California: Piute fire

The Piute fire on the Sequoia NF started yesterday and is moving out. HERE is a link to an almost-live web cam view of the fire.

Piute (CA-SQF-1356) 2,560 acres and 4% contained. Protection of the USFS Repeater Site, the Buston Mill, historic town sites and critical habitat areas are a priority. Closure was ordered for area campgrounds, resulting in the evacuation of campers. Road closures include Piute Mountain Rd., Saddle springs Rd. and Cold Springs Rd. Evacuations were put in place for residences and visitors in Brown’s Meadow and French Meadow. An evacuation advisory notice was issued to residents and visitors of the Claraville Town site. An Evacuation Center was opened in Lake Isabella at the VFW/Senior Citizens’s Center.

Evacuation definitions

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The Basin and Indians fires in Monterey County in California have caused various types of evacuations. Here are the definitions that the county is using:

1. Evacuation Advisory: This is a precautionary notice designed to give residents time to prepare for a possible evacuation. If you have special needs you might want to leave the area until the threat is passed. If you have livestock that needs transporting, you should move them.

2. Voluntary Evacuation: You are strongly urged to leave the area. If you choose to remain, you should be prepared to take action immediately if the danger approaches.

3. Mandatory Evacuation: You are in jeopardy and should leave the area immediately. If you choose to remain, you may be on your own as emergency personnel likely will not be able to help you.

California: Basin fire update

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The Basin fire near Big Sur has been very active today and spread significantly on the northwest side closest to Big Sur as well as on the east side, moving closer to the Indians fire.

A local news article:

The Monterey County Herald
Article Last Updated: 06/29/2008 04:06:28 PM PDT

An evacuation advisory has been issued for the Palo Colorado Canyon area due to the northward spread of the Basin Complex fire Sunday.

The advisory is a precautionary notice warning residents to prepare to leave if necessary.

Basin Fire spokeswoman Tina Rose said Sunday that residents have been moving animals out of the area and many have made arrangements to stay elsewhere. More than 1,000 homes are threatened by the fire, which grew by more than 2,000 acres overnight.

“Most people are taking the advisory as seriously as we want them to,” Rose said. “The movement of the fire is to the north, east and south.”

Emergency broadcast announcements were aired on local radio and television stations Sunday morning.

The affected area includes Garrapatos Road, Redwood Estates, Green Ridge, Rocky Creek Ranch, Long Ridge, Rocky Creek Road and Ray Ridge Road.

This map shows that the Basin fire is quite a bit closer to Big Sur than it was two days ago. Most of the heat shown on the Indians fire is from their burnout along the Arroyo Seco drainage.

The map below shows heat in red, orange, and black, detected by satellites, with the red areas being the most recently burned. The yellow lines are the perimeters uploaded by the incident management teams. Click on the map to see a larger version.

California: Indians fire and Basin Complex

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The firing operation on the Indians fire along the Arroyo Seco drainage is almost complete. Now some of their resources are concentrating on putting in indirect lines out ahead of the Basin Complex, for their purposes, being called Basin Complex East. Dozers have already completed approximately 6 miles (as the crow flies) of line north of the Indians fire, from the Arroyo Seco drainage north along the east boundary of the Los Padres National Forest.

On the south side of the Basin Complex, Hot Shot crews from the Indians fire are constructing hand line on the west side of the Indians fire, and south of the Basin Complex, between the Indians fire and a ridgetop dozer line. A shitload of dozer line has already been completed along that ridge and other ridges south of the Basin Complex. Some of them simply involved improving lines used on the Marble Cone and other fires, 10 to 30 years ago. If they can tie that main ridgetop dozer line off with another dozer line towards the west to the ocean, which they are working on, and then fire and hold these lines (a big if) they could hem in the south side of the Basin Complex.

Hot Shot crews and dozers from the Basin Complex West are working south of the fire putting in line from the North Coast Ridge Road to Rock Slide Peak.

I used old fashioned tools called “pens” to create this very sophisticated map to illustrate the above. Click on it to see a larger version.

Photo, Pam Balazer, USFS
Map, Bill Gabbert

Martin Mars lands at Lake Shasta

The third time proved to be the charm for the Canada-based Martin Mars air tanker. After having engine problems on Friday and Saturday, it successfully completed it’s 4-hour trip to Lake Shasta north of Redding, California this morning. It will stage there until it receives an assignment, which will likely occur today, visibility permitting. On each mission it can drop 7,200 gallons of water, Thermogel, or water mixed with foam concentrate on a fire and then will refill it’s tank by scooping water from a lake.

Wildfire Today covered the saga of this aircraft earlier, here and here.

Martin Mars Shasta
The Martin Mars anchored on Lake Shasta, June 29. It has already been outfitted with an American flag and a USFS decal. Photo courtesy of ShastaLake.com.

Incident Management Teams committed

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The National Situation Report shows that 16 Type 1 Incident Management Teams and 3 National Incident Management Organization (NIMO) Teams are assigned. The national IMTeam rotation page, which apparently has not been updated in a while, lists 17 Type 1 Teams, with one of those shown as “unavailable”. So apparently, all of the Type 1 Teams that are available are committed to fires.

There are 3 or 4 NIMO Teams. The status of the brand new Phoenix and Portland Teams is unclear, but one of them must be operational in addition to the previously organized Boise and Atlanta Teams, since a total of 3 are assigned.

I’m scared to link to the regular IMTeam web site, since simply opening the site in your web browser last week installed a virus or trojan on your computer. They claim the problem is fixed now. I am probably being overly cautious, but for a while at least, if I don’t have to go there, I won’t. The NIMO site and the IMTeam rotation pages are on different systems and did not have a virus problem.