W.I.S.E. Fire Tracking

This information would be much more helpful if it could be updated at least every 24 hours if not more frequently. For those of us living very close to this fire, day old (or older) info is not very helpful. Also the direction and speed in which the fire is moving and projected to move is some vitally important info. Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Reply: We are not the government. We don’t have access to information more than once very 24 hours. We post what we can dig up from obscure government websites. It’s not our fault if the government wants to hide information about wildfires from the threatened populace, and there is not much we can do about that.

The government does provide the InciWeb website [here]. The information there is also updated only once every 24 hours. They do provide phone numbers to call. (Right now the Banner Fire is not being reported at InciWeb.)

The best we can do here is provide a history of the day-to-day changes of selected wildfires, drawn from poorly written and difficult to find daily reports. We also provide this space to those who wish to comment on wildfires. We also provide our own commentary on selected wildfires at our forest commentary site, SOS Forests [here]. The Oak Flat Fire is the subject of a discussion there right now. Check it out, and add your two cents to the dialog if you care to.

We were backpacking overnight close to the area on Friday/Saturday (two miles NW of the fire.) Thankfully we had registered our destination at the trailhead. Saturday morning the Forest Service flew a helicopter into our campsite and dropped us a note that we had to evacuate (a two hour hike out of there.) It was a surreal experience as we started hiking out into the smoke filled valleys: yellow haze, the sun turning red, and some ashes in the air.

I was a smoke chaser in this area in 1957 and 1958. It had heavy fuels then and the fuels have dramatically increased. The lodgepole pine has been killed by the mtn. pine beetle for over five years and lodgepole is the main species. With the dry cold front predicted tomorrow with high winds I expect there will be rapid spread north and east into the Frank Church Wilderness. This fire will spread until snow fall. I expect the Challis/Salmon National Forest will exceed their target for acres burned. The area is also important for steelhead, Chinook salmon and bull trout with Idaho Batholith soils.

Correction… don’t perpetuate “myth’s” like the government hides information on wildfires. I and my fellow fire managers don’t hide anything… the whole concept of being able to do that is ridiculous. Stop by the Challis office sometime and I’ll give you all the info you could ever need or desire. The information we get out today due to the web is light years ahead of where we were 20 years ago.

Bill Blount-FMO

Thank you, Bill.

Please email me all the NEPA documents the Salmon-Challis NF prepared prior to implementing the Banner Let It Burn Fire. That would be the EA or EIS, the Section 7 ESA consultation, the Section 106 NHPA consultation, the WDDSS inputs and outputs, and records of all the public meetings and public involvement processes held prior to implementing this action.

That should be an easy task, since no such documents exist because no such NEPA procedures were followed.

Perhaps you can email me the USFS analysis of the economic and resource damages inflicted by the Banner Let It Burn Fire. Unless, of course, no such investigation or report is ever even attempted.

And perhaps you could send the Plan which specifies which acres are to be immolated and when on the S-CNF. You all have figured that out, right? You’re not just making it up as you go along, right? And please send me all the NEPA documentation associated with that Plan. It would be good to have some evidence that the S-CNF is compliant with NEPA, ESA, NHPA, CAA CWA, APA, etc. Unless, of course, the S-CNF is not in compliance with those laws, which is my current assumption.

Also, who writes the 209 reports? Can you hire somebody who knows how to use a spell-checker? Maybe somebody who also has some concept of what information is pertinent and useful to the public? I ask only because I read the 209’s and am daily impressed by the gibberish nonsense and useless rah rah found therein. After tracking some 500 fires and reading all the associated 209’s, I sense that fire managers might be good candidates for remedial English classes.

Thank you,

Mike Dubrasich, Exec Dir
Western institute for Study of the Environment