Kettle Complex 2015

 After a mild and dry winter followed by a similar spring the Pacific Northwest was having conditions line up for a severe fire season during 2015. I anxiously prepared myself mentally and physically for what I knew was going to be a busy summer.
After completing finals for spring term and making myself available for dispatch, the handcrew I was a member of began our season with a trip to Alaska to help suppress the historic fire activity they were experiencing. This trip was followed by a fire assignment in Oregon, followed by the rare trip into California, and then back north to Washington. It is in Washington that I witnessed some of the more severe fire activity.
August 11th 2015 a lightning event gave birth to the Kettle Complex in Northern Washington just 4-11 miles south of the Canadian border. Topography and winds aligning, mixed with heavy fuel loads, gave the complex severe fire activity. Heavy timber, dead and down trees and dense stands of lodge pole pine were fully consumed by the wildfire.
My crew arrived on the incident and was assigned to the Renner fire within the complex and was tasked with structure protection. With the fire making a hard push to several rural structures dotting the landscape, we conducted several burnout operations to reduce fuel loads. The strategy worked and the threatened structures survived.
While performing the burnout operations I was able to witness just how volatile a dense stand of lodgepole pine can be. While dragging fire through other mixed stands of conifer the fire stayed at a low intensity but once it hit a patch of lodgepole "whoom" up it went in a puff of black smoke.
The Kettle Complex will be a memorable assignment for me, it will be interesting to visit the Colville National Forest in five years to see what early seral species exist after such a severe wildfire.

                                                       Photo courtesy of Glenn Jones
Glenn Jones,