Forest Service Office Destroyed During The Post Fire In California. Crew Barracks Spared.
It's starting to get wild out there.
When the Post Fire started, crews from around the area responded to the fire and are still trying to get around the 15,000-acre nuke field. They did a great job holding I-5. However, during the initial attack, the Los Alamos Station on the Los Padres National Forest caught fire.
This is a co-location station where both the Los Padres and Angeles National Forest house engines and personnel. At first, reports were going around that everything was lost, but I reached out to the forest, and they said the office, which is a trailer (it is very typical to have a trailer as an office on a wildfire base), was the only structure lost. Both the engine bay and the crew housing were able to be saved.
It also looks like the pull-up bar was saved…
The Los Alamos Station (the engine bay plus the housing) where ANF E-14 is co-located with LPF E-74 is still intact, minus the office trailer - that did indeed get destroyed by the Post Fire Saturday afternoon during its initial run.
Flemming Bertelsen, Los Padres NF
You can imagine the added stress when you are responding to a wildfire and you start to hear radio chatter that your station is burning down. It’s a good reminder to folks in the public that when wildland firefighters rush to save your property, their property, which is also in the forest, is left behind until they get back.
Going forward, hell, they might get a nice new trailer… but the crew coffee pot might be gone along with any personal items in the office. And it’ll likely be engine bay briefings until the replacement comes.
Meanwhile, Utah and New Mexico are popping off, and California remains busy with new starts today.
Desert fires.
Here is the latest view of the South Fork Fire outside Ruidoso, New Mexico, this afternoon.
Busy months ahead. Stay heads up.
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Picture of the pull up bar for proof of life?
Forest Service facilities are some of the worst at practicing defensible space standards. Government red tape, misguided deferred maintenance, and internal environmental/cultural resources objections make it frustrating difficult to implement recommended standards. Just take a look at the cedar shingles roofs that are still required on most historic guard stations the next time you are out in a tinderbox enviros. We are talking thousands across the National Forest Landscape. Eventually, most in the business will be assigned to try and defend one. Sometimes, the same one on more then one fire.