YEEESSSSHHHHHH. I’m finally getting around to writing this one.
I wanna preface this by saying: Monsoons have arrived and fire restrictions have lifted (for the most part) here in northern Arizona and our local fire season is effectively over.
Fire season here in the Southwest works a little differently than fire season in the rest of the American West. Here in Arizona (and New Mexico), our spring starts out warm and dry. We have cooler nights up here at 7,000 feet, but humidity is very low, and a historic 1,200-year drought has exacerbated the lack of moisture here.
We deal with hot, sunny, dry days in April, May and June, and then once July hits — we get monsoonal rains, which typically end our fire season.
Of course, this is all climate-dependent, and due to the drought, the last few monsoon seasons in Flagstaff haven’t been as wet as normal.
Anyway. Our season got started WAY early this year with the Tunnel Fire that broke out back in April.
Once the Tunnel Fire was fully contained, we were still all holding our breath waiting for rain.
And… then instead, a few weeks later, we got the Pipeline Fire.
(As a reminder: I recently wrote a little guide to wildfires and incident management, and includes a lot of the initialisms and terminology I use a lot when talking about work. It’s good to reference if you need it.)
I was actually about an hour outside of town paddle boarding East Clear Creek when we got the call about a start in Schultz Pass. I booked in back to town and rushed to the office as soon as I could. My hair was actually still wet.
My boss had been handling everything solo until I got there, but once I arrived he gave me the run-down. We’d ordered a Type 1 Incident Management Team (IMT), but due to a resource shortage, we were getting a Type 2 team instead. The in-brief — the formal meeting where the forest-level IMT briefs the incoming IMT — was at 8 p.m.
I stayed in the office until about 11, and then was up at 4:30 the next morning to make it to the daily briefing before 6 a.m.
The one highlight of this fire? Its Incident Command Post (ICP) was at the city’s business incubator center and Buffalo Park… which left me with a literal 2 minute commute. Nice.
After the briefing, I went back to the office to work with my team and the Type 2 team.
It was also at this point that things went very south, very quickly. Two more fires broke out adjacent to the Pipeline — the Haywire Fire and the Double Fire. While the Pipeline Fire was human-caused, the Haywire and Double fires were both lightning-caused.
What are the odds, right?
(More than one fire in the area makes it a “complex.” The Haywire and Double fires shortly merged, and we just called them the Haywire Fire once that happened.)
I spent my morning writing the morning press release, ordering additional PIO resources, answering media calls and emails and trying to stabilize things as much as possible before the Type 2 team formally took over.
Things were also scattered because while the ICP was at Buffalo Park, the Type 2 team and my team were still working out of our office.
I ended up heading back to the business incubator building to start setting up for a press conference and fielding media calls.
Oh — I should also mention! Ryan had just finished up his 14-day fire assignment in New Mexico, so he was getting back for his three-day break right when all hell was breaking loose for me. Swell.
He brought me Chipotle though! There wasn’t any vegetarian fire food available at that point so I hadn’t eaten in almost 24 hours mid-way through day 2.
At one point, I did find about 20 minutes to go for a walk around Buffalo Park.
Because it was closed to the public since we were using it as a staging area for the teams and the fire, it was completely empty. Very surreal.
We held our press conference, and then I wrapped up my day at about 9 p.m. after answering phone calls and emails.
It was really nice to go home to Ryan! He made me dinner while I sporadically checked my phone. He’d also spent the entire day running my errands and cleaning since I was really busy on the fire.
After dinner, we sat on our front porch — which has a usually-incredible view of the San Francisco Peaks —
The Type 2 team took over on day 3, so while I was still working long hours starting with the 6 a.m. morning briefing, my team was no longer in charge.
At that point, it was eerily similar to the Tunnel Fire. We had a community meeting — with the same agencies, same agenda and same location — as six weeks prior.
The Type 2 team was pretty low on resources, so we stuck around to help them out a lot before the Type 1 team arrived.
Once the Type 1 team arrived, 24 hours later, they took everything off our plates.
Which was good! …because we were implementing partial forest closures and needed all hands on deck for that.
It was pretty similar to what happened last year on the Backbone and Rafael fires, when we were dealing with two Type 1 fires in different forest districts while implementing a full-forest closure.
The Type 1 team — Great Basin Team 2 — did come with plenty of resources, so we were free to turn our attention back to our forest-level work (like the area closures) and also find some time to clock out for the next few days.
Right before the Type 1 team concluded its work on the fire, we organized two field trips.
The first was for local media to get a chance to see Lockett Meadow and Inner Basin Trail. Lockett Meadow is a gorgeous aspen grove located up in the peaks.
We escorted local media to the area so they could get a look.
Then, the next day, we held a second media tour with the fire’s Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) team.
BAER teams basically come into a burned area as soon as it’s safe to do so, and start conducting tests and analyses to determine the extent of the fire’s damage and suggest strategies to employ in order to minimize long-term damage to thearea.
On this tour, we escorted members of the media and some of our partner agencies to Weatherford Canyon, so they could watch BAER team members conduct soil burn severity tests and also see some of the fire damage in that area as well.
After those two tours, the responsibilities associated with both fires dwindled significantly. The Type 1 team departed after a full 14-day assignment a few days after the tours, and monsoons kicked in soon after that.
As of right now, the Pipeline and Haywire fires are 90 and 95 percent contained, respectfully. It’ll take a while before they’re dictated as fully out due to a variety of factors, like smoldering stump holes and cinder material that holds heat.
Right now, my only responsibilities on the Pipeline and Haywire fires are daily InciWeb updates, and answering miscellaneous calls in regards to the fire.
Now that monsoons are here, I’m basically waiting until fires pick up in other parts of the country so I can head off-forest, and out on other fires in other regions.
Stay safe!
My views are mine alone and don’t represent those of the United States Department of Agriculture, the United States Forest Service, the Coconino National Forest or the U.S. federal government. All photos were taken by me and/or credited photographer and are property of the U.S. Forest Service unless otherwise noted. You can read more on my disclosure and privacy policy page.