[UPDATE 7:11 p.m.] Flames From a Piece of Logging Equipment Spreading Southwest of Briceland
About 5:52 p.m., a piece of logging equipment caught on fire southwest of Briceland. Flames from the vehicle spread to the surrounding vegetation, according to Cal Fire Battalion Chief Paul Savona.
At 6:26 p.m., the fire had spread to a quarter acre and aircraft were overhead.
Ground crews from Cal Fire, Briceland Fire, Redway Fire, [Whitethorn Fire] and Telegraph Ridge Fire are making their way in to the incident, Savona told us.
UPDATE 7:11 p.m.: Paul Savona tells us that the forward progress has stopped. Crews will be mopping up for two hours.
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Don’t forget Whitethorn Fire! If they weren’t first on scene, they were a close second 🙏
Thank a volunteer fire fighter in your neighborhood today!
Sorry! I apologize if I missed one of the volunteer crews. They are all awesome.
🙏❤️👏 I passed the Whitethorn Fire rigs en route, *overflowing* with fire fighters.. Just wanted to give the shout out 🔥
You kill it, Kym!! Thank you and your team ❣️
Fixed now and much appreciate the chance to get things right.
Just spoke with one of the Whitethorn Volunteers and basically Briceland and Whitethorn got there at same time..he said a week ago this would have looked very different with barely any crews in town last week. Lots of firefighters showed up today. Thank them all!
Whitethorn was at their monthly meeting at one of the fire stations which really helped.
He was impressed at the bomber that dropped that pink stuff on the fire and it really knocked the fire out. Impressive flying skills!
Make donations. Fire equipment is expensive..and the Volunteers are showing up for our communities ❤️
It’s too hot and dry and breezy to be running equipment in the woods
Wasn’t a red flag day.
What kind of logging equipment did that?
Anything with any engine can. Needles fall down in the engine compartment, build up around the turbo, turn into embers and next think you know any leaking oil or grease ignites and away it goes!
Feller buncher
KMUD says they stopped the spread near E’berg junction
KMUD says Calfire and all our VFDs stopped the spread near E’berg junction 7:10 PM
Thank you for your speedy response! Hate hearing those planes circling
We got lucky this time! Hope everyone kicks down to our great VFD’s!
❤️
Super scarey…any type of evacuation on the Briceland Rd wld be a complete disaster. The community needs to have a big fire drill & follow a prearranged plan. How can we get a “Team” together to spearhead an evacuation plan? And at least 2 alternative plans, given the one-road Redway reality.
At the Southern Humboldt Fire Safe Council, we are currently, along with CALFIRE, shepherding two fuels treatment projects. One is on some acreage NE of Redway (our worst fires are driven by winds from the NE), and the other is essentially a shaded fuel break ringing Garberville. A shaded fuel break along Briceland Rd is high on our list after those. But as someone who has implemented over 20 miles of shaded fuel breaks along county roads in SoHum, I shudder at the prospect of doing so on Briceland Rd. Head and shoulders, far and away, the greatest stress of those projects is traffic safety. Those jobs were mostly on Ettersburg Rd, Wilder Ridge Rd, Chemise Mtn Rd in Whale Gulch, and the first mile of Briceland-Thorn Rd going south from Thorn Jct. I can only imagine how much worse the traffic safety issues would be on Briceland Rd closer to town. It is challenging enough to do this work safely in the best of times. Drivers running the stop signs and/or speeding through the work zone complicate things tremendously. The area between the stop signs is usually just 100-150 yards at most. It’s not going to ruin anyone’s day to drive 5 mph for that distance; drivers need to be able to stop on a dime to keep themselves safe and to avoid collisions with workers. Folks are coming off steep cut banks with armloads of brush, and often stumble. But the county roads dept. says we’re not allowed to impose a speed limit, just to ask people to go slowly.
Please support the folks who implement this important infrastructure, that will make evacuating infinitely safer, and keep yourselves safe in the process. It works both ways.
Thank you to all the fire fighters! I cannot believe that it is legal to log right now. It’s way too dry out there!
I remember in the mid-70s at least, if the temp/dewpoint whatever got to a certain place, the logging would shut down. I remember very specifically because my boyfriend, who was logging around Mad River at the time would either come home very early or told not to come to work at all.
Don’t know if that was the law, but it was the practice.
I wonder if the change in attitude has t do with so many regulations over when such an activity can be done.
Not sure what you are saying. That before “so many regulations” people still used common sense, but now that there are regulations, they have just said “screw it” and ignore the danger?
I’d call that an attitude problem.
edited to add:
Like i said, I don’t remember if the shut downs were mandated or voluntary, they may well have been dictated by some agency. Also, want to stress that I do not know if the accident/fire in the article was because of the conditions we are talking about.
If I recall correctly, by law we had to shut down our cat side at 25% relative humidity, and the yarder side at 30%. This was mid-80’s to early 90’s. Not sure what the requirements are today.
That sounds about right. I was young and didn’t pay that close attention at the time. But now that you say it, yeah, it was like that.
When I ran cat if it was dark going over rocks or gravel, I could see sparks all around my tracks, and had a couple fires in the belly pan where leaves twigs sticks build up a foot deep saturated in oil and so dry its unbelievable.
Good point “For Sure” .. call a meeting at the BVFD station perhaps? Their auxiliary people could probably help get the word out .. and remember that Beginnings is an evacuation center.
BVFD has a benefit coming up on Sep 12 at Beginnings .. pick up bbq .. check out the posters
Look at the hack and squirt killing of the tan oaks in that area on Google Earth. Coordinates 40°4.667’N 123°53.863’W If you scroll back in the timeline to 2012 when it was freshly done, you can easily see the boundaries of the parcel because of the dead trees in a rectangle. I’ve always wondered if one could use the tan oaks for something like shiitake mushrooms instead of just killing them with herbicide? Shiitake’s love to grow on tan oak logs. I wonder if it could be a profitable venture symbiotic with fir logging. After the tan oaks are gone, the firs would get the light they need.
Yes to an Evacuation plan! And yes donations to all our wonderful volunteer fire departments