Shelter Deployment

Media Takes Field Trip to the Firefighter Safety Zone

By Scott Poniewaz, 8-15-05

Photo by Scott Poniewaz/New West

Monday afternoon, the Missoula media put on their finest Nomex, packed their camera bags and grabbed their reporter's notebooks to take a field trip to the site where three firefighters had to deploy their fire shelters last Wednesday during the blow-up on the I-90 fire.

Mike Oliver, Information Officer for the Shelter Deployment Investigation Team, guided the trip to the site. Apparently, the two dozer bosses and a dozer operator were turned back half way up the escape route to a pre-determined safety zone about 1.8 miles up the road. They decided to turn back to the area pictured and began clearing as much of the growth as possible to reduce fuels and widen their safety zone. They had about one hour to do the work before the fire reached them as it climbed the steep hillside. One of the fortunate things in this area was the steepness, which pushed most of the heat above the deployment area, especially when it hit the zone that had been carved out, which made a pocket of cooler air that further protected the firefighters, who were unharmed. The powerlines visible in the distance were the BPA. lines that ended up surviving the blaze with little effect on the power supply or physical damage.

Since it is rare that firefighters find themselves in fire shelter deployment situations, the team is investigating what they did right and what may have worked better to educate other firefighters. According to Information Officer David Schmitt, they are planning to put a presentation together with pictures of the area to let firefighters on the fire know what happened and educate them on these types of situations. Most of the details won't be released for months until the final report is published by the investigation team.

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