2024 Year End Infographic: Entrapments & Burn Injuries
The 2024 Year End Infographic is out, distilling common themes and lessons from over 200 incidents the Lessons Learned Center received in 2024. Over the next two weeks this blog will feature sections of the Infographic and provide links to many of the incidents that it references.
As the third post in this 2024 Infographic Series, we will cover Entrapments and Burn Injury Incidents.
In 2024, we received reports of entrapments on 13 fires and prescribed fires, up from 12 in 2023. Keen-eyed readers will note that in the Annual Incident Review Summary, we report 14 entrapments – after analysis, we determined there were two entrapments on the Buffalo Pasture Prescribed Fire.
It is common for entrapments to be reported more often during the dynamic environment of initial attack. But the number of prescribed fire entrapments – 3 of the 13 fires with reported entrapments – is less common. In 2023 there was one reported entrapment on a prescribed fire, and like two of 2024’s Rx entrapments, it involved an offroad vehicle.
Follow the incident links below to read more about the entrapment incidents. (Note that not every reported incident used in our statistics includes enough information to create an incident page.)
Buffalo Pasture Prescribed Fire
Compartment 22 Prescribed Fire
Moorland Volunteer Fire Department Entrapment (Media)
Kentucky Dept of Forestry Entrapment
Jack Wells Fire Engine Burnover
Burn Injuries
At the Lessons Learned Center, we also track burn injuries that occur in non-entrapment situations. In 2024, ten such incidents were reported to us from our variety of sources.
It’s important to remember, looking at these numbers, that the use of equipment which run on flammable liquids – drip torch mix and saw gas, in this case – regularly accounts for burn injuries. In one case, a chainsaw gas tank that appeared closed popped open when thrown onto a sawyer’s shoulder, and he was engulfed in fire. Have you ever closed a saw’s quarter-turn fuel tank cap and realized that it wasn’t actually sealed? I have!
These are the 2024 burn injury incidents we used to calculate 2024 statistics. Click through to learn more.
Savannah River Site Prescribed Fire
Holly Springs National Forest Prescribed Fire
Compartment 154 Prescribed Fire