News and opinion about wildland fire
Above is NOAA’s forecast for how smoke from the wildfires in the Northwest will stretch across several states by 7 p.m. EDT on August 16, 2015.
Below is a graphic produced by AirNow.gov, showing the locations of wildfires and the smoke produced by the fires.
To see the most current smoke reports on Wildfire Today, visit the articles tagged “smoke” at https://wildfiretoday.com/tag/smoke/
Five new lightning-caused fires started Friday that surrounding Chelan, Washington, threatened homes in the city, then some of them joined forces and crossed the Columbia River. Our main article about the Chelan area fires is HERE (which is updated daily), but you may want to hear a portion of the back story of how wildfire organizations came up with a plan to deal with the quickly developing emergency during a time when the competition, nationally, for firefighters has become overwhelming.
In this video Rob Allen, the Deputy Incident Commander for the Wolverine Fire which is 30 air miles up Lake Chelan from the City by the same name, describes how his fire sent firefighting resources from their winding-down incident to assist with the initial attack of the five new fires near the city.
In the last one-third of the interview, Mr. Allen explains the nationwide shortage of firefighters and how the competition for resources is affecting firefighting in the Washington area and the rest of the West. As we reported earlier on Saturday, even though 554 20-person hand crews are currently working on wildfires in the western United States, there are outstanding orders for 160 more crews that are unable to be filled. Other important nationally-managed resources are already fully committed to ongoing fires and are completely unavailable for new fires, including transportable shower units and caterers that can set up in a remote area and begin feeding hundreds of hungry firefighters a few hours after they arrive in a dusty field near a fire.
The U.S. Forest Service has released a preliminary 72-hour report on the line of duty death of firefighter Michael Scott Hallenbeck who was killed by a falling tree August 8 in California.
Below is the text from a memo dated August 12, 2015 signed by Thomas G. Wagner, the leader of the Coordinated Response Team assigned to the accident. Click on the image to see a larger version.
Over 26,000 personnel are currently working on active wildfires in the United States. The numbers from the National Interagency Coordination Center’s Incident Management Situation Report for August 15 also show 554 hand crews, 1,775 fire engines, and 173 helicopters assigned to fires.
These are BIG numbers.
In addition, 44 incident management teams are deployed:
There were 27 new large fires reported on Friday, to bring the total of uncontained large fires to 85.
The map of the Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACC) will help to decipher the acronyms used in the table above.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Satellite view of wildfires in the Northwest 
This August 14 satellite photo, with fire detections overlaid as red dots, shows many large fires that are generating smoke in northwest California, Washington, Oregon, Montana and Idaho.
The Regional Office in U.S. Forest Service Region 6, comprised of Washington and Oregon, distributed an update on the wildfire situation to USFS retirees. Below are some excerpts from the message, dated August 13.
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“…As predicted, initial attack (IA) was heavy across the region yesterday and into today. Many new and extended attack fires grew steadily, and in some cases, quite dramatically. Wednesday saw 32 new fires in Oregon for 9,738 acres while Washington had 58 new fires for 1,426 acres. The most concerning of these is the Stickpin on the Colville National Forest . There is continued concern for the National Complex, the Cornet/Windy Ridge, and Cougar Creek. Four Type I teams are assigned in the region at the Wolverine Fire on the Okanogan-Wenatchee, the National Complex on the Rogue River-Siskiyou, Umpqua and Crater Lake National Park, the Stouts Creek also on the Umpqua, and finally at Cornet/Windy Ridge out on the Wallowa-Whitman. IA resources are stretched thin and many Type III teams are managing challenging fire situations while Type I and II teams get in place. For more information on specific incidents, please visit the INCIweb: inciweb.nwcg.gov
The regional situation is all juxtaposition with the fact that nationally, there are 73 (and counting) uncontained large fires. More than 19,000 U.S. Forest Service and other federal, state, and local wildland firefighters; more than 100 helicopters; and 25 large airtankers are working to suppress wildland fires. Over the last week however, of the more than 1,200 new fires reported on National Forest System and other federal, state, and private land nationwide, about 50 – just 4% – became large fires. This is a testament to those tremendous IA efforts. An interesting point here in the Pacific Northwest though is that many of the large fires are burning into fire scars, some as recent as 2013. We are finding that old fire scars are not slowing the progress of fire spread this year. I think this represents another example of how fire behavior is not as it once was and the unpredictably we now face…”
