Firefighter Blog

The persistent Zaca Fire moves into the San Rafael Wilderness within the Los Padres National Forest where it could follow the same path as the Wellman Fire in 1966. As the fire heads east into the Wilderness the Feds. will take over relieving the CDF- Calfire resources. From the reports;

"A plan for transitioning to a Federal IMT (Gelobter) continues to be developed. Anticipated transition date is 7/17/2007. Estimated containment dates are difficult to establish at this time because of the establishment of the fire into the Wilderness. Our projection of a minimum estimated containment date is 14 days or greater."

Efforts to quell the Zaca Fire will be further hampered as fires within a "wilderness" designated area prevents use of bulldozers and other valuable equipment like chain saws. More from the incident report.

"The fire continues in steep, rocky, and broken terrain. Some engines and crews are being spiked to improve travel times. Aircraft, handcrews, and dozers continue to be important components for successfully keeping the fire within our north and south control objectives. In order to protect wilderness values and characteristics, mechanized equipment other than chainsaws, helicopters, and air tankers are prevented from being used in the wilderness area unless it is for firefighter safety.

"The San Rafael Wilderness is especially sensitive because it is home to the Sisquoc Condor Sanctuary. It's not clear how many condor's inhabit the sanctuary as there are so few in the wild but the sanctuary does place added influence on incident biologists adds additional concerns for incident command.

As mentioned the San Rafael Wilderness has seen fire before. In 1966 the Wellman Fire took over 92,000 acres. The fire started when a Cessna aircraft out of Vandenberg AFB crashed and went unreported for over a day. The area history and Wellman Fire are nicely chronicled on SB-Outdoors.org.

"A hot shot crew is helicoptered in to the top of 6,593 foot San Rafael Mountain to build a hand line from there down the north side of the mountain to White Ledge. In a small flat grass-covered saddle known as Hell's Half Acre, brush and trees are cut down so that the helicopters can land with fresh troops. Scores of pumpers and hundreds of firefighters are strung out along Figueroa Mountain Road and the Figueroa Catway from Cachuma Saddle to Zaca Peak. They do not wait passively. Now that they have a secure line that can be held with confidence, the backfiring begins. While the firefighters fan out near the brush to make sure that the flames don't turn back on them, the butane torches are put to work. From the Santa Ynez Valley the first glow of orange-red is frightening; they are sure the fire has broken through.

The backfires, despite their ominous look, are successful in securing this line. Bombers hammer both the Sierra Madre and San Rafael ridgelines, making scores of drops on each of them from the Cuyama Airport. The heavy bombers make mincemeat of the airport runway, this threatening to ground the planes. But in the night 30,000 square feet of metal landing strip are brought in from Port Hueneme during the night and it is usable again by morning.

The hot shots work their way up into the hottest part of the fire and are able to get above it near McKinley Mountain. While they hack away stubbornly, cutting through the trees and brush at a furious pace, the towering flames lick at their heels. Airdrops put down on top of them help to knock down the fire. There is no time to sleep, and with no place to sleep anyway, the Hot Shots work throughout the night, twenty hours straight, reaching a jeepway connecting with Santa Cruz Peak just after dawn. Wednesday morning, from Santa Ynez Airport Forest Service Supervisor Bill Hansen confers with Fire Boss Carl Hickerson. In contrast to last night's spectacular flames which burned along the entire western crest of the San Rafael Mountains, that morning all that remain are long plumes of smoke. "On one side, everything was mantled with a velvety-green and the big pines stood thick over the mountainsides,"News-Press reporter Dick Smith says as he surveys the previous night's damage from the air. "On the other, an ashen-gray pallor lay over the land, covering both sides of the Sisquoc, the Hurricane Deck, and surrounding Cachuma Mountain. At Wellman Canyon, where the fire got its night start the wreckage of the plane that caused it could be spotted glinting in the sun."

Coincidentally the Zaca Fire has 2100 fire personnel assigned to the incident, the same number as the Wellman fire 41 years ago. As the fire moves into wilderness the the Zaca command will be reduced to the same firefighting tactics as the Wellman bosses. One tactic shared by both managers is the use of "spiked" strike teams and crews. Spiking crews generally means because of accessibility issues it makes more sense to leave crews on the line where they can break themselves. As they did on the Wellman helicopters resupply spiked forces.

*One tool unavailable to Wellman Fire boss Dick Smith is 10 Tanker, for whatever reason the tool is not in play for the Zaca Unified Command.

Zaca Fire images page from Inciweb.
Map attribution, Inciweb.org.

Labels: 2007 fire season, Zaca Fire