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Our updates and operational briefings this week have shared information about firing operations that are taking place in areas along Forest Roads 12 & 14 of the Camp Creek Fire. We thought it would be helpful to provide an explanation of why firing operations can be such a useful strategy in fire containment efforts.

While managing fires can be complicated and challenging, the basic principles of fire are relatively simple. Fire needs three elements to ignite and continue to burn: oxygen, heat, and fuel. To stop a fire's spread, one of the three elements has to be removed to break the fire triangle. Taking away the third component, fuel (burnable vegetation) is the method often employed by fire crews.

Simply put, when a moving fire runs low on fuel -- just like a vehicle driving down the highway -- it slows down and can affect both the fire's progression and spread. Vegetation can be mowed, scraped to bare mineral soil by a hand tool (hand line) or bulldozer, (dozer line) or strategically burned if conditions allow. The latter, burning, can quickly treat a larger area in front of an approaching fire and create a continuous, fuel-free barrier called a fire break.

Firing operations are carefully-planned efforts where firefighters intentionally and precisely burn vegetation such as grasses, plants and shrubs  to take fuel away from the main fire to help establish containment line. Firefighters use a variety of tools and methods to apply fire to the ground in order to remove fuels. Most commonly, firefighters carry drip torches, which are handheld canisters that drip flaming liquid fuel on the materials to be burned. 

Crews will designate a “control line,” often a road, dozer line, or hand line cut in by crews, to safely begin firing. They wait until conditions are favorable for the use of the applied fire, such as cooler temperatures or lower wind speeds. 

Firefighters continuously patrol the control line while ignitions are underway and during the consumption of the fuel, which includes live vegetation, leaves, needles, duff, and dead woody material. When performed successfully, the main fire will slow or stop advancing because it has been robbed of fuel. This helps move closer to containment on that portion of the fire’s perimeter.

Two photos showing firing operations can be viewed below by clicking on the caption:

• A Silver City Interagency Hotshot crew member uses a drip torch to ignite ground vegetation
   
• Another view of a Silver City Interagency Hotshot crew member using a drip torch during firing operations

Click the link below to watch a video from September 2nd, when the Incident Management Team announced the Camp Creek Fire had gone from 0% to 11% contained. The video includes an explanation of how firing operations helped achieve that increase in containment.

• September 2 containment announcement (2:10)