Above: A 3-D map of the perimeter of the Brian Head Fire as of 10:30 p.m. MDT June 23, 2017.
The Brian Head Fire in southwest Utah continued to burn structures Friday. At the end of the day the Incident Management Team reported that 26 have been destroyed, double the number from Thursday.
The fire also blackened an additional 10,000 acres bringing the total up to 37,560.
As of Saturday night the fire had spread to the south approaching the closed Highway 143 in several places but has not crossed it. Most of the expansion on Saturday was on the south and southeast sides.
Tim Roide’s Great Basin Type 2 Incident Management Team is not providing a great deal of information about the fire, but as of Friday evacuations were still in effect in several areas. They have been producing a daily update, but on Inciweb the Team suggests searching for the generic hashtag #BrianHeadFire to find information provided by others.
Map of the perimeter of the Brian Head Fire as of 10:30 p.m. MDT June 23, 2017. Click to enlarge.
Firefighting resources assigned to the fire include 10 Type 1 hand crews, 13 Type 2 hand crews, 4 Type 1 helicopters, 5 other helicopters, 40 engines, and a total of 836 personnel.
Be sure and click on the photos below a couple of times to see larger versions… especially the one on the left.
A volunteer firefighter from the eastern New Mexico town of Nara Vista died Thursday after suffering severe burns on a large wildfire in Quay County (map). A second firefighter was injured but has been released from the hospital.
John Cammack, 74, of Nara Visa, was severely burned after falling from a fire engine during a “burn over” Wednesday night, said Nara Visa Fire Chief Gary Girard.
Girard said a second firefighter, Kyle Perez, was also injured during the incident.
He said the firefighters were attempting to refill a fire engine with a water tanker when the winds shifted abruptly.
“We were no longer fighting the fire, we were running from the fire,” Girard said.
Girard said the flames were as high as the fire engine as they fled the area. He said Cammack was transported to Lubbock for treatment and Perez was admitted to a hospital in Amarillo.
Perez’ condition was not released, but a family member posted on social media that he’d been released from the hospital.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Willard. Typos or errors, report them HERE.
This is the forecast for wildfire smoke at 5 p.m. MDT June 23, 2017. It looks like southern Utah is not the place to be today thanks to the Brian Head Fire east of Cedar City.
The fire doubled in size between Wednesday night and Thursday night.
Strong winds on Thursday spread the Brian Head Fire much farther to the south and east, adding another 16,800 acres, bringing the total to 27,700. The Utah Department of Natural Resources said 13 homes and 8 outbuildings have been destroyed in the communities near Brian Head, Utah as the fire spread down Clear Creek.
Southern Utah University is opening their dorms to displaced residents of the fire ravaged town of Brian Head. The University will have room for up to 60 people. Those interested can call George Colton, Red Cross Site Director, at (435) 879-9033.
3-D map of the Brian Head Fire as of 1 a.m. MDT June 23, 2017.
Highway 143 is closed from the cemetery in Parowan to milepost 50 outside of Panguitch.
The weather for Friday and Saturday should bring temperatures around 70, relative humidity in the low teens, and winds out of the northwest to northeast at 5 to 10 mph with gusts in the high teens. There will be virtually no humidity recovery at night; it will be no higher than the 20’s for the next two nights. For Sunday through Friday the nighttime humidity will be below 40 percent and in the teens during the day. This could allow the fire to remain active 24 hours a day. Monday through Wednesday will bring 20 mph winds, which could be problematic for firefighters.
Brian Head Fire, from video uploaded to Inciweb June 21, 2017.
Earlier today we wrote about the three-day, three-fire, three-state road trip where a group of us boarded a very comfortable bus, or coach, and toured the sites of three large fires that occurred last fall in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.
Here are some photos, taken by Bill Gabbert. If you click on a photo, you’ll see larger versions. The captions are in the top-left.
Above: Fire Management Officer Jeff Schardt talks about managing the Rough Ridge Fire.
I had never heard of a organized multi-day road trip that involved visiting several large fires that burned in previous years, so when the Consortium of Appalachian Fire Managers and Scientists (CAFMS) distributed notices about one I was very interested. Their plans were to spend about a half day each at three fires in three states over a three-day period. The fires occurred last fall in North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee. Since they were pretty far apart the remaining half days were devoted to traveling in a bus (or coach) to the sites. At each location we would meet with local subject matter experts that would explain how the fires were managed, the effects on the natural resources, and the social issues.
So I signed up.
The expedition was primarily organized by two folks from the CAFMS, the director Helen Mohr, and Jenifer Bunty, their Public Information Coordinator.
Ms. Mohr is a researcher that has been working with the USFS’ Southern Research Station until recently when she was selected as Director for the CAFSM, and said she now spends most of her time with that organization.
Ms. Bunty has bachelor’s degrees in biology and Russian, obtained a master’s in biology, has conducted research in the Russian Far East, and has worked for the Southern Blue Ridge Fire Learning Network. She is now working remotely for the CAFSM from China (yes, that China), but commuted to the Southeast for this road trip.
There were approximately 12 to 15 people that were on the journey for all three days, but at each stop others joined to talk about or learn about that particular fire. At the Rough Ridge Fire two or three dozen students from Clemson University’s forestry summer camp joined us.
Day 1 of the Road Trip, June 6, the Party Rock Fire
This fire started November 5, 2016 and blackened about 7,100 acres mostly in Chimney Rock State Park at Lake Lure in western North Carolina.
We met the first day at 8 a.m. in Flat Rock, North Carolina where we boarded the coach for a 30-minute trip to Lake Lure and heard presentations by the officials from Chimney Rock State Park and the mayors of Lake Lure and Chimney Rock Village. They discussed the effects on their populations, the evacuations, and the suppression of the fire.
Then after viewing the fire in the distance from a viewpoint, the group began a strenuous hike to a point called Party Rock, up a very steep washed out abandoned logging road — 2.4 miles round trip with a 1,500-foot elevation gain. After lunch and various discussions about fire effects, five hours later we reboarded the thankfully air conditioned coach.
The group takes a break for lunch at Party Rock, on the Party Rock Fire.
In another two hours we were at a motel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.
More information about the Party Rock Fire can be found at Wildfire Today and Inciweb. (Update Oct. 9, 2018: it is no longer available on Inciweb)
Day 2 of the Road Trip, June 7, the Chimney Tops 2 Fire
The Chimney Tops 2 Fire started in southeast Tennessee November 23, 2016 inside Smoky Mountains National Park and six days burned into Gatlinburg killing 14 people, forcing 14,000 to evacuate, destroying or damaging 2,400 structures, and blackening 17,000 acres.
A short drive that morning took us to a turnout on US Highway 441 where the Park’s Fire Management Officer Greg Salansky told us about the first six days of the Chimney Tops 2 Fire. Later at different locations we heard a talk by Fire Ecologist Rob Klein about fire effects on vegetation, and Jessica Giacomini and Cory Blair presented information about the effects on animals.
Fire Management Officer Greg Salansky tells the group about the first days of the Chimney Tops 2 Fire.
Ms. Giacomini said of the 50 black bears in the park that have radio collars, 20 of them were in the fire area at the time. All of those survived, but two that were not collared died; one was found dead and the other had to be euthanized due to its serious injuries. She said the collared bears hunkered down and remained in the fire area as it burned. This will provide a very rare opportunity, she said, to find out what bears do before, during, and after a wildfire.
That day the group viewed the burned area from several different vantage points, hiked the Cove Mountain Trail, and heard from Emily Snider of UNC and Joe O’Brien of the USFS about various fire intensities, the effects on Table Mountain Pine, and delayed mortality of the overstory.
The day ended with a 2.5 hour coach ride to Dalton, Georgia.
Day 3 of the Road Trip, June 8, the Rough Ridge Fire
The Rough Ridge Fire started on October 16, 2016 in the Cohutta Wilderness of northern Georgia and burned almost 28,000 acres in the Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forest.
A 30-minute coach ride took us from Dalton, Georgia to the Conasauga Ranger Station in Chatsworth where we heard from District Fire Management Officer Jeff Schardt.
This was the location where we were joined by two to three dozen forestry students from Clemson. After the initial presentation at the District Office, we all got back into our coach and the vans the students traveled in, and the convoy visited several sites in the footprint of the fire.
Areas treated with prescribed fire over the years were taken advantage of in several locations around the perimeter, and the group saw some of the effects of those projects. The reduction in fuel lowered the fire intensity and served as logical points at which to stop the fire.
Karen Larson, Recreation Program Manager on the District, told the group about issues related to managing a fire in a federal wilderness area, and how the decisions were made initially about suppression tactics.
District Biologist Ruth Stokes covered the impacts on animals. She said bats are migratory and had already left for their hibernation sites in caves. The fire may have destroyed some den trees that bears like, but the fire probably created quite a few more.
Ms. Stokes said that some fish were killed along several miles of the Conasauga River on the northwestern fire perimeter. The exact cause is not certain, but they think it may have been a result of ash deposition in the water. That area, she said, was heavily impacted by smoke. Fire retardant dropped by aircraft was not used in that area.
At all three fire sites we were told that access was extremely difficult and that issue had a very significant effect on the selection of suppression alternatives and the ultimate size and duration of the fires.
This is the first multi-day, multi-fire organized road trip that I am aware of. Depending on your interests, if there are ever any more you might find it as interesting as I did. Unfortunately, when someone asked Ms. Mohr, the director of CAFMS, if she would organize more in the future, her very quick answer was, “No”.
I found the 3-day road trip very interesting and worthwhile, and hope the CAFMS and other groups conduct more.
A much shorter trip on the other side of the country occurred today, planned by Utah State University and billed as the “Second Annual Wildland Fire Tour”, a six-hour event south of Tooele, Utah. The topic was mechanical treatments such as mastication. There was no indication that they would tour a prescribed or wildland fire. It was live-streamed; I watched a few minutes of it but it looked like it was filmed with a cell phone and the wind noise on the mic made it very difficult to hear the speaker. The group was using a nifty portable PA system that appeared to have a hand-held wireless mic. I could not tell if the speaker/amp, about the size of a carry-on suitcase, was battery powered or if there was a power cord that I could not see.
