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Firefighting technique questioned Oppressive smoke, mandatory evacuations, and a firefighting strategy that itself carries some risk has some Trinity County residents questioning the decisions being made with the fires that continue to burn in the county. Smoke from the firefighter set burnouts is ruining summer, said Paul Lehfeldt of Junction City. Also, Lehfeldt lost 2,340 feet of waterline to a burnout done by firefighters working on the Eagle Fire and was without water for about five days. Insurance did pay for new piping, Lehfeldt said, but hot spots in the fire area made laying the new pipe difficult. Lehfeldt said he went to the incident command post in Junction City to ask for help in hosing down the ditch, but the response was slow. "We got to it first," he said. Lehfeldt is not alone in his dislike of burnouts, as several residents have called the Journal to complain about the additional smoke they create and the possibility of the fires escaping control. Burnouts along Red Hill Road in Junction City early last week did start some spot fires on the wrong side of containment lines, but they were put out. Red Hill Road resident Will Shaw has a different perspective on the "fighting fire with fire" strategy, even though about three acres of his property was included in the burnout to stop the Eagle Fire. "I didn't lose any structures," he said, and in the burned areas "all the oaks will survive. The largest trees will stand . . . the grasses and the ferns will come back." Shaw, who has firefighting experience, called the burn a "textbook" operation. However, he acknowledges that he has neighbors who disagree. U.S. Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell has said, "Crews are using burnouts and other indirect firefighting techniques because of the inaccessible, rugged terrain and other hazards keeping them from the fire edge. We must consider firefighter safety in all of our tactical decisions." In speaking to concerned residents in Hayfork, Buck Wickham, operations section chief on the Lime Complex fires, said, "A burnout is a carefully planned firing operation that is done under favorable conditions. . . . It's better if we decide when and where fire burns than to leave that decision to the wildfire."
The Forest Service has said that another term, back fire, is used to describe a technique used when a fire is advancing quickly and there is not time to plan ahead. A back fire is considered a lastditch effort and is deliberately ignited fairly close to the wildfire so that wind created by the wildfire will draw it in.
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