The Sundowner Forces

Lessons Learned The day shift plan was to work dozers on the south flank of the fire. The tactic would be safe as the fire was out of alignment with wind and slope on that flank. When a Sundowner was forecast, the wind would put the south flank of the fire in alignment with wind and overpower the negative slope.

Lessons Learned If the Sundowner should surface, the tactics would be wrong for the dozer attack. The night Ops Chief attempted to extract the dozers as the danger was evident. What I learned was to assure that the tactics were based on a forecast. If we had acted before the fire changed to a wind-driven fire, we would have avoided the accident.

Sundowner situation The Romero Fire of 1971 graphic. Location may not be exact. The fire in daytime was out of alignment with wind and slope on the south flank. When the Sundowner surfaced, the alignment of forces changed and overran the dozers who were working below the fire. This slide is made up from Bruce Schubert’s emxsys.com project.