| 2005 Spring fire season photos |
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| well, calling it a "fire" season is a slight overstatement from my perspective. |
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| Well, it wasnt much of a fire season in my neck-o-the-woods. But for the fires we did have it was my year to be in the right place at the right time. These first 3 photos are from one of the first fires this spring. It started way out in the back country hardwoods when a skidder on a logging job tipped over and caught on fire (left). Below are two shots from our aircraft over head. Its hard to tell in the photos but this fire was very steep for us. The fire ran along a ridge top and slopped down onto the steep slopes on both sides. I ended up furrowing about 60% of it (all the while keeping the flipped skidder in the back of my mind and my ass sucked to the seat) and we had a local hand crew come in to help build hand line for the rest of it. ..it was most hand line I've seen built on a single fire that I have seen in 17 years in WI. |
| This next fire was a lot of fun for me but a pain for others as every fire fighting vehicle on the fire ended up getting stuck at least once. (I gotta start charging for pull outs) At right is an overview of the entire fire when it was all said and done. If you look in the overview photo and the others the areas of grass that are real white are canary grass in very wet areas. This fire was at the far end of our area so the local FD was there long before us. They made good progress until their 4x4 got stuck then they were relagated to back cans only which was very slow going in the heavy grass. |
| When I got there I started furrowing on the right flank. I was trying to beat the fire to this island of trees which was cluttered with junk and a 100 years of rock pickins from the ag field. As I went along it was getting wetter and wetter and I wasnt going to make it so I ended up going around the other side (photo at left) Once around the island I wanted to get back direct but I was blocked by a big ditch filled with water that I didnt feel lucky enough to try to cross with fire heading toward me. |
| So I kept to the high ground along the ditch (photo at right) and we were going to burn out. The ditch finally ended but I was at this big patch of canary grass which I was a little queezy about crossing because I felt is was probably pretty soft. I took it slow but I made it ok, then I was on high ground again. The burnout was having problems getting going behind me (you can see the start of the burnout at the bottom left of the photo to the right) and I wanted to get this thing corralled before it got into more soft ground so at this point I started pitching out fusees as I went along to at least get some black spots along the line if things heated up. The photo below was probably taken shortly after the one to the right and shows the burn out getting started in earnest, with the canary grass doing its stuff. |
| Thought I was kidding about it being wet?? ..here is a picture of my furrow after the fact. We diked it up and pumped out of it to mop up on the rock/junk islend. |
| Below A good example of the behavior of different fuels in the same conditions. The white canary grass areas (FM3) burns hot and fast with flame lengths of 4-6ft+, while the other areas (FM1) have flame lengths of 1-2 foot max. |
| Left: County Forest tractor plow works a fire. Right: Fire Dept. helps out on a fire. Note the old DNR tank on a fed excess duce 'n a half chasis. |
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| This fire was north of me and in the 1977 5 Mile Fire burn area so it had a LOT of potential. Fortunatley the start was on the wrong side of the road and the road held the forward spread and the guys got a line around it pretty quickly. Before the SEAT even got on scene. The SEAT did do a mop drop though. The line was cleared of folks (well more on that in a bit.) and he made the drop. (below and below left). He was supposed to drop along the line but in the black to assist mop up. Well, he missed a little bit and...... |
| One dozer operator (who was more than far enough off the line) got out and stoood on top of his dozer to get a better front row seat for the SEAT drop. ...he got a front row seat alright! HA HA HA!! |
| Well, thats it! I told you it was a pretty wimpy spring. We will see what happens this fall or later this summer. |
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