Fire Boots Made for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) at the Cobbler

The Cobbler makes fireboots for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF). When the water reserves in the soil are between 100% and 30%, the evaporation of water in plants is balanced by water absorbed from the soil. Below this threshold, the plants dry out and under stress release the flammable gases ethane and ethylene. A consequence of a long hot and dry period is therefore that the air contains flammable essences and plants are drier and highly flammable.

The propagation of the fire has three mechanisms:

• "crawling" fire: the fire spreads via low level vegetation (e.g., bushes)
• "crown" fire: a fire that "crowns" (spreads to the top branches of trees) can spread at an incredible pace through the top of a forest. Crown fires can be extremely dangerous to all inhabitants underneath, as they may spread faster than they can be outrun, particularly on windy days.
• "jumping" or "spotting" fire: burning branches and leaves are carried by the wind and start distant fires; the fire can thus "jump" over a road, river, or even a firebreak.

The Nevada Bureau of Land Management identifies several different wildfire behaviors. For example, extreme fire behavior includes wide rates of spread, prolific crowning and/or spotting, the presence of fire whirls, or a strong convection column. Extreme wildfires behave erratically and unpredictably.

In southern California, under the influence of Santa Ana winds, wildfires can move at tremendous speeds, up to 40 miles (60 km) in a single day, consuming up to 1,000 acres (4 km2) per hour. Dense clouds of burning embers push relentlessly ahead of the flames crossing firebreaks without pause.

Propagation of the fire with a characteristic shape of a "pear"

The powerful updraft caused by a large wildfire will draw in air from surrounding areas. These self-generated winds can lead to a phenomenon known as a firestorm.

French models of wildfires dictate that a fire's front line will take on the characteristic shape of a pear; the major axis being aligned with the wind. In the case of the fires in southeastern France, the speed of the fire is estimated to be 3% to 8% of the speed of the wind, depending on the conditions (density and type of vegetation, slope). Other models predict an elliptical shape when the ground is flat and the vegetation is homogeneous.

Below is an example of fire temperatures:

• Oxyacetylene Flame (3000 C or above)(5432 F)
• Oxyhydrogen Flame (2000 C or above)(3632 F)
• Bunsen Burner Flame (Min. to Max. Setting) (1300 - 1600 C)(2372 - 2912 F)
• Blowtorch Flame (1300 C)(2372 F)
• Candle Flame (760 C)(1400 F)

Oxyacetylene Flame
Oxy-fuel welding of metal is commonly called oxyacetylene welding since acetylene is the predominant choice for a fuel, or often simply gas welding. In gas welding and cutting, the heat needed to melt the metal comes from a fuel gas burning with oxygen in a torch.

Oxy-fuel cutting of metal is a similar process, using a different type of gas torch, called a cutting torch. Here the metal is heated until it glows orange (around 1800��F), and then a lever on the torch is pressed to pass a stream of oxygen through the work-piece, to burn the steel away where the cut is desired. The iron-oxide product of this combustion process falls to the floor as a dust. Once the process is started properly, there should be no globs of melted steel under the work-piece. No melting should occur.

Oxyhydrogen Flame
Oxyhydrogen , especially in biology also called by its German name Knallgas , is a mixture of hydrogen and oxygen at the volume ratio 2:1. It is produced in this ratio by water electrolysis.

Oxyhydrogen reacts explosively back to water, releasing 286 kJ/mol of enthalpy. The controlled combustion as oxyhydrogen flame is used for welding. A flameless recombination to water occurs in fuel cells.

CDF operations can be viewed as fitting into two categories: Schedule B and others. Schedule B is defined as Resources Agency/CDF-funded. Examples of non-Schedule B activities include county fire departments run by CDF under contracts with county governments. From north to south, Butte, Tuolumne, Merced, and Riverside counties are examples of county fire departments operated by CDF under contract. Another commonly-heard CDF term is SRA which refers to State Responsibility Area: lands or area for which CDF has the primary responsibility to manage the public safety during a fire incident.

Operational Units are organizations designed to address fire suppression over a geographic area. They vary widely in size and terrain.

For example, Lassen-Modoc Operational Unit encompasses two rural counties and consists of eight fire stations and 13 pieces of equipment. The unit shares an interagency dispatch center with federal agencies including the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management. An interagency center contributes to economies of scale, supports cooperation, and lends itself to a more seamless operation. The area has fragmented jurisdictions across a large rural area along the Nevada and Oregon state lines.

Riverside Operational Unit is one of the larger units with 91 fire stations with about 230 pieces of equipment. Some of these stations belong to the county fire department, which is operated by CDF under contract. The unit operates its own dispatch center in Perris. Terrain served includes urban and suburban areas of the Inland Empire and communities in the metropolitan Palm Springs area. The area includes forested mountains, the Colorado River basin, the Mojave Desert and Interstate 10.

Lawmakers in Sacramento have mandated that every Operational Unit develop and implement an annual fire management plan. The plan will develop cooperation and community programs to reduce damage from, and costs of, fires in California. One metric used by fire suppression units is initial attack success: fires stopped by the initial resources, (equipment and people,) sent to the incident.

CDF uses several enterprise IT systems to manage operations. Altaris CAD, a computer-assisted dispatch system made by Northrop Grumman, is employed to track available resources and assignments. Each Ranger Unit has a stand-alone system which includes detailed address and mapping information. Information about fires is batch-uploaded into a statewide statistical analysis system which is used to drive improvements to fire suppression and prevention. Resource Ordering Status System is used to cooperatively manage equipment and staff from other agencies at campaign-type fires.

The three largest state government land-mobile radio systems would include California Highway Patrol, California Department of Transportation (CalTrans), and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. Any of these three systems might be considered largest depending on what constitutes the factors of "largest." If some combination of the number of mobiles, overall number of transmitters, total number of users, annual number of incidents, number of radio transmissions carried, or geographic area served were considerations, one of these three would be largest.

CDF is a major user on the State of California, Department of General Services, Public Safety Microwave Network (PSMN). The network is used for the state's Green Phone telephone network, a telephone system used for communications between public safety agencies. The system primarily serves state agencies. Intercoms between dispatching centers use audio paths supported by microwave radio. These intercoms usually appear as circuits on communications consoles in dispatching centers.

Aircraft are a prominent feature of CDF, especially during the summer fire season. Both fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft are employed. Helicopters, or rotary-wing aircraft, are used to transport firefighting hand crews into fire areas. They also drop water and retardant chemicals on fires. Fixed wing aircraft are used for command, observation, and to drop retardant chemicals on fires.

Hearing a distant voice from a radio speaker, it was unclear what path the caller was using to reach you. This was especially true of dispatch consoles, which routed audio from many channels to one or two speakers. Radio protocol provided that users announce which channel and tone they were using in order that the called party would answer on the same channel and tone. A typical transmission where an engine was calling, preparing to tell something to dispatch, might be phrased, "San Andreas, Forty Six Eighty Eight, Local Net, Tone One." This queued the San Andreas dispatcher to manually select Local, Tone One or L1 to answer.