Wildfire news, November 7

Colorado: Hunters and snow contain fire while firefighters watch

From Summitdaily.com

SILVERTHORNE — A small wildfire that burned a hillside north of Silverthorne Tuesday was prevented from spreading into the forest because of the quick-thinking actions of a few local hunters.

Silverthorne resident Mike Usalavage was with friends at a hunting camp just north of Ute Pass Road when he began smelling smoke, and he looked up to see an orange glow in the sky.

“We got a call from my friend’s son that there was a fire burning on the hill,” Usalavage said. “When we got there, we saw sagebrush burning and three different trees on fire.”

With wind gust reaching up to 30 m.p.h., the hunters feared the fire would spread into some near-by pine beetle-killed trees, and they quickly went to work containing the fire with nothing but a snow shovel and the rest of their available drinking water.
“We were running around like crazy trying to stomp out the fire where we could,” Usalavage said. “It was so windy, I thought for sure the fire was going to race up the hill, it was very scary.”

After calling 911, Usalavage received a call back from Lake Dillon Fire-Rescue Chief Jeff Berino, who assured the hunters that they were monitoring the fire from the road below, confident that the incoming weather would extinguish the flames.

According to Lake Dillon Fire-Rescue spokesman Brandon Williams, the location of the fire was almost impossible for fire crews to reach, and the decision to take a defensive approach was the most logical choice.

“We did know there were hunters up there, so we were in contact with them via cell phone,” Williams said. “We watched it for about three hours, and then the snow took care of the rest.”

Snow flurries throughout the night were able to quell the half-acre burn area, and Forest Service crews on Thursday visited the site to begin their investigation. No details have been released on the cause of the fire.

“There is a huge threat in this county that some day the forests will catch on fire,” Usalavage said. “I don’t know what the plan is for when that day comes but this situation almost turned into the forest fire we are all thinking about.”

Helicopter drops mulch on burned area

Photo: U. S. Forest Service

We have been hearing a lot recently about helicopters dropping mulch on burned areas to reduce erosion on hillsides and happened to run across this photo of long-strand wood mulch being dropped over this summer's Corner Canyon fire in Utah. Here is how it was described in an article in the Salt Lake Tribune:

The project involves putting large bales of shredded wood, similar to bales of hay, through a wood chipper. The wood is then placed in a cargo net and hooked to a helicopter, which dumps the mulch over the 140 acres where the burn was most intense, said Paul Flood, a Forest Service soil scientist and team leader for the project.

Wildfire Today in earlier posts covered three other methods for dropping mulch and seeds.

Re-seeding In The Snow

I thought this photo of a helicopter re-seeding over snow was interesting. They are working on an area southwest of Reno, Nevada that burned during the Hawkin fire on July 6. Click on the photo to enlarge it.

The photo caption:

"Helicopter pilot John Kelly of El Aero Services of Carson City drops seeds and mulch Monday over the Hawken Fire area. Each load weighs 800 pounds, and he was covering 340 acres with seeds and an additional 165 acres with mulch that should prevent erosion."

More information from the Reno Gazette Journal:

"Seeds sown Monday across southwest Reno land scorched by the Hawken Fire are expected to bloom in the spring.

"We expect to see some growth. We're hoping for a good germination," said Sonya Hem, deputy director of the Nevada Land Conservancy. "We've been dropping pure live seed on the snow, sagebrush and bitter brush seeds."

She said unlike some plants, those seeds need to be on the snow to germinate. The seeds were then covered with mulch to keep them on the ground, she said.

The partnership of Washoe County and the land conservancy is conducting the aerial seeding of 350 acres and aerial mulching of 165 acres of the Hawken area that burned in July."

Wildfire news, November 12

Video of helicopter dropping mulch

Wildfire Today has posted several times about the aerial application of mulch to stabilize burned slopes. Here is a one-minute video of a helicopter dropping rice straw in Butte County, California. It almost looks like an explosion as the gold-colored rice straw is released from the cargo net.



If you liked that video, HERE is another one, 3 minutes long, that has more footage of the mulch-dropping.


North Carolina: Two firefighters injured

From foxcarolina.com

MARSHALL, N.C. -- Two firefighters were injured on Tuesday while fighting a wildfire in the western North Carolina mountains. The fire started Tuesday afternoon near the small town of Marshall. Firefighters said at one point they feared the fire would spread into downtown.

“All the buildings in downtown here is very old so it would have been a bad deal if it would have gotten into town,” said Capt. Mike Baldwin with the Marshall Fire Department.

Crews from three local fire departments and the U.S. Forest Service were called in to help battle the blaze. They used water-dumping helicopters and ground crews to get the fire under control.
Click here to find out more!

The two injured firefighters are expected to recover, crews said.

The cause of the fire is still under investigation.

The foxcarolina.com site has a video about the fire.


Minnesota: FEMA to give $3 million to Cook County for sprinklers

On January 6 Wildfire Today covered the fact that two counties in Minnesota had sought federal funding through FEMA to help pay the cost of installing sprinkler systems for homeowners. Now it turns out that Cook County in MN has received $3 million from FEMA for sprinkler systems for residents and businesses.

From the Duluth News Tribune:

The Federal Emergency Management Agency has given Cook County $3 million to help more residents and businesses install large sprinkler systems that help protect against forest fires. The FEMA money comes for the county’s “Pre-Disaster Mitigation Wildfire Retrofit Project.’’ The grant was announced today by U.S. Rep. Jim Oberstar, D-Minn.

The sprinkler systems are credited with saving dozens of buildings during the devastating 2007 Ham Lake fire. The systems use a gasoline/propane motor to pump water out of lakes. The sprinklers create a stream of water over cabins, homes and resorts — and the yards around them — that raises humidity, slows fires and protects against burning embers.

“In the Ham Lake Fire, over 100 homes were spared serious damage because they were equipped with these systems,” Oberstar said in a prepared statement, saying the federal money is better spent before a disaster instead of after.

Similar federal grants in 2000 and 2007 helped the county improve sprinkler systems and communications efforts, both of which are credited with preventing loss of life and injuries and saving homes during the Ham Lake fire.

Should the federal government be giving millions of dollars to private homeowners and businesses for fire equipment around their homes and businesses? What's next? Will FEMA pay to replace wood shake shingles with fire resistant roofing materials on privately owned structures? Will FEMA buy you a boat if you live in a flood-prone area?


Fires in OK, KY, MS, and GA

The Situation Report lists 18 fires that are larger than 100 acres in these four states. The largest is the Atoka Lake fire in OK, which as burned 4,960 acres.

One fire that is not on the Situation Report is the Woody Creek fire, a 530 acre fire in Georgia, being fought by the Georgia Forestry Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the U.S. Forest Service. The fire is in the Yahoola Valley in Lumpkin County. (See photo below.)

Here is an excerpt from an article in the Dahlogega Nugget:

"This is a steep, rocky area," Rightmyer said, "and it's easy for a log to roll down the mountain and start a new fire. And the firefighters have to be careful walking down the side of the mountain. The objective is to get the fire under control as soon and as safely as we can. It might get somewhat larger before we are able to get safe control lines in."

Lumpkin County Fire Department and the Forsyth County Wildland Team worked yesterday and today clearing around 20-24 structures potentially threatened by the wildfire, mostly in the area of Jack Walker/Thurmond Walker roads area, fire chief Ed Eggert said. Local restaurants and the Lumpkin Chapter of the Red Cross provided food and water to the firefighters.

New siren technology

Firegeezer has the story about a new type of siren that can be heard better in sound-proof cars, or when someone is blasting their radio or talking on a cell phone. It produces a lower frequency tone that can be felt as well as heard.


Wisconsin: Prescribed fire conference

The Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are putting on a conference titled: "Prescribed Fire -- Learning from the Past, Preparing for the Future", January 28-30, 2009 in Stevens Point, WI. More information is HERE.

New Heli-Claw transports mulch

The Missoula Technology and Development Center (MTDC) has invented a mechanical "claw" that when attached to the end of a 100' long line under a helicopter can transport 2,000 pounds of straw. Helicopters often haul straw in cargo nets to remote locations when doing rehab work on burned areas. It can be somewhat labor intensive to load the bales into the nets, disconnect an empty net and reconnect a full one. The "heliclaw" can be opened and closed by the pilot, making it possible to hover over a pile of loose straw, close the claw, fly to the area to be reahabed, then open the claw and unload the straw where it is needed.

The MTDC wrote all this up in a report, of course. You will need this to enter the site: Username: t-d, Password: t-d. The user name and password is wildely available on the Internet; don't ask me why they require it.

They also produced a video of the heli-claw in action. The first 5-6 minutes is quite boring, just showing a helicopter flying in circles with the heli-claw attached. Towards the end they show it picking up and transporting straw. The same username and password applies.

Thanks, Dick, for the tip.