Waldo Canyon Fire, June 26, 2012., Photo by Keystoneridin.
It was two years ago today, on June 23, 2012, that the Waldo Canyon Fire started in the Pike National Forest southwest of Colorado Springs, Colorado. On June 26 it spread into the Mountain Shadows area of the city. Before the fire was out, it had killed two people and burned 18,000 acres and 347 homes.
The Colorado Springs Gazette has an interesting article written by Ryan Maye Handy about the impacts of the fire, the rebuilding efforts, and how it affected the residents. It is very well written and worth your time. There is also a video with the article that covers the devastating floods that came weeks and months after the fire. But the website may make you answer two or more stupid questions before it will let you see it.
Below is a brief excerpt from the article:
…Nevertheless in Colorado and around the country, Mountain Shadows is considered a fire recovery success story. Partially due to its urban setting, a greater percentage of homes – 77 percent – have been rebuilt than in any other fire-ravaged community in the state, including neighborhoods in Boulder and Larimer counties and Black Forest. Nearly all the homes in Mountain Shadows were primary residences, whereas in some Colorado fires a significant percentage of houses lost were vacation homes.
Brett Lacey, the Colorado Springs fire marshal who engineered the new fire codes for the hillside neighborhood, has traveled around North America to talk about Mountain Shadows. The neighborhood’s fire mitigation work has become a model for cities in Montana and Canada.
But Mountain Shadows’ fast recovery also echoes a disturbing trend in the West: Catastrophic wildfires wipe the slate clean, making room for bigger, more expensive dream houses in zones that remain at risk for wildfires.
There was much criticism about how the Waldo Canyon Fire was managed in the city of Colorado Springs. At least three official reports were written, two from the city (here and here) and a third from the county sheriff’s office. However one of the most revealing was the result of an independent investigation by a newspaper, the Colorado Springs Independentwhich revealed facts that were left out of the government-issued documents. After reading the three official reports and then the Independent’s article, I wrote on December 13, 2012:
I am left stunned. Regarding the management of the fire within the city of Colorado Springs, I have never heard of a wildland fire with such a huge impact that was so utterly, catastrophically mismanaged.
From the Oregon Department of Forestry Sunday morning:
Yesterday’s heavy use of air retardant helped prevent the fire from spreading beyond the control lines. Sixteen loads of retardant were dropped from large air tankers and eight loads were dropped from small Single Engine Air Tankers known as SEATs. Helicopters were extremely busy all day long responding to fire fighters requests for drops on the hottest spots. Today, helicopters will continue dropping water along the southwest side of the fire.
With almost ten miles of fire line around the perimeter of this fire, fire fighters are laying hose and fittings for the next phase of holding the line and beginning mop-up on the cooler portions of the fire. The fire had slight growth due to the fire burning up to the control lines the fire fighters had established. Fire fighters continue to work diligently to stop the fire from spreading southward. A small amount of line remains to be constructed there.
They are calling it 1,327 acres and 15 percent contained.
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(UPDATED at 7:55 a.m. PT, June 22, 2014)
Map of the Bryant Fire. The red line was the perimeter at 9 p.m., June 21, 2014 The red line is from 24 hours earlier, on Friday night.
Very little new information is available about the Bryant Fire, burning in southern Oregon 25 miles southeast of Klamath Falls. When it was mapped Saturday night the size was estimated at about 1,260 acres.
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(UPDATED at 7:33 a.m. PT, June 21, 2014)
3D Map of Bryant Fire, looking west at 11 pm, June 20, 2014. (click to enlarge)
The Bryant Fire south of Bonanza and southeast of Klamath Falls, Oregon was mapped at 1,300 acres late Friday night while the fire was very actively burning. It started Thursday afternoon on privately owned land in an active logging operation in felled and bucked timber on steep terrain. An Oregon Department of Forestry Type 2 incident management team assumed command Friday evening.
Map of Bryant Fire, at 11 pm, June 20, 2014. The white line near the bottom is the California/Oregon border.
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The red and yellow squares represent heat detected on the Bryant Fire in southern Oregon by a satellite at 3:45 p.m. PT, June 20, 2014. The locations of the squares are accurate to within about a mile. (click to enlarge)
The Bryant Fire in southern Oregon was reported at 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, 10 miles south of Bonanza, 25 miles southeast of Klamath Falls, and 3 miles north of the California border. (See the map above.) Friday morning it had burned 836 acres, but there is an unofficial report Friday evening that the ODF said it has doubled to about 1,600 acres, all on privately owned land.
Oregon Department of Forestry (ODF) Incident Management Team 1, with Incident Commander John Buckman, will assume command of the fire Friday at 6 p.m.
A Type 2 State Fire Team has been ordered to take over the management of the Bryant Fire at 6 p.m. today. pic.twitter.com/kx64tWZ2Np
Sky lantern release in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Photo by Takeaway.
Chinese lanterns, sky lanterns, or fire balloons are banned in at least 12 states and 6 countries. These devices use burning material such as rubbing alcohol or a candle to heat the air in a bag made of tissue paper or very thin plastic. The heat makes the device lighter than air causing it to rise into the sky, staying aloft for 10 minutes to 2 hours. They can be very pretty to watch especially when they are released dozens or hundreds at a time such as at a wedding or some other celebration. The problem is they sometimes start fires in structures and wildland areas, and they leave litter where they eventually land.
We strongly discourage using sky lanterns because of the fire hazard.
Then they listed some helpful hints to consider if you still insist on using them in a National Park, such as, don’t use them indoors, and
Do not use sky lanterns in areas with burnable vegetation. Misuse in this manner has resulted in many wildland fires.
We checked with the NPS’ Kathy Komatz, the National Structural Fire Training Specialist who wrote the article about the use of sky lanterns. She told us that she was not able to find a Park Service-wide policy on the use of the devices. However, it is possible that individual park units could ban them and few people would know about it.
Mike Ferris a spokesperson for the U.S. Forest Service, explained his agency’s view:
There are no specific CFR’s [Code of Federal Regulations] that address Sky Lanterns. They would not meet the definition of a firework or other pyrotechnic device. However, they are a “fire” and several CFR’s prohibit any unpermitted or uncontrolled use of fire. It would loosely fall under the campfire definition as well. The most applicable prohibition would be 261.5(d) Leaving a fire without completely extinguishing it. Therefore, they would not be legal to use in the National Forests unless they were specifically permitted.
For the Bureau of Land Management’s take on sky lanterns, we heard from Kenneth Frederick:
I asked Jon Skinner about this (he is the BLM’s national fire mitigation and education specialist at NIFC). Jon wrote that, as far as he knows, Montana is the only state in which the BLM has banned sky lanterns on agency-managed lands. However, it is important to note that federal regulations already prohibit causing wildfires on public lands. The BLM expects land users to be careful and wise. That applies to any activity that could ignite a wildfire.
Sky lanterns have not been a serious problem (yet) for the BLM. But if their use becomes a more and more common source of wildfire ignition on BLM lands, I think the public could expect them to be banned outright on BLM lands–or at least strongly regulated.
Entire countries have banned the use of sky lanterns, including Austria, Australia, Brazil, New Zealand, Spain, Germany and parts of Canada. In the United State they are illegal in California, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Washington.
A company called Rise Lantern Festival is planning fire balloon events around the world, hoping to make money by selling tickets to the participants. They have one planned on October 18, 2014 about 20 miles south of Las Vegas, Nevada, and another for Bali, Indonesia on November 15, 2014. Their web site does not specify how the trash will be collected, or how they plan to deal with fires that may result.
It seems counter-intuitive that many national parks and forests ban open campfires, at least in certain areas or times of the year, but it’s perfectly fine in some locations to set a fire in a flimsy, sometimes home-made hot air balloon and let the wind carry it to an unknown destination, while recognizing that the use of the devices has “resulted in many wildland fires”.
At least two companies have used images of fire balloons in their television commercials, which could raise the popularity of the dangerous devices. Those irresponsible companies are Mercedes automobiles, and AndroGel, which is testosterone marketed by AbbVie.
A sky lantern may land when the flame is still alight, making it a fire hazard. In typical designs, as long as the lantern stays upright the paper will not get hot enough to ignite, but if the balloon is tilted (say, by the wind or by hitting some object), it may catch fire while still in the air. All the paper will usually burn in a few seconds, but the flame source may remain lit until it hits the ground.
Sky lanterns have also been alleged to pose a danger to aircraft.
On 1 July 2013 the ‘largest fire ever’ in the West Midlands of England, involving 100,000 tonnes of recycling material and causing an estimated six million pounds worth of damage, was started by a sky lantern which landed at a plastics recycling plant in Smethwick. Images of the lantern starting the fire were captured on CCTV. In response to the fire, Poundland decided to stop selling sky lanterns and recalled their entire stock on 6 July 2013.
The video below, at the 11-second mark, shows the sky lantern falling into the Smethwick plastics recycling plant in Smethwick, referred to above. Look at the very top of the picture.
Wednesday night as the sun was setting, a rainbow was in the eastern sky. In the west, the sky was full of orange clouds. (Click the photo to see a larger version.)
