Showing posts with label Whitetail Canyon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Whitetail Canyon. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
Wynne's Photos
I've added Wynne Brown's photos to her account of the Horseshoe Two Fire's run through Whitetail Canyon. To see them, scroll down to the first (lower) of the two entries for June 12.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Extremes
At last night's community meeting with the fire team, Rich Harvey (an incident commander) emphasized the extremes which the firefighters are encountering in their dealings with the Horseshoe Two fire––unprecedented in his 32 years of experience. (Very likely, firefolk on the Wallow and Murphy Complex fires are finding the same extremes.) None of the professionals in this Type 1 fire team have ever seen such dry fuels.
Dead fuels are classified as 1-hour fuel (like grass), 10-hour fuel, 100-hour fuel, and 1000-hour fuel (a big, down log). 100-hour fuel takes 100 hours to dry out enough that it will burn. Here in the Chiricahuas, 100-hour fuel is burning in only 3 hours, and that low a value has never before been seen by this team.
The amount of strong wind is blowing minds. Red-flag day follows red-flag day, and today we have another. Strong winds push fire into strong uphill runs, creating crown fires that take out stands of trees. The amount of energy being released in one hour's worth of crown fire in the Chiricahua Mountains is the equivalent of the energy released by an atomic bomb. Such a fire chute occurred when Horseshoe Two raged in only 3 hours from the Saulsbury Saddle line, up to and through Onion Saddle.
Yet, even with those serious extremes, a mosaic burn is being achieved in many areas through use of techniques that moderate the fire's growth and spread, including lighting ridge fires at night to back slowly down into canyons, and meet the oncoming fire before it rushes up those same ridges. Of all the techniques tried by the teams so far, the backburning is working best on this fire, under these conditions. Moderating the fire not only promotes a mosaic burn, but also protects soils for future regrowth.
A photo of the junction of Rustler and Barfoot roads showed many of the big trees still intact, so some of the mosaic burn still happened, even in this intensely-burned high country.
We also learned more about one crew boss's experience as they battled the holocaust in Whitetail Canyon, a situation vastly complicated by constantly-changing high winds that demanded the utmost in quick responses and flexibility. Plans had been carefully laid for protecting Whitetail, including a line laid by hand that joined the back road into Chiricahua National Monument, a dozer line, and structure protection. Then a big blast of wind from the south changed everything. One juniper flared and sent firebrands in all directions, and fire jumped the lines. A column of blazing hot smoke rose thousands of feet into the air, then rolled and started to collapse. That is a firefighter's nightmare, because a huge collapsing column sends fire everywhere as superheated smoke hits the ground. The worst-case scenario was narrowly avoided in Whitetail when another big wind gust suddenly straightened the column. Firefighters were beaten back from Whitetail by these volatile and dangerous conditions; when they were able to return, they found that the sprinklers and other structure protection in place had saved 18 of the 20 residences there.
A similar extreme event happened further south along the western flank of the fire, when the fire was being pushed upcanyon by very strong wind, which suddenly entered another canyon with different orientation, and sheared the fire column 180ยบ, setting the entire column (thousands of feet high) to spinning. Suddenly the fire turned into the faces of the crew there.
These events involving collapsing columns of fire and smoke are quite rare, and this is only the second time in this operation chief's career that he has ever witnessed one.
One photo graphically illustrated why residents and other people are not yet being allowed back into the burned areas: a gaping hole where a tree once stood was still burning deep in the ground. Fires can burn into big root systems for days, making the terrain dangerous.
More than 1200 fire personnel are now working on Horseshoe Two. They are on the lines 24 hours a day, in two shifts. People in the planning department have longer days than those out on the fire lines: they are spending 16 - 20 hours a day working on strategy, as the fire moves and conditions constantly change.
The new planned perimeter lines are out in the flats, with much lower fuel supply and easy terrain. There they should finally be able to fully contain this fire. Rich Harvey said that they estimate that Horseshoe Two is now 45% contained. He is cautious about calling a fire contained because, "If I say it's contained and something happens, they name it after me and I'm in big trouble."
Other agencies help and advise the fire teams. US Forest Service staff are interested in resource protection, and they make sure that important details like the locations of crucial habitat and Spotted Owl nests are considered when fire plans are formulated.
The fire bosses said that two weeks of working on a fire like Horseshoe Two is worth years of experience of working on more normal fires.
Dead fuels are classified as 1-hour fuel (like grass), 10-hour fuel, 100-hour fuel, and 1000-hour fuel (a big, down log). 100-hour fuel takes 100 hours to dry out enough that it will burn. Here in the Chiricahuas, 100-hour fuel is burning in only 3 hours, and that low a value has never before been seen by this team.
The amount of strong wind is blowing minds. Red-flag day follows red-flag day, and today we have another. Strong winds push fire into strong uphill runs, creating crown fires that take out stands of trees. The amount of energy being released in one hour's worth of crown fire in the Chiricahua Mountains is the equivalent of the energy released by an atomic bomb. Such a fire chute occurred when Horseshoe Two raged in only 3 hours from the Saulsbury Saddle line, up to and through Onion Saddle.
Yet, even with those serious extremes, a mosaic burn is being achieved in many areas through use of techniques that moderate the fire's growth and spread, including lighting ridge fires at night to back slowly down into canyons, and meet the oncoming fire before it rushes up those same ridges. Of all the techniques tried by the teams so far, the backburning is working best on this fire, under these conditions. Moderating the fire not only promotes a mosaic burn, but also protects soils for future regrowth.
A photo of the junction of Rustler and Barfoot roads showed many of the big trees still intact, so some of the mosaic burn still happened, even in this intensely-burned high country.
We also learned more about one crew boss's experience as they battled the holocaust in Whitetail Canyon, a situation vastly complicated by constantly-changing high winds that demanded the utmost in quick responses and flexibility. Plans had been carefully laid for protecting Whitetail, including a line laid by hand that joined the back road into Chiricahua National Monument, a dozer line, and structure protection. Then a big blast of wind from the south changed everything. One juniper flared and sent firebrands in all directions, and fire jumped the lines. A column of blazing hot smoke rose thousands of feet into the air, then rolled and started to collapse. That is a firefighter's nightmare, because a huge collapsing column sends fire everywhere as superheated smoke hits the ground. The worst-case scenario was narrowly avoided in Whitetail when another big wind gust suddenly straightened the column. Firefighters were beaten back from Whitetail by these volatile and dangerous conditions; when they were able to return, they found that the sprinklers and other structure protection in place had saved 18 of the 20 residences there.
A similar extreme event happened further south along the western flank of the fire, when the fire was being pushed upcanyon by very strong wind, which suddenly entered another canyon with different orientation, and sheared the fire column 180ยบ, setting the entire column (thousands of feet high) to spinning. Suddenly the fire turned into the faces of the crew there.
These events involving collapsing columns of fire and smoke are quite rare, and this is only the second time in this operation chief's career that he has ever witnessed one.
One photo graphically illustrated why residents and other people are not yet being allowed back into the burned areas: a gaping hole where a tree once stood was still burning deep in the ground. Fires can burn into big root systems for days, making the terrain dangerous.
More than 1200 fire personnel are now working on Horseshoe Two. They are on the lines 24 hours a day, in two shifts. People in the planning department have longer days than those out on the fire lines: they are spending 16 - 20 hours a day working on strategy, as the fire moves and conditions constantly change.
The new planned perimeter lines are out in the flats, with much lower fuel supply and easy terrain. There they should finally be able to fully contain this fire. Rich Harvey said that they estimate that Horseshoe Two is now 45% contained. He is cautious about calling a fire contained because, "If I say it's contained and something happens, they name it after me and I'm in big trouble."
Other agencies help and advise the fire teams. US Forest Service staff are interested in resource protection, and they make sure that important details like the locations of crucial habitat and Spotted Owl nests are considered when fire plans are formulated.
The fire bosses said that two weeks of working on a fire like Horseshoe Two is worth years of experience of working on more normal fires.
Whitetail Canyon: a Firsthand Account
by Wynne Brown, Guest Author
All hell broke loose soon after I sent my last update. The wind picked up to 50-60 mph gusts that afternoon and blew so hard that it was hard to stand upright. The light in the Grills' barnyard turned copper, the sun disappeared, and the smoke was so thick we could barely see Blue Mountain, much less The Nippers, Split Rock, or Maverick Peak. It whipped anything that was smoldering into flame, junipers exploded, and burning embers flew as far as 3 miles, igniting the ground, trees, dead stumps, and dry grass wherever they landed.
Whitetail became an inferno. Watching the smoke and, once darkness fell, the western glow, we knew for sure that every structure there HAD to be gone.
A fire team member arrived just before dark to assess the defensibility of the Grills' ranch and let us know that although the fire probably wouldn't get here, we should be prepared to evacuate just in case. So we scrambled to devise a list of who would release which livestock, which horses would go where, what truck/trailer combination would hold our combined 8 dogs and 7 cats, what about the chickens and the lame calf, where would the llamas go––and would the 2 camels load in the stock trailer?
Peter and Frances were able to set up a generator on the pump that feeds the cattle waterer and the house, and our first showers in a week were very welcome. Clean or not, none of us slept much Wednesday night.
Thursday at 4:30 a.m. one of the firefighters pulled into the driveway to let us know two residences had burned and some other outbuildings. In the dark and smoke, he'd had a hard time identifying specific places (all our houses were coded: mine is structure #3)––but he was pretty sure Al's and my places were OK.
The rest of Thursday was more dense smoke, more clearing flammables away from structures, more fire team trucks pulling in and out of the driveway, more discussion between the Grills and the fire team about using their pond for helicopter dips or just filling tenders, multiple trips to the hill a mile away to check cell phone messages and make calls, and most of all, trying to get real information about damage to our homes. The assessment team couldn't get into Whitetail, which was still burning with flaming trees continuing to fall, hot rocks rolling down hillsides, stumps bursting into flame, the road thick with engines, tenders, and busloads of hotshot crews. I talked to a firefighter later, who grinned and said, "Yeah, we took some heat!"
By suppertime, Columbus Electric put in a new power pole so that this ranch could have power and the phone. Hallelujah!
On Friday (yesterday), the sheriff's office informed me: My barn burned, but my house is fine.
Thanks to the structure prep crews and the heroism of the firefighters who kept returning to the blaze after being beaten back by the heat, torching trees, and smoke––my house looks exactly the same as it did the week before all this started. The hay barn is nothing but a pile of roof metal and twisted rebar, but the tack shed, the Merhow horse trailer, the straw bale pump house, Jim's ATV and trailers, his office across the road––they're all fine.
Two of the 18 Whitetail residences burned.
Although the official rule is still no non-fire personnel in the area, two safety officers and the crew boss knew about Jim's stroke, knew that I needed to get to Tucson, and kindly arranged to take me into the canyon, as long as I promised to stay in the truck.
Until the turn-off into Jhus Canyon, everything looks normal, as long as you avoid glancing at the gray mountainsides above it. I had no idea it's so rocky....
After Jhus, the grassland is dotted with blackened patches, but Darrow Richins' cows looked healthy as they grazed on what dry grass is left. Once you cross the last cattle guard before my house, the devastation begins. Some areas look mostly OK, others are a black and white photo where the tonal range extends from tree trunks of deep black to ash-white ground. Some of it looks so different that, without my mailbox, I wouldn't have recognized my own driveway. In other areas, the mesquites still have drooping leaves of sooty green, and although the ground is bare and gray, the remaining junipers look as if they may make it.
My composter totally melted away, the garden hot box looks like a Salvador Dali dripping watch, the hay under the llama shelter is incinerated––but the big beautiful juniper I park under looks fine, and the 1000-pound bale in the slow feeder is unsinged under the hill horses' shelter.
The house sits in an oasis of green––and the firefighters even watered my petunias and marigolds.
On the surface, it might seem that the past six weeks have been nothing but loss: I've been laid off, my dog had to have her leg amputated, my partner had a stroke, and Hell roared through my property, destroying my barn.
Yet, my gratitude list is nearly endless. I still have a house, I still have Jim––although our life together will be very different than it was for some time to come––and I still live in a beautiful, if wounded, area.
But, most of all, I live in a buffer zone created by the loving, caring kindness of friends.
Thank you, all of you!
[And thank you, Wynne, for sharing your account with our community of concerned friends, both local and global! Wynne will send photos when she can, so check back in to see those too.]
All hell broke loose soon after I sent my last update. The wind picked up to 50-60 mph gusts that afternoon and blew so hard that it was hard to stand upright. The light in the Grills' barnyard turned copper, the sun disappeared, and the smoke was so thick we could barely see Blue Mountain, much less The Nippers, Split Rock, or Maverick Peak. It whipped anything that was smoldering into flame, junipers exploded, and burning embers flew as far as 3 miles, igniting the ground, trees, dead stumps, and dry grass wherever they landed.
Horseshoe Two from Portal on June 5
(All photos by Wynne Brown)
Whitetail became an inferno. Watching the smoke and, once darkness fell, the western glow, we knew for sure that every structure there HAD to be gone.
Jhus Canyon burning on June 7
A fire team member arrived just before dark to assess the defensibility of the Grills' ranch and let us know that although the fire probably wouldn't get here, we should be prepared to evacuate just in case. So we scrambled to devise a list of who would release which livestock, which horses would go where, what truck/trailer combination would hold our combined 8 dogs and 7 cats, what about the chickens and the lame calf, where would the llamas go––and would the 2 camels load in the stock trailer?
Peeking in the window as fire approaches
Peter and Frances were able to set up a generator on the pump that feeds the cattle waterer and the house, and our first showers in a week were very welcome. Clean or not, none of us slept much Wednesday night.
Thursday at 4:30 a.m. one of the firefighters pulled into the driveway to let us know two residences had burned and some other outbuildings. In the dark and smoke, he'd had a hard time identifying specific places (all our houses were coded: mine is structure #3)––but he was pretty sure Al's and my places were OK.
The rest of Thursday was more dense smoke, more clearing flammables away from structures, more fire team trucks pulling in and out of the driveway, more discussion between the Grills and the fire team about using their pond for helicopter dips or just filling tenders, multiple trips to the hill a mile away to check cell phone messages and make calls, and most of all, trying to get real information about damage to our homes. The assessment team couldn't get into Whitetail, which was still burning with flaming trees continuing to fall, hot rocks rolling down hillsides, stumps bursting into flame, the road thick with engines, tenders, and busloads of hotshot crews. I talked to a firefighter later, who grinned and said, "Yeah, we took some heat!"
By suppertime, Columbus Electric put in a new power pole so that this ranch could have power and the phone. Hallelujah!
On Friday (yesterday), the sheriff's office informed me: My barn burned, but my house is fine.
Remains of a barn
Thanks to the structure prep crews and the heroism of the firefighters who kept returning to the blaze after being beaten back by the heat, torching trees, and smoke––my house looks exactly the same as it did the week before all this started. The hay barn is nothing but a pile of roof metal and twisted rebar, but the tack shed, the Merhow horse trailer, the straw bale pump house, Jim's ATV and trailers, his office across the road––they're all fine.
Two of the 18 Whitetail residences burned.
Although the official rule is still no non-fire personnel in the area, two safety officers and the crew boss knew about Jim's stroke, knew that I needed to get to Tucson, and kindly arranged to take me into the canyon, as long as I promised to stay in the truck.
Until the turn-off into Jhus Canyon, everything looks normal, as long as you avoid glancing at the gray mountainsides above it. I had no idea it's so rocky....
After Jhus, the grassland is dotted with blackened patches, but Darrow Richins' cows looked healthy as they grazed on what dry grass is left. Once you cross the last cattle guard before my house, the devastation begins. Some areas look mostly OK, others are a black and white photo where the tonal range extends from tree trunks of deep black to ash-white ground. Some of it looks so different that, without my mailbox, I wouldn't have recognized my own driveway. In other areas, the mesquites still have drooping leaves of sooty green, and although the ground is bare and gray, the remaining junipers look as if they may make it.
The aftermath
My composter totally melted away, the garden hot box looks like a Salvador Dali dripping watch, the hay under the llama shelter is incinerated––but the big beautiful juniper I park under looks fine, and the 1000-pound bale in the slow feeder is unsinged under the hill horses' shelter.
The house sits in an oasis of green––and the firefighters even watered my petunias and marigolds.
On the surface, it might seem that the past six weeks have been nothing but loss: I've been laid off, my dog had to have her leg amputated, my partner had a stroke, and Hell roared through my property, destroying my barn.
Yet, my gratitude list is nearly endless. I still have a house, I still have Jim––although our life together will be very different than it was for some time to come––and I still live in a beautiful, if wounded, area.
But, most of all, I live in a buffer zone created by the loving, caring kindness of friends.
Thank you, all of you!
[And thank you, Wynne, for sharing your account with our community of concerned friends, both local and global! Wynne will send photos when she can, so check back in to see those too.]
Friday, June 10, 2011
A Burning Question
As one of the hotshot fire crews finished their work at Rick and Lynne Taylor's house in Whitetail Canyon, their neighbor walked past, and was asked this question: "What is the ratio of sugar to water for filling these hummingbird feeders?"
Now that is an unusual level of care being taken!
Now that is an unusual level of care being taken!
Magnificent and Calliope Hummingbirds
(Acrylics by Narca)
Friday, June 3, 2011
The Long Siege Lengthens
As we thought we were seeing an end to the fire and its attendant stresses (with containment being predicted for June 22), the Horseshoe Two Fire has broken free of containment lines to move across Rock Creek Canyon and northeast toward Paradise, East Whitetail Canyon, and Chiricahua National Monument. The Monument is temporarily closed to visitors, and residents of Paradise and Whitetail are being evacuated––again, in the case of Paradise. One Whitetail resident was told yesterday that the fire was "still a day away" from her home.
Unexpected high winds caused the fire to jump to the north side of Rock Canyon, generating flame lengths 200 feet high in a veritable firestorm. (At the start of the fire on May 8, Barney Tomberlin––one of Portal's volunteer firemen who tackled the new conflagration––also estimated those initial flames to be 200 feet high and the convection column of smoke to be 20,000 feet high.)
Those appalling flames released embers that caused two new fires to start near Saulsbury Saddle, more than a mile and a half from the containment lines. One of those new fires had grown to 400 acres by yesterday morning.
Firefighters had to disengage from working the line in Rustler Park yesterday because the danger was too great. (Thus far, there have only been 7 injuries, thankfully all minor.)
News from the southwest part of the fire was better: the burnout along a 6-mile stretch of Tex Canyon Road was finished yesterday. That part of the perimeter is more secure, although smoke from the operation was very heavy and contributed to the pall that continues to shroud the northern end of the Chiricahuas, making breathing very uncomfortable and difficult for residents there.
The overall fire size is now 86,140 acres and is considered 50% contained (a drop from yesterday's 75% containment figure). The fire crews had begun to scale back, and now 825 personnel remain of the 900+ that were here a few days ago. With the new menace from the fire, will that scaling back continue?
When a crisis is viewed from a distance (right now, South Carolina), questions multiply. If any of our Portal friends send more information today, I'll post it.
What friends have been sending me is a link to the New York Times article questioning whether the fire was started by illegal immigrants. In the strictest sense, it is an accurate article. The only proof is circumstantial. However, the article also seems to diminish and discount the actual, daily effects of illegal immigration and smuggling on our communities, among them the settlements in and around the Chiricahua Mountains.
I would like to challenge the New York Times to send a reporter to live in one of our Border communities for a year, interacting frequently with Border Patrol, and then to write an investigative article about the real problems caused by illegal traffic of both humans and drugs. It sounds like Pulitzer Prize material to me.
Unexpected high winds caused the fire to jump to the north side of Rock Canyon, generating flame lengths 200 feet high in a veritable firestorm. (At the start of the fire on May 8, Barney Tomberlin––one of Portal's volunteer firemen who tackled the new conflagration––also estimated those initial flames to be 200 feet high and the convection column of smoke to be 20,000 feet high.)
Those appalling flames released embers that caused two new fires to start near Saulsbury Saddle, more than a mile and a half from the containment lines. One of those new fires had grown to 400 acres by yesterday morning.
Firefighters had to disengage from working the line in Rustler Park yesterday because the danger was too great. (Thus far, there have only been 7 injuries, thankfully all minor.)
News from the southwest part of the fire was better: the burnout along a 6-mile stretch of Tex Canyon Road was finished yesterday. That part of the perimeter is more secure, although smoke from the operation was very heavy and contributed to the pall that continues to shroud the northern end of the Chiricahuas, making breathing very uncomfortable and difficult for residents there.
The overall fire size is now 86,140 acres and is considered 50% contained (a drop from yesterday's 75% containment figure). The fire crews had begun to scale back, and now 825 personnel remain of the 900+ that were here a few days ago. With the new menace from the fire, will that scaling back continue?
When a crisis is viewed from a distance (right now, South Carolina), questions multiply. If any of our Portal friends send more information today, I'll post it.
What friends have been sending me is a link to the New York Times article questioning whether the fire was started by illegal immigrants. In the strictest sense, it is an accurate article. The only proof is circumstantial. However, the article also seems to diminish and discount the actual, daily effects of illegal immigration and smuggling on our communities, among them the settlements in and around the Chiricahua Mountains.
I would like to challenge the New York Times to send a reporter to live in one of our Border communities for a year, interacting frequently with Border Patrol, and then to write an investigative article about the real problems caused by illegal traffic of both humans and drugs. It sounds like Pulitzer Prize material to me.
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