Getting a bit tired of this whole fire thing!

Ryan Mooney

Moderator
Staff member
Messages
8,103
Location
The Gorge Area, Oregon
Third year in a row we've had one that is pushing 2 miles from the house. This one ran almost 6 miles today, and is just above the west end of town now with little-no actual containment last I heard. Using the mark-1 eyeball it appears to have dramatically slowed its advance around dusk when the wind died down and quit moving at the miles/hour rate anyway! They have what seems to be every firefighter in the territory rotating through the command center about two blocks from my house. Glad to see them here, but sure wish they didn't have to be.

Luckily so far none of the fires have gotten into town and the firefighters around here do a really fantastic job of protecting structures. Some of the other fires in WA and OR have burnt hundreds of homes, feel really bad for all those folks! Its been a bad year for the whole situation in this part of the country.

A year off from this whole thing sure would have been nice!

http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/4061/

https://twitter.com/RowenaFire2014

(picture borrowed from facebook).
above_town.jpg
 
My sympathies, Ryan. BTDT too many times.

@Larry: what we have learned about wildfires pushed by high winds is that there is no safe place except someplace else. Embers are flying up to a mile ahead of the flames and starting small fires that then become large ones and join with the main fire. There is a even greater danger of smoke inhalation. We had an entire church family die in the huge San Diego fire of 2003 (900,000+ acres, ~1500 homes, and 17 lives lost). They couldn't get out of a canyon that was boxed in in flame and they raced to the lake. Their burned out truck and bodies were found a couple of hundred yards from the water. The coroner explained to us they had died of smoke inhalation long before the flames got to them. Very scary stuff.

Stay safe, Ryan. When they say evacuate, get out of there. There is nothing there worth your lives.

And yes, firefighters are amazing people and we who live in fire county really, really appreciate them.

BTDT just a few months ago, shortly after I arrived back in CA. Still finding ash to clean up around the place.
 
Fires are an annual event here. It is not a question of if there will be a fire this year but, when. These are generally natural events although we have our fair share of human-started ones as well. They can make you nervous when they come close. Glad it missed you.

P.s. Funny personal observation; I have never been able to figure out why someone would live where tornadoes or hurricanes pass through regularly. I just realized that I continue to stay where the earth shakes and burns without any problem :dunno:.
 
Also BTDT, and I'll echo the comments to stay alert and move out if they say move out. (But you already know all of that.)

I've got a buddy who's on a NM Hotshot crew in Washington now. He's posting periodic updates on Facebook, and some of the pics and videos he's posting are very compelling to watch. (Like the helicopter water drops 20 yards or so from where he's standing.) He's had a few 24 hours workdays, too.
 
The hot shot folks are completely insane imho, I mean I'm glad they are here and do what they do no question! But even in my young and irrational days I don't think I ever did anything quite as crazy as the stuff they do. I'm actually not even sure how they physically pull some of those runs off :bow:

The fire ran up to 2600 acres yesterday evening from about 200 yesterday morning, most of that was grasslands so it moved really really fast. Luckily it sort of burned back on itself when the wind died at dusk and didn't progress overnight. There's only one major hot spot threatening anything on this side but the rest of it is mostly a 2600 acre fire break. Today the big problem has been on the other side heading up the hill and in one pocket where they've been battling around some houses. Hoping for the best for those folks! I've got a couple of co-workers/friends up in the hills there.

@Rob not to bad on timber losses on this one, lots of grasslands. Some of the other fires have lost a fair bit though.

@Glenn Yeah we were talking about that at work yesterday and decided that Tornados were the worst. This was from a group that is surrounded by wildfires pretty much yearly and lives on the side of an active volcano in a fault zone :rolleyes: Having said that spare a thought for our friends in Hawaii who just had a (small) earthquake and have not one but TWO hurricanes heading their way. A friend lived through iniki in Kauai and when they rebuilt they made the lower level of the house a concrete bunker so I guess there are some mitigations you can make on the hurricane situation in the right spot. I'd say its got to be close to a wash on the fire vs hurricane situation, but nope nope nope to Tornado country.

@All yep, if we needed to leave the house here half of town would already be gone and there sure wouldn't be nothing I could do!

Here's a time lapse video of the fire heading over the hill towards town. Pretty exciting for the middle bit when it gets really rolling.

 
No airport, there is a freeway thorough the center of town... You might have been seeing the helicopters coming through to drop water. I think there were over a dozen working the fire during the most active bits... They kind of look like firefly's in the video.
 
Top