Above: The Horton Fire, as seen from the entrance to Blue Ridge Mountain Club at 5 p.m.November 22, 2016. Incident Management Team photo.
(UPDATED at 11:20 a.m. ET November 23, 2016)
The Horton Fire seven miles southeast of Boone, North Carolina was very active Tuesday night, continuing to spread to the east and southeast. It is burning on all sides of Dugger Mountain northeast of Joe’s Creek and has covered an estimated 761 acres as of Tuesday night.
No homes have been destroyed but 55 remain threatened. Firefighters are burning out fuels around structures in order to protect them.
Mandatory evacuations remain in effect near Watson Drive.
Fire managers expect the fire to grow to 1,500 acres on Wednesday . The weather forecast for the fire area calls for 54 degrees, 6 mph winds out of the south, 30 percent relative humidity, and partly cloudy skies. There is a 35 percent chance of rain Wednesday night, and conditions on Thursday will be more favorable for firefighters with the humidity in the 70s.
Map showing the perimeter of the Horton Fire at 11:30 pm ET November 22, 2016.Burnout along Sampson Road on the Horton Fire, November 22, 2016. Incident Management Team photo.
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(Originally published at 6:27 p.m. ET November 22, 2016)
A fire that started Monday evening seven miles southeast of Boone, North Carolina is forcing some residents to evacuate. By Tuesday afternoon, according to the incident management team, the Horton Fire had burned 700 to 800 acres.
The fire is burning in steep, heavily wooded country, and is threatening 55 homes six miles east of Blowing Rock, NC.
The weather in the fire area on Wednesday is predicted to be moderate for fire behavior — partly cloudy with a 5 mph wind out of the south and 53 degrees, but the relative humidity will be fairly low, bottoming out at 31 percent. There is a slight chance of precipitation Wednesday night. The relative humidity will be high on Thursday– 75 percent.
For the latest articles at Wildfire Today about how smoke from the wildfires is affecting various locations in the South, check out the articles tagged “smoke”.
This gentleman created a do it yourself device for making what he calls a fire tornado. Generally in the wildland fire world we reserve that term for very large scale fire whirls that could be hundreds of feet in diameter. Fire whirls are much smaller and not terribly uncommon if the atmosphere is unstable.
What he made is interesting and no doubt fun to look at. But we feel compelled to point out some of the safety hazards if you were considering making something like this. Cutting glass with a 110-volt power tool cooled with a jerry-rigged running water setup is not the smartest thing in the world. Then there’s the liquid fuel burning in a cup.
Hopefully plugging something into a GFCI outlet will save me if something goes wrong.
There must be an easier way to construct a device like this without having to cut glass. I wonder if you could use a glass chimney from a kerosene lantern mounted on a base that has vents allowing the air to enter at an angle so as to encourage the whirling motion?
Above: Satellite photo from Sunday afternoon, November 20, showing plumes of smoke.
The amount of smoke created by wildfires in the southeastern United States decreased on Sunday. In satellite photos from last week smoke could be seen that covered large portions of South Carolina, Georgia, and North Carolina. However as you can see in the photo below, the smoke increased on Monday.
The amount and location of the smoke varies depending on the wind direction and the fire activity. It is difficult to predict more than a day in advance the quantity and location of smoke.
Satellite photo from November 21 showing wildfire smoke. NASA
Below are maps predicting air quality information and the location of smoke for today, November 21.
While performing a stunt on top of a ladder truck during a parade in Tijuana, Mexico, 19 firefighters fell and were injured November 20.
The truck was moving very slowly while firefighters were doing handstands on top of other firefighters. When the truck suddenly stopped, they all fell, with most of them going all the way to the ground. There is one report that first, a firefighter lost his balance at the front of the truck, and the driver hit the brakes so as not to run him over. But very rough Google automatic translations leave some of the details in question.
Below is an excerpt from LaJornada, translated by Google:
Tijuana, 20 November.- The Sunday morning accident was recorded during the parade on November 20 in Tijuana, in which 19 members of the Fire Department were injured.
Firefighters were performing stunts aboard one of its units-above boulevard Paseo de los Heroes, at the height of the Glorieta Independence- when the truck stopped making them off balance.
According to the office manager of the Ministry of Public Security official Jose Luis Lopez, the injured are being treated, none seriously injured, however, two of them have possible fractures collarbone and leg, while others already they were discharged.
When I worked for the U.S. Forest Service, forms that had to be completed after every accident had one section that asked: “How could this accident have been prevented?” Well, I have some ideas about this one.
Firefighters with leaf blowers on the Chestnut Knob Fire. The fire is 6 miles south of Morganton, NC and at the last report grew by 9 acres. InciWeb.
While several large fires in the southern states are still actively spreading, firefighters have made progress on dozens of others.
On Monday the Southern Geographic Area reported 52 large uncontained fires, for a total of 133,146 acres. There were 185 new fires of all sizes for 1,477 acres; most of those were suppressed while still small. That was considered “moderate” initial attack activity.
Firefighting resources assigned in the South:
78 aircraft
83 hand crews
1,011 pieces of equipment
4,476 personnel
Map showing the location of some of the large fires in the southern states. The red dots represent heat detected by a satellite at 2:22 am November 21, 2016.
On Sunday evening four fires reported 24-hour growth of more than 100 acres:
Rock Mountain Fire
Map of the perimeter of the Rock Mountain Fire at 6 p.m. ET November 20, 2016.
The Rock Mountain Fire that started about 10 miles northwest of Clayton Georgia has spread north into North Carolina. At the last report it had burned 11,287 acres, an increase of 862 acres. On Sunday it was very active, moving through the hardwood leaf litter in all directions at a rate of about one mile each day. Evacuations are still in place for Dream Catcher Cove north of Tate City, Georgia.
On Saturday strong winds pushed the blaze across the Appalachian Trail on the north end of the fire. Winds blowing leaves still falling from trees are creating problems for firefighters, covering existing firelines and causing some areas to re-burn.
East Miller Cove
The East Miller Cove Fire is just east of Walland, Tennessee, 16 miles south of Knoxville. On Sunday evening the incident management team reported it had burned 1,492 acres, an increase of 1,292 acres, threatening 100 structures north of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Big Branch
The Big Branch Fire is in southeast Kentucky three miles south of Roxana and five miles northeast of Cumberland. It has burned 625 acres, an increase of 175 acres.
Oakwood 1 Fire
This fire is in Arkansas, listed at 468 acres, an increase of 278. No other information is available.
A firefighter on the Chestnut Knob Fire. InciWeb.
For the latest articles at Wildfire Today about how smoke from the wildfires is affecting various locations in the South, check out the articles tagged “smoke”.
Since at least 1972 there have been investigations, lawsuits, and consent decrees that were spawned from sexual misconduct and discrimination against women in the U.S. Forest Service. A significant portion of it originated within the fire management organization. In spite of the attention this issue draws at somewhat regular intervals it is difficult to detect a great deal of long term improvement.
But it is not confined to the USFS. In a September 22 hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, two National Park Service employees testified as “whistleblowers”, possibly putting their careers in jeopardy and risking retaliation as they described allegations of sexual harassment and a lack of accountability.
One of them was Kelly Martin, Yosemite National Park’s Chief of Fire and Aviation Management, who has had a 32-year career with the U.S. Forest Service and the National Park Service. She described a hostile work environment in Yosemite and the sexual harassment she was exposed to while working for the USFS. Six days later the Superintendent at Yosemite announced his retirement.
Members of that House Committee and other Senators and Congresspersons, a total of 13, signed a letter on November 10 requesting that Phyllis K. Fong, the Department of Agriculture’s Inspector General, conduct an audit of the USFS to find out if progress has been made after allegations surfaced in 2014 of “sexual misconduct and retaliation in Region 5 [California] of the FS”. At that time the IG investigated and found that:
The Forest Service is making progress and is focused on improving the environment of its workplace.
Below is an excerpt from the November 10 letter:
In addition, given the recent findings of rampant sexual harassment in the Department of the Interior National Park Service, now is an appropriate time to consider whether the Forest Service’s improvements have succeeded in improving the workplace environment. If the new procedures implemented by the FS have been successful, they may serve as a model for other federal agencies. If the new procedures have not been successful, it is critical that they be modified as soon as possible.
In March of this year the Huffington Post published a stunning article outlining a culture of sexual harassment at Grand Canyon National Park, as well as other examples in the USFS. The author, Kathryn Joyce, described numerous disturbing examples of female employees, including a wildland firefighter, being aggressively degraded and humiliated with little if any repercussions for the assailant. In some cases the victims were fired.
And yesterday, November 20, Darryl Fears of the Washington Post wrote about similar difficulties female firefighters in the federal government and other organizations are faced with. The author quotes several women, including Katie Sauerbrey of the Nature Conservancy who embeds with the Forest Service and the National Park Service when needed:
I know a lot of women who have left fire because they did not feel supported or felt there was no room for them to grow. It’s sad for me to see women who have that desire who don’t continue because of the culture. It’s hard to describe the passion people have for this job. There’s no other job I’d rather be in.
And there is at least one other encouraging sign. Ms. Martin, the Chief of Fire and Aviation Management at Yosemite who testified before the House Committee, told Wildfire Today on September 30, two days after the Park’s Superintendent announced his retirement:
The thing that is surprising is that post my testimony our Regional and National offices, our leadership in the Park Service, is taking the allegations of the hostile work environment complaints seriously. They have also dispatched the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General to complete additional interviews. It sounds as if, I don’t know this for sure, that additional people are willing to come forward based upon my testimony, but they still fear retaliation.
