Tag: Myrtle Fire

Since the Myrtle fire burned over 10,000 acres and racked up $4,000,000 in suppression costs, land managers in the Black Hills of South Dakota have become more proactive and aggressive in organizing to fight wildfires. The agencies have been attacking new fires with enough resources to stop the spread within the first burning period. And it has not been easy in all cases. While dozens of lightning-caused fires have burned less than two acres, a few fires have burned several hundred acres but were stopped the same day.

In addition — they have beefed up the number of ground resources available for initial and extended attack of new fires; have increased the number of helicopters available at Custer; on most days there have been a couple of heavy air tankers available at Rapid City; and today they announced that fire managers from the Black Hills National Forest, the National Park Service, and the South Dakota Division of Wildland Fire Suppression entered into an agreement to order a Type 2 Incident Management Team to operate a Command and Mobilization Center. The Team will be assisting with initial attack of fires that grow beyond the capabilities of local resources; assisting the local units by tracking and handling the administrative processes of incoming personnel, crews and equipment; and ordering and resupplying the tools, equipment and other items to ensure that firefighters are ready to go to the next fire.

These are all welcome improvements, and the land managers should be commended for their success in dealing with the many new fires over the last eight days.

This was not necessarily the case when the Myrtle fire started at 1:30 p.m. MT on July 19. From the radio traffic I heard, the first large air tankers were requested at approximately 3:40 p.m. and I saw the first one arrive over the fire at 7:14 p.m. By that time, the Type 1 Incident Management Team, which is used for managing the largest and most complex fires, had already been ordered. I don’t know if a squadron of air tankers over the fire in the first 30 minutes would have made a big difference, but for whatever reason, the fixed wing aerial resources were not available to assist the firefighters on the ground.

As we frequently say, air tankers don’t put out fires, boots on the ground do. But air tankers and helicopters can greatly enhance their effectiveness. An investment in flight time and retardant within the first 30 minutes can, in some cases, save the taxpayers millions of dollars and reduce the loss of lives and property. Having only nine large air tankers available on long term contracts for the entire country makes this objective difficult to achieve. Ten years ago we had 53.

On June 26 we provided a solution for reducing the number of megafires. It began like this:

Dr. Gabbert’s prescription for keeping new fires from becoming megafires: Rapid initial attack with overwhelming force using both ground and air resources, arriving within the first 10 to 30 minutes when possible…

Thanks to the great efforts by firefighters, and favorable weather, the incident management team is calling the Myrtle fire in the Black Hills of South Dakota 75 percent contained. The size has not changed in the last few days, and remains at 10,080 acres. Monday evening I visited the fire and saw no major fire activity, only scattered smokes.

Two weather stations near the fire measured 0.28″ and 0.30″ of rain between 9 and 11 p.m. on Monday, but it was a mixed blessing, in that it came with a great deal of lightning, as you can see in these photos.

Investigators determined that the likely cause of the fire was a U.S. Forest Service road grader that was performing road maintenance. The belief is that the metal blade fractured a rock on the road surface igniting the grassy fuels on the roadside.

All evacuations and road closures have been lifted, and electrical power as been restored to primary residences in the area. Wind Cave National Park plans to reopen today.

A map of the fire current as of Monday night can be found HERE. While it came very close, the fire still has not burned anything within Wind Cave National Park.

Today I spent several hours on the south end of the Myrtle fire in the Black Hills of South Dakota where firefighters were successfully conducting an extensive burning operation in Cold Brook Canyon and Song Dog Road. They usually had the wind at their backs and the milder weather along with a little rain yesterday minimized any extreme fire behavior, but the fire still burned extremely well. It only took a few drops out of the drip torches to convince the fire to spread quickly from the firelines and roads into the timber. The temperature maxed out at about 90 while the relative humidity was in the high 20s.

Firefighters enjoy burning operations. It’s not as physically exhausting as constructing fireline, for example, and it can be very satisfying to conduct a well-planned and skillfully executed burnout. You can very quickly see the effects of your efforts, whether they are positive, or if you’re chasing spot fires across the fireline.

Two of the crews working on this operation today were the Sawtooth and the San Juan Hotshots. It is always a pleasure to see such highly trained and experienced crews work. This was not a simple burning operation, and it involved igniting some distance away from the firelines to draw in the heat that was later generated closer to the lines. These crews did it as if they do it every day, with very little verbal direction from the supervisors. They know their jobs. The only raised voice I heard was when someone running a drip torch completed her assignment, stopped to extinguish the torch with her back to what she had just lit, and didn’t realize that 3-foot flames were heading her direction and were about 6 feet away. Someone said “GET OUT OF THERE!”. And she did. Safely. No harm done.

(More photos are below.)

Continue reading “Photos from a burning operation at the Myrtle fire in South Dakota”