Idaho Wildfires

In my wonderings over the last few days I have been hearing the news about the many wildfires currently burning in Idaho. I am not able to pull together links and other resources for you on all these fires. Nor am I going to even try to list all the fires. I'd like to start by reporting a line of duty death, the Idaho Statesman reports on the death of Anne Veseth, a USFS firefighter who was killed by a tree while working a fire near Lewistown Idaho, she was working the Steep Corner Fire (43 acres) in the Nez Perce-clearwater National Forest.

I thought that it might be useful to find some articles summarizing the current wildfire situation in Idaho. To that end, I found this short report dated Aug 12, 2012 story from KTVB7 on wildfires burning in Idaho along with this short report from KIVI ABC6. You might enjoy: a photo gallery from KBOI2 of a grass fire near Boise and another photo gallery from KTVB 7.

One of the first things that I did in preparing this article was to go to the current listing of Idaho Wildfires on InciWeb (as of about 2 PM EDT on Aug. 13, 2012). For brevity, I am only listing the Idaho wildfires that have burned at least 10,000 acres:

• Halstead Fire Salmon-Challis National Forest. Fire origin on Fri. July 27, 2012 from lightning, 49,322 acres, 3% contained
• Minidoka Complex Sawtooth National Forest. Fire origin on Sun. Aug 5, 2012 from lightning, 92,511 acres, 44% contained. Boise National Forest. 
• Trinity Ridge Fire Boise National Forest. Fire origin on Fri. Aug 3, 2012 probably human caused, 37.044 acres, 5% contained.
• Flat Top 2 Twins Falls District of the Bureau of Land Management. Fire origin on Sun. Aug. 5, 2012 from lightning, 140,000 acres, 60% contained. 

I then went and downloaded the today Incident Management Situation Report from the National Interagency Coordination Center, go here to obtain the current version which will differ from the one that I downloaded today (8/13/12). I like this report because it summarizes national wildfire activity by region. A good place to start. One of the reasons why I like this National Situation Report is that it includes some fires that I can not find on InciWeb. For example, I found about the Faust Fire (wildlandfire hotlist thread that has burned 22,045 acres and is 30% contained from today's National Situation Report. I believe that the Faust Fire is burning on Bureau of Land Management Lands.

More information on wildfires burning in Idaho may be found at the Northern Rockies Coordination Center (Northern Idaho) or the Eastern Great Basin Geographic Coordination Center (southern Idaho). The fire management webpage of the Idaho Dept of Lands may be found here.

As for aerial resources working these fires, Wildfire Today posted some pictures of helos working a wildfire in southern Idaho. I then found that the Idaho Statesman is reporting on NC Air National Guard deployment to Boise Idaho for wildland firefighting, from what I understand the 145th will send two aircraft with 16 airmen to Boise. Finally, as I was working on this article, I found a report from KTVB7 that one of the DC-10 tankers is being dispatched to fight the Ourada Ranch Brush Fire near Boise Idaho, a photo gallery may be found on this page from KTVB in Boise. I'll try to follow-up on both the DC-10 tanker and the 145th deployment.

 I'd like to thank my friend from Boise for pointing me to some of the Boise news outlets.