hours 14 windblown wildfires many of them started by arsonists are raging from Los Angeles to the Mexican border they spread with frightening speed bill and Judy Miller here the first fire reports from their Canyon home overlooking the Pacific after 30 years here they know the usual precautions I came up early in the day remember and I got all the trash cans and filled him with water and and put all the bath towels in and then I went back to work because I didn't think the fire would ever get here I never had reason to fear for my life but this made so much noise that it scared you before I ever got here 30 miles away fire captain Jan Bernard and his crew are put on high alert we were sleep that night we got a call at about it was around 10 o'clock in the evening of the 26th to respond to the brush fire the wind was pretty strong the fires soon roar into full-scale calamities taking out posh mansions middle-class neighborhoods whatever stands in the way in the mountainside community of Altadena northeast of Los Angeles a hundred and fifty homes go up in flames firefighters face overwhelming odds racing from one burning house to another they are no match for the speed and intensity of wind driven flames fifty miles to the south fire and a brush covered Canyon spreads rapidly to the seaside resort of Laguna Beach it wipes out more than 360 homes in a trailer park propane tanks explode like landmines firefighters are deployed from all over California they strained to keep pace but fires of breaking out fast and far apart in a narrow canyon captain Bernard and his crew stopped to fight a vicious blaze but the wind quickly turns the fire toward them and they flee to the safety of their fire engine as soon as we reach the fire engine the main body the fire had made a run around us when the fire burned up the slope and hit our fire engine it went up and had crowned over the top almost like a wave breaking on the ocean so basically the fire engine acted as a shield although because of the radiated heat it was still hot enough to give us burns even though the direct flame contact was were shielded by the fire engine I knew I was being burned I said it's this thing is hot but I didn't feel the pain until we got to engine 35 when we started to put water on us then I felt the pain captain Bernard would feel more pain for seven arduous weeks under treatment for third-degree burns by now scores of firefighters are injured and thousands are exhausted but after battling fires for a full week another arson fire explodes out of control on a mountain ridge that separates the inland valleys of Los Angeles from the Pacific Ocean the fire right now is approaching what's called the Saddle Peak area which is again just above Malibu and in the panga area stoked by winds howling up to 50 miles an hour the fire takes off with breathtaking speed and power in the first six hours the fire traveled seven miles burning embers carried by the wind land and dry brush up to a mile ahead of the main fire and those embers are what significantly contribute to a fire storm really speed up the fire spread and make it much different much more difficult for us to control a fire storm is a fire gone out of control a swirling mass of smoke flames and superheated air creating its own wind moving in unpredictable patterns every 30 seconds it can release heat equal in intensity to the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima flames burning in dense dry brush leap 200 feet in the air sometimes more normally they burn faster uphill but here they are driven downhill by the fierce power of the Santa Ana winds and we kind of sat on the deck and watch this thing get ready to happen and didn't think it was really gonna get here and all of a sudden it I don't know it was like a tsunami just well this came down the canyon came down the bottom came up beside and it just engulfed us by mid afternoon the fires destination is apparent it is burning with ferocious intensity toward the ocean and the world-famous movie colony of Malibu with hundreds of families in jeopardy more than 7,000 firefighters the largest number ever committed to a single fire in the history of the fire service are bracing for the Battle of their lives [Music] firefighters are now struggling with the second wave of brush fires to hit Southern California in less than two weeks massive flames are cascading toward the beach community of Malibu as hot afternoon winds kick up the fire races through steep canyons two thousand acres are consumed in 20 minutes treacherous mountain roads hamper the movement of fire trucks and flames incinerate hundreds of homes thousands of residents flee in panic but some are trapped by the advancing flames with residents panicked and dozens of homes exploding in flames air tankers join the battle their job is to cool the fire down slow its progress to give firefighters on the ground a fighting chance some drop water others lay down a chemical retardant just ahead of the fire a red slurry that coats vegetation to insulate it against heat and flames if it wasn't for the helicopters we'd be losing a lot more structures guaranteed because the brush would take off and we wouldn't be able to stop it one helicopter the Sikorsky helitanker plays an especially important role in the Malibu fire in one drop it down fire with two thousand gallons of water then using a snorkelling hose with a pump at one end it refills its belly tank in less than a minute but firefighters on the ground are hampered by the immense amount of fuel explosively flammable vegetation called chaparral a mixture of native growth has dried during the summer turning these hills into a virtual tinderbox a furious wind driven fire is a thing of awesome beauty at times it becomes a fire whirl a spinning vertical funnel of superheated air much like a tornado of flames oh what a fireball and always unpredictable than the Malibu fire there are numerous situations where fires turn it around and ran downhill ran sideways ran all kinds of different directions without warning I'll tell you the thing to remember the most is how damn scared I was Bill Miller and five other men are caught by surprise as flames engulf his home and surround them with smoke you take breathing for granted then we start sucking smoke you're not breathing and it hurts I mean smoke in your lungs hurts it's not just that you're suffocating you're hurt Miller and the others trapped in his burning house pile into a car their only hope of escaping the enveloping flames nothing please start please start you start that did cars started lit up got about halfway up the driveway and I realize I couldn't see anything it was still so smoky and orange flamie that's when I opened the door and the flames that sucked into the car I didn't know what to do it and the way to keep going or not keep going or what you don't have a plan who the hell has a plan for dying you know that one so you just do the best thing you can somehow Miller does keep going he and the others narrowly escape by driving through the smoke in flames as sheets of fire howl through the dry hillsides toward Malibu firefighters are caught short-handed and handicapped by a shortage of water some residents resort to garden hoses to save their homes but the faucets soon run dry the fire engine been trying to get missile a flag on top an off-duty firefighter goes looking for help we need water D then you're coming so we need to leave it out thanks to the coordinated efforts of fire and police the man's home is saved another man tries to save his neighbor's home with the borrowed fire hose as firefighters coach him from below he manages to save this home while sacrificing his own as the fire sweeps to the coast the only road to safety is closed firefighters mask their equipment for a final effort to save lives and property the highway becomes the last line of defense which smoke choking the air and obscuring the Sun daylight turns to darkness many firefighters have already spent sleepless days and nights battling these fires nearly overwhelmed by their task the fires burn into beachfront properties as night falls water dropping air tankers are no longer available they cannot fly a treetop level in darkness and treacherous air currents but with the deadly winds dying down firefighters use another weapon from their arsenal they fight fire with fire intentionally lighting what they call back fires in the path of advancing flames their goal is to deprive the main fire of fuel when the fires merge there is nothing left for the main fire to burn but for a backfire to work whatever when there is has to be blowing toward the main fire we have to have the wind at our favor and sometimes that's pretty iffy the wind may be in your favor right now but five minutes from now it may shift now sometimes we're playing with fire sometimes it works sometimes it does so we have to take that chance and that's a calculated risk that we take when we do the back fire the back fires do their job but a firefighters primary weapon is the high-pressure hose that can shoot a powerful stream of water up to 125 feet that same power makes the hose line a potential hazard without the grip of two firefighters it can whip out of control with enough force to break a man's leg against a strong wind with water blowing back in a firefighters face even a high pressure hose can be ineffective after a furious night long battle weary firefighters have the upper hand they have saved the Malibu movie colony from fiery devastation but it's mother nature that decides when these fires will end their West would March is halted only by the Pacific Ocean by the time the malibu fire dies out three people are dead of fire related injuries 380 homes are reduced to ashes in almost two weeks of brush fires that have rampaged across Southern California more than 1,000 homes are destroyed 200,000 acres have burned to a crisp bill and Judy Miller lost their home to the malibu fire bill barely escaping alive he'll never forget being stunned by the fires sheer power there's a bizarre beauty about a fire it almost mesmerized you man when it slams India it it's not like anything you can imagine early at least I couldn't the noise you could hear it with the roar of the fire the roar of the wind a lot of people would say there was the worst day of your life uh-huh there's a luckiest day of my life because I've done enough dumb things that I probably should have died and I got at the end the last thing that happened was the luckiest break I got I got out [Music] few places in nature are more serenely beautiful than the lodgepole pine forests of Yellowstone National Park but Yellowstone splendor conceals a little-known fact like all forests it is programmed by nature to burn [Music] in the summer of 1988 Yellowstone America's first national park turns ugly severe drought has turned the parks vegetation into dry tinder lightning triggers two large fires and people start five more Yellowstone becomes a sea of ravenous flames the blaze advanced on mammoth hot springs where I live and at that time the firestorm was about a half a mile away from my house and and and it was going on 24 hours a day John Varley Yellowstone's chief of research at the time knows that fire is inevitable but he isn't prepared for what he sees we knew during the fires of 88 that we were seeing something absolutely unprecedented people that had been fighting fires for 30 years had never seen anything like it in the early days of the u.s. Forest Service all fires were considered bad the marching orders were always stamped them out you by the time Yellowstone ignites much more is known about fire ecology there's a growing awareness that some fire is good for the forest what understand I went to one of the briefings last night before the Rangers and they indicated that something like this happens about every 200 years and it's good for the ecology so the policies now let the fires started by Nature burn unless they endanger life or property for three weeks lightning set fires are allowed to rage in the park until they near civilization when fire advances on the hamlet of Cooke City firefighters set a back fire to block its path but the backfire turns around and becomes the real threat residents join firefighters in preparing for the worst and the controversy over letting fires burn rages along with the approaching flames if this burns down I don't know we'll pick up and go we'll pick up and start over but I don't want this place to burn down and it shouldn't be burning down and we should have stopped these fires two months ago as it turns out wind blows the head of the approaching backfiring cook City and only a few cabins are burned but the major fires are now behaving in ways that baffle Yellowstone's fire managers the order has now been given anybody not connected with the fire are now given the order they will evacuate now the fires are officially declared wildfires and the order is given go to war with the Forest infernos it's an order that will cost taxpayers two million dollars a day on the ground the battle force expands to twenty five thousand firefighters from all parts of the United States and Canada fire managers muster an armada of 200 air tankers mostly surplus military aircraft converted to firefighting with pressure intensifying to get the yellowstone fires under control 2,000 troops are flown in from an army base in the state of Washington they prove their mettle after a hasty cram course in the basics of firefighting these folks have been working right up against some a hotter line last year pack yesterday we got burn out of line and so they have had a taste of fire and going in to be quite good farming in parts of Yellowstone bulldozers cut broad fire breaks [Music] nobody figured out so work in other areas teams of specialists roll out flexible tubing full of explosive three two one zero when the explosive is detonated brush and other fuel is blasted away in a flash saving hours of labor with hand tools with fires erupting in remote parts of the yellowstone wilderness the only way to get firefighters there quickly is by parachute smoke jumpers fire call as a member of the federal government's elite corps of airborne firefighters veteran smokejumper Eric Hickey has seen his share of fires they want a real quick response time to a fire to get why it's small that you should call up smoke jumpers they can throw us in there and for two or three days all I have to do is talk to us on the radio then we'll be live smoke jumpers are dropped in two at a time usually no more than eight on the first fire call this face mask is protection from tree branches Shepard's away elastic forever cargo all right baby bring me home once on the ground the smokejumpers work is like all firefighting exhausting dirty and dangerous you'll be working 24 hours straight a lot of the times we jump in on fire saying say in the afternoon and then we can end up working all night long on that trying to get a line around it contain it and so it can be pretty tiring the biggest risk we face usually as a stuff falling on its trees rocks rolling down the hill you always have to be aware of what the fire is doing infrared cameras can help firefighters on the ground avoid dangerous situations by sensing the heat and intensity of a fire ground crews or smoke jumpers can then attack a potentially dangerous fire before it erupts into a major problem [Music] the Yellowstone fires peak on a day firefighters called Black Saturday when winds gusting up to 70 miles an hour lift flames as high as 300 feet in the air the winds around the fire can be a horrific between the wind and and and the sound of the fire it's it's just all-encompassing as fires head toward campsites and villages the park is closed to visitors well and I plan 35 years I've been here twice and didn't have never got see Yellowstone once I got snowed out and now this time we got Brno I just drove 2,000 miles I see this the fires raged for three months until a monstrous wall of flames threatens to swallow up the historic village at Old Faithful geyser [Music] firefighters soak the wooden buildings with water and spray them with detergent foam to guard against flying embers and insulate against severe heat in a few hellish hours a handful of structures are lost [Music] the old village is saved but the massive fires race on despite the valiant efforts of 25,000 people the fires are only vanquished three months later by an early snowfall watching you know get to go home soon [Music] Yellowstone's total landmass is enormous but national parks in Canada are even bigger and less accessible to ground crews airtankers like the super scooper snuff out fires in remote wilderness areas [Music] super scoopers can refill their belly tanks without landing by skimming a body of water it scoops up 1,400 gallons in less than 12 seconds [Music] in one hour it can hit a fire with 30 separate air drops airtankers are a tremendous aid to firefighting but they can't take the risk out of battling fires on the ground this is supposed to save my life as the last ditch means of protection firefighters are issued shelters made of aluminum and fiberglass cloth they won't protect against direct flames but in an emergency they'll reflect intense radiant heat and trap cool air close to the ground being in a fire shelter is a lot better than breathing a superheated air out in the atmosphere because that's when firefighters die that's basically why they die as they've seared their lungs the superheated gases have consumed their lung linings shelters have saved the lives of an estimated 250 firefighters six years after Yellowstone in the summer of 1994 fire shelters will be needed again at a stubborn fire in rural Colorado even with them something goes terribly wrong [Music] at first the small fire that breaks out on a Colorado mountainside is considered low priority other bigger wildfires are burning that day so the fire on storm king mountain is allowed to burn slowly for two days until it suddenly flares up and threatens the small resort town of Glenwood Springs our house is probably gone already so we're trying to help these guys with their house so we can do fire officials finally decide to act eight smoke jumpers are called in from Montana led by eight year veteran jumper Don McKee [Music] eight others from out of state including Eric hit key jump in the following day all my firefighting 'he's been around Washington State Northwest you know Oregon and Idaho and well I got put in that brush I had never been in anything like that and I didn't realize the way that stuff could burn this is not a typical forest fire here the scrub vegetation with few large trees to shield it from the wind burns extremely fast another crew from Oregon elite ground troops called hotshots hikes in to join up with the smokejumpers in a rugged Canyon overgrown with brush in the meantime angry homeowners pitch in to prepare for the approaching inferno they've known about it for what four days now and it comes to this pretty ridiculous the residents have no idea of the tragedy about to play out on their behalf a sudden cold front moves in and with it come winds of 50 miles an hour without warning a blast of wind blows up the canyon where the firefighters are working the fire below them explodes and when that wind hit us about it beyond that in the afternoon there it just it just everything just went crazy after that point as the fire is about to engulf them hippy and most of the other firefighters scrambled to safety but some make a fatal choice everybody else gonna stop for a little bit thinking about putting up their shelters that made the difference I'd never relied on a fire shelter that saved Eric hip ghee but some of his colleagues perished many in their fire shelters we had a major catastrophe major tragedy here today there's Leben bodies at least counted on the hill there three persons missing Don Mackey and 13 other firefighters died this day on storm king mountain overtaken by searing flames that race up the hillside the whole Canyon just blew up I don't know I've never seen anything like that before I could feel the heat coming and then cinders started rolling around me and then a blast of heat knocked me knocked me to the ground in the wake of the storm king tragedy there are bitter questions how much firefighting is too much and when should the lives of firefighters be put at risk storm king is a good example of putting firefighters in a hazardous environment and one of the reasons why we tend to continue to do that is because homes are threatened and lives are threatened mark mullennixs wildland fire coordinator for the city of Boulder Colorado he's devoted his career to keeping fire from destroying homes built in wildland areas I think we've learned some valuable lessons through the years about where we can and can't put people and where Fire should probably just go and burn now it may mean we're gonna lose homes but people have to take the responsibility if they build homes of combustible nature in a combustible ecosystem that's gonna burn on a regular basis then those people have to take some responsibility because we're really tired of killing the rescuers in Boulder city officials have organized an effort to manage what's called the urban wildland interface those ever-expanding regions where people in wildland try to share the same space they want to live in the trees in the grasses in the natural areas or as close as possible to them that's just a trend that our society is going through right now Greg toll oversees the problems involved when homes in Boulder encroach on wildland areas his job involves inspecting homes to determine their risk in a wildland fire the information he collects is fed into a computer a special program calculates the potential fire hazard and displays it on a series of maps with more people than ever living close to nature while land fires are increasing putting more firefighters at risk if fire managers could anticipate precisely where a fire is going to move and how intensely it'll burn the risk to firefighters could be reduced at the National Center for Atmospheric Research outside boner scientists have developed a computer model of a wildland fire that is raging out of control the model depicts how the fire will behave under variable atmospheric conditions every minute every hour the weather changes and that fire is going to change in intensity and in size and direction right now we just make a prediction in the morning and we send the crews out and tell them at a certain time of the day you can expect this the computer model has a long way to go before it has any practical use but it may offer a glimpse into the future of man's battle with fire with this technology we think we can get closer to to the reality of what's going to happen and maybe keep firefighters out of harm's way when a buildup of dry vegetation threatens safety it's time for action time to roll out the big guns and fight fire with fire [Music] in all of nature there's nothing like the power of a forest fire to unsettle a man's nerves why this afternoon the winds became so severe firefighters were more concerned about saving themselves in the homes around big lake in the first half of 1996 fires like this raged across the western United States devouring five and a half million acres of wild land an area the size of Massachusetts it was the worst fire season in 30 years and the most expensive it costs taxpayers half a billion dollars and raised a troubling question how much firefighting is too much the forests are becoming more dangerous and what I mean by that is the massive accumulations of fuels that haven't been eliminated by natural fires have caused fire conditions to explode in some of our fourth mark Mullenix the Colorado wildfire specialist is one of many experts advocating more use of prescribed burning there are two kinds one is a fire ignited by lightning that's allowed to burn freely as long as no lives or buildings are threatened the other is a fire set by man to burn off old underbrush that could fuel a wildfire prescribed fire is now federal policy it's just like a prescription you get from a doctor under very very tight constraints will we do those burns and if the wind direction shifts if the fire burns in - too high or too extreme of intensity we'll have to shut the fire down for a while to try to achieve our stated goals one of the preferred weapons for fighting fire with fire is the territory this flamethrower can shoot a blazing ton of gelled gasoline as far as a hundred and fifty feet it's a weapon with a specific purpose usually when a fire burns you're you're you know you have low humidities and high temperatures and you have a chance of it getting away we use the territory when the fuels are a little more moist when you don't have a chance of an escape so we can maybe burn 12 months out of the year where we used to be able to burn maybe four or five this attitude toward fire contradicts the notion that forest fires are inherently bad the fact is wildland fires are as much a part of the natural environment as soil sunlight and water these forests have been doing this for literally thousands of years and so they've all adapted to deal with fire this this wildflower is is called a Lupin to John Varley Yellowstone's chief researcher the monster fires of 1988 affirmed that Yellowstone is ecologically programmed to burn every 250 years or so so the fires of 88 were burning a forest that was created by the fires of the early 1700s and and so forth and so there's that cycle that goes on and on when the Yellowstone fires finally died out it was only because of the weather despite the valiant efforts of 25,000 firefighters it took an early snowfall to bring the 1988 fire season to a close it was the worst fire season in the parks known history in four months the fires had scorched almost a million acres of parkland forests one-fifth of the parks entire land mass fires are always going to be here this delicate atmosphere that we live in sustains fire fires always we always always here and it always will be Yellowstone was it was a great laboratory for us and a benchmark in the fire service where we saw that fire wasn't that bad of a thing ecologically what happens to the ashes of everything that are burned is that it's reduced to a fine level of fertilizer so the stage is set for the new flush of growth to come in after the fires and most of these plant species have various strategies to survive the fire even this stately lodgepole pine Yellowstone's dominant tree has an ingenious system for receding itself after a fire nicknamed fire weed it actually depends on fire they have these wonderful cones called serotinous cones that only open when they're heated above a hundred and forty degrees and so the the cones open after the fire sweeps through and within literally minutes of the fire sweeping through the new forest has already planted most of the larger wildlife elk bison and moose survived the fires and quickly came back seeking new plants to feed on despite the horror of a raging forest fire scientists like John Varley are more convinced than ever that fire is Nature's Way of rebirth this forest probably saw those fires is no more disconcerting than than a thunderstorm or or a strong winter storm I mean it just it's resilient it it handled it with ease those who have a close encounter with wildfire invariably learn a universal lesson the power of fire is not to be taken lightly especially if you live in Paradise it was a beautiful place to live had its risks you knew that and I think if you live on a hillside you damn well better know that there's some risk to it captain jan bernard recovered from his burns is back fighting fires I never once ever thought that I wouldn't come back and I think that's the thing that maybe helped me heal as fast as I did and I believe that's the thing that has kept me from being afraid of doing what I'm doing putting the horror of storm King behind him Eric hip ki is also back on duty a lot wiser about the hazards of his job coming out storm king of a healthier respect for fire not so complacent about going into a fire anymore just got to be ready for the unexpected in human terms wildfires are unpredictable [Music] in the grand scheme of nature they are not for all the devastation caused by fire storms they are magnificent in their power to restore life itself you [Music] you [Music]

Channel: Anatomy of Disaster

Views: 42,533

Keywords: Anatomy of disaster, Brushfire, Forest Fire, Firestorms, Firefighters, Disasters

Id: L-iSjzWuQUs

Length: 46min 59sec (2819 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 19 2016