It can be overwhelming to attempt to get a clear picture of the state of the wildfires in the United States with so many large ones churning out tens of thousands of acres and massive smoke columns every day. So I put together a list of all of the fires listed on the national Situation Report that are not contained and are larger than 4,500 acres — 26 of them this morning. Of course there are many other fires that are less than 4,500 acres. Some of those will continue to grow as competition for firefighting resources increases and aggressive initial attack on new fires becomes less common.
This list does not contain any fires that have previously been contained.
It is a pretty impressive list, especially since we are just beginning to enter the traditional busy part of the western fire season. The National Preparedness Level is 4 (maximum is 5). Only two other times have we entered PL 4 this early in the year.
My daughter lives in the Craig area and I am trying to find an Internet link that will show me a map of all of the Colorado wildfires since I am not that familiar with the names of all of the areas. Do you know of such a site. If so, would you be email that URL to my address above?
Thanks.
Inciweb is one resource that provides that service and shows the fires on Google maps and a brief writeup on the fires by the incident commander.
This is for the High Park Pire…
http://inciweb.org/incident/2904/
You can use the zoom out and pan feature on the map to view other fires in Colorado and elsewhere.
bill thank you for sharing this wonderfull website with all of us.. you all do a fanstatic job keeping all of us safe
you are a great asset to the fire fighting community and very much appreciated. 🙂
second that
And High Park, since it’s officially contained, is left off this list. 87K+ acres and >300 structures lost. Crazy.
Thanks Bill – Great to have all this info in one place!!!
I second that statement. Thanks a lot Bill for all your hard work.
Agreed – this is the best summary yet and wanted to send your readers to this 7-minute film – it sums up the link between climate and fire: https://vimeo.com/41747411
Did you forget about those poor people evacuated in Idaho??? HE MUSTANG COMPLEX. http://www.flickr.com/photos/salmonchallisnf/sets/72157631323680162/with/7895208854/
Basic Information Mustang Complex Fire
Incident Type Wildfire
Cause Lightning
Date of Origin Monday July 30th, 2012 approx. 10:16 AM
Location North Fork Ranger District
Incident Commander Pete Blume
Current Situation
Total Personnel 962
Size 221,727 acres
Percent Contained 16%
Estimated Containment Date Sunday September 30th, 2012 approx. 12:00 AM