Wildfire activity: Arizona and Canada

Wildfire season is underway in portions of the U.S. and in Canada. I'm going to start with the wildfires in Arizona because of a report I saw while watching the weather channel yesterday. I have also noted a few wildfires burning in Canada, our friends to our north.

As some of you may know, there are a few wildfires burning in Arizona. Not being quite sure of the number of fires in Arizona, I went to Bill Gabbert's Blog Wildfire Today to see what he had to say. I found an article on these Arizona fires that he updated earlier this morning, May 15. He mentioned four fires: the Gladiator Fire, Sunflower Fire, Bull Flat Fire, and the Elwood Fire. He includes a couple of maps showing the location of the fires, includes a smoke map and some information on each fire. Bill reports that there were several large air tankers working these fire, as much of eight of the eleven on national contract. Bill is doing a good job, as he always does, on reporting on these fires, so you might want to refer back to his blog, Wildfire Today for updates.

Other sources of information include theinciweb national incident website inciweb, where I found an incident report for the Sunflower Fire. and the Gladiator Fire. Other sources of information include the Arizona Emergency Network (thanks for the reference, Bill), and the Southwest Coordination Center.

In addition, it is always worth checking the southwest initial attack hotlist forums where I found a threads on the Gladiator Fire, Sunflower Fire, Elwood Fire, and Bull Flat Fire.

Michael Archer of the Firebomber Publication Blog had a couple of articles about the current situation in Arizona on May 14.

I don't want to leave out my friends in Canada where I understand there are a few fires currently burning in Ontario, Alberta, Manitoba, and British Columbia. Michael reported on these fires as well in his post of May 14. Another source of information on the recent wildfires in Canada is the international hotlist thread from wildlandfire where I found links to articles about wildfires in New Brunswick, Alberta, another article about Alberta, and British Columbia. I understand that Canadian Airtankers have worked some of these fires.

Stay safe out there everyone!

Tomorrow, May 16, I plan to post another article in the series of articles I've been doing based on my recent visit to Downstown, this one on loading operations at Downstown.