Lackofintellect

The Ridge Pt. 2

“The Burn Out”

After establishing a hand line down the ridge toward the drainage the weather was favorable for a burn out.  A squad of 5 firefighters worked with drip torches to burn out fuels along the ridge line from top to bottom.  The hope is to develop a wide enough line of burned out fuels that will stop the fire down below from crossing the ridge and growing past our containment line.  The going was slow at first because we didn’t want to get too much fire established which then could push the burn out operation on the road above the hand line.  

The Ridge pt. 1

“So what do you do on a fire?”

Sometimes you have to get way out ahead of the fire and pick an area where topography and fuels give you a fighting chance of catching it.  On my last wildfire assignment we were working a wildfire burning in an old wildfire scar that was making runs up out of drainage bottoms when it reached areas of vegetation that wasn’t burned in the Biscuit Fire (2002), or areas where the fire burned at a lower intensity leaving brush and more grass available to the fire.   

A plan to take a ridge line that runs from the road down into the wilderness and down to the bottom of the drainage was formulated.  Using a ridge top to catch a portion of a fire is a common practice because the vegetation is usually reduced on a ridge top and if you have time to burn out along the ridge top you can use the back side of the ridge to your advantage(fire burns up hill much faster than down.)  The work to establish the fire line and took several crews several days and while I was walking the line I took some photos.  Here’s the first part of those photos showing the process of establishing a hand line that eventually would be used to burn off from.