Scott Mountain Let It Burn Fire
Location: 14 mi NE of McKenzie Bridge, Willamette NF, Linn Co. OR
Specific Location: near Kuitan Lake, Mt Washington Wilderness, Lat 44°16′9″ Lon 121°54′30″
Date of Origin: 08/19/2010
Cause: Lightning
Situation as of 09/12/2010 8:00 pm
Personnel: 87
Size: 3,464 acres
Percent Contained: 35%
Costs to Date: $4,500,000
Continue mop-up in portion outside the wilderness. Prepare checkline on Trail 3508. Continue preparation of secondary control lines.
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Situation as of 09/11/2010 8:00 pm
Personnel: 78
Size: 3,464 acres
Percent Contained: 35%
Costs to Date: $4,400,000
Smoldering and creeping on SE corner of fire. Prepare checkline on Trail 3508.
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Situation as of 09/10/2010 7:10 pm
Personnel: 78
Size: 3,464 acres
Percent Contained: 35%
Costs to Date: $4,400,000
Continue mop-up outside the wilderness and work on contingency lines.
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Situation as of 09/09/2010 6:30 pm
Personnel: 92
Size: 3,464 acres
Percent Contained: 35%
Costs to Date: $4,348,000
Continue mop-up outside the wilderness and work on contingency lines.
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Situation as of 09/08/2010 6:40 pm
Personnel: 92
Size: 3,464 acres
Percent Contained: 35%
Costs to Date: $4,296,000
Area closure remains in effect.
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Situation as of 09/07/2010 6:30 pm
Personnel: 92
Size: 3,464 acres
Percent Contained: 35%
Costs to Date: $4,100,000
Continue mopping up but only outside of wilderness where fire continues to burn unchecked.
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Situation as of 09/05/2010 6:10 pm
Personnel: 99
Size: 3,454 acres
Percent Contained: 35%
Costs to Date: $4,000,000
Smoldering and creeping duff and dead logs. Continue mopping up but only outside of wilderness.
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Situation as of 09/02/2010 6:30 pm
Personnel: 109
Size: 3,454 acres
Percent Contained: 30%
Costs to Date: $3,750,000
Will update 209 when activity changes.
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Situation as of 09/01/2010 9:30 am
Personnel: 114
Size: 3,454 acres
Percent Contained: 30%
Costs to Date: $3,750,000
Hwy. 242 reopened last evening. Type 3 team in place. Area closure remains. Mop up areas outside the wilderness.
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Situation as of 08/31/2010 1:30 pm
Personnel: 285
Size: 3,454 acres
Percent Contained: 30%
Costs to Date: $3,576,000
Hwy. 242 reopened last evening. Type 3 team arrival and shadowing. Demobilization of resources ongoing.
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Situation as of 08/30/2010 4:00 pm
Personnel: 397
Size: 3,454 acres
Percent Contained: 30%
Costs to Date: $3,128,000
Wetting rain and snow received throughout the fire area. Hwy. 242 scheduled to be reopened this evening. Demobilization of resources is ongoing. Transition to Type 3 team scheduled for Wednesday, September 1, 2010.
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Situation as of 08/29/2010 3:30 pm
Personnel: 547
Size: 3,454 acres
Percent Contained: 30%
Costs to Date: $2,834,000
Fire remains mostly within wilderness area. Containment line have been prepared outside of the wilderness area. Burnout is pending favorable weather. [sic]
Note: unfortunately for the holocauster forest killer contingent, it’s raining, and they won’t be able to burn, baby, burn and kill, baby, kill anymore.
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Situation as of 08/28/2010 4:30 pm
Personnel: 560
Size: 3,305 acres
Percent Contained: 30%
Costs to Date: $2,168,000
Hwy. 242 remains closed due to public and firefighter safety. Completion of indirect lines SW of fire. ~$60 million worth of timber incinerated so far.
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Situation as of 08/27/2010 3:30 pm
Personnel: 557
Size: 2,884 acres
Percent Contained: 5%
Costs to Date: numbers reported are incompetent
Planned Actions: Scouting for possible line construction.
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Situation as of 08/26/2010 4:00 pm
Personnel: 440
Size: 2,559 acres
Percent Contained: 5%
Costs to Date: numbers reported are incompetent
The new strategy is Let It Burn, in violation of the Willamette NF LMRP and FMP. The criminal incompetent responsible is WNF Forest Supervisor Meg Mitchell.
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Situation as of 08/25/2010 4:30 pm
Personnel: 292
Size: 935 acres
Percent Contained: 0%
Costs to Date: $1,100,000
Highway 242 closed to non-fire traffic. Four new spot fires reported today, two of them on the south side of Scott Mountain.
PNW Team 3, Jeff Pendleton, IC, assumed command at 1800 yesterday. A new strategy is being analyzed that focuses on protecting watershed and wilderness values, firefighter safety, sold active timber sales, timber, T & E and recreation resource values.
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Situation as of 08/24/2010 6:30 pm
Personnel: 147
Size: 600 acres
Percent Contained: 0%
Costs to Date: $1,100,000
Flew a lot of retardant on the south side, used crews to secure anchor to the east, used heavy helicopters to slow fire spread to the north. Type 1 Team assumed command at 1800. They are planning to manage the fire for mulitple objectives given the variables of the wilderness, the timber sales, the boy scout camp, bug kill, and any benefit fire might have on the landscape. [sic]
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Situation as of 08/24/2010 6:00 am
Personnel: 120
Size: 200 acres
Percent Contained: 0%
The Melakwa Boy Scout Camp and Scott Lake Campground were evacuated. Active timber sales within a mile to the west. Will utilize critical resource needs to attempt to keep fire from the timber sales and minimize growth onto the general forest lands.
A Type 1 Incident Management Team has been ordered and will take over the managing the suppression efforts starting today. East winds, hot and dry weather expected with thermal trough passage. Continuous heavy fuels, no natural breaks.
Over 50 years ago, my scout troop hiked the trail to the top of Scott Mtn. My memory is of no trees, lots of buck brush, and thousands of hummingbirds. It was late July or early August. I mean more hummingbirds than you will ever see in one place, working over the buck brush and late emerging wild flowers. We hiked there from Camp Melakwa, mosquito camp, on a lake that was really too cold to swim in. Numbing cold water. Hot all week, and you knew if you dove in that lake your breath was gone, and your manhood disappeared. But the view from the top of Scott Mtn. was territorial. Not as good as the South Sister, which we also hiked or climbed, That was in the days when you stayed overnight at Sunshine Shelter, and then did the climb at daybreak, so’s to be off the mountain when the snow got really soft and the rocks started to roll.
In their role as God, and interpreters of the USFS Bible as presented by Congress, the ever public friendly USFS PIss Fir Willy Brigade burned all the CCC shelters along the Skyline Trail (now the Pacific Crest Trail) because nothing of the “hand of man” should be found in the new Three Sisters Wilderness. Beat the fire rings to gravel with sledges, and hauled the cast iron grate out. I suppose the nails in the three sided shelters, as well. The brain power of the USFS was well on its way to being the canard and oxymoron it is today with that one act of purposeful destruction.
I was through that country a year ago, and there is no end to the dead, bug-killed trees. This fire will not be out until snow falls. The last two years that has been the day before deer season starts in October. The reported 200 acres was 600 acres at dark. Tomorrow night it will be 1500 acres. And by weeks end, 10,000 or more. The death knell to standing trees in the Mt. Washington Wilderness. And maybe a fire from rocks at elevation to the great lava flows, and all in between. Revisionist landscape planning by Pyromaniacs and Obfuscationistas from the Green Left. Oh, well. School starts in a week, and Boy Scouts can find another camp.