Looks like a few thousand acres being burned per watchduty. Pretty impressive column on the camera
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Aircraft overhead now
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Is this in their box or was there a whoops?
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Fine work TGU. Ball and chain units so pouring it to the coals is the intent ( aka helitorch) and for everyone looking to pick it apart, you did 16 other things right and won’t get credit!
Without the heat it will smolder like a mastication unit.
110 years of fire exclusion and vaporizing of zip codes,and yet, your efforts will still be criticized by those that never have…I feel your challenges.
Strong work.
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Strong work indeed. This burn and RX Unit is a challenging location and time of the season year after year. BUT the landowners, the agencies, the neighbors and other stakeholders down to the jack rabbits are all in agreement and supportive of this annual burn. You don’t often get that and when you do, you gotta lean into it and let the nomex do its job.
Some tactics were changed this year from lessons learned in the past, and it helped but apparently still got sporty enough early evening to attract some state birds. 
Good fire. Good work. Thank you TGU.
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I feel as though it’s not a problem that the aircraft had to show up. But that it should be factored in to the burn, possibly ahead of time.
It only makes sense to me that. In order to effectuate real fuel reduction on a level that provides some safety for communities. We need to have budgets available and make plans. That replicate or mimic a campaign fire with all those resources.
How many times on large scale incidents do we successfully complete complex burn operations where the end result is years of comfort and peace of mind not only for the communities and public, but the fire managers in the local area.
Knowing if fire gets into that area. Now it will be moderated to the point we anticipate being able to catch it and stop the spread. And if we can do that time and time again, under the harshest conditions on major incidents. Then, why aren’t we planning those type of operations in those areas. When we have much more time to hypothetically, bomb proof our burn.
Of course. The answer is the risk is very high. What if it gets away? And there’s too much Red Tape but I’m just rambling on, I suppose and preaching to the choir. But how much more comfortable would people have been? If lets say the areas outside the box of this r x burn were painted with retardant before the burn started.
And what if there was rotor wing assign to the burn before it started? So there was a possibility to moderate some of the fire had the situation called for it. And maybe ems on standby, add a drop point for a vmp in the even it was needed.
There are certain times where we do a prescribed burn, and we have some of these things. All I’m saying is, we never have it on the level that mimics a burn operation on an incident and my soapbox is why don’t we or why isn’t that the goal.
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Has anyone seen the burn plan?
Are aircraft included as a contingency?
I only ask because i have seen burn plans and FC400 list not only fixed and rotery wing aircraft. But NVG rotery wing. The costs of potential aircraft use get included into the plan.
I have been on a burn where a CF T1 was used to cool down sections of the fire and the justification was “training”.
Kudos to TGU for continuing the good work. The majority of the Sierras need this kind of fuel reduction.
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Looking at the flight patterns of AA and the tankers before they went to the fire show they did some training, both Tankers from Redding took a flight out then went back to Redding before heading to the fire. 1 drop each then home.
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There is NO budget line items for fuels or prescribed fire asside from pre loaded budgets for fuels crews, camps and fire centers. Anyone see the problem here?CF funds grants all year long yet there is no actual “pot” to fund the work that is mandated by government order. Creative financing and cowboy ways to get the work done!
To clear up assumptions,or guesses, both fixed wing and rotor wing were on the AUA for the project. Considerd tools on the tool box.
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I have said this exact thing time and time again. Burning annual grasses is fine if you are treating for ignitions or ecological benefit. Look at the various burns along the sides of several highways in the North State, they reduce IAs by the dozens. However to call those burns lasting is a misnomer. Yes they provide benefits, but they must be repeated every single year. Larger burns that treat brush and timber in large enough quantities turn a running crown fire into a meek ground fire that can be combatted, and those burns can occur on a 5-10 year timescale that allows for a more treated acres in that period than we could ever accomplish by burning the same grass fields year after year.
The funding has to come, otherwise we will keep burning towns and cities down. The massive investment into aircraft is great at keeping IAs small and manageable, but when they become established those resources lose effectiveness. Only large scale prescribed burning and fuels reductions gives us a fighting chance when everything else is against us.
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Agreed. I think leaning into recent burn scars is essential for getting to scale, too. We get a window of opportunity after a fire to burn right next to areas which are already black, and fairly low hazard. We’ve been doing a bit of this near Forest Ranch, on Doe Mill Ridge, just to the NW of the Camp Fire scar. When we started in 2020, being adjacent to the 2 year-old burn really lowered the threat of any of our burns getting away into the steep/nasty of Butte Creek Canyon - just to the east of our burns.
We weren’t pushing anything that really had much potential for escape, but it did buy me some peace of mind as a burn boss. I probably would have been leery to burn in the same place if it weren’t for the nearby burn scar. Five years later, the burn scar is pretty grown in, but in the meantime, we’ve carved out a new catchers mitt with all of the burning we’ve gotten done.
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