Fire

Gather App
Most of the area burned was grass and sage brush. Sage grouse and their habitat are huge issue around here. Intentionally burning sage grouse habitat would probably putting one in jail. I have never heard of the BLM doing any prescribed burns. The few that do occur are on private ground and happen in late October when you have to work to get it to burn.
 
Mark Reynolds said:
There are multiple considerations that go into a planned or controlled burn. The stars pretty much have to align perfectly, and being able to get the stars to align varies greatly in degree of difficulty depending on where you are. Fuel load is not the only consideration. In areas of high fuel load, a controlled burn at the right time with the correct moisture and wind conditions can 'fairly safely' eliminate the load and risk. An attempt on the same fuel load under the wrong conditions quite often is disastrous. In many/most areas, you can, and often do, have multiple years, back to back, that never have a day with favorable controlled burn conditions.
Click to expand...
But if it starts as a wildfire all this goes out the window and many times they make a big fire out of a little one.
 
I can't think of any of the fires happening now which are human caused. They are lightning. There were a couple human caused ones earlier but none of them became real big..

kenny thomas said:
But if it starts as a wildfire all this goes out the window and many times they make a big fire out of a little one.
Click to expand...
That occurs when they bring in federal fire bosses from out of area. When that happens the Peter principal becomes obvious. They have been promoted above their level of competences. Often they are into fire management not into putting fires out. One of the reasons our local guys work very hard to put fires out before the government shows up..
 
Not everything on the internet is true. Artificial intelligence isn't intelligent. But a lot of fires start on the urbran/forest boundaries and from camp fires, cigarettes thrown out, dragging chains sparking on the road. I've noticed that for a long time.
 
I've driven by three fires that were already called in and on the radio, with firefighters arriving as I drove by or already there... and the fires were small. About the size of a suburban at the time. One had about 30 firefighters standing around drinking coffee and shooting the bull. Days later I drove by and two of the three fires were out, but they had burned hundreds of acres.
The one that wasn't out quickly burned several million dollar (back when a million bucks was a very expensive home) homes and the fire department was finally investigated for standing around and letting fires get out of hand. It made the papers, so it was a big deal at the time.
No one wants to think fire departments would do that, but I suspect it's more common than not. I had a guy on the fire department say they don't get paid unless they have something to fight. If money is an incentive to hesitate while fighting a fire, then something needs to change.
 
Dave said:
I can't think of any of the fires happening now which are human caused. They are lightning. There were a couple human caused ones earlier but none of them became real big..


That occurs when they bring in federal fire bosses from out of area. When that happens the Peter principal becomes obvious. They have been promoted above their level of competences. Often they are into fire management not into putting fires out. One of the reasons our local guys work very hard to put fires out before the government shows up..
Click to expand...
This is a big problem everywhere. I had 48 years of wildland firefighter experience and was highly qualified. I would put myself up against most in my area. I could be a good firefighter in your area but had no business being the commander. A local person should be in charge.
 
Dave said:
I can't think of any of the fires happening now which are human caused. They are lightning. There were a couple human caused ones earlier but none of them became real big..


That occurs when they bring in federal fire bosses from out of area. When that happens the Peter principal becomes obvious. They have been promoted above their level of competences. Often they are into fire management not into putting fires out. One of the reasons our local guys work very hard to put fires out before the government shows up..
Click to expand...
I have seen the opposite. They are sending a lot of the wildland fire fighters down to local departments to burn schools now to learn about prescribed burns. Many of them have only ever "faught fires" but never learned to do prescribed fire safely. Many of them think wind and tall grass is always bad.

Its like teaching cowboying vs stockmanship... two different things. One makes the other a lot better at what they do.
 
Well management or lack there of causes fires to get a lot bigger here. Today at the sale two guys were talking about how the road from Elgin to Tollgate was a traffic jam yesterday. There is a 40,000 acre fire burning up there. They took over the rodeo grounds for their fire camp. The road headed toward the fire was lined up with trucks and pickup. All of the guys out of the trucks standing around BS'ing. Our tax dollars at work. The longer the fire burns the more money they make. I could spend an entire day typing out all cases of mismanagement which I have witnessed.
Edit. I looked it up there is 682 people working on that fire and the fire 33,000 acres with no containment.
 
Last edited:
I had a man tell me he showed up at a fire HQ with his Cat on a trailer. Talking to the out of area fire boss he said he would take this road to the fire, pointing it out on the map. The boss said no you have to go this way. The man said I have lived here all my life I know how to get where I am going. The boss said go my way your you wont get paid. The man pointed to a road and said I will go this way. The boss said that is not the way to the fire. Man said, no it is my way home. He left.
 
Dave said:
I had a man tell me he showed up at a fire HQ with his Cat on a trailer. Talking to the out of area fire boss he said he would take this road to the fire, pointing it out on the map. The boss said no you have to go this way. The man said I have lived here all my life I know how to get where I am going. The boss said go my way your you wont get paid. The man pointed to a road and said I will go this way. The boss said that is not the way to the fire. Man said, no it is my way home. He left.
Click to expand...
Sad but I don't blame him... A** hole boss....
 
One that always bothered me is back during the fire here in 2024 73 year old me would be out on the road at 5:30 checking the fire advance. The fire crews wouldn't show up until 9:00 maybe later. Because of lower temperatures and higher humidity during the night the fire would die down. Once the sun came up the fire grows. But they had to have their daily meeting every morning. My neighbor decided to attend one of the morning meetings. They had a map and were pointing out where the fire was and their plan to attack it. Neighbor raided his hand and told them that the fire was a mile past where the said it was. They just stood there looking at him and then continued on. After the crew leaders left the bosses went to telling him how they knew all these things. He told them that was fine but that he had actually been there about an hour earlier. Stood there and saw it with his own eyes. Faced with the facts they had no answers.
Still bothers me that they have their long well into the morning meeting. Want a morning meeting. Fine. Get up earlier, eat breakfast earlier, have your meeting, and get out on the fire at the crack of dawn.
 
I was on a BLM pumper crew (1 ton dually truck with tank, hose, etc. usually initial attack) in 1987-88. We would get on a fire and never leave unless it got big and they brought in an incident command team, and even then we would stay on it unless we were needed somewhere else. Maybe they have changed all the rules since due to accidents and lawsuits. We were usually pretty effective if we could get there before they got big.
 
The little 200 acre fire that our guys had controlled and contained last Friday morning and turned over to the BLM to mop up is now at 75,417 acres. Today the BLM is calling it 58% contained. Interesting, about 20 miles of it is along the Snake River (a mile wide) and another side is along I-84 for about 15 miles. Been against them since Monday. But it is still growing to the north. Strong winds predicted for the next 2 days. I don't know which direction the wind is supposed to blow. I hope it is blowing toward the river.
 
Dave said:
One that always bothered me is back during the fire here in 2024 73 year old me would be out on the road at 5:30 checking the fire advance. The fire crews wouldn't show up until 9:00 maybe later. Because of lower temperatures and higher humidity during the night the fire would die down. Once the sun came up the fire grows. But they had to have their daily meeting every morning. My neighbor decided to attend one of the morning meetings. They had a map and were pointing out where the fire was and their plan to attack it. Neighbor raided his hand and told them that the fire was a mile past where the said it was. They just stood there looking at him and then continued on. After the crew leaders left the bosses went to telling him how they knew all these things. He told them that was fine but that he had actually been there about an hour earlier. Stood there and saw it with his own eyes. Faced with the facts they had no answers.
Still bothers me that they have their long well into the morning meeting. Want a morning meeting. Fine. Get up earlier, eat breakfast earlier, have your meeting, and get out on the fire at the crack of dawn.
Click to expand...
 
Funny how they always have to have meetings, especially with all this new fangled technology to tell them exactly what the conditions are. One would also think that logically, if you put your efforts into fighting it when the conditions are more favorable for success, rather than when your efforts are basically futile.
 

Latest posts

Back
Top