“Now we’re hot spotting and hopefully put it to bed, but it will be a while. There’s stuff coming up every day. It’s just things coming out of the woodwork because it wasn’t a clean burn on the northern edge. For the most past, we’ve initiated a bunch of rehabilitation already. I know they’re looking at starting to sell the wood… there is some work to do though,” says Paul Wandler the Incident Commander for the Gustafsen fire.
There’s no bucket (air) support needed anymore but if they did get something internally going they would use it, says Wandler.
“With the help of the local fire department, the 108, it’s been a great resource for us. We’ve been working together quite well,” says Wandler. “They’ve been getting calls from the houses that are close, in and around, so they’ve been helping where they can.”
There are approximately 50 crew members working on the Gustafsen fire and the Jim Lake fire, the latter of which is expected to be out soon, he says.
“For the most part, there’ll probably be crews here until we have a good rain. There will be at least 20 people walking around the fire steady, hot spotting and patrolling. Once we get closer to the end, we’ll do another final scan and go after the remaining few.”