Yarnell Tragedy Spurs Forest Service To Improve Fire Shelters

By Laurel Morales
June 27, 2014
David
Laurel Morales
David Turbyfill's son Travis died along with all but one member of his hotshot crew when a firestorm burned through their fire shelters. He holds a firefighter’s shirt after testing a fireproof fabric he found on the Internet.

One year ago, 19 hotshots deployed fire shelters in an Arizona box canyon. The fierce wind blew the Yarnell Hill Fire over the crew and killed them.

Today, the father of one of those men is trying to help the Forest Service improve those shelters to withstand direct flames.

David Turbyfill doesn’t want his son Travis to have died in vain. He recently sent a video he made to anyone who would take notice. One of the first images in it is a photo taken during the investigation of the Yarnell Hill Fire. Nineteen twisted piles of crumbled aluminum and ash — the barely recognizable remains of the fire shelters.

Later in the video we see Turbyfill’s recent shelter tests.

A large metal pipe shoots fire for 30 seconds on to the current fire shelter material layered over a firefighter’s yellow fire retardant shirt.

Turbyfill, wearing protective glasses and gloves, pulls the metal frame off the now-black shirt. He holds it up to the camera.

“The shirt material has obviously scorched,” Turbyfill said. “It’s hardened. It’s brittle.”

Then he runs the same test, but a minute longer, over a fireproof fabric Turbyfell found on the Internet.

“My inner foil, no burn through, still intact and the firefighter’s shirt is completely intact,” Turbyfell said.

For anyone who’s seen a wildfire, the video gets your attention.

At Turbyfill’s metal fabricating shop in Prescott he talked statistics. In the last two decades burnover and entrapment accounted for 25 percent of wildland firefighter deaths.

“What I’m saying is if you create a better fire shelter or survivable fire shelter product that you could eliminate 20-25 percent of all fatalities. Eliminate,” Turbyfill said. “Not reduce, eliminate.”

“High temperature insulation materials are usually heavy, bulky and fragile,” said Tony Petrilli, the fire shelter project leader for the United States Forest Service.

Petrilli said the current shelter reflects radiant heat. And he agreed adding insulation would make a better shield against direct flames.

“A firefighter has to carry this fire shelter along with all their other equipment, all day, every day, all summer long,” Petrilli said.

David
Laurel Morales
David Turbyfill holds up a firefighter’s shirt after testing the current shelter.

So lightweight materials are a must and that’s something Turbyfill’s fabric is. But it’s also a bit bulky. He said with high demand a manufacturer could improve it. And the proper equipment is essential to the firefighters’ safety.

“They shouldn’t have to pay with their lives regardless of the situations, whether they make a mistake, or management makes a mistake or weather makes a mistake,” Turbyfill said. “It’s not an act of God. We’re given intelligence for a reason. We should build a shelter that is fully survivable, not a prayer.”

Turbyfill said he’s reminded of his 27-year-old son Travis every time he looks in the mirror. He said he doesn’t want to relive the past, but he believes it’s important to bring attention to what he calls a fixable issue.

The process to revamp the fire shelter is a complex one. The Forest Service plans to select a new fire shelter after it’s been tested in the field during the 2016 fire season.

Granite Mountain Hotshots Fire Shelters