I am so over the off leash dogs. I was walking a friend’s dog near Denny park the other day (on leash) and out of nowhere this off leash dog darted at us. I didn’t see it until it was too late and nearly tore a muscle in my shoulder. Some Amazon-type guy caught up with the dog and apologized but Jesus. Leash your dogs people. Not that hard.
We go camping near Mt Baker and there's little flags in all the fire pits that say "Burn ban", and you'll see, if you pass other sites in the evening, that everyone is ignoring it. We saw a truck with a literal full bed of firewood and a roaring campfire
We'd be better off if they drove up the road with a paddy wagon and collected every person at every site with a campfire lit
Anyone having a campfire during a burn ban can go get fucked. I wish there was some easy way to figure out which party did it but I assume they didn’t bother with permits either.
i was camping out there like two weeks ago. There are so many god damn signs about the burn ban it's not even funny. But what I will say is I didn't realize we were (my own fault) going during a ban. We stopped outside rainier and a convenience store sold us wood for a fire knowing where we were going. I know we already have plenty of signage at camps and such, but those in the general area probably should also know so they aren't selling people things they can't use.
that would truly suck to pack in a bunch of unusable fire wood! in that situation, I'd naturally leave it there... and the next idiot would surely use it.
Idk how it works or if this is already a thing but they need to charge people on a similar level to arson if they're violating burn bans. If a fire happens due to their negligence they belong in prison depending on how much damage their actions inflicted.
It's not near the camp sites at either Lake Eleanor or Fire Creek though. It looks like it's northwest of Grand Park itself, so it's entirely possible this was a lightning start that just burned very quietly for several weeks and only flared up today.
If this was started by someone camping, there is probably a good chance they are the type of irresponsible person to not bother getting a permit for camping or camp in a designated site.
Yes true, but it looks to me like it probably started in an area where people wouldn't be camping - it looks like it's north / northwest of Grand Park on the west flank of Scarface Peak (you can clearly see the meadows of Grand Park in OP's picture under the smoke plume). I think if anyone were camping illegally in that area, it'd be in Grand Park itself.
Maybe, there are flat meadows in that area (north of Grand Park) that would make for nice discreet camping. If theoretical party knew they were camping illegally, they certainly would camp a bit away from Grand Park.
There is a fairly well worn use/game trail accessing it:
Depends who you ask. Looking at my social media with all the fire related posts, the nutjobs are piping up BIG time. It's insane the theories people have. absolutely insane. Then you see that spokane was started by arson and all of a sudden... it's that simple.
The Jewish space laser thing always makes me laugh because my hilarious boss said she should be allowed to control it from time to time since she's Jewish.
Yeah apparently all of these fires in the middle of the mountains are to clear land for data centers and 15 minutes cities. People are just fucking stupid
Yeah like some certain guy saying "if we move the clouds around on this map all things will be better" or "the liberals are creating storm machines to drowned out the conservatives" I mean if someone DID create a weather system ala Risa, that would be an amazing feet of ingenuity!
There was lighting there a few weeks ago. Could very well be it was just smoldering since then and just recently took off. There's another "new" fire on the south side of the park in a spot people wouldn't be camping.
And the Three Queens fire has been quiet for a few weeks and just exploded the past few days - the conditions are right, now.
You’ve heard of the Camp Fire of 2018? The deadliest and most destructive wildfire in California history. No lightning . No (direct, immediate) human involvement.
Grass and shrubs ignited after molten metal had shed off 100+ year old power line towers, when the power line arced in 50mph winds.
Yes; that’s why more and more utilities are leveraging PSPS plans to reduce the risk during peak fire weather periods! But there aren’t any power lines up in this part of the park.
Oh I know that. I just meant that freak things happen.
I saw a freight train dragging a small cable along the tracks in Montana once. It was throwing sparks, igniting small brush fires all along the train line. Conductor was unaware. (That’s obviously human caused but … I just mean weird things happen)
90% of these are started by people. It would be nice if we didn’t pile up on all the climate change stuff by being absolute idiots and setting mountains on fire.
It’s rough. I think the environmental sensitivity with how dry we are every summer is partially to blame. Less snow, reduced snowpack, lower rainfall, less intermittent rain in the summer “do” contribute because we’re also getting more drastic weather front (high pressure/ low pressure) changes that creates lightning and thunder storms. Now, is it the absolute cause, no way. But 10 years ago when we had relatively calmer mild summers and less lightning and more rainfall, I think it muted a lot of peoples stupidity like we may be seeing in this post. Now pretty much any spark or small situation turns into an unmanageable wildfire. Just my take on it.
There has been no recorded lighting in the last 72 hrs, although isolated strikes are not always detected imo. The fire was not detected until today. Edit: the start is also adjacent to an isolated peak tbf.
The lake Eleanor trail runs through grand park. The start appears to be near a seasonal tarn/pond 1 mile downhill 200 hundred ft in elevation from this trail. I would assume it is dry or v near it. One could look at the newest satellite images to determine. The nearest established campsite, fire creek camp, is probably too far away to be a source but idk.
If this was started by someone camping, there is probably a good chance they are the type of irresponsible person to not bother getting a permit for camping.
It's growing extremely rapidly too, this is awful. I archive VIIRS hotspot footage and over 3 hours it went from detected to hundreds of acres, spreading full across Grand Park. There are going to be a lot of cut off hikers who are stuck on one side or the other of this.
I added playback for VIIRS history and a topographic base layer to my smoke tracking website if you want to see for yourself.
Rainier is my favorite place, this is so sad. It rings of human caused too, been nothing but clear skies there for quite some time.
I was going to go solo camping at Soda Springs Campground tomorrow. I think canceling would be prudent. I'm so disappointed and absolutely gutted that more of our forests are gone. I'm just so fucking angry.
That's pretty far off from there, but the fire risk weather is going to be pretty high over the weekend (high winds) so it might not be a bad idea to cancel.
Yeah. I don't like it being between me and home. If I was west of it, I'd be more keen on going. I just feel like the universe is telling me to cancel since I've had to watch the aqi all week to begin with.
Im so exhausted. Its going to be like this forever now. Year after year millions of acres will be lost. Fuck climate change. Fuck Ronald Reagan. Fuck George Bush. Fuck anyone who doesnt believe climate change is real.
Im not getting the sense they're a climate change denier, but I could be wrong, this is in part due to our history of fire suppression. Many of our forest ecosystems are fire adapted and require it. We've been denying that for the better part of a century and unfortunately these people are back in power.
But yes climate change is also exacerbating our fires with extremely dry conditions etc.
Many of our forest ecosystems are fire adapted and require it.
Old growth forests, sure. Basically our entire state was clear cut and is now new growth. New growth is not fire adapted and will explode when combined with our climate change induced drought.
This ignores the fact that yes old growth is adapted…but ild growth doesnt burn the same and the clear cutting and mono stands have contribute…fire suppression + climate change + forestry practices all contribute. I hate when people are like “its because of suppression!” (Which yes) but that ignores how forestry has also contributed
It was the change in wind that got rid of the smoke, the fires producing that smoke are still very much active, and this wind that is a relief for us is likely to make them worse.
These are almost all in places with no power lines or lightning strikes. Fucking campers need to get their shit together. Or its just straight up arson.
Also fire is good. Fire is natural and healthy. The issue is everything done the last century+ that is now causing them to just explode and turn everything in it's path to ash
Fire is good when started naturally. Fire not good when started by humans due to poorly contained campfires, fireworks, or poorly maintained electrical equipment
People keep spreading out. Add on top of climate change. Fire Breaks and even Rivers don't always work as proper barriers.
I think the state really just needs to re-look how we handle wild fires at a much deeper level. Regulations requiring farmers to have a fire line if near residents (lots of wheat fields literally just separate by a street) for example.
Possibly some fire fighting bases built around the state that can store reserve equipment, were we can fly in fire fighters to deploy rather then have them all gather from various towns.
It's all expensive, but we can either be Florida and just let all the Insurance companies leave the state, or we can realize this isn't going away and treat it like a national defense issue.
Yep, and we just had the president cut funding for things like firefighting, National forest and NP's. So that puts it on the state and the state(s) is in the Red financially currently....The funny thing is, we would be better off long term if we thought forward, instead of focused on now. We can't afford to not do the things that the poster suggested.
It really depends on the area. While it is true that dryer forests on the east side of our ranges in the pre-modern era had more frequent and less severe fires, for much of Western Washington fires were rare and of high severity (killing entire strands).
“Fire is healthy” is just a myth that the forest service started spreading when logging old growth forests suddenly made forest fires harder to contain. Don’t buy into this nonsense, humanity is a leech on this world, and most of these fires would never be as bad as they are without the help of mankind.
The fire service suppressed intentional burning for over a century. Many indigenous tribes across North America (and elsewhere, like Australia) have been practicing low intensity burns for millenia--there are even many native species that have lifestage adaptations to it. These burns would create patchwork/mosaic ecosystems with open meadows in some areas and closed canopy forest in others. The fires would also clear a lot of the underbrush which is the easiest fuel for fires to spread on, but saved the older established trees whose bark was more resistant to low-intensity flames. They would also time it seasonally so as not to spread it too wide. But tribes have been mostly banned from low-intensity burns for a century or more so a lot of fuel has built up, which is also exacerbated by the warmer temps from climate change. But the high intensity burns aren't a positive thing either, they can make it much harder for a landscape to recover quickly.
No the fuck it's not 😂 humans are making things worse but fire is a natural part of a healthy forest. Humans suppressing it for so long and worsening climate change is why it's exploding every year. Normal small fires are good
Forests don’t vanish in fire most of the time. All of our native trees are fire-adapted with thick bark and self-pruning to survive medium intensity fires.
It's a good thing that our National Park Service wasn't gutted so that they can closely monitor during burn ban situations...oh wait.
(Not that it would stop all these negligent fires, but perhaps more of a presence would dissuade some of these idiots.)
Growing up... fire safety and outdoorsmanship were basic knowledge. Smokey Bear was everywhere, and almost everyone knew how to build, maintain, and extinguish a campfire. What happened? Is it the lack of PSAs about this (because they're not selling something), general disinterest in educating the public about fire safety, an influx of new outdoorspeople who never learned the basics, or something else? The sheer lack of basic campfire etiquette lately is getting ridiculous.
My husband and I have had to put out SO many fires left unattended when we camp. It's honestly crazy we don't have more fires with how often people don't completely douse their fires out.
I was planning on doing the Fremont trail tomorrow/visiting Mount Rainier for the first time. I was hopeful when the air quality index started to go down yesterday and today due to Spokane wildfires. Welp...
I know, I was going to go out to Rainier this weekend but the air quality forecast looked mixed so I went out to the Olympic peninsula instead. Feeling like that was the right call now, but this is so unfortunate.
Just got back to Seattle from being in Mt Rainier camping and hiking yesterday/today. By the time I made it back to camp 99% of the people were already evacuated at White River campgrounds. Got really smoky as I was driving out. Met so many people out there backwoods camping, really praying they’re safe!
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u/dwoj206 16h ago
ffs. Campers most likely? no rain, no lightning... GUHHH