Wildfire Today

That is what one of the firefighters on a Grayback Forestry fire crew told a reporter for VBS.TV, when attempting to describe what it is like to be a wildland firefighter.

The 14 minute video below expands on that, at times from the point of view of a rookie or reporter that was thrown into that role for a day or so. The photography is excellent, and when I saw the images of a fire warehouse and a chain saw it brought back those smells.

Check it out, it’s worth your time.

Here is how the video is described at VBS.tv:

Whenever someone at our office bitches about being overworked, our stock response is “Beats digging ditches.” While the express intention of the statement is usually not-so-supportive, we think it’s a healthy reminder that at the end of the day, we are all basically professional emailers and should be thankful for such.

The wildland firefighters who work for Grayback Forestry in Southern Oregon have no such motivational adages because their job is actually digging ditches. Around active forest fires. On the sides of mountains. You can’t even bitch at these guys for having cushy government pensions to fall back on when they get older, because they’re all private-sector contractors. Which means if they aren’t out fighting forest fires or doing preventative forestry on unburned woods (basically extreme landscaping), they are losing money. They are literally the hardest working men in tree business.

We spent a few days following a crew of Grayback forest-firefighters walk up the sides of what most people would consider a cliff to chop down underbrush in preparation for a controlled burn. This is what they like to call “project work,” aka the light stuff in between fires, and yet it was still some of the hardest most least-rewarding work we have ever tried to do in our lives. Unless you consider 12-hour-plus shifts of backbreaking labor, virtually zero outside recognition, and occasional accusations of being shills for the timber industry rewards. Which we do not.

Thanks Judy

It’s going to be hot and windy in the Rockies, the northern Great Plains, and the western Great Basin. This map covers the period for August 22 through 28. The “W” stands for Windy. Click on the map to see a slightly larger version.

In western South Dakota today the temperature will be 95-105, near the record high for the date, with strong northerly winds of 25 mph, gusting to 35. A red flag warning is in effect due to the heat, the wind, and a relative humidity of 10-15% this afternoon.

Two rock climbers, trapped by the El Monte fire near El Capitan Reservoir east of Lakeside, California, were rescued by a helicopter that could not land at their location, but hovered close enough that the climbers could step into the helicopter. Here is an excerpt from a story at nbcsandiego.com:

A sheriff’s helicopter was sent to rescue ten people, including two hikers who were stuck on a rock wall on El Captain Mountain. Andre Doria and his hiking partner Meg went for a day of multi pitch climbing on El Cajon Mountain. They were having lunch when they noticed the smoke.

“We called 911 and they said ‘yeah we know about this fire’,” Doria said.

Within 20 minutes the fire had spread to several acres.

“It came up the mountain face and we were going to start rapelling down and try to get to a safe area for the airlift to come. By the time we got to the repel anchors, the fire was just so smoky where we were that we decided it was best to just keep going up,” Doria said.

Fortunately the wind came in and blew a lot of the smoke away and the helicopters were able to find them.

Just in time.

“It was dicey, because when the airlift came, the fire came over the ridge to us and it was probably about 50 feet from us,” Doria said. “They came down with their chopper and they couldn’t land right on the mountain, but they came close enough we were able to step into the chopper.”

He says nothing like this has ever happened to him before.

“I’ve never been that close to a fire that large and been in such a position where I’m just completely at its mercy and fortunately this people who airlifted us out found us soon enough. I mean it was down to the last second there,” Doria said. “It was intense. Amazing. We are very blessed to have those people.”

Doria and Meg got out safety, but $2,000 worth of their hiking gear did not.

“I was told that my bags were on fire,” Meg said. “It was a lot closer than I would ever want to cut something, ever again.”

The hikers had some advice for fellow hikers.

“Everybody should, if they go out, always carry a cell phone. Had we not had a cell phone, they wouldn’t have known we were up there and fortunately we had reception so we were able to call 911,” Doria said.

Two firefighters received minor injuries. The cause of the fire is being investigated.

As of 8 p.m. Saturday night, the spread of the fire had been stopped. The fire had burned 1,047 acres (down from an earlier estimate of 2,500-3,000 acres), and was 10% contained. It was burning in 7-year old fuels that last burned in the 2003 Cedar fire.

Managing the fire was Carlton Joseph’s Type 2 incident management team, but as of 0600 Sunday, August 22, 2010, the Type 1 Southern California Interagency Incident Management Team #1 will be assuming command of the incident. Three days ago Carlton was named Deputy Incident Commander Trainee on the Type 1 CA-IMT #5. Congratulations to Carlton, who is the Fire Chief for the Cleveland National Forest.

In this video, one of the rescued climbers tells his story.

Here is an early map of the El Monte fire near Lakeside that was produced Saturday night, showing the estimated fire perimeter.

More information about the fire is in the video below.

Fire repellent?

The LA Times, which should know better, said this about the El Monte fire:

Firefighters were battling the blaze with fire repellent and water dropped from four air tankers, six helicopters and three helitankers, she said.

I wonder if I could get a patent on fire repellent?……. hmmmm. How do you make it?

In the summer of 1988 numerous fires burned 793,000 acres of Yellowstone National Park as well as large tracts of land surrounding the park. Half of the acres burned inside the park resulted from fires that started outside the boundary. Nine of the fires were human-caused, and 42 were started by lightning.

On the worst single day, “Black Saturday” on August 20, 1988, tremendous winds pushed fire across more than 150,000 acres. Throughout August and early September, some park roads and facilities were closed to the public, and residents of nearby towns outside the park feared for their property and their lives. Yellowstone’s fire management policy was the topic of heated debate, from the restaurants of park border towns to the halls of Congress. Following this event, the National Park Service and other federal land management agencies rewrote their policies affecting how they managed fires with less than full suppression strategies.

For more info:

http://www.nps.gov/yell/planyourvisit/upload/firesupplement.pdf