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CNN Live Today
Fire Season Has Already Caused Enormous Damage in Arizona and Colorado
Aired June 27, 2002 - 10:38 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: The summer is only a few days old, but you don't have to tell that to the thousands of people who are out there fighting fires, and those who have been forced from their homes because of them. The fire season has already caused enormous damage in Arizona and Colorado.
Boise, Idaho, though, is where officials are standing by, and that's where they keep an eye of this fast-moving developing across the western U.S.
Our Jeff Flock is standing by now. He's in Boise, and he has an with update on a bit of tour for us this morning -- Jeff.
JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Indeed, Leon. Good morning to you. From the Pentagon of the war on fires, in some sense, this is the war room over my shoulder. Perhaps you see the latest fire they're looking at. This is a satellite imagery. And I think if I put laser pointer on it down there, maybe you see a little puff of smoke and that arrow. That is that new fire in Southern California called the Louisiana Fire.
Now I'm with Kim Christensen who runs the war room. You're watching that one closely, because that's the newest one, right?
KIM CHRISTENSEN, INTERAGENCY FIRE CENTER: Yes, it is. It started about 4:00 yesterday afternoon. It's up to 6,000 acres right now. It did calm down a little bit overnight. They do have suppression forces on that fire. So we're optimistic that they can get the upper hand on that.
FLOCK: You have the latest numbers and the latest intelligence. How many crews are on that fire?
CHRISTENSEN: Currently 16 crews.
FLOCK: And that's 20-person crews.
CHRISTENSEN: That's correct.
FLOCK: OK, so a lot of people on that already. Give me a buzz through this if you can, Kim. I know you have a lot of desks here, working at various issues, in terms of putting these crews together and sending people. What are these people doing here, this young lady here?
CHRISTENSEN: These people are going to be mobilizing engines, and caders (ph) and showers, as well as communications equipment to new fires.
FLOCK: So if I can look just right over shoulder, I'm looking at a resource order here. And, Rick, if you're able to see, and on that I see "resource order." What are they looking for there, if you can tell?
CHRISTENSEN: What they do right there is they're keeping track of resources that are going right now. This, for instance, is going to the Pike San-Isabel Forest (ph) in Colorado.
FLOCK: That's the thing, you've got so many different fires. We're focusing on the Arizona fire, the ones in Colorado, and now this California fire. But you have got them everywhere.
CHRISTENSEN: Right now, we are continuing to support fires, even in Nevada and Utah at this time.
FLOCK: And looking here, this young lady here, what are these people at these desks doing?
CHRISTENSEN: They're mobilizing individual single resources such as dispatchers, crew bosses and helicopter managers to support the fires out in the field right now.
FLOCK: Like if you're able to -- come over my shoulder here, and maybe you can see over this lady's shoulder. These are individual people she's looking at here in this book, is that correct? So you're moving these people around on the chess board.
CHRISTENSEN: Moving these people around on the chess board from various locations throughout the United States.
FLOCK: You call them overhead, but those are people.
CHRISTENSEN: Single resource overhead.
FLOCK: Got you.
Back behind me here, I see people looking like national maps, and what is this, aircraft?
CHRISTENSEN: This is the Aircraft desk, and they are going to be dispatching helicopters, air tankers and lead planes, as well as scheduling our contract jets to move crews around the country.
FLOCK: What does this man that I'm look at right now, this guy, he's got a map of U.S. there -- what he is planning right now?
CHRISTENSEN: Right now, we've got the fires plotted there, and it will also show the locations of helicopters so that we can mobilize the closest helicopter to the fire. FLOCK: And that's the whole dance of it, it's almost a ballet, putting these resources all together. Before we get away, I want to ask you in terms of what the intensity has been like so far this year? You've got couple of major fires at the same time. How have you been doing with resources?
CHRISTENSEN: We're doing just fine. What we need right now is really a break from Mother Nature. But here, over the last couple of weeks, we've been supporting fires in the southwest and in Colorado, and then we'll get an occasional fire starting elsewhere, like in California. So what we really do here is we just choreograph the movement of this whole thing.
FLOCK: I feel the intensity here. I listen to people as we walk through. We're hearing people on the phone. It's sort of a fascinating, behind-the-scenes look. We appreciate it very much.
Kim, I'll let you get back to what you got to do. Thanks for the time. And we thank the folks at the National Interagency Fire Center for this behind-the-scenes look to see how they orchestrate this real war against wildfires in this very tough season.
Leon, that's latest. Back to you.
HARRIS: Thanks, Jeff, that's fascinating, absolutely fascinating. Thanks, buddy. We'll see you in a bit.
FLOCK: Thank you.
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