Though our semi-daily Lookout Livestreams usually are focused on current developments on active fires, we end up covering a lot of broader wildland firefighting, forestry, and prescribed fire topics.
This episode uses the ongoing Garnet and Dillon Fires to illustrate indirect attack tactics – the practice of preparing firelines well in advance of the fire’s expected spread, and then ‘firing them’ (burning out the fuels in a prescribed burn-type action) to remove large areas of fuel before the main fire arrives.
This broadcast also includes a long-form interview with members of the Climate and Wildfire Institute about their ‘Teakettle’ large-scale prescribed burning project, which was planned for the Garnet Fire area, but burned in the wildfire last week, instead. The CWI project was funded out of the California Climate Investments (CCI) grant program, which redistributes money paid by major industrial polluters as part of California’s ‘Cap and Trade’ program. The Cap and Trade program set a limit on carbon pollution, and then forces polluters to either buy ‘carbon offsets’ – e.g. paying someone somewhere else to plant a tree to suck up your carbon emissions, or pay a tax to the State.
The Garnet Fire isn’t waiting around for the shell game to play out. It wants to burn this area, which hasn’t had a major fire for 100 years, and it is getting on with it.
Update: 9/7/2025 – 1200 hrs
The Garnet Fire has crossed Dinkey Creek and is making a run west, toward Oak Flat Campground. The fire has crossed the powerline right of way, by around noon, 9/7. Black line on left shows rough location of contingency firelines established over past 10 days. Yellow camera icon is Fence Meadow Web Camera location.
Lookout Livestream 9/5/2025
Imagery of Garnet Fire burning Teakettle Experimental Forest
Satellite image from 12:00 PST, 9/2/2025 – Teakettle Experimental Forest in Green.
