High Park Fire

[xj-grin]

Our BLM FF's visited us at the station last night to brief us on local conditions. We are setting records for how dry the fuels are. It's just a waiting game at this point.

having camped up in the northern part of middle park a few weeks ago, I agree, Kevin. I've never see a complete standing-dead forest before. The creaks and pops were eerie, but one lightning strike and that will go up like a candle.

As for the '88 yellowstone fire, and actually forest fire in general, I disagree that anything was "lost". I was fortunate enough to be in the park before the fire in '88, and then again in both '89 and '90 after the fire -- the changes to the ecosystem are absolutely spectacular, with different species taking over the understory, and wildlife expanding to new areas due to the new openness. You can already see this happening in the beetle kill portions of Colorado, where grasses and shrubs are growing in what used to be lodgepole shadows, and elk and deer are growing fat on the new forage.

Obviously the loss of private property and homes in wildfires is tragic, but to say that we lost something just isn't really accurate -- its certainly different, but not lost. Indeed, many species of pine/spruce/fir NEED fire in order to germinate and reproduce. If our government hadn't insisted on 100% fire suppression for decades, resulting in overly dense forests, none of these fires would be nearly as devastating as they are... we're paying the piper, so to speak...

 

[dannanw]

If our government hadn't insisted on 100% fire suppression for decades, resulting in overly dense forests, none of these fires would be nearly as devastating as they are... we're paying the piper, so to speak...

agree 100%!

 

[Led]

Big government works!!! :laugh2::dunce::bs:

 

[jimgrms]

Just ask obama

 

[DutchVDub]

So I finally got to contribute to the effort, at least in a minor way.

I got a call at about 11am that there was a broken down fire truck in need of recovering so I got the Freightliner and lowboy ready and left the shop at around 11:30.

A few shots of the command area:

Loading the truck onto the trailer:

Ready to head back to the shop:

All fixed and ready to go by 5pm

Pulling back into the command area

I got back to the shop by 8pm, so that'll be a nice little 3hrs of comp time added to my stockpile. Hopefully (well not really, but I really enjoy these missions) there will be more shite breakng down and I'll be able to make even more runs

 

[zluster]

http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2904/

Up to 75,537 acres now, 45% contained.

 

[DutchVDub]

One problem though, according to the guys working the fire all the "containment" is pretty much along the eastern front where it's ran out of trees to burn anyways. They've barely made any progress up the mountain.

 

[old_man]

I think they will take anything they can get. It really made a run up north past the Poudre River and into Red Feather. Lots of houses up that way.

110 square miles burned.

 

[Grant]

A very big thank you to all our friends who have been checking in on us the past few weeks. My apologies for not responding to all the texts, emails and calls, we have been rather busy.

We did not evacuate on Sunday 10th, as we have chosen to stay in the previous couple evacs too. Good thing, as we were one of the few reliable sources of news in the canyon for the neighbors that did bug out. The fire lines are about 3 miles north of us, and Sunday 17th was real scary as the fire exploded back into the canyon, and spotted across onto the east side.

The evac was lifted last night, so today is the first day back at work in 2 1/2 weeks - lucky the boss is very understanding.

Thanks to Old Man and Jacobs for calling to see if we were OK, and to everyone else who was concerned about us.

Grant

 

[Fred]

Glad you made it okay. They have issued more pre-evac orders here. The wind is not helping today. Lucky to have the slurry bombers here today.

 

[old_man]

Glad to hear from you. I have been worried. Remember if you need help bugging out, let us know. I bet we could have a ton of vehicles and trailers up there on short notice.

My approach to things like this, having lost two homes to fire is to have really good insurance and only take what is not replaceable. Let the insurance buy me all new stuff.

Remember to take your video camera and walk through the house and shop and videotape everything. I went though the hassle with trying to come up with receipts and prove I had stuff after all my records were burned up.

 

[DutchVDub]

Just got called in to work, need to take the roll-off up there and grab a f*ed up HMMWV, bring it to the shop, fix it, and then take it back to them. It'll be a long night.

 

[xj-grin]

Thanks, Dutch, for doing what you do. Be safe.

 

[DutchVDub]

Well I lucked out, the truck wasn't as big of a priority so all I had to do was drop it off at the shop for it to be fixed this morning. I was in bed by 0145

Here's some crappy pics

The roll-off ready for its cargo

Loaded up

It's sweet how much easier it is using a roll off than the HEMTT for recovery. That being said the HEMTT will go just about anywhere and recover just about anything. I've used them to pull boats off court house lawns and to recover tracked vehicles.