Wildfires 2017

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Nesikep

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Lillooet, BC, Canada
We had a pretty mild year for wildfires so far this year.. a couple stupidities over the long weekend..

Then today happened, 137 fires started across the province, one that started this morning is 10,000 acres already, we had some NASTY winds this afternoon

Kathie would usually start this kind of thread, she's away for a bit though

Here's what BC looks like right now
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-c ... ign=buffer
 
They are quite a ways away from us... though with the hot windy weather something can spark up anywhere and grow in a hurry
 
A real wet spring so there was lots of vegetation growth and now hot and dry. Thing are right for some real big fires.
 
Yeah, so far our immediate area hasn't had any.. though Cache creek is only 30 miles as the crow flies and about 2-3 mountain ridges away or so... What really flared things up yesterday is that at the winds picked up.. that 10,000 acre fire had been lit that morning..
I don't know how it is in the US, but here, it seems like they need to have a full assessment of the fire, then a 1 hour safety meeting, and then they go do something.. A lot of these fires could have been put out in a hurry and would not have spread if hit hard and fast.. somehow doing it that way is less safe than having a safety meeting while it grows out of control /rant
 
That's exactly how it is here with our volunteer group Nesi, they seem to like to set up their incident control and play being generals.

Ken
 
Here we try to have someone on the fire within 30 minutes. If it's on federal land they sometimes do as you said. In the area I work, this spring the average fire size was 3 acres.
 
yes, they're scooping up water... right around us we don't have any lakes, so it's mostly done by helicopter, they dip into the river

Here's a pic from 2009
 
Last night a dairy up the road lost 3 stacks of 1 ton bales, with more than 100 bales per stack, to fire. It was still smoldering this morning pretty well when I left. Thankfully, no wildfires nearby, though.
 
Bestoutwest":1tr14b1z said:
Last night a dairy up the road lost 3 stacks of 1 ton bales, with more than 100 bales per stack, to fire. It was still smoldering this morning pretty well when I left. Thankfully, no wildfires nearby, though.
Did they bale a little wet perhaps? That used to be a leading cause of barn fires.
 
Nesikep":2oagz0ej said:
Bestoutwest":2oagz0ej said:
Last night a dairy up the road lost 3 stacks of 1 ton bales, with more than 100 bales per stack, to fire. It was still smoldering this morning pretty well when I left. Thankfully, no wildfires nearby, though.
Did they bale a little wet perhaps? That used to be a leading cause of barn fires.

Yes, they did. A friend at work has relatives who live right across from that. The husband owns a dairy himself and was saying he could smell how wet it was when they put it up. It got awful close to their house, too!
 
kenny thomas":21qoozfm said:
We sent crews this week to Eastern Montana. Hope everyone gets some needed rain.

A friend of mine left, mid-week, as part of a crew to Montana. She's out of Maine. Figures to be gone at least 2 weeks. Last year she was out in Utah or Idaho (not 100% sure where they were) for about a month fighting some big ones.
 
Well, that fire in Cache Creek is now up to 100,000 acres in size, it's up to the next town Clinton about 15 miles away and they've been evacuated.. Meanwhile all of Williams Lake (12,000 people) is currently being evacuated due to a different fire,.. In all, I think we got a dozen fires over 10,000 acres going right now in a 100ish mile radius..

So far we're OK, yesterday the wind blew so hard I swear it would have put out the fires.. Nothing in our immediate area, not looking like we're getting any rain either
 
Nothing too big in Washington yet. But there are several smaller ones going. One out of Carlton is burning in the area of the 2014 Carlton Complex fire that burnt over 400,000 acres and about 400 homes. All those standing dead trees that have had 3 years to dry are liable to burn mighty hot.
 
It was 3 years already? wow, seems like yesterday. I guess if the grass has come back well, you could have a heck of a grass fire that burns all those dead trees again... though I don't think they'd candle like the first time around
 

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