This is an interesting Twitter message sent out by the Boulder, Colorado office of the National Weather Service today:
Large grass/forest fires can start & spread easily under the right conditions. #firesafety #cowx pic.twitter.com/s7i9YpOyW5
— NWS Boulder (@NWSBoulder) March 30, 2014
Somebody needs to tell the NWS just how badly their tweet goofed.
This looks more like it:
$31,261,047 West Fork Complex
from National Interagency Fire Center, Wildland Fire Summaries, 2013: http://www.predictiveservices.nifc.gov/intelligence/2013_Statssumm/wildfire_charts_tables13.pdf
The $2.2M number from June 22 was when West Fork staffing was just beginning to get serious… about 300 personnel, compared to about 1,500 eventually, with lots of resources on the fire through about July 12.
June 18 “about 260 people assigned to the complex” (nifc inciweb)
June 21 “With only 275 fire personnel on the ground structure protection is unavailable for the majority of properties. …. Given the lack of resources assigned –note the fire ignited on June 5– and the apparent fire behavior,…. This fire will burn until nature decides it is time to stop” (firefightersblog.com quoting nifc)
June 23 “Personnel: 426+ — with more arriving.” (nifc inciweb)
July 1 “Personnel: 1464” “8 Type 1 crews, 20 Type 2 crews, 82 engines, 5 dozers, 13 water tenders…: 6 Type 1 helicopters, 4 Type 2 helicopters, and 10 Type 3 helicopters.” (nifc inciweb)
Wasn’t the $2.2 million the estimated cost of fighting West Fork fire as of June 24, when it was still growing and threatening habitation? I thought it was fought intensively for a few weeks after that, before it became less threatening to communities and the bulk of crews demobilized.
So I guess maybe I missed something about the West Fork, but why was it so much cheaper to battle than the other two?