The Telephone Fire continues to be the Alaska Team’s top priority

HARNEY AND GRANT COUNTY-The Telephone Fire continues to be the Alaska Team’s top priority among the many fires being managed in the Falls-Telephone Fire group. On Sunday, firefighters on the southern edge were successful in keeping the fire north of Highway 20, but the fire did make a push to the northeast, and is now in the vicinity of Thompson Mountain. We could not get an Infrared flight providing fire size data overnight, but this morning it is estimated the Telephone fire is 27,000 acres.

Today there are with 272 firefighters assigned to Telephone Fire. That includes two 20-person hotshot crews who just successfully completed a technical assignment on the Ritter Fire to contain a challenging spot inside a ravine near Bootleg Spring. Had that fire escaped, there was the threat of it taking off into the Crowcamp Hills.

A key goal for fire leaders in these extreme fire conditions is to move crews to high priority areas as quickly as possible, especially when resources are spread thin, across the entire northwest region, which is experiencing historic fire conditions. We will continue work to get more resources for the Telephone Fire, as well as all of the fires in the group of 15 that we’re managing.

We’ll have an Operations Briefing video for you a little later this morning, and continue to keep you updated throughout the day and evening.

Also, we will host a community meeting tonight at 7pm at the Harney County Chamber of Commerce, 484 N. Broadway, in Burns.

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Elkhorn Media Group