September 2020 – Page 7 – Wildfire Today

Crew on North Complex in California overrun by fire deploys fire shelters

And, an update on the shelter deployment at the Dolan Fire

Why did the Oregon fires in the Siege of ’20 spread so quickly?

Using a rule of thumb to predict how fast a wildfire will spread

Beachie Creek Fire Lionshead Fire Oregon Riverside Fire

Photos of air tankers attacking fire one mile from air tanker base

Tanker 103 drops fire Medford Oregon — Tanker 103, (an MD-87, N293EA) drops on a fire west of the Medford, OR airport Sept. 9, 2020. Photo by Tim Crippin.

Tim Crippin shot these photos of two air tankers dropping on a fire that had just broken out one mile west of the air tanker base at the Rogue Valley International Airport (MFR) at Medford, Oregon. Here is what he wrote:

I took these pictures of Tankers 103 and 910 dropping retardant on a fast moving brush fire that was racing up the Bear Creek Greenway near I-5 between North Medford and Central Point, OR yesterday (9-9-2020). This fire threatened multiple businesses and structures including a FedEx building and Costco. The city of Central Point was on a Level 3 evacuation shortly after it started due to the rapid spread of the fire.

The fire was only about 1 mile west of the Medford Airport and the tankers and helicopters that were working on the South Obenchain Fire were diverted to this fire. They had 3 air tankers do drops and they were Tankers 60 (missed their drop), Tanker 103 and Tanker 910. Along with multiple helicopters.

I took these pictures near Million Air at the Medford Airport.

The South Obenchain Fire has burned about 12,000 acres 12 miles northeast of the airport.

Tanker 910 drops fire Medford Oregon — Tanker 910, (a DC-10, N612AX) drops on a fire west of the Medford, OR airport Sept. 9, 2020. Photo by Tim Crippin.

medford Oregon T-103 T-910

Wildfires have burned over 800 square miles in Oregon

Four fires east of Interstate 5, from Portland south to Eugene, are each larger than 100,000 acres.

Beachie Creek Fire Echo Mountain Fire Holiday Farm Fire Lionshead Fire McKenzie Fire Oregon Riverside Fire

Bobcat Fire spreads east across Highway 39

In the Angeles National Forest above Arcadia and Glendora, southern California

Bobcat Fire California

North Complex of fires estimated at a quarter of million acres after explosive growth

September 9, 2020 | 4:20 p.m. PDT

Claremont and Bear Fires — North Complex of Fires, 11:36 p.m. PDT Sept. 8, 2020. The Claremont/Bear Fire, two fires that merged.

One of the fires on the North Complex of fires east of Chico, California apparently grew by about 100,000 acres Tuesday. Operations Section Chief Jake Cagle said Wednesday morning that 45 mph winds pushed the Claremont/Bear Fire to the southwest for miles until it reached Lake Oroville east of the city by the same name. But it didn’t stop there. According to the map produced by the incident management team it worked its way around the south side of the lake and may have even spotted across the lake.

With the extremely rapid growth, firefighters were unable to have the luxury of containing the fire’s edge, their time had to be spent on the urgent matters of firefighter and public safety, notifying citizens of mandatory evacuations, and protecting structures.

Evacuation information can be found at the Plumas National Forest’s Facebook page. A virtual community meeting will be available there at 6 p.m. PDT today (Wednesday).

The exact location of the fire’s edge was not certain at mid-day Wednesday because an aircraft scheduled to map the fire Tuesday night became unavailable due to a maintenance issue. Without the more accurate mapping system, the incident management team used heat-sensing data collected by satellites to evaluate the size, which is far less reliable. Mr. Cagle estimated Wednesday morning that the fire at that time was about 45 miles long and 30 miles wide.

The incident management team believes the North Complex of fires has burned approximately 254,000 acres, an increase of about 104,000 acres over the figure released earlier in the day.

The North Complex is comprised of multiple fires, most of which were suppressed, but remaining were the Bear and Claremont blazes. The map below shows where they were on August 20 before they burned together. The team fighting the fire now is referring to it as Bear Fire, or the North Complex.

The map below is not an accurate perimeter. It is an estimate from satellite heat sensors that may have detected heat in the smoke a distance from the fire, in addition to the fire itself. It may show the fire as being much larger than it actually is. This can happen during explosive growth of a fire that is burning very intensely and putting up a very large column of smoke containing a great deal of ash and debris.