Wednesday Morning Fire Update
Fires are blowing up all over. Oregon is particularly hard hit.
The Royce Butte Fire [here] ignited yesterday in the Five Butte area. That is the portion of the Deschutes NF where Judge Michael R. Hogan enjoined fuels management last week at the request of Earth First! [here]. The protracted legal battle prevented any treatment, and now the area is ablaze. Intense burning was observed with 150-foot flame lengths, running crown fire, and long range spotting. Crescent Lake Junction, Diamond Peaks subdivision (located west of Crescent Lake Junction), the Odell Lake Lodge, and all summer homes at Crescent and Odell Lakes have been evacuated. The Central Oregon Type 2 IMT (Rapp) has been requested and is on the fire this morning.
Too bad they named the fire already. I would have suggested it be named the Hogan Earth First! Fire in honor of the folks responsible.
The Middlefork Fire [here] of the Lonesome Complex has raged across the Cascade crest and is headed for Klamath Valley, now only four miles away from the crowning fire front. Acreage burned was reported at 6,000 acres but is closer to 9,000 acres. The Middlefork Fire has been burning for a month. It could have been extinguished when tiny, but Rogue River-Siskiyou NF Supervisor Scott Conroy demurred. He decided to make it a non-suppression “suppression” fire. Nearly $7 million has been spent not suppressing the Middlefork Fire, so far. Now it is burning on the Fremont-Winema NF and is somebody else’s problem.
The Rattle Fire [here] on the Umpqua NF blew up again yesterday and doubled in size to 13,000+ acres. It has spread east out of the Boulder Creek Wilderness, crested Thorn Mountain, and is incinerating the Deer Creek drainage due north of Toketee Falls. Interestingly, the stats reported by the ORCA Type 2 IMT (Paul) are grossly misstated in all departments. The fire is at least 13,000 acres; they report 7,400. The fire is less than 10 percent contained; they report 25 percent. The fire has cost over $18 million so far; they report $9 million.
Ken Paul’s team cannot be trusted to tell the truth. They are doing a lousy job of fighting the fire, too, unless their goal is to burn as much of the Umpqua NF as possible, in which case they are succeeding according to plan.
The Rattle Fire was under control two weeks ago. But then the Northwest Oregon IMT (IC Carl West) was ordered off the fire for doing too good a job [here]. Nobody is going to accuse ORCA of that!
The Gnarl Ridge Fire on Mt. Hood was contained a month ago [here], but the Mt. Hood NF failed to do adequate mop up and now the fire has flared up again. No report yet on evacuations or fire suppression response (if any), but the smoke is pouring into the Hood River Valley, again.
In Kings Canyon National Park the Tehipite Fire has blown up [here]. The Tehipite Fire was ignited two months ago and allowed to smolder all summer. In the last week it has exploded into a raging fire and quadrupled in size to over 8,000 acres. Plume behavior was reported, indicating crown fire and 100% tree mortality. KCNP officials continue to watch, dumbfounded and impotent, as one of America’s treasures is incinerated. Park Superintendent Richard Martin is worthless when it comes to caring for and protecting our national park.
All in all, a very bad day for forests.
by Russ
Regarding the Gnarl Ridge Fire: I sat in on the morning briefing with our local Fire Chief. The fire is basically free burning, somewhere around 2,000 acres, moving to the Northwest and around Mt. Hood at the 3-4 thousand foot level, burning in bug kill, over mature firs, and plantations. There are no effective control actions taking place because of the lack of resources, air and ground. A Type 2 team will be taking over the fire this afternoon(9/17).
Currently a Task Force of engines from the Hood River Valley is moving to the Copper Spur area to provide protection for about 75 homes, a resort and the Copper Spur ski area. Residents of the area are under a voluntary evacuation order, which will probably go to mandatory. Two historic sites, Tilly Jane camping area and Cloud Cap Resort, are in serious jeopardy. They cannot be protected by engines because of the terrain, fuels, and access.
The Crystal Springs Water District’s Zone of Contribution on the mountain is also in harms way, and may have already had portions of the area burned.
The fire “ice capped” at about 0930 this morning and has a vertical column at least 20,000 feet above the terrain. Safety briefing this morning emphasized critical burning conditions for the next several days.
There is no estimate of control or final size.
Those of you living in the Portland area should have good view of the column.
The area currently burning is one that the FS tried to treat with a thinning and forest health timber sale several years ago. However, several local residents with legal help from an environmental group in the Portland area were able to wear the FS down and the thinning sale was not made.
I walked that entire thinning with the TMO and we talked at length about the mark. I was polite but told her I would have marked it a lot heavier. She said they were trying to appease. Later we both chatted about it with the DR. She was nice but airy. Eventually nothing happened.
I also cruised it for a potential land swap. The Mt. Hood NF decided they didn’t want to trade it because it was the one spot where they thought they might have a timber sale. Also there is an historical road (more like an overgrown rut) up there.
Shoulda, coulda, woulda…
by bear bait
Arson is the magic word and the official USFS land management policy under Chief Kimball.
We live in funny times. Since the Consent Decree in Region 5 in 1984 (I believe the year was) when the Regional Forester settled a discrimination suit by two women on promotions, education has not been a resume’ line item nor has experience. To fill slots and to make sure the decree was followed, a woman or a person of color could transfer into the USFS or BLM with a law degree or a Job Corps certificate and hold any management job at any level without ever having taken a course in science, let alone forestry-related natural science.
Today we are paying for ignorance in favor of gender and ethnicity. Top down, the USFS can’t pour piss out of a boot, with a hole in the toe and directions on the heel, if their pants were afire. Total disarray. No idea of mission. All blather and kumbaya and no common sense. Paint by the numbers and Cod Forbid someone loses #19.
The idea that fires can be suppressed with limited dollars seems to work for local, county and state agencies. They do it every day. Only with the Feds does it take three days to begin to fight a fire. By then it is all lost and efforts are always a step behind, a day late, and a dollar short. Then all the blame for high costs is placed on people who live in houses within 20 miles of a wilderness or wildland.
The ONLY way to fight fire is with a command structure that names the first on the fire the IC until relieved by an Incident Command Team. That person knows the fire, where it started, where it is headed, and where safe zones are. There is no confusion because one person is in charge for the time being. Good or bad, that person gains valuable experience, and when the Overhead Team gets there, they know who to debrief and get their feet on the floor in a more seamless manner.
But that usually stops fires too fast, not enough resources get burned, and the per acre cost is too high. That is the USFS way to do things, though. Jack-ass accounting rules until the whole of the industry is bankrupt, and then talk about change but do nothing but bail water out of a sinking ship. Read the paper; that is our story now.
The mentality of mortgage bankers, investment bankers, and hedge fund wannabes guides the USFS with the same reverse efficiency… pouring billions, even trillions, down the drain. Destroying watersheds, heritage forests that will never be again, priceless National Park vistas and vegetation, and hurrying species to extinction. Insane. The American Way Today: Insanity Rules!! Keep the USA weird!!!
So arson is now forest management. WFU is the Plan!! The trees are burned to save them from the loggers!!! Kevorkian Forestry. MacNamara Forestry. Burn the village to save it from the communists, only in this case, for the communists. If this does not work, look for the fire tankers to be flying napalm instead of retardant [helicopters already do that to our domestic forests; it's called aerial ignition - Mike].
When the Democrats run Congress, this is what you get: Lyndon Johnson napalm on the forests, and forests re-imagined as fixed carbon to be unfixed by sudden oxidation. The plan is to incinerate it all so that the new forest will (over decades) sequester all the greenhouse gases and carbon released (over the course of a few hours) by the flames. Now that is what the old Hooktender described as “wipin’ your butt on a hoop.”
by YPmule
Prescribed fire blows up on the Sawtooth NF:
http://www.mtexpress.com/index2.php?ID=2005122673
Prescribed fire jumps lines, threatens highway
Stranded Highway 75 travelers bide their time in historic Smiley Creek Lodge
This was just the line burn for the prescribed burn, and it got away from them. Also it sounds like they burned twice the number of acres than they intended. We have had a very dry fall so far this season, today is a red flag day, its very very dry. They are warning hunters to be careful with campfires. The forecast last weekend was hot and dry yet they went ahead and started a fire.
In addition to all the above, a smoldering lightning strike has exploded into a canopy fire in the Bull of the Woods Wilderness. Thought to have been sparked by lightning a month ago, the Lake Lenore Fire was 550 acres as of yesterday evening.
The fire is in old-growth westside Cascades forest. Trees up to 450 years old are torching. Irreplaceable, extreme resource destruction is occurring.
There was no initial attack. No attempt to contain, control, or extinguish the fire is being made. The fire is being “monitored.”
This is what wilderness designation means, priceless old-growth owl habitat is set up to burn and allowed to burn in catastrophic holocaust.
Hurray for holocaust. Do you feel like you did your part for the planet today by chipping in money to Earth First! arsonist USFS policies? Because you did. That’s what your tax dollars go to.
After a major run across the higher elevation forests on the Northeast side of Mt. Hood yesterday(9/17) the Gnarl seems to be calm this morning, while waiting to see if the weather change from Southeast winds to Southwest winds kicks it into life and heads back toward where it came from.
Last evening the fire was reported at about 2,000 acres and had reached the Elliot creek area, but stayed up slope from Cooper Spur resort and resident area. Cloud Cap Inn was spared although the fire went over it. Foam and fire proof wrap probably made the difference. As of last evening I had no information about facilities at Tilly Jane. The fire did burn through that area, but because of the fire and down trees no one had been able to check damage.
Carl West’s IMT is on the fire and will take command early today. Weather is calling for temperatures in the 70’s and SW winds up to 10 mph. Extended forecast is for continued mild temperatures, some clouds and a slight chance of showers late this week.
Control efforts yesterday were hampered by lack of firefighting resources, aviation and hand crews, lack of access and heavy concentrations of dead and down trees.
A human caused fire at the site of the Five Butte timber sale a few days after the injunction? Sure sounds like arson to me.