News and opinion about wildland fire
Driving back from dinner tonight in Redding, California, heading north, this smoke column was mesmerizing. There are three major fires north of the city, but we’re thinking this smoke was on the Coffee Fire where they conducted a burnout operation today. That fire is 40 miles northwest of Redding, and10 miles northwest of Trinity Center on the Shasta Trinity National Forest in the Trinity Alps.
Today a Federal Grand Jury indicted 32-year-old Keith Matthew Emerald for starting the Rim Fire that eventually burned 257,000 acres in the Stanislaus National Forest and Yosemite National Park. He was charged with two felonies, “Timber set afire” and “False statement to a government agency”, plus two misdemeanors, “Fire left unattended and unextinguished” and “Violating a fire restriction order”.
The fire became the third largest in California recorded history.
According to court documents, Mr. Emerald was rescued by a CAL FIRE helicopter from the extremely remote Clavey River Canyon area of the Stanislaus National Forest near the origin of the Rim Fire about an hour after the fire was reported. He was carrying bow hunting equipment with him and advised authorities that he had been on a solo hunting trip.
The CAL FIRE crew turned Mr. Emerald over to a U.S. Forest Service Fire Prevention Technician, who was not a law enforcement officer. He was later given a ride out of the forest by a government employee, but no one asked him for any identification. Investigators believe they were able to overcome that oversight. Later they applied for a search warrant for Mr. Emerald’s house and his vehicle, expecting to possibly find evidence in his computer, cell phone, backpack he was carrying that day, or elsewhere on the premises. The documents we reviewed did not reveal the results of the search.
During the extensive investigation and multiple interviews with Mr. Emerald, he told investigators several different versions of how the fire started, including:
Mr. Emerald later recanted the campfire story.
Investigators ruled out all possible fire causes other than “incendiary/intentional fire start by human”, the court documents revealed.
Mr. Emerald is expected to appear soon in the federal court in Fresno. If convicted of setting timber afire or of making false statements to a government agency, he faces a maximum statutory penalty of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine for each count. Leaving a fire unattended and violating a fire restriction order each carry a maximum penalty of six months in prison and a $5,000 fine.
In addition to the photos of the 31,000-acre Eiler Fire we posted earlier here and here, below are a few more. The fire is about 40 miles east of Redding, California. Most of it is in the mopup stage after receiving rain a couple of days ago.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Mopup ingenuity and film preservation on the Eiler Fire 
Yesterday we had the privilege to meet David Shepard, the owner of a house deep in the woods in northern California. His log house with a metal roof survived an onslaught from the 31,000-acre Eiler Fire about 40 air miles east of Redding, California without a scratch. Even his stacks of firewood on the porch and in the yard are completely intact. The fire burned completely around his place, right up to the structure on one side. Helpfully for when a fire burns through the property, the house is flanked on two sides by a creek that forks just upstream from the structure.
When we asked Mr. Shepard if he was at the house during the fire, he said, “Do you think I’m crazy?”
As you can see in the photo above, just across the creek multiple tree torched, indicating that it was burning intensely just 75 feet away from the house. We saw no indication of any retardant drops from air tankers, probably because they were not allowed to place retardant near the streams.
Mr. Shepard, who prefers not to have his picture taken, is a film preservationist — he restores film. We asked if he worked with old nitrate base films which are extremely flammable and can even spontaneously combust if stored at a high temperature in an area where the heat can’t dissipate. He said he has some in the house but they are stored in metal containers.
We later Googled Mr. Shepard and discovered that the modest man produces movies and is an award-winning film preservationist, receiving, among others, the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Denver Silent Film Festival.
While we were at the house an engine crew from the Tahoe Douglas Fire District arrived to do some additional mopup. Much of the area had already been heavily mopped up, to the point of becoming muddy, probably by using water drafted out of the creek. But there had not been much done on the other side of the creek, and a few smokes created some concern for Mr. Shepard, who had called and requested some additional work from the firefighters.
One reason the area across the creek had not received much attention was that there was no easy way to cross the six to ten-foot wide water course. Captain Chris Lucas and his crew of Jessie Rowan, Ben Pratt and Shean Bailey solved that problem by taking a ladder off the engine and using it as a bridge. After extending it vertically, they lowered it across the water by using “baby hose” as a rope. The firefighters then got on all fours and crossed on the ladder.
We had a full day in northern California today, talking to a Colorado Springs engine crew at the U.S. Forest Service district office in Chester and visiting the air attack base across the street. Then we spent a few hours on the 31,000-acre Eiler Fire 40 miles east of Redding. We will post more about these activities later, but as a start, here is a photo we took on Highway 89 on the Eiler Fire.
OK… the Hotshot Crew that is leaving high stumps… cut it out!
But seriously… Davey Tree Service was very active in the area, using their bucket truck with a long boom to do work high above the ground. Maybe this tree, right next to the highway, was partially burned through higher up in the tree and they removed the top to reduce the hazard on the highway. And maybe…. in the interest of time they moved on to higher priorities, leaving the high stump to be cut down later at their leisure. Or, maybe…. they thought leaving it like this added to the esthetics.
Two men get prison for starting the Colby Fire
Two men have been sentenced to several months in prison for starting the Colby Fire that threatened homes in Glendora in January, east of Los Angeles.
National Guard to train 240 soldiers to fight fires
The California National Guard is sending 240 of their members to Camp Roberts for four days of training to fight wildfires.
Should dead trees be logged after a fire?
As the U.S. Forest Service’s plans are being finalized about what to do with the thousands of acres of timber that were killed on National Forest land in the 2013 Rim Fire near Yosemite National Park, a debate is going on about whether to remove the trees or not.
Bushfire exposes large pot operation
When a bushfire in New South Wales destroyed a house, firefighters discovered nearby an underground shipping container. Inside were 118 cannabis plants with an estimated street value of $590,000.
