hand line

Here’s what the USFS is reporting today. Looks like they can’t get in to the remaining burning areas. But those are burning slowly and not progressing.The remainder of the uncontained fire perimeter is in inaccessible terrain (100% slope) and is not safe for firefighters to work. The fire area is being flown daily with infrared to detect activity. There has been no fire movement reported for several days. Significant demobilization of resources is planned for October 11. Inciweb will be updated on October 11, at approximately 6:00pm.

Here is the latest fire perimeter map as well.

Even though there are high winds predicted for the next couple of days, the USFS is saying that the fire will stay put. It’s up to 84% now with 100% containment predicted by Oct. 17. Pretty much everyone around here is figuring that it’s over. The crews are starting to do fire break rehabilitation, something that usually does not start until full containment is reached. Here is a perimeter map from yesterday, the 9th. Comparing it to Oct. 7th shows the line southwest of Cone Peak improving, as well as the line on the southeast corner. The line in the northeast section doesn’t seem to have improved yet.

It looks like the fire is really slowing down and posing much less of a threat to Big Creek as it did before. The containment as of today is at 67%. Crews seem to be going directly at the fire and building hand line right in against the burn to keep it as small as possible. You can see from the following perimeter map where the fire lines are. Black are contained lines and red are the currently uncontained portions. I believe that access to some of these lines is being provided by helicopter pads , as concluded by the blue dots labeled H-1, H-2, etc. on the map. Perhaps that’s how they are accessing this incredibly steep and remote terrain.

I have decided to resume operation of Big Creek as normal, allowing researchers and classes to come as previously planned.

I investigated this “direct line from Hwy 1 to Twin Peak” reported in today’s Incident Action Plan, both by phone and visually. Six crew trucks were parked in the pullout just north of the big slide at the bottom of Twitchell’s trail, north of Limekiln SP. They were building that fire break up Stone Ridge toward Twin Peak. I drove up to an overlook along the hermitage road and had a wonderful conversation with a group of USFS firefighters, including a captain. Their crews got about halfway to Twin Peak today and hope to finish tomorrow. The plan tomorrow would be to come down off the coast ridge, along the cone peak trail until it meets the saddle between there and twin peak. If they can do it, they will move across to twin peak and tie in to where they got to today (Stone Ridge summit at 2449 Elevation). If the ground crews can’t do the upper section between twin peak and cone peak, they hope to just “paint it” with air support. This fire is burning in 9 year fuels this time, instead of much older fuels back in the Kirk Complex fire of 1999. So they feel more confident about this working this time (it was not an option given the conditions in 1999).IC is responding to a lot of community and political pressure to keep any more coastal watersheds and slopes above the highway from burning. So they are doing a lot of direct attack and trying to keep the fire away from 1. If this can be pulled off then the fire will be taken from Cone Peak, down into Limekiln and hopefully just put it out down in the dampness of the creek. On the east side of cone, they plan to run it up the coast ridge into the Basin perimeter and out to the Indians perimeter on Hunter Liggett.

The fire has moved lower down Hare canyon now. That and a few wisps high above the highway between Limekiln and Kirk Creek is all you can see from the coast now. I also got news from those firefighters and Jeff Kwasny (USFS Resource Advisor) that the fire break along Prewitt and out to McKern road has been successful. I guess another 8% successful.

Neither the wind nor the .2 inches of rain we got last night and this morning seemed to make much difference. It’s still smoldering.

US Forest Service crews arrived on Tuesday, Sept 30 and worked for three days I wasn’t expecting them for a couple more days so that was a surprise. It was good, however, to recognize Pete Harris from his work here during the Basin Complex fire. He knows the reserve, where our buildings are and what our “light on the land” policy is. Pete conferred with us that, while protective actions in the Reserve were “contingency” at this point, there is no really good place for a fire break between our watershed and the fire’s location. Cone Peak and Twin Peak are in between us and consist of some of the steepest and inaccesible country in the mountains. There is a significant chance that this Chalk fire will eventually make it here. So it didn’t take long for us to consider what needed to be done. In 1999 the Kirk Complex fire approached Big Creek from this same direction, the southeast. In order to protect the Whale Point cabins and the cabins in Devil’s Creek Flat, they cut a hand line up from the common cabin, over Highlands Ridge, and down to the road to Circle M Ranch where Bob and Joey Milton live. The idea is then to fend the approaching fire off and send it around to the north of Devils Creek, over Mining Ridge, into Big Creek and up to Dolan Ridge. This same approach will be employed this time, except the crew leaders decided that the road from the canyon will be sufficient to use from the bench above Whale Point and down to the first left hand hairpin in our road heading to Devil’s Creek Flat. From there, they will cut a hand line straight down to the common cabin. Then they will also use the road from the bench down to Circle M. In order to do this, crews trim the roadside so that when the fire backs down to the road, there will be less fuel and will be easy to put out. Using the road means that we get some free roadside pruning and avoid cutting a swath across the ridge.Here are the crews reopening the hand break at the bottom of the canyon road at Devils Creek Flat and “brushing” the roadsides. You can just imagine how much poison oak these firefighters end up with!

According to the USFS supervisor working in Big Creek Reserve at the moment (I worked with him during the Basin Fire as well, so good to see a familiar face-got a hold of him through the IAP you posted-thanks!), there is no hand line being build along the Vicente Flat-San Antonio trail. Don’t believe everything you read, he said. A fact I can confirm with you is that they are building a hand line here in the Reserve and will use that plus our road to backfire and protect our structures and Bob and Joey’s house down at Circle M when (if) the fire gets here. Unfortunately, and things could change, they are preparing for the fire to round Cone Peak, probably from the east but maybe from the west and drop into Devils Creek or Vicente Creek. His story is that the fire is hung up above Fresno campground along the ridge there but that they have kept it below the cone peak road just west so far.

Now, you don’t have to take his or my word for it, call it “contingency” but here at Big Creek they are fully expecting this fire to burn north to the Basin and Indians perimeters. We shall see. We’re just glad we have good support here on the ground and we’re already pretty prepared from our experience with the Basin Fire being stopped on Dolan Ridge.