CASCADE, Idaho — Fire crews continued their battle Saturday against the Four Corners Fire burning just west of Lake Cascade. The weekend brought encouraging news.
“It's a little bit cooler and you can actually feel the higher relative humidity in the air versus the last few days. So, the fire behavior has been pretty moderate,” said Jesse Bender, Public Information Officer with Great Basin Team 4, the team taking on the Four Corners Fire.
A major plus for the team is the close proximity of Lake Cascade to the fire burning just west.
“A fire like this is the perfect situation for it," Bender said. "We've had up to four of the scooper planes flying in tandem out there and they can just come one right after the others, get their water off the lake and immediately be over the fire area and then right back down to the lake."
Fire managers said the lake’s location promotes fast turnarounds for scooping water and dropping it where it’s needed. A scoop and drop cycle can be done in only seven minutes, but it’s not just about scooping and dropping anywhere in the fire zone -- coordination is key.
“It takes the coordinated effort. We have fire crews on the ground. We have the aviation in the air, and they're working together to accomplish the fire suppression," Bender said. "The firefighters on the ground rely on that assistance a lot to cool down areas so that they can continue working."
Late Thursday into Friday of this week saw fire conditions prompt evacuation orders, some noticed though that scooper planes were not in the sky Friday as the situation intensified. Some are asking why that is -- fire managers said it’s all about weather and visibility conditions.
“After Thursday night when the fire grew a few thousand acres, the following morning, all that smoke settled down across the lake and there was very limited visibility," Bender said. "All of our aircraft, of course, need really good visibility to be able to fly their plane under visual flight rules, VFR and the scoopers specifically require 3 miles of VFR to be able to fly over the fire area, but yesterday's reduced visibility definitely hampered aviation operations. At the same time, the fire activity was a little less too. So that was beneficial."
Visibility is huge, because Lake Cascade remains open to the community for recreation. The Valley County Sheriff’s Office monitors the lake, making sure people stay out of the way of scooper planes collecting water.
“Earlier this morning, we did not have the scoopers running yet, because the visibility was still too low. So, there were a lot of people out on the lake in boats and jet skis," Bender said. "As soon as we found out that the scoopers would be able to come to the fire, the sheriff's office immediately got their deputies out on the lake to make sure that people were out of harm's way and that the aviation operations could be conducted safely."
Pilots of firefighting planes and helicopters also have a limit of how much they can fly each day, so fire managers need to think critically about the best windows to have aerial assets assisting.
“We try to find the right spot between starting them early enough to really have good value on the fire in the morning hours, but not starting them so early that then we don't have flight time left on the other end of the day,” Bender said.
The Cascade Rural Fire Protection District is collecting donations for their community fund to help those who have been forced out of their homes. Click here for details on how to help the community.
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