Approximately 200 U.S. Army Soldiers assigned to the 5th Battalion, 3rd Field Artillery Regiment, 17th Field Artillery Brigade, 7th Infantry Division, at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Washington have been activated to assist in the suppression of wildfires during a period when over 32,000 regular wildland firefighters are deployed but still more help is needed.
The Soldiers were trained at their base by wildland fire agency personnel, including the Bureau of Land Management Vegas Valley Crew comprised entirely of military veterans. They arrived at the Tower Fire in western Washington near the Idaho border late in the afternoon on August 22, where Tom Story captured some images.
The U.S. Forest Service has developed a system called BlueSky Modeling Framework using multiple models that when combined in various configurations can enable:
the lookup of fuels information from fuel maps
the calculation of total and hourly fire consumption based on fuel loadings and weather information
the calculation of speciated emissions (such as CO2 or PM2.5) from a fire
the calculation of vertical plume profiles produced by a fire
the calculation of likely trajectories of smoke parcels given off by a fire
the calculation of downstream smoke concentrations.
The image above is a screen grab from a Beta website of an animation of a 3-hour running average of PM 2.5 using modeled fires. (Don’t ask me to explain it any further than that!)
More information about the system is HERE. You can configure your own animation at THIS SITE.
Illustrating the severity of the wildfires and the shortage of firefighters in the northwest, for the first time ever the state of Washington is asking for volunteers to help suppress the 12 uncontained large fires currently burning in the state. Five of those fires are “complexes” that are comprised of many fires, sometimes more than 10.
At first the Department of Natural Resources was asking for anyone who could operate heavy equipment, such as a dozer or grader, who would then be given specific wildfire training. But now the DNR is only accepting volunteer applications from:
…from those with wildland firefighting qualifications, including an Incident Qualification Card (commonly called a Red Card), a “Blue Card,” or a letter of certification from a local or rural firefighting agency stating that you have met appropriate physical fitness, experience and training standards for serving on wildfire incidents.
Please complete our online intake form by listing your qualifications and contact information to volunteer with our temporary community resource coordination centers in Colville, Omak and Castle Rock.
The DNR has set up centers at three locations to talk to potential volunteers:
Omak: Jay Guthrie
Omak City Hall
2 Ash St. N
Phone 509-826-2546
Colville: Julie Sacket
Washington State Department of Transportation
Second Floor
440 N Hwy 395
Phone 509-675-7847
Castle Rock: Kellie Williams
601 Bond Rd.
Castle Rock, WA 98611
Phone 360-575-5024
The National Interagency Coordination Center’s Situation Report for Saturday includes 250 “active” wildfires in the United States, and 46 of those are large, uncontained fires. The number of hand crews assigned to fires, 680 now, continues to grow. There are 32,255 personnel committed to battling the fires.
At last count there were 46 incident management teams and 3 area command teams assigned or activated. The Situation Report only shows 2 area command teams assigned; one in northeast Washington and another in northwest California. But including one team on “NCF Fire Support/Preposition”, three have been activated. Earlier this year the number of area command teams was reduced from 4 to 3, which was a controversial decision.
This video created by Kenji Kato using Google Earth, is a “fly-through” showing heat data collected by a satellite for the Chelan Complex of Fires, the Okanogan Complex of Fires, and other fires in north-central Washington state. The fly-through starts above the U.S., then flies in on the Pacific Northwest, then Central Washington, before closing in on the fire areas. The icons represent heat detected by a satellite as late as 3:30 a.m. PDT on August 20, 2015.
The icon color is based on fire activity with red representing heat detected in the last 0-12 hours (at the time data was updated). Orange represents activity in the previous 12 to 24 hours, and yellow is data 1 to 6 days before.
Above is an updated map, at 3 p.m. MT, August 22, 2015, showing the distribution of wildfire smoke across the U.S.
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The wildfires in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana are creating a great deal of smoke that is seriously degrading the air quality hundreds of miles away.
For example in southwest South Dakota, 800 miles away from the large fires in Washington, there is a very strong smell of forest fire smoke and the air quality measuring stations are recording an “unhealthy” air quality index.
To see the most current smoke reports on Wildfire Today, visit the articles tagged “smoke” at https://wildfiretoday.com/tag/smoke/