A backburn lit by an incident team on the Saddle Fire reversed direction on June 12, jumping the county road to burn 150 acres of private land and threaten the lives of three Hyampom residents.
“We asked them not to light the backburn,” said Jennifer Lance, whose husband, Richard Collins, beat the blaze away from their rural home with the help of two friends. Their property, she said, now resembles “a moonscape.”
Northern California Incident Team 2, an interagency management team called in by the National Forest Service, took control of the firefight at 6 a.m. on the morning of June 12. At the time the Saddle Fire was less than 10 percent contained and had burned 950 acres. According to U.S. Forest Service Public Information Officer Corey Wilford, a hotshot team assessed the area and determined that the best way to combat the fire was to start a fire at the bottom of a mountain close to Lance and Collins’ property. Firefighters accomplish this either by using a drip torch or flares. The goal is to remove fuel in the wildfire’s path, creating a “buffer zone” around structures and other key areas. In this case, the buffer was around County Road 311, which winds along the south fork of the Trinity River.
At around 5 p.m. Lance began getting frantic calls from her husband, asking her to call 911. The fire had jumped the road and was beginning to eat its way toward their home. Lance, who was on the coast with the couple’s two children, called 911 and the Forest Service’s public information officer repeatedly, begging them to send vehicles to protect the house. Meanwhile, Collins and his friends began to fight the fire themselves, using fire pumps and a bulldozer. One friend ran to the county road and flagged down a Cal Fire crew, which came to defend the house.
“They saved our lives,” said Collins.
Lance said she had difficulty obtaining information from 911 or the public information officer about the state of the fire. Additionally, the couple allege that they were never given the order to evacuate. In previous years (this would have been the family’s third mandatory evacuation order in 10 years) a representative from the Trinity County Sheriff’s Office visited the home personally to tell them it was time to leave, but this year the only information they received was via local media. The flames came within a few feet of the home’s back deck.
The sheriff’s office confirmed that they issued a mandatory fire evacuation for Lower South Fork Road north of Big Slide Campground to Manzanita Ranch on Wednesday June 10, two days before the incident. The normal procedure, a spokesperson said, is to notify the area via press release or, when possible, use a reverse 911 call. If all else fails they will visit a residence personally, with the help of Forest Service law enforcement officers, but with rural homes this can be a challenge.
Wilford said that the crew’s actions were made with the best information possible, and that the team had no way to anticipate the sudden shift in winds. If the backfire had not been lit, he says, the initial wildfire would have jumped the road anyway, with similar results.
Lance disagrees.
“Basically, they made a very bad decision to light a burn out during afternoon winds,” she said. “We are not unique. The Forest Service is not working with local communities or communicating with local people.”
Soon after the incident, the Forest Service had hosted a community meeting in which close to 100 people showed up; several locals expressed their opposition to the operation. A smaller crowd of 40 to 50 people attended a later community meeting, which Wilford said was more “subdued,” and that people expressed more happiness with the firefighters.
“It’s normal for people to feel stressed out when the fire first begins,” Wilford said.
Meanwhile, Collins said that he is seeking compensation for the 150 acres of timber that burned in the fire. There is legal precedent for landowners whose property has been damaged in wildfire suppression, including a 2014 case in which 150 property owners sued the state of Washington for failing to contain the 256,000 acre Carlton Complex Fire.
As this post went live, the Saddle Fire was 90 percent contained. Hyampom Volunteer Fire Chief Joe Watkins was one of several locals who expressed their gratitude for the incident team. He said that the team in place was “very experienced” but couldn’t have anticipated the sudden shift in the wind.
“These guys are doing their damnedest to stop this thing, none of it was intentional,” said Watkins.
Editor’s note: This story was updated from a previous version to correct the amount of acres burned and the date of the first community meeting.
This article appears in Making It.
From the photos, it looks like their house isn’t cleared 100ft as recommended for fire defense. They are lucky to have their house.
All the usfs had to do was study the previous day’s weather to know winds would shift
Dan, our house is clear. The barn is not. In 2004 during the sims fire, the firefighters said they would take refuge in the house after they foamed it if things got crazy. Since then we have put in a pond by the house. We have a fire pump and fire hose. We have done fuels reduction projects around our meadow and driveway. We put dozer lines around our home as soon as the fire started. We even put in dozer lines under the power poles where the burn out was lit a usfs request.
There is more than 100′ of defensible spaces around their house, and is a big factor in it’s survival in this fire.
Hard work and preparation have far more to do with that than luck.
You can’t tell that from the photos.
This home still stands because the homeowners are experienced rural homesteaders. They have plenty of defensible space to protect their home. They are
Lucky to have their home intact and standing because THEY prepared, planned and fought really hard to protect it from an experience like this. This ravenous fire was mismanaged and the back burn caused them to lose forested private property. Thankfully their beautiful home still stands. Pictures can be deceiving
The Forest Service story about it “would have happened anyway” is an attempt to cover up what actaully happened. The fire at that point was burning so cool it wasn’t burning fast enough and that’s why they lit the back burn. If it was going to happen anyway they wouldn’t have needed the back burn.
I would like to clarify that we as private landowners are not attacking the firefighters on the ground .They where great and helped to keep our houses and properties safe after the fire went thru at there own personal risk .We are criticizing the decisions to light a burnout at 2 pm with heavy afternoon winds and low humidity predicted.In a fire that was burning at low intensity that morning,after being told by many local people that the winds here are unpredictable. They lit it with no structure protection on personal residences in the area .It was well over 200 acres of personal land burned by the burnout not 20.
thank you guys on the ground, cal fire crews and hyampom volunteer firefighters !!!,
The article misstated re a public meeting prior to the burnout. The first public meeting was a day or two after. Numerous people did try to contact the FS to object to planned burnout.
Possibly the main topic of concern to over 100 Fire Fighters and their Supervisors was our ‘wind pattern’ and it’s timing. It is not Fire Protocol to light a Burn Out in the hottest part of the day with the highest wind speed and imminent change of direction. It’s not protocol and it’s not Rocket Science
The land owners were the reason why the burn was started in the early afternoon. If the burn was executed when the div supervisor directed the hotshot crews to start… it would have been completed without any spot fires over containment lines. We had perfect conditions prior to a very abrupt wind shift that was influenced by the fire itself… not local weather patterns. The fire would have threatened the structures regardless of the burn.
I just want to say i am very grateful to the firefighters, and we are truly thankful our home survived. I am not opposed to burn out operations and understand them to be a successful strategy in the right conditions. at the public meeting on Saturday, the usfs agreed to light no more burn outs in the afternoon. A newsweek article shows subsequent burnouts lit at night. There were many calls made by concerned citizens about the plan Friday to light in the afternoon. We are thankful no one was hurt. Firefighters are true heroes! We are not seeking compensation as the article states, and about 200 acres of private land burned (not20). We would like the usfs to coordinate more with local fire safe councils. That is the intention of sharing our story.
This article is a slap in the face to the firefighters who fight fire every summer in places all over the country. And it’s insulting to the families who sacrifice every day for those men and women to support them from home. Here we are 9 DAYS from the anniversary of Yarnell where 19 MEN lost their lives trying to protect lives and property like yours. I am sorry that you feel they made a mistake, but I’m NOT sorry that the only thing lost was trees and your pretty view. Anyone can armchair quarterback after the fact…
It wasnt about the firefighters but the decisions made which caused the fire to grow. We are grateful and blessed for the love and dedication of those trained hardworking fire fighters. A review of policy and procedure on management may be something to consider, for the safety of all, including those on the frontlines