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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 18, 2013 - 05:42pm PT
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Joseph: Thanks for the links. Works for me. I do appreciate the Inciweb link maps are often out of date.
Thanks everyone for the anniversary wishes! Things are looking more encouraging for the Sun Valley area today.
But the Schist just keeps coming for Idaho. There is a new fire that is burning hot on the SW side of the Sawtooth Mtns.
The Little Queens Fire is already at 1,000 acres and is currently staffed by 4 observers. It will likely affect air quality in the Stanley area, and there are already trail closures in the area.
http://www.inciweb.org/incident/3663/
Here's some more photos from the Beaver Cr. fire.
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susan peplow
climber
Joshua Tree, CA
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Aug 18, 2013 - 08:13pm PT
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A shout out for safety of one of our own Supertopian's Chris Trudeau. Almost for certain in the thick of this as he's the Helitack Superintendent for Swan Valley just east of there. Hoping for speedy containment and most importantly safety of residents and firefighters!
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jaaan
Trad climber
Chamonix, France
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Aug 20, 2013 - 08:02am PT
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Bump for this. Does anyone have any updates - particularly Croy Creek - Fritz, anyone? The inciweb and Blaine sites don't seem to give much away.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 20, 2013 - 09:50am PT
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Jaaan & all: Things are looking much better on the Beaver Creek fire.
Looking at recent updates:
Pre-evacuation alert for Ketchum & Sun Valley were lifted last night.
Sat. photos of the fire at 3:00 A.M. this morning show recent burning only on the N.E. corner of the fire.
Most all of Croy Cr. burned on the N. side of the main road, but no structures are reported lost.
Currently 1,800 fire-fighters and a bunch of copters, planes, and bull-dozers are in the area.
Fire manager was optimistic last night about total control of the fire happening soon.
Scattered showers and higher humidity are expected for the next three days.
On the down-side, the new Little Queens fire on the S.W side of the Sawtooth Range is up to 7,000 areas and the nearby ghost/mining/tourist town of Atlanta is under mandatory evacuation. Smoke was very bad yesterday in the south-end of the Sawtooths.
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jaaan
Trad climber
Chamonix, France
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Aug 20, 2013 - 10:03am PT
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Thanks again Fritz.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Aug 20, 2013 - 12:15pm PT
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Today's paper says it is still only 9% contained/97Kacres with continued
potential strong winds. :-(
I remember a fire in E Washington in the 70's was about 40K acres and that
was considered nearly cataclysmic back then. That would be considered
NBD these days. Our Station Fire two years ago was 160K acres.
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jaaan
Trad climber
Chamonix, France
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Aug 21, 2013 - 11:45am PT
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Seems things are looking a bit better now. My friends have been told they can hopefully go home today or tomorrow.
Question is now what can be done about the 100 years of fire suppression timber that's just waiting to go up again? Can it be safely burned under control? Is there an official strategy to somehow deal with this?
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Aug 21, 2013 - 12:07pm PT
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All of these fires would be NBD, if there were some selective timber harvesting and removal of the underburden. The fires near my ranch/home last year were a result of lots of old and beetle killed timber going up in smoke and flames. The selective removal of dead trees by firewood users hd been discontinued. Everything simply becomes a throwaway under the current system.
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jaaan
Trad climber
Chamonix, France
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Aug 21, 2013 - 12:16pm PT
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I was climbing at Elephant's Perch last year and we could see and smell the smoke from the Halstead fire. From what you say about the big fires back in 1910 Idaho does seem to have a bad track record. Do other states suffer in this way/as badly? I guess California is one...?
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mouse from merced
Trad climber
The finger of fate, my friends, is fickle.
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Aug 22, 2013 - 08:12am PT
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My friend in Idaho, Marion A. Carlson, who owns a hay farm up there, has posted this picture on her FB Timeline.
Mandy Carlson was from Merced and knew The Flames intimately.
She resided in Wawona for a time "back when."
One night, in fall, she hosted one fine party there.
We gladly went, for it was raining like heck in the Valley.
Even Flames need someplace to dry out.
The beer was flowing...hardly a dry night!
Oh, how I wish it would rain![Click to View YouTube Video]
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Bad Climber
climber
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Aug 22, 2013 - 09:15am PT
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I'm hoping for the best in Idaho. We need fires, but we like to live in areas meant to burn. Not a good combo. Y'all should know that beetle kill IS NOT an indicator of increased fire risk. It just looks that way. Here's a quote from a leading scientist/forester:
Below is an excerpt from Dr. Kulakowski’s testimony on April 11, 2013 before the Subcommittee on Public Lands and Environmental Regulation of the Committee on Natural Resources of the United States House of Representatives. He was providing information for the committee members to consider when they vote on H.R. 1442, a proposed bill with a strange name, the “Depleting Risk from Insect Infestation, Soil Erosion, and Catastrophic Fire Act of 2013″.
“…Another example is that of a major outbreak of spruce beetle in spruce and fir forests in Colorado in the 1940s, following which there was substantial concern about the increased risk of fire. But although over 300 fires occurred in that region in the decades that followed, our research found that the forests affected by beetles were no more likely to have burned than other forests. Furthermore, no major fires occurred in those beetle-affected forests in the years and decades that followed the outbreak despite the abundance of dead trees. The most likely explanation for this lack of large severe fires is that climatic conditions in these forests are a more important factor in determining fire risk than is the presence of dead trees. In fact, it was not until a severe drought in 2002 that a large fire affected these forests. During that year there were many wildfires in Colorado, the majority of which burned forests with no recent history of outbreaks.
The article: http://wildfiretoday.com/tag/beetles/
Counter-intuitive, yo!
BAd
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Aug 22, 2013 - 11:01am PT
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That quoted statement is a perfect example of mealy-mouthed double-speak. Of course there's no greater risk of a fire "outbreak." That is normally left to lightning. The old dry beetle killed timber burns like crazy once it's ignited, though. In the northern Medicine Bow National Forest near my ranch, there hasn't been anything done to reduce the spread of wildfires, such as selective removal of 100 years of accumulated dead timber; this resulted in over 150K acres being destroyed last Summer.
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jaaan
Trad climber
Chamonix, France
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Aug 22, 2013 - 12:09pm PT
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Am I being naďve in thinking that one of the reasons that there is a beetle problem is that fires that would otherwise have wiped them out, have been suppressed?
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John M
climber
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Aug 22, 2013 - 12:20pm PT
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Brokedown.. that article goes on to say..
Furthermore, no major fires occurred in those beetle-affected forests in the years and decades that followed the outbreak despite the abundance of dead trees.
He then theorizes that weather is the primary difference, not dead trees. I have no idea, but it is interesting to me how much a fire will lay down at night, with just a 20 to 40 degree drop in temperature, even though the flash point of wood is 572 degrees. This to me points to the significance of weather. I'm not a fire guy, so I don't really know. It seems like dead trees would make for more fierce fires. It takes longer for green stuff to catch, but when it does, it can really go up.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Aug 22, 2013 - 12:40pm PT
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John M- You surmise correctly. Dry wood ignites a lot faster/easier than green wood.
Beetles seem to like old and mature trees. My ex and I formerly owned 160 acres that was entirely surrounded by National Forest, and the dead trees there (beetle kill) were predominantly "mature" Ponderosa pines and black pines. The younger trees were still mostly green and viable. We were engaged in cutting down the big dead ones on our property to clear space for a cabin, firewood, and fire control when we finally decided to sell the land. That acreage was burned to the ground last year. It saddens me to see the beautiful trees all turned to dust and ashes.
Edited 10:43 AM.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 22, 2013 - 04:54pm PT
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A lot of Idaho burns most-every summer, however as Ron Anderson mentioned: The Big Burn of 1910 set the record:
The Great Fire of 1910 (also commonly referred to as the Big Blowup, the Big Burn, or the Devil's Broom fire) was a wildfire that burned about three million acres (12,140 km2, approximately the size of Connecticut) in northeast Washington, northern Idaho (the panhandle), and western Montana. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Fire_of_1910
That fire also set in motion the concept of complete forest-fire suppression that dominated Forest Service thinking until a few years back, when lower budgets and more fires helped to turn around almost 90 years of fighting forest fires with every resouce available.
One of the leading theories on complete fire suppression in the Northern Rockies was that Lodgepole Pine, which is a "fire-species" would be naturally replaced by longer lived non-fire species such as Douglas Fir & Spruce. That would gradually help to change an entire ecosystem from fire-oriented vegetation to wetter non-fire oriented vegetation.
It seemed to be working in some places. In the 1970's on the upper Middle Fork Salmon drainage, I could see it happening.
However, with current budgets for fire suppression and what appears to be a hotter and drier climate, most all of Idaho has burned in the last 15 years.
Here are Modis Satellite Fire Maps, showing in yellow areas that burned in the Upper Great Basin, I have areas burned for 2006 & 2007, then skip to 2010-to present. The 2007 photo is of West-Central Idaho, but the other photos show central & S. Idaho, eastern Nevada, most of Utah, and parts of SW Montana & Western Wyoming.
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Fritz
Trad climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Topic Author's Reply - Aug 22, 2013 - 11:19pm PT
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A historical note from my working for a Forest Service helicopter fire-crew based out of Hailey Idaho in the late 1960's. We had our Forest Service fire-retardant mixer, which we would climb up to with heavy bags of retardant to mix with water.
The fire-retardant was delivered by huge single-engine WWII surplus TBM Avenger torpedo bombers. The TBM Avenger is the largest single engine propeller driven airplane to operate from an aircraft carrier. During fire-fighing operations, they held up to 600 gallons of retardant. Photo below is a Forest Service file photo of a TBM Avenger.
The planes had a huge rotary-engine which vibrated the air and ground like -------the flight-deck on a WWII Aircraft Carrier.
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Brokedownclimber
Trad climber
Douglas, WY
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Aug 23, 2013 - 09:46am PT
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Fritz-
Another popular ex-Navy airplane is the twin engine P2V Neptune Antisubmarine warfare patrol bomber. At the height of the 2012 fire season in Wyoming last August, there were 2 Neptunes and 2 DC-10s operating from KCPR (Casper) in the fire retardant dropping-role, in addition to several single engine Ag-cats and helicopters. The extreme dryness exacerbated the problem of lots of old growth and beetle killed timber in inaccessible terrain. There were at one time 3 separate fires burning in the Medicine Bow National Forest all at the same time, which spread the fire fighting resources pretty thin. A lot of economic benefit would have resulted from some selective timber harvesting: fewer burned cabins and cremated wildlife, in addition to the revenue accrued to the FS from timber sales.
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Yeti
Trad climber
Ketchum, Idaho
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Aug 26, 2013 - 01:26pm PT
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Fritz: Thanks much for the good wishes. We live in East Fork and on the 15th I watched the Greenhorn burn for a few hours before packing a few irreplaceables up in time to be pre-evacuated. I stashed the priceless things with a friend in a safe zone and joined several other Wood River Valley homeless people for a few days of climbing at the City. Climbing was good and it's amazing how simple life can be without all that 'stuff' in the house. We're in Bozeman but will be back in East Fork this week and if you're going to the city this weekend let me know. Happy Anniversary! Yeti
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HighTraverse
Trad climber
Bay Area
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Aug 26, 2013 - 01:32pm PT
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I remember those Avengers fighting the fires around Salt Lake Valley.
One particularly vivid memory of them making 3 or 4 drops one afternoon on the lower slopes of Mt Olympus just above town. Could see them from my yard but Mom drove us up 39th south to get a closer view (she loved that stuff). Now nothing but houses all they way up to the lowest slabs on Olympus. No range fires up there now.
CalFire retired their P2Vs a couple of years ago.
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