Normal operations resumed at INL on Thursday, July 25. It is anticipated the Sheep Fire will be at 100 percent containment this evening. No INL structures were damaged, there were no injuries, and there were no radiation releases. At the time I am writing this, the INL Emergency Operations Page still has information on the Sheep Fire.
July 24, 2019 10:15 PM
I am writing to provide a late day update on the Sheep Fire that is burning on lands owned by the Idaho National Labs (INL), please see the article on the Sheep Fire that I wrote earlier this morning. I was out and about today enjoying a nice summer day in New Jersey. Even so, I found myself checking out the INL Emergency Operations Page as well as Bill Gabbert's Wildfire Today. I was waiting for INL to post their July 24th afternoon press conference about the Sheep Fire and looking for any updates by Bill Gabbert. Bill did not disappoint as he updated his reporting on the Sheep Fire at 6:37 MDT. He has a good report and I hope that you take the time to review his updated article with links to photos and videos of the fire as well as some information about weather conditions impacting fire operations this afternoon. Finally, He shared the video of INL's afternoon press conference, I will get to that in a minute. Briefly, important take-aways from Bill's latest update confirmed by INL Emergency Operations are:
- INL continues to monitor radiation and air quality. There are no radiation releases.
- Commercial power at INL is not affected by the Sheep Fire. Repairs are underway to electrical infrastructure damaged in the fire without affecting power to INL.
- Normal operations at INL are expected to resume on Thursday, July 25th.
As I was preparing to write this article I first went back to the INL Emergency Operations Page and saw their latest update today at 7:17 MDT (on July 24th) with some updates to the information reported in their earlier press conference. That is, the fire has burned 113,000 an increase of 3,000 acres from the figure reported earlier, containment is estimated at 60 percent, and the fire is no longer a threat to INL research facilities.
So, keeping in mind that there is later information not referred to in INL's July 24th press conference, I am sharing the video for your convenience. Those of you who have already seen Bill's article may have already watched this video on his site. Careful listening reveals that they were hoping for 50 to 60 percent containment and that they were in the process of doing some mapping of the fire to ascertain acreage burned. The video is over 24 minutes long. In the first 7 minutes of the video you will hear from various INL personnel and contractors about their operations. The report from the INL fire chief about wildfire operations starts at about 7 minutes followed by a Q&A period.
No comments:
Post a Comment