Prescribed fire escapes in California State Park

San Felipe Fire
San Felipe Fire as seen from Mt. Laguna at 9:50 a.m. PT, May 5, 2013 (click to enlarge)

(UPDATE at 7:18 a.m. PT, May 26, 2013)

CAL FIRE is reporting the fire has burned 2,650 acres and is 90 percent contained. Resources assigned include 612 personnel, 50 engines, 23 hand crews, 6 dozers and 11 water tenders.

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(UPDATE at 12:19 p.m. PT, May 25, 2012)

After overnight GPS mapping, the fire is now listed at 1,800 acres and 70 percent containment.

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(UPDATE at 5:30 p.m. PT, May 24, 2013)

The incident commander of the San Felipe fire northeast of Julian, California is calling it 1,850 acres and 70 percent contained.

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(UPDATE at 3:27 p.m. PT, May 24, 2013)

The images from the Mt. Laguna camera show that the San Felipe Fire is not putting up as much smoke as it was earlier today. CAL FIRE, in a 2:30 p.m. update, reports that it has grown to 1,800 acres and is still 60 percent contained.

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(Originally published at 10:25 a.m. PT, May 24, 2013)

A prescribed fire in Anza Borrego Desert State Park 4 miles northeast of Julian, California got away from firefighters around noon on Thursday. A change in the wind direction is being blamed for the escape, now named  the San Felipe Fire, that as of Thursday evening had burned 1,500 acres and was 60 percent contained.

The Ramona Sentinel reported that CAL FIRE conducted the prescribed fire.

Map of San Felipe Fire Anza Borrego
Map showing the approximate location of San Felipe Fire, heat detected by a satellite at 10:35 p.m. PT, May 23, 2013 (click to enlarge)

As of 6:15 p.m. on Thursday the resources assigned to the San Felipe Fire included 644 personnel, 65 engines, 24 hand crews, 5 air tankers, 7 helicopters, 5 dozers, and 13 water tenders.

An animation of still photos taken from Mt. Laguna Thursday afternoon is available HERE. A window may pop up outside of your browser. It will take a while to load, and it may not work in the Chrome browser.

The latest still image is available HERE.

The fire is in the same general location as the Vallecito Lightning Complex of fires that burned more than 15,000 acres in August.

USFS tries out UAV for studying fires

UAV view of fire
The view of a prescribed fire from the hexacopter

The U.S. Forest Service is experimenting with a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) for studying smoke generated by fires. The six-rotor hexacopter can carry a five-pound payload and the onboard GPS enables it to hover in one spot or follow a predetermined flight path.

“We first took a test flight in a field near the University of Georgia,” says Scott Goodrick, project leader of the Forest Service Southern Research Station Center for Forest Disturbance Science. “Then a friend told me he was doing a prescribed burn on his pasture, so we took it out there to see how it would perform. We’re very impressed with how easy it is to maneuver the hexacopter.”

“For now we’re just using the camera, which provides very good images,” says Goodrick. “Eventually we’ll add an infrared camera so that we can measure different aspects of fire from overhead, as well instruments to measure weather variables and particulate matter in smoke from fire. At some point, we’ll be able to measure what happens to vegetation after a fire and compare this to the data taken by satellites.”

Here are links to two recent articles about the use of drones to monitor wildfires, in Popular Science and the New York Times.

Forest Service Chief could override air tanker protest

In testimony Wednesday before the Senate Appropriations Committee, Chief of the Forest Service Tom Tidwell said he has the authority to override the protest filed by Neptune Aviation for being passed over in the awards for next-generation air tankers. Chief Tidwell said he will make a decision within the next couple of weeks.

He also said the USFS hopes to obtain the C-27J aircraft that the Air Force may decide to declare surplus, and the agency would outfit them with scaled down versions of the Modular Airborne FireFighting System (MAFFS) retardant tank systems that are used in military C-130s, rather than conventional gravity-powered tanks.

More information is at Fire Aviation:

House proposes large budget cuts for USFS and Department of Interior

Dollar SignThe House of Representatives has proposed a large budget cut for the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of Interior. The numbers are about 20 percent below President Obama’s budget request and about 14 percent below current sequestered funding levels, according to Alan Rowsome, director of conservation funding at the Wilderness Society.

Below are excerpts from an article at eenews:

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“It’s an allocation that would have devastating impacts for our lands, water and wildlife,” [Alan Rwosome] said. “At these funding levels, we would see massive and devastating park and wildlife refuge closures, less and less law enforcement officers protecting the public, and almost no resources to fight wildfires across the country.”

[…]

The House’s Interior-EPA allocation could change, especially if the chamber receives a new top-line funding level as a result of a budget agreement with the Senate, a House aide said. But it is unclear whether the two chambers will be able to reach such an accord.

The current allocation would put significant pressure on subcommittee Chairman Mike Simpson (R-Idaho) over how to fund programs important to constituents including conservationists, park and wildlife advocates, clean water groups, states, and Indian tribes.

[…]

Simpson last month warned that if Congress continues to tackle the deficit through discretionary spending — which accounts for about one-third of overall spending — he may soon be forced to zero out funding to some Interior programs.

“Do we come to the point where we say there are just some things we’re not going to do, and eliminate them and at least concentrate on the parts that we do well?” he asked at an April budget hearing for Interior. “That’s a tough choice.”

Cutting funding for Simpson’s agencies is particularly difficult given the high fixed costs of programs like wildfire funding — which consumes roughly half of the Forest Service budget — and the Indian Health Service, according to one former House appropriations aide.

“They’re going to have to figure out sizable things to just stop doing,” the former aide said.

Then-Interior Secretary Ken Salazar in April told Simpson his agency was “limping along” under sequestration cuts, which have resulted in fewer park police, reduced services at parks, more than $110 million in cuts in payments to states, reduced youth hiring and furloughs.

 

Thanks go out to Chris

Using an air curtain to burn bug tree debris

Air CurtainI have heard of air curtains, but had not seen one being used until today. After Hurricane Andrew devastated a large section of south Florida in 1992, an air curtain was used to dispose of a huge pile of debris (we lovingly called Mount Trashmore) which for a while was the highest point in that part of the state.

An air curtain is not terribly sophisticated. It simply pumps air into the area where material is burning. The extra air flow and oxygen greatly shortens the time it takes to burn the fuel.Air-Curtain

Wednesday I visited a site near Custer, South Dakota where Bayfield, Colorado based NRG Consulting Services is conducting contract work on private land. They are thinning and reducing the fuel around structures as well as cutting and burning beetle-infested trees.

Some of the thinned and  bug trees they are cutting are green, partially green, or at least have a moisture content high enough to make it impossible to burn in a conventional slash pile right away. But if they wait for the wood to dry out enough to burn, the beetles will hatch and disperse to other trees.

Air CurtainThe air curtain makes it possible to burn the high-moisture content wood immediately.

The brand new portable unit they were using Wednesday has a movable ceramic-lined firebox mounted to a trailer. The box is raised and lowered by a hydraulic lift system. Once on site, the fire box, which has no bottom or floor, is lowered to the ground. So the burning occurs on the ground, surrounded by the box. If you notice the line of holes in the wall of the box in the photo below, that’s where the air comes out at a fairly high velocity. A small diesel engine powers the blower and the hydraulics that raises and lowers the fire box.Air Curtain

While I was at the site the system was producing virtually no smoke. The photo below shows what was left after a full day of use. At the end of the day they let it sit overnight, then the next morning they may raise the fire box and move it to a different location.

Air Curtain

While a fire in an air curtain is less likely than a burn pile to escape, there is some fire hazard associated with the system. At one point I happened to look down at the sleeve of my cotton shirt and saw a small burning ember about the size of a gnat. I brushed it off and saw that it left a small burn mark on my shirt. Then I noticed that the cotton shirt of the crew boss had at least a dozen holes just like the new one in my shirt. The gentleman closest to the machine, the person feeding it, was shrewdly wearing a Nomex shirt. I looked around and didn’t see any spot fires in the area. A burning permit is required to operate an air curtain in the Black Hills of South Dakota, which these folks had.Air Curtain