The Walker Fire has burned about 4,200 acres since it started on October 10, 5 miles southwest of Idaho City, 5 miles east of the Bogus Basin Mountain Recreation Area, and 14 miles northeast of Boise.
It is difficult to find much information about it since the National Interagency Fire Center no longer updates the national situation report daily and the Great Basin Coordination Center’s web site reports “No Large Fires in GBCC”.
Strong winds on the day it started spread it across 2,500 acres by the next morning on lands managed by the Idaho Department of Lands, Southwest Forest Protective District, and the Boise National Forest. It is burning on both sides of Grimes Creek Road. Three cabins and one outbuilding have been destroyed.
The fire was very active on the north side on Tuesday.
Evacuations have been ordered for residents in Macks Creek, Wolf Creek, and Pine Creek.
Smoke from the fire has caused air quality alerts in the Treasure Valley area.
Wow! This “little” fire is affecting a lot of people and costing a lot of money. My husband works at the hospital and people are being kept longer than usual with cold complications and other respiratory illnesses. It has completely ruined a week of what could have been a beautiful, perfect time in Boise, and yet everyone is poo poo’ing it off as “not a big deal”. Are you kidding? If you live here, you can’t go outside! The air quality is worse than the soda fire in August that everyone was concerned about! Plus, no mention of who started it. No accountability, nor consequences! Maybe next October, hunters and campers can use fire however they want, cause by October no one cares.
Not to be defending the talking heads… But we are at the point where the GACCs and local resources can handle the situation (see PL level). No need to involve the National Interagency Fire Center. Although some resources are still moving across GACC boundaries.
In defense of the Great Basin, they do have the Walker fire listed in “Team Fire” heading on the website. A Type 2 team being currently committed to the incident
Bill I guess NIFC forgot that fire season is still alive and well in much of the Western USA. The State of Montana/County RFDs has had two large wildfires in Central and SW Montana over the past weekend too.