Potter has provided three figures showing the weather indices computed from the National Weather Service’s NAM model analyses. It is described as being very simple and only considers the atmospheric factors of heat, moisture, and wind. The HDW is a new tool developed for firefighters to predict weather conditions which can affect the spread of wildfires. Forest Service, offered to provide some preliminary results looking at how HDW performed during the 2017 Chetco Bar Fire in Oregon, as well as how the Haines index performed during that fire. In a comment on the earlier post about the Hot-Dry-Windy Index (HDW), Brian Potter, a research meteorologist with the U.S. So if the weather this year is anything like it was two years ago, firefighters could be busy in the area for at least another month. “We even had to move our own fire camp,” Casey said. “Extreme spotting” propelled fine embers up to six miles ahead of the main fire, dropping the live ash right between firefighters’ tents and close to people’s homes. According to an article in the Mail Tribune the suddenly vigorous fire was transporting burning embers that started spot fires six miles out ahead of the flaming front: In early October it had become virtually dormant, but a few hot spots were revitalized by an east wind event on the 14 th. The Klondike Fire west of Grants Pass started July 15, 2018. Strong winds that drove the dozens of fires September 8 in Oregon are not super rare. The entire eastern two-thirds of the Chetco Bar Fire was in the footprint. The 2017 Chetco Bar Fire and the 2018 Klondike Fire burned for miles into the then 17 or 18-year old fire scar. If recent fire history is any indication, the Slater Fire may not even slow down when and if it reaches the Biscuit burn, and of course it depends on the weather, which has moderated this week. It has come to within about four miles of the 2002 Biscuit Fire. It started northeast of Happy Camp, California and ran north into Oregon then took a left and crossed Highway 199. That growth, however, has slowed in the last several days. The Slater Fire reported September 8 grew to 89,000 acres by September 9 and has now spread to 150,000 acres. The Northwest California/Southwest Oregon area has kept firefighters very busy at times during the last 20 years, as you can see on the map above.Ī new fire is rapidly putting itself into that history. In 2012 he represented owners of a Montana ranch who won a $750,000 judgement against the state of Montana when firefighters on the Ryan Gulch Fire employed firing operations which burned 900 acres of the ranch’s land.Ī partial history of fires in Northwest California and Southwest Oregon, 2000 through Sept 17, 2020. He told Wildfire Today in 2012 that he was in the first planeload of jumpers on the South Canyon Fire in Colorado in 1994, the fatal fire on which 14 wildland firefighters were entrapped and killed. He worked as a wildland firefighter for eight seasons between 19, serving on the Helena Hotshot crew and later as a smokejumper at West Yellowstone and Missoula.

The attorney representing the landowners is Quentin Rhodes in Missoula, who is not your typical barrister.

The Chetco Bar Fire started from a lightning strike during a storm on June 24 and was first reported by an airline pilot 17 days later on July 12. “The large-scale planned ignitions on the Chetco Bar Fire ignored political and property boundaries and used Plaintiffs’ nonfederal resources as backfire fuel, imposing the costs of the natural resource management objectives upon Plaintiffs.” “USFS employed planned ignitions in the form of large-scale backfires designed to artificially grow the naturally occurring wildfire to sizes much larger than if it has been left to burn naturally,” say the two complaints filed October 21. It alleges that between August 17 the USFS conducted firing operations on their property “to achieve its natural resource management objectives, and to otherwise manage its lands”. The suit, under the Tucker Act for inverse condemnation, seeks compensation for “property taken” by the USFS in its use and management of the Chetco Bar Fire. Two lawsuits have been filed in federal court for firing operations that burned private land during the Chetco Bar Fire that eventually burned more than 191,000 acres on land managed by the US Forest Service and private landowners in southwest Oregon. The Chetco Bar Fire on Jtaken from a helicopter during the Type 3 Incident Commander’s first recon flight.

Chetco bar fire commander 2017