(Originally published at 5:31 p.m. MDT, June 20, 2013; updated June 21, 2013)
I have tried to be patient. I have given InciWeb the benefit of the doubt. I WANT to like InciWeb. The user interface looks fine, it strives to contain useful information, and if it worked well, it could provide a very valuable service.
Before U.S. Forest Service employee Jon Holden created it in California 10 years ago, it was difficult for the public to ferret out current information about fires that may be threatening their property. Some Incident Management Teams created web sites for fires, but they were all different, and if another IMTeam took over a fire they would sometimes start over again with a different web site, keeping the affected citizen guessing … and hunting.
But now in its tenth year, I have to admit, InciWeb is a failure. To be precise, too often it fails to perform in a manner that meets the needs of its customers. After 10 years, it is reasonable to expect that a web service could have worked out the bugs and would be extremely reliable. ESPECIALLY, if the purpose of the web site is to provide critical information to users who in many cases at that moment are being adversely affected by an emergency. For some it may be one of the worst days of their lives. If a site with this purpose can’t have at least 99.99 percent uptime, and load a page reliably in less than three to four seconds, it needs to be put out of its misery.
How embarrassing is it that a web site existing primarily to provide information during emergencies has THIS as a banner across the top of the page:
That banner has been on the site for months, not just for a few hours while a bug is being fixed.
In recent weeks the performance of the site has gotten even worse. Sometimes the home page loads in less than a second. Other times it will not load at all and an error message appears instead. Frequently if a page does load correctly, it can take 10 to 20 seconds for it to appear. Several times in recent days when the page loaded the formatting was completely screwed up and was unusable. This problem, I have found, is intermittent. At times the information is available very quickly, but too often, the site is virtually worthless.
Wildland firefighters have been VERY busy in Colorado for the last couple of weeks. In the last few days several new fires have broken out or become much more active. Both the Rocky Mountain and Southwest Geographic Areas just increased their Preparedness Levels to 4 on the scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the most extreme. This is a little early in the year for the Rocky Mountain Geographic Area. There are also several large fires burning in New Mexico and Arizona.
On the map above the green dots represent fires that are not being fully suppressed, while the red dots are fires that ARE being fully suppressed. The base map, with the dots, was provided by the Rocky Mountain Coordination Center; we added the fire names and acres.
Distribution of smoke from wildfires at 10 a.m. MDT, June 20, 2013
As you can see in the map above which represents the distribution of smoke from wildfires, residents in Kansas are being exposed to what to them is probably surprisingly high levels of smoke. I believe the Silver Fire in southwest New Mexico can be blamed for a large share of the smoke, in addition to four large fires in Mexico that are 15 to 60 miles south of the border. The West Fork Complex in southern Colorado which is a “confine/control” fire is also becoming a major smoke contributor, and could continue to maintain that status for weeks or months.
Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches for enhanced wildfire danger have been issued by the National Weather Service for areas in California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming.
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The Red Flag Warning map above was current as of 9:08 a.m. MDT on Thursday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts. For the most current data, visit this NWS site.
For the last several days the weather has been in favor of the firefighters. Saturday brought rain over most of the Complex, with accumulations of 0.02 to 0.20 inches, however in some areas it did not penetrate tree canopies in areas with heavy timber. Smoke prevented most aerial firefighting Saturday but helicopters and air tankers will be in the air Sunday if they are needed and weather permits. Thunderstorms are in the forecast for the next few days. Winds on Sunday will be out of the Northwest at 5-15 mph, with a 60% chance of rain actually hitting the ground.
The Incident Management Team reports the fire is two percent contained and the three fires in the complex have burned 95,775 acres: Windy Pass 1,415, Papoose 34,836, and West Fork 59,524 acres.
Resources on the fire include 8 Type 1 hand crews, 20 Type 2 hand crews, 109 engines, 5 dozers, and 11 water tenders, for a total of 1,502 personnel.
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(UPDATE at 9:20 a.m. MDT, June 28, 2013)
Map of West Fork Complex, 12:01 June 28, 2013 (click to enlarge)East side of Papoose Fire, looking NE, 12:01 June 28, 2013 (click to enlarge)
The Papoose Fire, pushed by 30 to 40 mph northwest winds out of a thunderstorm, ran for about four miles on the east side Thursday, southwest of Antelope Park. Adding approximately 6,000 acres, it became established in Trout Creek and threatened to spread up the east side of the drainage. The fire spread through beetle-killed Englemann Spruce spotting one mile to one and a half miles ahead, according to the Incident Management Team spokesperson, who reported that firefighters burned around some structures to remove the fuel before the fire hit those areas — here were no reports that any burned.
The West Fork Fire was much quieter than the Papoose Fire, but it was somewhat active near Elk Mountain and on the southeast side.
The incident Management Team reports the three fires in the Complex have burned a total of 90,056 acres.
The weather forecast for the Antelope Park area south of Creede calls for 78 degrees, relative humidity in the mid-20s, about a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms, and winds out of the southwest at 8 to 15 mph.
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(UPDATE at 10:50 a.m. MDT, June 27, 2013)
More information has become available about the West Fork Complex:
The Papoose Fire was active Wednesday night and moved into Crooked Creek and towards Rio Grande Dam. It moved past structures near Workman Creek along Highway 149 but there was no report of damage to structures. Firefighters worked through the night to reinforce firelines, protect structures, and conduct firing operations along Squaw Creek to remove fuels in front of the fire.
The West Fork Fire has been active on the northeast flank near Elk Mountain. Structure protection, including sprinklers, is in place along Highways 149 and 160.
Portable fire retardant plants have been set up near the Papoose Fire and on the east side of the West Fork Fire. These will be used for refilling buckets and tanks on helicopters. Dropping fire retardant will be more effective than using plain water.
Current acreage for the whole Complex: Total 83,004; Windy Pass 1,403; Papoose 26,483; West Fork 55,118.
Shortly after 9 a.m. today two military MAFFS C-130 air tankers were dispatched to the West Fork Fire from their base at Colorado Springs where another portable fire retardant base has been established.
The Incident Management Team is now putting various types of information in at least four different places: Google Drive (which I can’t get to work), Facebook, Photo Bucket, and Inciweb. Apparently this IMTeam has said goodbye to the concept of putting all information about a fire in one place, possibly due in part to the dysfunctional InciWeb.
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(UPDATE at 7:20 a.m. MDT, June 27, 2013)
Map of heat detected by a satellite on the West Fork Complex at 11:21 p.m., June 26, 2013 (click to enlarge)
The satellite that passed over the West Fork Complex twice in the last 24 hours has not found as many heat sources as in previous days. But the instruments can only detect areas of heat that are at least 30 meters by 30 meters.
Dozers have finished constructing a fireline between the fire and the town of South Fork and fire crews are continuing to work around the structures on Highway 149. Not much other new information is available, other than the Incident Management Team reported that they held some internal meetings and briefings. The fire’s InciWeb page has not been updated since Wednesday morning.
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(UPDATE at 10:40 p.m. MDT, June 25, 2013)
The West Fork Fire has been burning for 20 days, and on day 20 a usable map of the fire was posted on InciWeb by an Incident Management Team running the fire. And instead of placing photos of the fire on InciWeb, they are putting them on something called “Photo Bucket” under West Fork Complex, according to a message sent out by the team. In addition the IMTeam is posting some information on Facebook, “dedicated to thank yous to the firefighters working on the fire line” according to a Tweet the Information Officer published. Of course, InciWeb is virtually unusable, so they can hardly be blamed for partially abandoning it and only updating InciWeb rarely. Apparently this IMTeam has said goodbye to the concept of putting all information about a fire in one place.
As the weather moderates, the IMTeam expects the fire to become more fuel (or vegetation)-driven, rather than wind-driven as has been for the last one to two weeks. On Tuesday an increase in humidity caused the fire to spread more slowly and allowed firefighters to make more progress than they have been used to, especially on the west side.
The Papoose Fire still remains south of highway 149 and Creede has not been evacuated, in spite of reports to the contrary. One of the DC-10 air tankers dropped retardant on the west side of the fire today, at a rate of 11,600 gallons per sortie.
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(UPDATE at 8:25 a.m. MDT, June 25 2013)
Map of West Fork, Windy Pass, and Papoose Fires, 10 p.m. MDT, June 24, 2013 (click to enlarge)
There was not much change in the perimeters of the Papoose, West Fork, and Windy Gap fires over the last 24 hours. Each of them grew a bit, but there was no major change in acreage. The West Fork Fire is still about four miles from the intersection of Highways 160 and 149.
The Incident Management Team this morning said: “Current acreage per infrared flight last night: West Fork 54,222; Papoose 23,605; Windy Pass 1,355 TOTAL for complex, 79,182” Continue reading “Colorado: West Fork Complex”
Pyrocumulus on the Jasper Fire, August 25, 2000. Photo by Bill Gabbert
You may be familiar with pyrocumulus (pyroCb) clouds that form over intensely burning vegetation fires. They can be a combination of smoke and condensation. Some firefighters call this “ice capping”.
Chuck Bushey, a Fire Behavior Analyst and former President of the International Association of Wildland Fire, is a member of a small group studying pyroCb led by Mike Fromm of the US Naval Observatory.
“…this is one recent example of the sort of products our small global pryoCb group watch. The group also examines lots of particulate and atmospheric information (some from ground based instrumentation such as Lidar, as well as from other satellite channels) to make sure it’s a real fire event or something else. There are other events that may look similar from orbit and some of the more remote incidents that this group sees we may be the first observers.
We can sometimes track these major upper atmospheric (stratospheric) events multiple times around the globe mixing with other weather systems. The most global round-trips I have observed has been four in the northern hemisphere.
We can only speculate on what the input of the volatile elemental and organic chemicals and other pyrolyized materials (such as soil and ash) are having on the cold, upper atmosphere and our climate. We also guess that these events may be more frequent now and maybe more intense than in the recent past but we really don’t know because no one was watching and our capabilities were limited.”
