Finding the Fire at Night
John Flannigan, Night Operations Chief
Oregon Department of Forestry Incident Management Team 1
Finding the fire at night can be one of the most challenging parts of fire, and in his 34 years of experience Night Operations Chief, John Flannigan has gotten to be an expert at it. Part detective, part firefighter Flannigan says getting there “can be an adventure at night.” On the Haystack Complex with four new fires in three days it made his work even more challenging.
Using nighttime to fight wildfires has some special advantages, less heat from the sun and sometimes humidity recovery (dew) that can slow the fire down. In his years working often at night he has seen “lots of time when the fire lays down and we can get tight to it.” Getting tight to the fires edge and removing one of the three legs of the fire triangle, heat by using water, or fuel by digging a fire line will stop the fire from growing.
But you have to get there, and just looking at the orange glow in night sky doesn’t often show you the way.
If the fire was found in the daytime there may be directions, but what looks obvious then can look completely different at night with dust and darkness. Plastic flagging, bright in the daytime can look like crumbs at night and to get to the Beard Canyon Fire he needed to slow down at every intersection and look for dozer tracks in the dust that would lead his way in. Technology can help with GPS integrated into tablet computers but that doesn’t show if the road is passable or has a gate. Local knowledge really helps.
John Flannigan takes the big view of firefighting at night “finding the new fires and getting going on them is challenging, but just what we do.”
–Dave Wells, IMT 1 PIO