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A camp for firefighters battling a British Columbia wildfire had to be shut down because of “persistent bear activity,” Canada wildlife officials reported. About 160 firefighters at a camp near Goldbridge to fight the Downton Lake wildfire relocated to T’it’q’et First Nation and Lillooet community facilities, officials said on Twitter, now rebranded as X. The British Columbia Wildlife Service said it ordered the closure to “ensure the safety” of firefighters. Conservation officers are working to find a safe place for a new camp so firefighters can resume battling the wildfire, officials said. Officials did not provide details on the bear...

While this may not be interesting to most folks I think everyone on this site will like the flag save around the 25:30 mark. Sorry it's Youtube.

It was attempting to refill its water bucket at a lake Four were killed Monday May 10 after a helicopter crashed in Erhai Lake in Dali, Southwest China’s Yunnan Province. The Z-8X helicopter operated by the People’s Liberation Army Air Force had been assisting firefighters on the ground by dropping water with an external bucket. It crashed while attempting to refill at the lake. Initially it was reported that the two pilots were killed and there were two missing crewmembers. After a search that involved 16 ships and more than 490 rescuers the crewmembers were found deceased about 16 hours...

One of the last two Flying Boats from World War II -- a 747-sized airplane that can only land on water -- will be floating on Lake Elsinore this summer, ready to dump tons of water on Southern California wildfires. The 'Mighty Martins' One of the last two Flying Boats from World War II -- a 747-sized airplane that can only land on water -- will be floating on Lake Elsinore this summer, ready to dump tons of water on Southern California wildfires, it was reported today. A Martin Mars JRM-3 flying boat -- with a wingspan greater than a...

'It was the most destructive thing I've ever seen' . A day later, the sickly sweet smell of fire hung in the air. Tendrils of smoke rose from smoldering piles as the people of this small town got their first clear picture of the fury wrought by a leapfrogging blaze that consumed or heavily damaged two dozen buildings and left two firefighters dead. Greg Korinek stood in silence Wednesday at the corner of Arkansas Avenue and Second Street, staring at a pile of ash and metal - the remnants of the mobile home where he had lived. He had rushed...

Dozens of homes have been evacuated and a 5-mile stretch of Colorado 82 in western Colorado has been closed due to heavy smoke from a brush fire. The 100-acre brush fire is burning at 1265 County Road 100, and is threatening several homes and a school, said Tanny McGinnis, spokeswoman for the Garfield County Sheriff's Office. She said a horse farm and a private school have been evacuated. Two buildings have been damaged and one person has been transported with injuries... Firefighters from Carbondale, Basalt and Glenwood are at the scene.

The U.S. Forest Service has not developed national guidelines to assess the risks communities face from wildfires and is unable to ensure that the most important fire prevention projects are funded first, an independent government audit has found. And while the majority of catastrophic wildfires occur in the West, nearly 58 percent of the total acres treated in fiscal year 2004 were in the southeastern states, the report said. "The Forest Service cannot clearly identify the level of risk to communities from wildfire," it said. "It cannot demonstrate to stakeholders its accomplishments in reducing those risks with the funds provided."...

Officials urged residents in rural mountain communities to evacuate as they battled one of California's largest and longest-lasting wildfires. Thick smoke turned the sky gray and purplish Tuesday as flames rolled through pines and juniper trees on slopes of Los Padres National Forest, where more than 3,800 firefighters have battled the blaze since it started on Labor Day. "The problem is we've had extremely dry fuels," fire spokesman Dan Bastion said Wednesday. "Brush and trees will be ignited by the heat of the fire, so there's a domino effect going on." Fire trucks, bulldozers and water tankers guarded homes within...

Logging trucks are again rumbling through town after a nearly 15-year hiatus. The Forest Service has reopened - or has plans to reopen - numerous drainages south of Eagle Ranch to logging... There are currently two active sales south of Eagle, with another in the works, said Cary Green, the White River National Forest's timber management assistant for the Eagle area. The 60-acre Beecher Gulch salvage timber sale, on Hardscrabble Mountain, sold in 2005, and about 500,000 board feet of timber is currently being harvested... A typical 2,000-square foot, single-family home requires about 27,000 board feet of framing lumber, paneling...

Federal officials on Friday were tracking 60 large, active fires that were burning more than 1 million acres, or more than 1,500 square miles, across the West. The states in the region with the most number of fires included Idaho, Nevada, and Montana, according to the Web site of the Boise-based National Interagency Fire Center, composed of various federal agencies that coordinate to battle wildfires. In Idaho, fires had burned more than 231,000 acres, or 360 square miles, the center reported. State officials toured fire camps to survey the damage -- as well as to tell federal firefighting crews here,...

Haines Index Map - Higher Haines means fire growth tends to be stronger: Fuel Dryness:  Tells you how likely things are to burn if a fire gets started: August 3, 2006 Nationally, initial attack activity was light with 111 new fires reported. Nine new large fires were reported: one each in South Dakota, Idaho, and Montana; and six in Oklahoma. Five large fires reached containment: one each in North Dakota, Nevada, Oklahoma; and two in Montana. Two MAFFS C-130 aircraft and support personnel from the 145th Airlift Wing, Charlotte, North Carolina and the 153rd Airlift Wing, Cheyenne, Wyoming were...

Haines Index Map - Higher Haines means fire growth tends to be stronger: Fuel Dryness:  Tells you how likely things are to burn if a fire gets started: National Preparedness Level 5 (On a scale from 1 to 5)Current hours for the National Fire Information Center are (MDT) 7:30 am - 4:30 pm, Monday - Friday 208-387-5050 July 31, 2006 Initial attack activity was light throughout the nation with 159 new fires reported. Seven new large fires were reported: one each in Idaho, Montana, and Utah; and two each in Texas and Kansas. Twelve large fires reached containment yesterday:...

High wind hampered fire crews again Sunday as they fought a wildfire that had dashed across nearly 300 square miles of remote rangeland in northern Nevada. The brush fire 50 miles northeast of Winnemucca had exploded from less than 30 square miles to 292 square miles since Thursday, making it one of the nation's biggest wildfires of the season, fire information officer Susan Marzec said. "The fire is continuing to make its move because of gusty winds and dryness," Marzec said. "Every time we make headway we're back where we started." The fire was just 5 percent contained, and no...

Wildfire triage helps districts decide which properties to protect... Increasingly wary of powerful forest fires..mountain fire districts are mapping out which vulnerable homes might be sacrificed to avoid putting firefighters in harm's way and make best use of limited resources... Since [ the ] disastrous fire season of 2002, fire districts and departments...are rapidly assembling data to assist in hard decisions about what neighborhoods are defensible and which ones may be left to burn. But should a fast-rising fire force districts with too few resources to make deployment decisions fast, new maps and software give firefighters instant access to the...

In Ariz., fire 30 miles from Grand Canyon strands tourists. Lightning-sparked wildfires burned across more than 50,000 acres of northern Nevada on Monday, closing Interstate 80 for a second day, forcing evacuations in some rural areas and claiming most of the training grounds at a state fire academy. At least a half-dozen new fires were spotted around the Reno and Carson City area after another round of thunderstorms packing lightning rolled through the area Monday. Nearly 1,000 firefighters were fighting about two dozen blazes from the heavily timbered western front of the Sierra Nevada near Reno to the sage- and...

Haines Index Map - Higher Haines means fire growth tends to be stronger: Fuel Dryness:  Tells you how likely things are to burn if a fire gets started: INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SITUATION REPORTSUNDAY, JULY 30, 2006 – 0800 MDTNATIONAL PREPAREDNESS LEVEL 5  CURRENT SITUATION:Initial attack activity was light nationally with 151 new fires reported. Twelve new large fires (*) were reported, five in the Rocky Mountain Area, two each in the Eastern Great Basin and Northern California Areas, and one each in the Northern Rockies, Southern, and Southwest Areas. Five large fires were contained, two in the Southern California Area, and...

Haines Index Map - Higher Haines means fire growth tends to be stronger: Fuel Dryness:  Tells you how likely things are to burn if a fire gets started: INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SITUATION REPORT SATURDAY, JULY 29, 2006 - 0800 MDT NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS LEVEL 5 CURRENT SITUATION: Initial attack activity was light nationally with 172 new fires reported. Eight new large fires (*) were reported, two each in the Eastern Great Basin and Southern Areas, and one each in the Western Great Basin, Northern Rockies, Rocky Mountain and Southern California Areas. Five large fires were contained, two in the Northern Rockies...

Haines Index Map - Higher Haines means fire growth tends to be stronger: Fuel Dryness:  Tells you how likely things are to burn if a fire gets started: Current hours for the National Fire Information Center are (MDT) 7:30 am - 4:30 pm, Monday - Friday 208-387-5050 July 28, 2006 Wildland fire activity was moderate throughout the nation with 212 new fires reported. Twelve new large fires were reported: one each in South Dakota, Texas, Nebraska, Oregon, Montana, Utah, and Washington; three in California; and two in Nevada. Fifteen large fires were contained: one each in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho,...

Haines Index Map - Higher Haines means fire growth tends to be stronger: Fuel Dryness:  Tells you how likely things are to burn if a fire gets started: INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SITUATION REPORT WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 2006 – 0530 MDT NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS LEVEL 4 CURRENT SITUATION: Initial attack activity was heavy nationally with 441 new fires reported.  Twenty-two new large fires (*) were reported, five in the Western Great Basin Area, four each in the Eastern Great Basin and Southern Areas, three each in the Southern California and Northern California Areas, and one in the Northern Rockies Area.   Fifteen large...

NIFC's server is down as I am posting this. Some links may not work. Much of this is on FS servers, though, so I am posting it anyway, and when the NIFC and BLM sites go back up, it should all be readable: Haines Index Map - Higher Haines means fire growth tends to be stronger: Fuel Dryness:  Tells you how likely things are to burn if a fire gets started: INCIDENT MANAGEMENT SITUATION REPORT TUESDAY, JULY 25, 2006 – 0530 MDT NATIONAL PREPAREDNESS LEVEL 4 CURRENT SITUATION: Initial attack activity was heavy nationally with 548 new fires reported.  Twenty-one...