Western Railroad Discussion > BNSF Gateway Sub Heads up - FarNorCal Fire

South of Beiber on the west slope there's a wind driven fire heading towards the hills and the mainline. Named the 3-1 fire for the local coordinates. Very sparsley populated area with evacuation warnings on the dead end road to the town of Little Valley.

The catch is if it crosses the Pit River it gets into a Wilderness area where the rules are different. The Fire has been progressing quickly with CalFire throwing lots of crews and aircraft at it. FlightRadar24 shows the sky full of aircraft.

If the Sub is closed they may detour onto the UPrr Black Butte Sub from Klamath Falls past Mt Shasta, down the Sacramento River Canyon to the Marysville area. Or there may be a work train with the water tank cars for Fire fighting.

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If the gateway is closed, I dont think it will be for long. As you said, there are ample resources right now that are being designated to this fire.

Little valley is under an evacuation order, although, I highly doubt any resident there will evacuate.

The winds are calming now and should be less than 10 mph tomorrow. The there is little elevation difference within this fire.

I have been assigned to assist with this fire (not fire suppression), Ill let you know if there are any major developments that I know about.

Andrew
Burney, CA

Posted from Android

Thanks Andrew,
So far Plumas Cnty. & the FRC are Fire Free!

Dave

DaveL Wrote:
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> Thanks Andrew,
> So far Plumas Cnty. & the FRC are Fire Free!
>
> Dave

Ya, so far! I hope it stays that way. Im tired of seeing that area burn.

Update for the 3-1 fire: Good progress has been made over night. I'm very hopeful that the fire behavior will be calmer today and growth will be minimal. Im now on stand-by for this fire.

Posted from Android

Looks like they caught it. The WatchDuty info credits the night flying helicopters and less overnight winds.

The night flying capability is somewhat recent in the past year or two. There's a limited number of Pilot / Aircraft combinations for night operations so they requested them early and fortunately there is no other big incidents in the region that had priority.

Be safe. 

Back to regular programming.

+ https://www.helis.com/database/news/cal-fire-firehawk-s-70i-fleet-completed/



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/08/26 12:46 by TCnR.

TCnR Wrote:
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> Looks like they caught it. The WatchDuty info
> credits the night flying helicopters and less
> overnight winds.
>
> The night flying capability is somewhat recent in
> the past year or two. There's a limited number of
> Pilot / Aircraft combinations for night operations
> so they requested them early and fortunately there
> is no other big incidents in the region that had
> priority.

The cost of the night vision systems, and more importantly qualifying hours for the pilots is significant.  I'm glad that night ops have helped put a dent in this fire.

FishinJeeper Wrote:
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> Ya, so far! I hope it stays that way. Im tired of
> seeing that area burn.

No kidding. I just paid my homeowner/fire insurance for the house in Quincy. Yikes!

A massive amount of resources were released from the 3-1 fire this morning. In the last hour or so, there have been 2 starts. The Loomis fire (45 acres) and an unnamed fire (10 acres). Both in close proximity to the 3-1 fire. Today's forecast is high winds, low relative humidity, and temps in the low 90's. As usual, Ill keep everyone updated when I get new information.

Both fires are right off the RR tracks. The gateway will likely close for these. I wonder if a train went through. Its 1306 hrs now.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/11/26 13:13 by FishinJeeper.

There's also talk about dry lightning followed by T-stroms from the south.

Here's a photo from the alert cameras on the WatchDuty site. Don't have a landmark reference but this looks concerning.

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I have not seen any clouds in the past few days. My back yard looks out in that direction. This fire has a rapid rate of spread. Im heading to work, I'll update when I can, but who knows when that will be.

Posted from Android