Telegraph fire update, July 31

The Telegraph fire has now burned 33,705 acres and is 40% contained. The active portions of the continue to be on the north and east flanks of the fire near Jenkins Hill in the Merced River drainage. This area is a high priority for the deployment of firefighting resources. Crews have made excellent progress in diminishing the threat of fire to structures in the Midpines and Mariposa areas. Some 200 residences were allowed to return to their homes yesterday. The fire is still about 7-8 miles west of the El Portal entrance to Yosemite National Park.

The fire has two incident management teams assigned, CalFire teams #6 and #8.

The Martin Mars water-scooping air tanker, on contract from a Canadian company, took off from Lake Shasta at 1:00 p.m. on Wednesday enroute to the Telegraph fire to assist with the suppression efforts. It was expected to work the fire for about 3.5 hours, dropping 7,200 gallons at a time, before returning by 7:00 p.m. to Lake Shasta in northern California, near Redding.

Contrary to a report elsewhere, there is only one Martin Mars air tanker working in the United States. The company has a second one, but it has been out of service at their base in Port Alberni, BC, Canada for an extended period of time. The Martin Mars works with their own "bird dog", a small aircraft called a lead plane in the U.S., that flys the drop route in advance of the air tanker. Their bird dog is unusual, in that it has floats rather than wheels, and can land on the same lakes as the much larger Martin Mars.

File photo of the Martin Mars scooping water from Lake Shasta.

The map below shows that the only major heat sources detected by satellites was on the northeast and east sides. It shows heat, in orange and black, detected by satellites last night, with the orange areas being the most recently burned. The yellow line is the latest perimeter uploaded by the incident management teams. Click on the map to see a larger version.


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