SOS Forests

The Payette Lets It Burn Again

After incinerating 470,529 acres of the Payette NF last summer [here], the Payette NF managers are at it again. The Rush Creek Fire is burning freely and blowing up to mega-proportions in the nation’s leading Let It Burn laboratory.

Sparked by unknown causes on July 15, the Rush Creek Fire is now 200 acres and expanding rapidly. There is no staffing on the Rush Creek Fire, no attempt to contain, control, or extinguish it. Burn, baby, burn is business as usual on the radical and lawless Payette.

This may seem like an innocuous fire, but last year the Payette NF decided to let innocuous fires burn until 800,000 acres were incinerated across three national forests [here, here, here, here, here].

This blurb was spit up last week on the Payette NF website [here]:

McCall, ID (July 18, 2008) – The Krassel Ranger District is currently managing the 30 [sic] acre Rush Creek Fire in the Frank Church – River of No Return Wilderness. The fire is located in the Rush Creek area near Shellrock Creek in a remote area characterized by steep slopes and rocky terrain and is not threatening property or people [just forests, wildlife, watershed, and other resource values].

The cause of the fire is unknown [we're clueless and don't really care]. It began on July 15 and is burning in heavy timber [i.e. forests, the kind with trees]. Currently, the fire is staying on the ground and moving slowly through the forest [until it blew up to 200 acres and is now rapidly growing]. The fire was at 20 acres when it was discovered and grew to an estimated 30-40 acres, due in part to an increase in wind [but she's a roaring now. Whoopsie daisy, another bonehead bad fire behavior prediction]. Thunderstorms are expected to bring wind and rain today and tomorrow but temperatures are predicted to bring hotter and drier conditions over the weekend.

The fire is being closely monitored via over flights by fire staff [no firefighter is going near it]. Fire Management Staff and Forest leadership are monitoring the fire’s progression and will implement point protection if values become threatened [that would be never on the Payette. They have no values]. Fire behavior modeling is also being utilized to help predict the progression and spread of the fire across the landscape [even though the models are funky and wrong].

The Rush Creek Fire is being managed and not immediately suppressed because of its location, the potential for resource benefits associated with fire and the lack of any threat to people or property [WHAT GODDAMN RESOURCE BENEFITS????????????????]. Not suppressing the fire also does not put firefighters at risk unnecessarily [just the forests, wildlife, watersheds, etc.] Firefighter and public safety are priorities as fire managers consider the array of fire management tools available to them [such as sit on their fat cans and do nothing].

This pro-holocauster government babble and horrific abrogation of legally mandated responsibilities is likely to lead to another megafire at the cost of tens of $millions and damages in the hundreds of $millions. They got away with it last year (no Payette person was prosecuted or jailed for burning 1,250 square miles of public forest).

There has been no Environmental Impact Statement written, no hearings, no Declarations by Forest Supervisor Susie Raines, not even the slightest nod towards U.S. environmental laws such as NEPA, ESA, NHPA, NFMA, or all the rest. The Payette don’t need no stinking laws to do Let It Burn.

Please call the Payette National Forest at (208) 634-0700, (208) 634-0784, or (208) 634-6945 to express your displeasure.