Often, downbursts or downdrafts coming out of a thunderstorm are invisible, especially if it is a dry downburst. This weather phenomenon in the dissipating stage of a thunderstorm can be deadly if the wind direction suddenly changes and affects the direction of spread of a wildfire.
The video above is of a wet downburst. That and the time lapse feature make it possible to clearly see the air and the rain descending, reaching the ground, and then spreading out. Firefighters need to be aware that this is not a rare occurrence and it can affect the wind direction miles away from the cloud.
Five new lightning-caused fires started Friday that surrounding Chelan, Washington, threatened homes in the city, then some of them joined forces and crossed the Columbia River. Our main article about the Chelan area fires is HERE (which is updated daily), but you may want to hear a portion of the back story of how wildfire organizations came up with a plan to deal with the quickly developing emergency during a time when the competition, nationally, for firefighters has become overwhelming.
In this video Rob Allen, the Deputy Incident Commander for the Wolverine Fire which is 30 air miles up Lake Chelan from the City by the same name, describes how his fire sent firefighting resources from their winding-down incident to assist with the initial attack of the five new fires near the city.
In the last one-third of the interview, Mr. Allen explains the nationwide shortage of firefighters and how the competition for resources is affecting firefighting in the Washington area and the rest of the West. As we reported earlier on Saturday, even though 554 20-person hand crews are currently working on wildfires in the western United States, there are outstanding orders for 160 more crews that are unable to be filled. Other important nationally-managed resources are already fully committed to ongoing fires and are completely unavailable for new fires, including transportable shower units and caterers that can set up in a remote area and begin feeding hundreds of hungry firefighters a few hours after they arrive in a dusty field near a fire.
The U.S. Forest Service has released a preliminary 72-hour report on the line of duty death of firefighter Michael Scott Hallenbeck who was killed by a falling tree August 8 in California.
Below is the text from a memo dated August 12, 2015 signed by Thomas G. Wagner, the leader of the Coordinated Response Team assigned to the accident. Click on the image to see a larger version.
Over 26,000 personnel are currently working on active wildfires in the United States. The numbers from the National Interagency Coordination Center’s Incident Management Situation Report for August 15 also show 554 hand crews, 1,775 fire engines, and 173 helicopters assigned to fires.
These are BIG numbers.
In addition, 44 incident management teams are deployed:
2 Area Command Teams
14 Type 1 IMTs
28 Type 2 IMTs
There were 27 new large fires reported on Friday, to bring the total of uncontained large fires to 85.
The map of the Geographic Area Coordination Centers (GACC) will help to decipher the acronyms used in the table above.
