Fort Ord prescribed fire at 11:11 a.m. October 15, 2013 nine hours before it escaped. Photo by Andrew Po.
A prescribed fire on Fort Ord near Monterey, California escaped Tuesday. The objective of the fire was to remove vegetation to make it easier to clear the area of unexploded ordnance. The plan was to burn 341 acres but it blacked an additional 100 acres. The fire was ignited in the morning and at 6 p.m. the Army said it was contained. Between 9 p.m. and 11:30 p.m. a large smoke plume was seen in the area.
This is the third escaped prescribed fire on Fort Ord in the last 16 years. In 1997, a planned 100-acre burn turned into a 700-acre wildfire. In 2003, a scheduled 490-acre burn jumped containment lines and burned 1,470 acres.
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UPDATE October 19, 2013: Rock, who was at the prescribed fire (see his comment below) sent us this photo taken at about 10 a.m., hours before the fire escaped.
Fort Ord prescribed fire 10 a.m. October 15, 2013. Photo by Rock.
Escaped prescribed fire north of Grantsburg, WI. Photo by Wisconsin DNR.
A prescribed fire conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources escaped control on Tuesday north of Grantsburg in the northwest part of the state. The project, planned at 500 acres, burned an additional 600 acres before it was contained Tuesday afternoon with the help of two air tankers and a helicopter.
A spokesperson for the DNR said no structures were damaged. The fire burned grass, marsh and some upland forest, including jack pine.
Escaped prescribed fire north of Grantsburg, WI. Photo by Wisconsin DNR.
San Felipe Fire as seen from Mt. Laguna at 9:50 a.m. PT, May 5, 2013 (click to enlarge)
(UPDATE at 7:18 a.m. PT, May 26, 2013)
CAL FIRE is reporting the fire has burned 2,650 acres and is 90 percent contained. Resources assigned include 612 personnel, 50 engines, 23 hand crews, 6 dozers and 11 water tenders.
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(UPDATE at 12:19 p.m. PT, May 25, 2012)
After overnight GPS mapping, the fire is now listed at 1,800 acres and 70 percent containment.
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(UPDATE at 5:30 p.m. PT, May 24, 2013)
The incident commander of the San Felipe fire northeast of Julian, California is calling it 1,850 acres and 70 percent contained.
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(UPDATE at 3:27 p.m. PT, May 24, 2013)
The images from the Mt. Laguna camera show that the San Felipe Fire is not putting up as much smoke as it was earlier today. CAL FIRE, in a 2:30 p.m. update, reports that it has grown to 1,800 acres and is still 60 percent contained.
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(Originally published at 10:25 a.m. PT, May 24, 2013)
A prescribed fire in Anza Borrego Desert State Park 4 miles northeast of Julian, California got away from firefighters around noon on Thursday. A change in the wind direction is being blamed for the escape, now named the San Felipe Fire, that as of Thursday evening had burned 1,500 acres and was 60 percent contained.
The Ramona Sentinel reported that CAL FIRE conducted the prescribed fire.
Map showing the approximate location of San Felipe Fire, heat detected by a satellite at 10:35 p.m. PT, May 23, 2013 (click to enlarge)
As of 6:15 p.m. on Thursday the resources assigned to the San Felipe Fire included 644 personnel, 65 engines, 24 hand crews, 5 air tankers, 7 helicopters, 5 dozers, and 13 water tenders.
An animation of still photos taken from Mt. Laguna Thursday afternoon is available HERE. A window may pop up outside of your browser. It will take a while to load, and it may not work in the Chrome browser.
Two newspapers, at least, are running a story following up on the May 7 prescribed fire in Devils Tower National Monument that escaped during mopup operations the following day and burned 56 acres outside the project boundary. All except one or two of those “bonus acres” were inside the Monument. The small amount that crossed over the boundary unfortunately burned land leased by Wyoming state Senator Ogden Driskill, but did not damage any structures.
The Billings Gazette and the Rapid City Journal published the same article written by Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal. Senator Driskill’s wife, Rosanne Driskill was quoted as saying:
Fire is a legitimate management tool. Farmers and ranchers use it themselves,” Rosanne Driskill said. “But you don’t do it in your front yard or on the face of a national monument.
However, the Monument’s Chief Ranger, Drew Gilmour, thankfully disagreed, saying that is exactly where you want to do it in order to control invasive plants and reduce fallen timber and other snags that can fuel future wildfires.
File photo of the Meadow prescribed fire, Devils Tower National Monument, May, 2000. NPS photo.
Devils Tower has conducted many prescribed fires without any escapes until this year. But a few of the locals have previously been vocal in their opposition. Around 1996 or 1997, one of the projects burned a little hotter than anticipated and took out a pretty good sized patch of Ponderosa Pine on the east side below the tower — the most visible aspect that can easily be seen from the main highway and as visitors drive into the entrance road. One local citizen was quoted as saying, “The Monument is ruined for generations!”. Since then many of the trees killed in that fire have fallen, and much of the downed wood was probably consumed in the May 7 prescribed fire.
File photo of the Meadow prescribed fire in Devils Tower National Monument, May, 2000. NPS photo by Bill Gabbert.
A few hours after the National Park Service posted a very nice photo on their Facebook page of a prescribed fire at Devils Tower (map) in Wyoming, (which we placed on Wildfire Today) the fire escaped and burned 56 acres outside the project boundary.
Firefighters from the Northern Great Plains unit of the National Park Service ignited the prescribed fire on Tuesday, May 7, but winds on Wednesday caused it to spot across the control line in the afternoon, burning 56 unplanned acres in the southwest part of the Monument. The original intent was to treat 300 acres with fire.
Named Belle Fourche, the fire damaged a power line, interrupting the electrical service for 15 to 20 residences. The power company restored the electricity later in the day.
Today, Thursday, the fire is 90 percent contained and firefighters are mopping up.
In the interest of full disclosure, Devils Tower was one of the seven National Parks for which I was the Area Fire Management Officer, from 1998 until 2003.
We don’t have the exact number of resources that were on the fire, but we found out that the fire organization ordered breakfast for 115 people on Thursday.
At the automatic weather station at Devils Tower on Tuesday and Wednesday the temperature was in the mid 70s. The relative humidity on Tuesday bottomed out at 17 percent, but was higher on Wednesday at 24 percent.
On Thursday, the day the fire escaped, the wind speed was 5 to 7 mph, with gusts at 13 to 22 mph. The previous day it was 2 to 6 mph, gusting at 10 to 12.
Below is a map showing the approximate location of the planned prescribed fire. The Tower is just outside the project boundary, shaped a little oddly in this Google Earth 3-D rendering.
Approximate location of the planned Belle Fourche prescribed fire at Devils Tower. The green line is the Monument’s boundary. Wildfire Today map. (click to enlarge)
Ranchers in western North Dakota will be donating hay to their fellow ranchers whose grazing lands burned April 3 after a prescribed fire escaped on the Grand River Ranger District of the Dakota Prairie National Grasslands in South Dakota. The prescribed fire conducted by the U.S. Forest Service was supposed to have been a 130-acre project, but it escaped control on a windy day and burned 10,800 acres southwest of Lemmon, South Dakota.
Some of the ranchers who will be donating hay received similar donations after a massive 1999 wildfire in McKenzie County and have not forgotten that kindness. They are also making arrangements to help rebuild some of the 64 miles of fence that was damaged in the fire.
Here is an excerpt from an article at FarmAndRanchGuide:
…There were 11 ranchers affected by the fire, some more than others and one who lost all his grass.
Frank Carroll, a retired Forest Service employee who specializes in filing damage claims, met with them this week to get the process started. The Forest Service has said it’s up to ranchers to pay their own damages and then file claims, a process that will take up to two years.
Carroll said one rancher lost 26 calves because cows had to be pushed from a burned hay yard out on to stubble, though other losses were less dramatic. He said fence damages alone tallies around $1.4 million and replacement hay and feed will be another cost.
The Grand River Grazing Association paid Carroll to spend Thursday and Friday with affected ranchers as a group and one on one, said secretary Cathy Evans.
