North Central Washington fires

[ferri]

i'll just start out with this map: http://www.mappingsupport.com/p/gmap4.p ... d_fire.txt

i'm in Tonasket, surrounded by sagebrush, hoping fire doesn't start on my parents place. lol i have pictures of the fire across from here, until it got too smokey to see. i'll try to get them on this thread, trying to help people that are evacuated/homeless right now.

[zookeeper]

Hi ferri, thanks for providing the map. I have family in Washington, both south and west of the Twisp fire, and adopted family near Spokane. My heart goes out to our neighbors.

[ferri]

it was horrible when the 3 firefighters were killed in Twisp. there is one that was burned and is doing fairly well. he's in Harborview and has gone through one surgery. i think they said 60% of his body was burned.

that map updates usually once a day so you can see which way the fires are going and how much they have grown. they're worried now that the one on left is going to hit Loomis. a few nights ago it was looking like it might, they said it would take 2-3 hours to get there. we had very strong winds, which was exactly what we didn't need. lol

i believe it was on the 21st. strong winds with gusts of 50 mph. we watched this:

become this:

[ferri]

then it went to this:

whew. that chopper looks pretty small. lol

[ferri]

we watched that fire crest the mountain that night:

the next morning we woke up to this:

and that was when we lost sight of everything. lol and you did too.

[ferri]

an update on one of the complexes.

http://www.omakchronicle.com/news/2015/ ... contained/

[BriTer]

This is what the back of the slope of the mtn. across from ferri looks like. At that point the fire was just making it's way up the back and I knew with the wind we had that it would broach the top and start downslope. Looking north.

[BriTer]

View from the front of that slop. Flames now coming over the top and headed downslope (towards 97) This is all about 2 miles outside of town (Tonasket)

[BriTer]

Slowly making it's way down the slope. Juts below and to the left of that gully is a house, and another a bit farther to the left.

[BriTer]

Dust cloud just below the descending fire was made by a bulldozer clearing a strip in that area. A house is just to the left of that.

[BriTer]

The size of the smoke plume was unbelievable. I've never seen anything like it.

[BriTer]

[BriTer]

[BriTer]

[ferri]

i just had to share this picture. :)
go full screen! wow!

Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife
Our Sinlahekin Wildlife Area manager Justin Haug got this shot late last week of a helicopter bucket drop near hot shot crews on the east wall of the Sinlahekin Valley near Blue Lake. Justin and all our wildlife area staff have been helping as advisors in the suppression efforts on the Okanogan Complex Fire which has consumed most of the Scotch Creek Wildlife Area and roughly half of the Sinlahekin (although the incident team on the Sinlahekin has now all but stopped the advance of the fire north at Blue Lake.) Stay tuned to wildfire status at http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/state/49/#.