(Originally published at 11:29 a.m. PDT July 26, 2017)
Firefighters on the Modoc National Forest in Northeastern California are dealing with the aftermath of lightning activity that left, at last count, approximately 51 fires. The actual number is a little nebulous because they have not been able to locate all that have been reported and it is likely that others will be discovered in coming days.
All of the articles about the Modoc July Complex of fires can be found here, with the most recent at the top.
The responsibility to manage 25 to 30 of the fires has been delegated to the Northern California Interagency Incident Management Team II which assumed command Tuesday of fires within a specific geographic area. The team will handle the fires north and east of Highway 139 and north and west of Highways 299 and 395.
The map below shows the location of fires within the team’s responsibility area that were large and hot enough to be detected during a 1:30 a.m. PDT mapping flight Wednesday morning.
Rain Tuesday night slowed activity on many of the fires, but there is a Red Flag Warning in effect until 11 p.m. Wednesday predicting abundant lightning which will be followed by warmer weather on Thursday and through the weekend.
Good decision to assign a Team to a cluster of fires like this. Safety and operational efficiency will benefit.