Historic Fires out West

[BradMarks]

Not Political: All Lives Matter.  Pray for those impacted. Our state is aflame, entire communities torched.  California up in smoke, Washington only a little better, for now. Daughter and SIL evacuated to our house in town two nights ago, probably lost their house. House they used to have farther up river burned up.  BIL fifteen minutes away from us evacuated yesterday.  Last time I felt this helpless was when my brother was in a coma, rest his soul. Send the positive thoughts our way.

[sawguy21]

Thinking of you, we have been through it. All you can do is hope for the best and prepare for the worst.

[RPF2509]

The wind is the big driver so far.  Hills east of Oroville burning hot, a wind shift will drive it into town.  Half of Talent, Oregon burned down - started as a grass fire.  Buildings burnt surrounded by a parking lot.  No rain is in sight for several weeks.  Its going to be a long fall.  Latest fires are mostly human caused.  I feel for you Brad and your family.

[Bruno of NH]

Sorry to hear this for all.
Prayers for your family and community. 

[charles mann]

The wind is the big driver so far.  Hills east of Oroville burning hot, a wind shift will drive it into town.  Half of Talent, Oregon burned down - started as a grass fire.  Buildings burnt surrounded by a parking lot.  No rain is in sight for several weeks.  Its going to be a long fall.  Latest fires are mostly human caused.  I feel for you Brad and your family.

we just showed up in chico for the creek fire, threatening orville. my former employer south of portland, or, some of which former employees from there, now with me, are miles from loosing their stuff, while they are out here battling fires in other states. this season reminds me of 2017 and 2018 fire season. sad thing is, we are only a few miles from the camp fire of 2018 that claimed the lives of 80 residents of the town of paradise. i hope ya'll that are in these areas stay safe and keep the fire breaks clear.

[SwampDonkey]

Fire is definitely a nasty business. Been so dry all over the continent, only rain in spots and sometimes too much. Weird. I'm very surprised that we have been able to keep fire at bay here, never had more than 1/2" of rain at one time, mostly a mist. I bet we never had 6" of rain since May, normally there would be 20". They say only been 7" in Caribou, Maine since May. The saving grace, if there is one, is that all the old growth fir forest is pretty much been cut. When the budworm would kill a large swatch of it, it would certainly go up in smoke as soon as it dried out and mostly man influenced. Years ago in this region, the old timers cleared all tree growth around the farm buildings, for good reason. Now there are whole communities in under tree canopy. It's not a good idea.

[Roxie]

Our thoughts are with all in harms way. 

Back in the day, we watched a forest fire top the Brushy Mountains in North Carolina and jump from mountain to mountain with terrifying ease. 

You never forget the helpless feeling and your realization of your own insignificance in the face of Mother Nature's power. 

[thecfarm]

Fire is bad, even with all the equipment, we can not control a fire.  :(

I have seen 2,one bordered my land, and one up the road. But only on a small scale. Only acres, not miles was burned.

[sawguy21]

What Roxie said. The speed is terrifying as it crowns from tree to tree, forget trying to outrun it.

[Howdy]

Living just west of Portland Oregon we are surrounded by several different wildfires.  Closest they have ever been to us in the last 40 years.  Sky is hazy and breathing is difficult, eyes sting, and the heat/smoke is held tight to the ground by an inversion layer.  Looking at the sun is easy as it is so obscured, street lights are on most of the time.

My daughter living one town south is under a level two evacuation with everything packed and ready to go.  Hills between us are consumed with zillion dollar estates ablaze.  

Cost of lumber has doubled and expected to keep increasing.  I bought a sheet of 3/4" plywood last week for more than $45 bucks for the cheap stuff. A buddy is in the planing stages of building a new home and the builder will not estimate prices of material any more than a very short time.  

Hang on folks.

[RPF2509]

It will be interesting to see the effect of the fires on lumber prices.  There is about a year window to harvest it before a substantial degrade.  Huge areas of prime timber are being burned.  The really big question is whether or not the National Forests will salvage timber. If they do, expect the price for logs to tumble.  Lumber may stay up due to demand for rebuilding and the general shortage of housing in the west.

[BradMarks]

Update:  Kids house is saved so far, adjacent neighbor was allowed to stay - he is the ex Chief of the McKenzie FD, and he spent 48 hrs straight putting out hotspots on the properties. There is a tired hero!.  Unfortunately, personally only,  our cabin and acreage down by Klamath Falls is straight in the path of the Two Four Two fire. On a side note a 2x4 Std and Better was $4.19 at the lumber supply two days ago, highest I can ever remember.

[Stephen1]

Our thoughts are with everyone . Mother Nature is tough on us all.

[Ljohnsaw]

My brother is up in Ashland, OR and was put on stage 1 evac (be ready).  Luckily, the fires were  north of him and heading north so he stayed safe.  Not so lucky for the folks in Talent, OR.

Down here, there are fires seeming in every direction from us.  Nothing close but the wind keeps changing direction.  Blows smoke away only to be replaced by some smoke from a different fire.  Air quality is around 100 but has spiked up to 400 at times.  Satellites showed a huge cloud of smoke off in the ocean when we had winds from the east (very unusual) only to have it come back the next day when the winds ran the "normal" direction.

[charles mann]

 Satellites showed a huge cloud of smoke off in the ocean when we had winds from the east (very unusual) only to have it come back the next day when the winds ran the "normal" thee

We were just looking at the cloud radar on foreflight and was watching plumes of smoke billowing up from a fire and the smoke/cloud bank off the coast. 
Its a weird season for sure. Hadnt been this bad in the past 3 yrs.  

[Ljohnsaw]

Just on the TV News/Weather - the smoke has gone 1,000 miles out into the Pacific and swirling counter clockwise around a low out there.  We are in a nuclear winter ;) - temps down at least 5 to 10° because the sun is blocked.

[charles mann]

temps down at least 5 to 10° because the sun is blocked.

im not complaining bout the temps. was coalinga, ca 3 wks ago and @ 115 w/ 20-25 mph winds, it was like working back in the foundry again near the blast ovens. id rather be in iraq or afghanyland dealing with that kind of heat, than here in the us. at least over there, the pay makes up for the heat.

[clearcut]

Was texting the wife at work about what to have for dinner and such, when my next text was - "Fire CLOSE! - Packing to Evacuate - what do you need me to grab for you?". Quickly, what is truly important, becomes apparent, sorry kids!  :D

Had a brush, grass, and some trees on fire less than a 1/4 mile away, blowing up quickly. Hot, dry, and windy. We were the last house before the mandatory evacuation boundary - sheriff parked in our driveway to stop residents from entering the fire zone - suggested we also evacuate. We were packing to do so. 

The fire was bordered by 2 paved roads, and the local fire departments - local fire protection district, CAL Fire, USFS, BLM, and county fire were on it in minutes. Spotter plane, air tanker dropping retardant, helitak crew, Bambi bucket below the helicopter. Fought overnight and held to 14 acres, no structures. Cause has not been announced.

Glad the family had grab and go kits packed and ready. Next-door had 15 minutes to evacuate. Residents closer just had to go.

Currently breathing the smoke from the Fork Fire which will likely be with us until it rains. Moving at a slow rate of spread through inaccessible terrain.

[BradMarks]

Lest anyone think otherwise, multiple arrests in recent days for ARSON. And there are other "human" (scum) caused fires not yet classified as arson (Riverside, Lincoln City, 242, come to mind).  Some are lightning, some neglect - Holiday Farm fire was charged power lines that came down in predicted windstorm.  That said I want to post about the politics of fire but I might be banished. Better go.

[sawguy21]

We don't have active fires but the valley is socked in solid with smoke from Washington, we can't see more than a mile and the air smells. Still haven't heard from my relys in Oregon.

[Tacotodd]

My stepdaughter from Humbolt California is coming all the way to stay with us while this thing calms down, not to mention her and her "partner" are confused. It'll be an interesting time.

I just hope that everyone fairs well.

Remember, lemons make lemonade.

TA 

[sawguy21]

We are completely socked in and the air stinks from the Washington fires 140 miles north of the border.

[BradMarks]

Sawguy:  Where do they live?

[sawguy21]

Molalla

[farmfromkansas]

Back in the days when people were settling Kansas, the first thing settlers did was cut the grass short and clean up around their home sites.  Can't have a hot fire without anything to burn.

[SwampDonkey]

Yep, around here the old homesteads never had but maybe one tree around the buildings. They remembered the Miramachi fire that burnt down half the province, one of the biggest of 3 fires in recorded history (1825).

Meanwhile, we are also getting the smoke off the western fires all the way out here on the Atlantic coast. Coming in on the wind. Can't smell it, but it is smoggy on an otherwise clear blue sunny day.

[gspren]

  Here in south eastern PA we can see the smoke as a haze, I can't smell it but the wife says she can, she smells better than me in at least two ways. :D

[trapper]

sun was bright red again as it set tonight from the smoke 

[curdog]

Flying in to Oregon today, things were really smoked in starting about Idaho and getting into Oregon I couldn't see the cascades or the ground below me in most spots. The pilot mentioned that the plane would start smelling like smoke and not to worry  :D

[RPF2509]

Just got back from the Holiday Hills fire.  Left last Monday and drove through solid smoke from norcal to Salem.  By Tuesday the fire had really slowed due to calm weather.  Spent 5 days building line and mopping up.  Thunderstorms Thursday night really put the kabosh on flame advancement.  For all the years I spent in Oregon I never saw thunderstorms like that.  Heavy rain bursts with lots of broken, uprooted trees, plenty of snapouts in the woods.  Saturday was the first day it cleared enough to see anything.  I was on the NE edge of the fire and all I could see to the south was burnt.  Some creek drainages looked OK but huge swaths of timber are burnt.  All plantations in the burn are smoked flat.  Logger I talked to said over 6 logging sides were burnt up.  Skyline towers, loaders, processors, cats and skidders - a huge hit to logging capacity.  I've seen sub drainages burnt out before but this fire burnt out several complete river systems.  I only saw about 1/1000th of the burnt area and it was devastated.  The hardest part was on the way home driving past Phoenix/Talent; entire neighborhoods burnt to ash.  These towns are the low income suburb of Medford.  People just surviving lost everything.  The fire moved up a riparian area adjacent to I-5, burnt to the waters edge.  Gas attendant I talked to said the wind was like a hair dryer - hot and strong pushing the fire ahead.  It will be a huge job recovering.  Right now the fire in the Mendocino national forest is set to top one million acres and has joined the burn scar from last year's half million acre fire to the south and is close to joining the Carr fire scar just outside of Redding.  In the last 3 years a strip over 150 miles by 30 has burnt on the west edge of the Sacramento valley.

[sawguy21]

 :( That is brutal! It will regenerate but not in my lifetime. It is actually clear and sunny this morning, a welcome break from the heavy smoke coming in from your fires.  :(

[SwampDonkey]

That certainly is one huge burn scar.

[BradMarks]

Just talked with a friend who works for the ODF and was assigned to the Holiday Farm fire, mapping/gis.  He said that Weyerhauser has lost at least 70,000 acres.  At 300 TPA for replanting (when the time comes) it amounts to 21 million seedlings. Other companies who lost lots of acres are Giustina, Rosboro.  There is not that much capacity in their nurseries for a number of years to come. And then there is the Beachie, the Riverside, both huge fires also. It will be a long time until our hills are green again with viable trees.  

[ST Ranch]

Pretty difficult to get a sense of the destruction and hardship these fires have caused these past few years. 

I came across the following that I think is a good read regarding the fire situation.

www.workingforest.com/why-firefighting-alone-wont-stop-western-mega-fires/

Tom

[Roxie]

RPF2509, thank you for responding to this crisis and reporting back to us. It's heartbreaking to hear about the devastation and it must be even harder to see with your own eyes.

Could you please explain the definition of the word snapout?  Google was not my friend on that one.

[RPF2509]

Snapout - top of the tree breaks out usually due to wind.   There is plenty of blame to spread around but basically the weather has driven all the fires to catastrophic proportions.  When its hot and blowing all you need is a spark, natural, accidental or malicious and no amount of people and equipment are going to stop it.  We are set to have 90+ temps again here in CA next week.  Rain is still a dream for CA and its the only thing that will stop the fires. OR and WA are getting rain so that may free up people and equipment for CA.  SPI looks like it lost 40K acres of timberland and plantations in the Feather river.  This is like their 5th year of getting slammed.  It would not surprise me if they pulled out of CA.  Their mills may just cut the burned wood and then close due to lack of supply.  Nursery capacity is inadequate for the private lands let alone when the fed lands are considered.  Most of the feds will be left to recover on their own meaning forest land will revert to brushfields and scrub for the next century or more.

[sawguy21]

 :'( That is sad but the harsh reality. I once chased an S-61 fighting fires in northern CA with a fuel truck. There was a big fight in Sacramento over whether to put them out or let Ma Nature take her course and rejuvenate the forest. It was finally decided if the fire was man made we would fight it, otherwise let it burn. :

[RPF2509]

Certainly prescribed fire has taken a back seat in CA for over 2 decades.  Why? Because people want bright blue skies all the time.  Back when I was in charge of burning, getting a burn day from the air quality office was once in a blue moon.  In 2018 we had 4 months of smoke every day from July to October.  Now the bay area and Sac too is getting it and they are crying after a month of bad air.  Last February we had a month with zero precipitation - it was a perfect burn window but I never saw any smoke in the air.  Maybe now people will be a little more tolerant of hazy winter days.  Forest conditions are overgrown such that it is very difficult to control a burn.  Most forests need a pretreatment before a burn to reduce fuel load to reasonable levels.  Even with 3 million acres burned there still is a lot of forest out there needing treatment.  Something like 1/2 a million acres needs to be treated a year to get back to the historical burn cycle.  If you look at old pictures of CA, most show hazy skies from burning.

[clearcut]

SPI is the largest private landowner in California, and in contention for largest in the US. I doubt that they will be leaving soon. Their business model through the 80s and 90s was to buy and rehabilitate high–graded and burned–over timber lands. 

CARB certainly has a great deal to do with insufficient acreage managed via prescribed burn. Directly by preventing ignitions during perfect burn windows and further, discouraging interest in prescribed burning. You only need to get shut down after spending hours and thousands preparing for a burn a few times, before you are unwilling to be "burned" again.

As important, possibly more so at least with the smaller landowners, is that California is a strict liability state. You light it, you are responsible for all damage and suppression costs. Ask my neighbor who bought 1/2 acres of char for $18,000 when his tractor sparked a grass fire. Insurance won't even cover houses out here, "and you want to intentionally light a fire?". CALFire's Vegetation Management Program's major selling point was that they assumed liability.

Seems to be increasing interest in prescribed fire. More classes being offered, more friendly words from CAL Fire. Even CARB has made some "might be a good idea" noises. Can only hope.

[curdog]

I've got a few more days on the fires here in Oregon before heading home. Definitely some hard hit areas with loss of lives, property and timber, but I have met some great folks out here.  Ive had a chance to meet a lot of landowners while going around checking on my crews and the hospitality has been great. Unfortunately the news paints Oregon as being represented by the riots in a few cities, and it's definitely not the case.  This is my fourth dispatch here,  and hopefully I won't need to come back, but I do enjoy the state. 

[RPF2509]

One can only hope.  We have two new starts over the weekend in CA. One in Napa and the other near Redding, combined over 10K acres - temps rising to 100 this week in the valleys.  No rain in sight.

[DbltreeBelgians]

Flying over Nebraska right now. Just left Denver headed to Columbus Ohio. Visibility from Grand Jct to Denver was fair but leaving Denver the smoke haze was pretty thick to the north from the Cameron Peak Fire. 
The Pine Gulch Fire in the Bookcliffs north of Grand Jct. is finally 100% contained.  Awfully dry out west. Can't buy a good rain shower.

Brent

[DbltreeBelgians]

Small Wildfire outside Salt Lake City on 9/21



Sign in Park City Utah on 9/22

Brent

[sawguy21]

We had some rain late last week but dry and unusually warm now for so late in the year. 2020 sure has been a test!

[BradMarks]

Curdog:  Thanks for realizing Oregon is a decent state!, with good people. Unfortunately the Portland metro area dictates (by population/popular vote) the vast majority of policies of the state. The rest of us get fed the garbage that comes down I-5. 

[sawguy21]

I wish I could visit Oregon, it is a favorite. Portland is just another large city I try to avoid. We are still getting smoke but it is not bad although the temperature has dropped noticeably.

[curdog]

Curdog:  Thanks for realizing Oregon is a decent state!, with good people. Unfortunately the Portland metro area dictates (by population/popular vote) the vast majority of policies of the state. The rest of us get fed the garbage that comes down I-5.

Many of the people I talked to described "garbage " that comes from the state government out there,  and I was probably only 20-30 minutes from Portland,  but in a still rural but growing area. 
I did meet ya'lls governor when I gave her a briefing on my fire. I don't much about her,  but she was friendly as well. The news cameras were on, but they might needed a translator for a southerner with a mask on,  so I dodged being on TV this time  8) :D

[charles mann]

We just moved to what is said to, cali's worst fire in history. We started out in ukiah, but smoke prevented us from flying much. So cal-fire moved us to a heli-base just north of garberville, ca. Day 1 up here and flew an 8.0hrs and dropped 1 million, 54,000 lbs of retardant. Smoke got us today. Hopefully another full 8 tomorrow. 

[RPF2509]

On Monday CA passed a couple of milestones.  One fire, the August Complex is now over 1 million acres - largest fire in Ca's history.  It is double the size of last years record fire at a half million that occurred just to the south of the August complex.  Combined they have burned 80% of the Mendocino National Forest.  For the other record 4 million acres have burned in CA this year.  Some rain is forecast this weekend so fire spread will really slow .  No rain for Socal though so fire can still rage there.  The only good record not set is number of structures burned - less than 10,000 which is small compared to 18K lost in the Paradise fire and 6K in the Tubbs.

[RPF2509]

Mr. Mann - How does the burn severity look out of Garberville? The Mendocino National  Forest is a mosaic of grass, shrubs and hardwood/ conifer trees. Some of the burning probably did a lot of good in places if it did not get too hot.  Its been awhile since I drove across it.  Its kind of the national forest no one visits.  No spectacular geology like the Sierra's, not much timber production, lots of inaccessible areas.  A favorite place for dopers though with the recent changes to laws everybody grows in their backyards now.  Plenty of 40' greenhouses out of Garberville.

[charles mann]

Mr. Mann - How does the burn severity look out of Garberville? The Mendocino National  Forest is a mosaic of grass, shrubs and hardwood/ conifer trees. Some of the burning probably did a lot of good in places if it did not get too hot.  Its been awhile since I drove across it.  Its kind of the national forest no one visits.  No spectacular geology like the Sierra's, not much timber production, lots of inaccessible areas.  A favorite place for dopers though with the recent changes to laws everybody grows in their backyards now.  Plenty of 40' greenhouses out of Garberville.

I havent went up since we got to garberville, so i cant say as to a birds eye view, but the pilots said it just a bunch of burned land. I guess after many yrs of doing this, 1 burned section looks like most of the others. It does seem though, that even with our limited access dip site areas, compared to bucket ships, usfs and cal-fire prefer heli-tankers over heli-buckets. 2600 gal of retardant/water does put a walloping on the fire lines.