Monday, June 16, 2008

Indians Fire #4

Morning briefing was the usual blahblah. Wx hotter and drier. RH coming up, but above 2k' still dry. RH in the low teens to single digits low, high teens to mid 20's high; temps mid 90's low, mid 80's high.

Division assignments all say "continue line construction" except for Div. U - "Prep and hold for possible firing"; structure groups - "provide structure protection for firing ops in Coleman Canyon"; and there's a burn group to fire out Coleman Canyon.

New pictures are up.

Air ops:
A/A FW - 166.6875
A/A RW - 130.200
Briefing - 128.475
Helibase Deck - 163.100
Torch Base - 134.875/171.1375


I'm leaving at about 1500 to head home. I'll post everything that I have left when I get back in.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Indians Fire #3

PM Briefing: Burnout tomorrow if the line gets completed. Wx getting cooler with a little better RH/Fuel Moisture recovery at lower elevations, but above 2000', it's still going to be hot and dry. The marine layer will come in, but that's part of an inversion, and we all know that above the inversion, it's warm and dry.

Freqs: NIFC Command 1 and 2; NIFC Tacs 2-7; R5 Tac 5; A/G:167.95

Found out during the day that the repeater on Comm 60 was programmed wrong. The right channels are there, but #1 is still the old (now wrong) channel, and the PL tones weren't programmed right - encode only, which does no good - and only a single PL instead of being selectable.

Vehicle and foot traffic over the phone line between the trailer mall and the SitStat tent broke one of the pairs. One down and 3 to go.

The data feed is working great, which is why I'm lucky enough to post here.

Camera battery went dead, so it's on the charger for now. I'm going to get one that takes AA batteries so I can BBS (beg, borrow, steal) them from Supply/Comm/etc.

Indians Fire #2

Morning Briefing was the usual BS. Apparently the plan is to control the fire long enough to put completed line in on the east side of the fire from Milpitas Road to Arroyo Seco Road along Reliz Canyon and Vaqueros Creek just outside the Wilderness boundary. Minimum Impact Suppression Tactics (MIST) are being required inside the Wilderness, but outside, it's all SRA, and the 12' wide McCleods are having a free-for-all. There's a map showing the last time that there was a fire, and some of the areas in the Wilderness haven't burned for 90-100 years. The IC wants the line put in by tomorrow, and made a comment about a "fire show" which leads me to believe that they're going to draw a line around the wilderness and fire it all out. They'll probably do this at night to make it a low(ish) intensity fire, but it'll burn into the next day.

I've got an album of pictures that I'm uploading as I go along, so check back regularly to see what I've added. Click here for the pictures.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Indians Fire #1

Okay, I arrived here about 2100, after winding my way around on narrow bumpy paved roads, and a dirt track that's barely wide enough to have 2 cars pass, much less 2 trucks.

The official GPS coordinates for where I am right now are 36 03.77'N x 121 18.12W. I'm about 50' from the row of trailers housing the command team.

Found the 3 most important places in camp: Supply, Food, and the T-Shirt vendor.

Took a bunch of pictures of the helibase. FHL is letting the FS use their helipads, which are nice and paved. There's a few ARNG units out here playing, so I wasn't surprised when I saw them firing blanks in a scenario as I was driving in.

I got the quick and dirty from the guy that I'm relieving about what's going on with Comm 60.

Checked in with the OES Comm Support unit that's here, and the Div Chief said that the plan for the fire is basically this: Draw a big line around it with dozers and hand crews, and fire it out. This about the same strategy that they used on the Zaca fire, but this time they're a little more serious.

There's hotshot crews, engines, watertenders, dozers and helitack crews from just about every forest here. There's a load of other agencies here, too: Kern, SBarb, Ventura, and lots of CDF crews and engines. I'll wander around camp tomorrow and get a few pictures. Now, I'm going to see about getting a place to bed down for the night.