We have been using the Boise Fire as an opportunity to talk about the social aspects of fire management in the Klamath Mountains. If you missed those stories, you can watch them in the two videos embedded at the end of this post.
5pm UPDATE:
The maps below show the fire’s location at 2:40pm, today, 8/13/2024. The green line is the 2:40pm perimeter. The orange and yellow colors are from last night’s IR flight.
Firing has been done on the 10N01 Road in the North Fork of Red Cap Creek. This is the green line running center-right of this image. It looks like some of this slopped over and ran to the ridge. I am guessing this is not an attempt to hold the fire, but to get some backing fire going in this area so it doesn’t all burn hot during a head fire. The fire in Butler Creek, over the main ridge, grew quite a bit in past 12 hours.Looking west. Green line shows 14 hours fire growth.Firing has been extended downhill on the 10N01 Road, and things fired last night appear to be holding, here.If the 2:40pm mapping is accurate, the jagged little run uphill by the Bise Creek label is concerning, as it means the fire has jumped Boise Creek and will run uphill to the top of Telephone Ridge. Elsewhere here, the fire continued to back actively, though slowly, to the west.
Earlier report from 9am, resumes here:
After a couple days of fairly subdued behavior, the Boise Fire got active yesterday afternoon and evening.
Boise Fire as seen from Oregon Mountain, near Weaverville, 6:39 pm, 8/12/2024.
The following maps are from infrared overflights taken at 12:20am on 8/13/2024.
The fire ran hard to the east, spotting over the main ridge into the 2013 Butler Fire. It also crossed from Humboldt County into Siskiyou County, and from the Orleans Ranger District of the Six Rivers National Forest into the Salmon River Ranger District of the Klamath National Forest. The fire is surrounded on 3 sides by the 2020 Red Salmon Fire, the 2013 Butler Fire, and the 2023 Pearch Fire.Looking SW over the Butler Fire. The fire has good alignment to make vigorous runs up the North Fork of Boise Creek and over Antenna Ridge today. There are patches which burned with low severity within the 2023 Pearch Fire, and we won’t be surprised if this fire gets established within portions of the Pearch Fire, but we don’t expect much to happen in these areas.Firing operations started along the 10N01 Road last night on the south flank of LePerron Peak. This is an attempt to keep the heel of the fire from spreading toward Orleans.There was no spread on much of the left flank of the heel of the fire between 6pm and midnight last night. The teal-colored line is the 6pm perimeter. The fire backed downslope toward Boise Creek below Short Ranch during that time.This NW flank of the fire is the most troublesome for Orleans. The fire is likely to cross Boise Creek and run toward Deer Lick Saddle and Ferris Ranch Road.4am heat satellites show a lot of new heat since midnight in the eastern portion of the Boise Creek Watershed, near the 2020 Red Salmon Fire. This may be inaccuracies in the heat mapping, or it may be tactical firing using drones to establish backing fire high on the slope to improve the odds of getting good fire effects with backing fire before the main fire gets there. If this is the strategy, they are a couple days late, as the main fire is likely to get there today, and it would have been good to have more time for the fire to back before it gets hit with a hard run from below.At midnight, the fire was about 7 miles from Orleans.Today’s Operations Map shows dozer and hand line along the NW flanks for the fire, attempting to corral the fire from heading toward Orleans. Unless these are fired well in advance of the fire crossing Boise Creek and pushing upslope, they are not likely to halts the fires’ northward spread.
The operations map also has a structure triage layer on it. Structures are color coded by whether or not they are defendable.
Structure Triage information on Operations Map. This is an example of pre-fire planning data being useful during a wildfire. With limited resources, firefighters often can’t save every house, and need to focus on the ones that are safest to engage/most likely to be save-able. This is another good reason to clear brush around your place. If firefighters don’t feel safe to be at your place during a fire, they won’t linger.
Here are our videos about some of the wildland fire culture in the Klamath Mountains, and also, some of the pre-fire planning work that has been done in this area.
