Haze in the Landscape

There is something dreadfully beautiful about a wildfire. It is dreadful because there is a possibility for the loss of human life and the destruction of property. But, the smoke from the fire creates a alien landscape that is beautiful to me.

The Fontenelle Fire (http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2934/) is burning in Bridger-Teton Nation Forest 17 miles west of Big Piney, Wyoming. The fire began on June 24, 2012. At this time, the fire is 28,579 acres burning in heavy, dead timber and has burned into the Big Piney Ranger District.

I went down to Big Piney over the past two days and got to see the smoke from the fire up close. On Wednesday, my supervisor invited me to attend a fire briefing. At the fire briefting, the type 3 team in charge of the fire transitioned to a type 2 team. A type 2 team has more resources and more people working on the fire. It was interesting to see the leadership from the incident management team discuss the fire.

Outside, I could see a little bit of ash falling from the sky. The air smelled like a campfire. When I looked to the distance, I saw a menacing plume of smoke. With the wind, I could see it shifting in the sky, as if it was fighting to make it closer to us.

Yesterday, I drove a vehicle to the incident command post for the fire. As I drove through the alien landscape, I noticed that the smoke had shifted. There was smoke in areas that didn't have smoke yesterday. Some places that did have smoke yesterday, now had blue skies. When I arrived at the incident command post at Big Piney High School, the dark plume of smoke had grown. The increase and shift in smoke is representative of the Fontenelle Fire growing from 2,000 acres to 28,000 acres.

Wildifres are deadly. The Waldo Canyon Fire in Colorado has destroyed 350 homes, killed one person, and forced tens of thousands of people to evacuate (http://www.inciweb.org/incident/2929). President Obama has declared it a major disaster. Here in Wyoming, we are hoping that the Fontenelle Fire does not grow and that the incident management team is able to contain it soon. The haze in the landscape has been a unique thing to witness but I hope that it disappears soon.