Monday, July 12, 2010

Swakane Wildfire

It has been a couple of busy days around the homestead.  The Swakane Wildfire started about Saturday noon and four miles north of our house.  High winds have pushed the fire mainly east, but also to south towards our house.  So I have set out sprinklers on the east side of the house that is in native vegetation primarily sage and grass.

The National Weather Service has a Red Flag Watch out for today and continued high winds tomorrow.

The Redmond and Prineville Hotshot crews did a burn out just above the house last night to create a black line off the Burch Mountain Road.  It appears to be holding in the 40 mile winds we are currently experiencing.   Hopefully, all lines will hold the next two days.

I just got a call to report to the Incident Command post tomorrow morning.   So the blog postings will be temporarily suspended until the fire is controlled.  Hopefully, I will be able to start posting again in a week or so.

It has been a wet spring in many parts of the country.  Please be careful with any sort of fire.  It is still July and this fire shows that fire season has once again arrived in the west. 

If you want to keep track of the fire situation nationwide see the post on the Thirty-Mile Memorial  Thirty-Mile Memorial.  There are links there. 

The Swakane Fire is listed in the inciweb site:  InciWeb.

4 comments:

Doug said...

Stay safe!

Vladimir Steblina said...

Thanks Dugg.

I survived 10 days dealing with the media!!

Age, does give you an important perspective. Some risks are not worth the reward!

I just wish those in the 20's would have the same perspective.

Doug said...

Yes, I'm sure the media can be as ferocious as any forest fire. I followed InciWeb daily, good job keeping it updated.

Glad your home survived. I think rain and snow will wash away the charcoal smell by Christmas---but what about the view from your home? That, you may see for decades.

Vladimir Steblina said...

Our home is located in sage and grass, so the effects of the fire are mostly gone by the following spring. If you are into plant ecology you can tell that there was a fire, but most people just see vegetation.

Now we have three fires west of about four miles. These were lightning starts. Smoky today and if we get high winds from the west that fire can run towards the house. I thought it was going to be a mild fire season due to the late spring. So much for my predictive ability.