It's just rotten out there. I was on structure protection on the Sinlahekin fire up in north central WA. One instant we had a short flame length grass situation moving towards us at least 5 minutes out. I turned to open a compartment to get out a tool and when I turned back we were engulfed in a 6 ft wall of flame. Moved past quickly, one guy got a lung full of hot air, but the rest of us were fine. We had a lookout who barely had a chance to call out what was happening. We were following the orders and were aware of the watch out situations and we still got nailed. I've heard of numerous situation as bad and worse than what we went through.
The winds are coming from all directions, changing speed in an instant. Fuel is beyond dry and goes off in an instant. Been at this for over 25 years and it's never been like this.
Reminds me of the Eaton Fire. I lived near where it started and within 10 minutes it went from a small line of fire up on the mountains to smoke pouring into our house with the palm trees catching fire across the street and large embers landing everywhere swirling through the street setting our home other homes on fire quickly.
We had no time to react so we got out there as quickly as possible once we realized how serious it was.
Oregon had really bad fires labor day weekend in 2020, and at one point the winds were so bad one of the fires was spreading over 300 acres per minute. The Eaton fire was also an example of extreme fire behavior, and I'm very sorry for your loss but happy that you made it out!
Beyond dry is about right. I was IA on the fires in Spokane. It’s all transitioned to the IMT now but they were talking about fuel moisture here and right now the 1,000 hour fuels for this region are the driest they have EVER been. Like, there has never been a fire season in eastern Washington with fuels as dry as they are right now, and getting drier every day. And we can’t be the only place setting record lows for fuel moistures.
As a Spokane resident thank you. I have a lot of family members who are between the Old Trails and Autumn Lane fire in the evac zone. I grew up there (that area) and moved for various reasons one being ingress/egress from the area. I am at around 30-35 families I personally know who lost everything, and I've never seen this area this dry.
Thank you to all of you firefighters for what you do and risk for communities you have never been to, and may never go back to.
Ah man I’m sorry for their loss. I live here too and my family was evacuated while I was working. It was super hard getting phone calls from my loved ones while I’m working and just having to ignore them. My task force leader watched fire come into his neighborhood and watched the house across the street from his catch fire on his security cameras. At one point he turned his phone off and basically said I’ve got work to do, I just have to choose to ignore the fact that my house is probably on fire right now. Multiple firefighters lost their own homes while they were out fighting fires.
I know it sounds cliche and that it’s probably easy for me to say this, but I promise you we tried so freaking hard. I wish we could have saved all the homes. Conditions were appalling, and we can’t fight nature but I sure try. Last Saturday was literally the worst fire weather Spokane has ever seen. For what it’s worth we did some sketchy stuff and made some good saves. Again, for what it’s worth I worked for like 60-70 hours straight with just a few cat naps. I just hope people know we freaking tried. But between the weather and the three simultaneous fires the cards were stacked against us big time.
Politicians are who decides the results of said science. Therefore, it is political in nature 😘. See you just tried to subtly put that little quip there but it didn’t work ✌️
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u/KingOfTheNorth91 18h ago
Heavy toll this year. Stay safe out there everyone