2023 Year End Infographic: Entrapments and Burn Injuries

Today we are diving into the next couple of related incident types included in the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center's (LLC) 2023 Year End Infographic: Entrapments and Burn Injuries. How do we decide which incidents should be called entrapments and which are burn injuries? Obviously, some entrapments result in burn injuries, but that is not a deciding factor included in the NWCG definition of entrapment:

"A situation where personnel are unexpectedly caught in a fire behavior-related, life-threatening position where planned escape routes or safety zones are absent, inadequate, or compromised. An entrapment may or may not include deployment of a fire shelter for its intended purpose. These situations may or may not result in injury. They include 'near misses.'" NWCG Escape and Entrapment Definitions

In our LLC database of incidents, and in our analyses, an entrapment is an incident that meets the above definition, regardless of the outcome. Burn injuries, by contrast, are those incidents where fire personnel were burned in circumstances other than an entrapment. A common example over the years is a burn on the leg from lit drip torch fuel dripped onto a firefighter's pants.

With that explanation out of the way, let's look at the entrapments reported to us in 2023.

Interestingly, all the wildfire response-related entrapments reported to the LLC in 2023 were either during initial attack or prescribed fire operations. Because "entrapment" is a definition that includes non-injury events and "near misses," the number of incidents last year that met that definition is likely far higher than the number reported to the LLC. The incidents reported to us last year included entrapments of engines, engine crewmembers, and dozers. Several resulted in burns and smoke inhalation injuries, and many caused thermal damage to equipment. There were no reports of individual fire shelter deployments, but there was one report of an entrapped dozer operator using fire curtains for protection.

The above lesson was taken from an engine entrapment in the dynamic environment of initial attack firefighting. For more lessons and in depth narratives of many of the 2023 entrapments, click on the links below.

Dudda Shop #2 Rx Fire Entrapment

Las Tusas Fire Entrapment

Devil's Butte Fire Entrapment

Snow Hill Fire Entrapment

SKU August Lightning Complex Dozer Entrapment

Lone Pine Fire Entrapment

Morrisania Mesa Fire Entrapment

Williams Fire Entrapment

In 2023 the LLC received reports from all over the country of burn injuries to firefighters engaged in a huge variety of operations. The two most frequent causes of injuries were from lit drip torch fuel on PPE, and from falling into burning or smoldering material. One reported burn injury resulted from an explosion of a can of soup. The details on this particular incident were limited, but it is a good reminder to beware of any container that through heating or atmospheric pressure change is suddenly called on to act as a pressure vessel!

Once again, further details on many of these burn injury incidents can be found by following the links below.

Wolf Creek Rx Burn Injury

Harvey Rx Drip Torch Burn Injury

Lost Horse Creek Fire Pump Accident Burn Injury

Ida Fire Burn Injury

In response to the Lost Horse Fire incident involving a Mark 3 pump, Josiah Wagener sent in this blog post as an "Independent Action" submission to the Wildland Fire Lessons Learned Center Blog site.