Wildfire Pictures (Lots of Pics)

[npaden]

Well, my place burned up but at least I got some neat pictures. I had 5 trail cameras out when the fire hit and ended up with pictures of the fire on 3 of them. 2 of the cameras are going to be okay, 1 might make it and 2 are toast.

I didn't have the time on the cameras syncronized, so I can't really tell how long it took to go from one setup to the other, but you can see by the time stamps on the pictures that it was moving pretty fast.

Here's the camera that got hit first. Picture quality isn't very good, I'm guessing it was struggling with the smoke. You can see the leading edge of the fire toward the top of the picture.

50 seconds later and the fire has moved a bunch. The flames weren't even in view on the left side of the picture on the first one and they are pretty close on this one.

Just 3 seconds between these to pictures and the fire noticeablely advanced.

4 more seconds and it is back burning pretty intensely. I mowed a path in front of this camera and that slowed down the advance quite a bit when it hit the shorter grass, but it didn't stop it because the straps burned off the camera and it ended up on the ground. It might be salvageable.

Next camera. This one is setup on my protein feeder which somehow didn't end up burning up. This one doesn't have seconds on the time stamp so you can't really tell exactly how long elapses between each picture. These pictures do give a pretty good feel for the intensity of the fire.

You can even see flames coming in front of the lens on this shot. This camera was pretty melted and I'm pretty sure it is toast but the SD card seems to still be fine.

The brush is burning pretty intensely in this shot.

Just 2 minutes on the time stamp from the first picture and the fire is already moving on with pretty much everything burned up. You can see that the plastic housing on the camera has melted and is covering up some of the lens.

This camera is setup on one of my spin feeders. In the first shot no actual flames are evident. Lots of smoke though.

37 seconds later and there are now plenty of flames.

32 seconds after that and things are pretty well engulfed.

37 seconds later.

Less than 2 minutes later and the fire appears to be already out.

A few minutes later though and if you zoom in you can see that the fire isn't out, it's burning in the crack of the big mesquite tree.

The fire would burn in the crack of mesquite trees and over the next several hours burn the heart of the tree completely up and even down into the roots. The tree in that last picture ended up burning completely to the ground at the stump.

Here's an example of another tree that suffered the same fate.

 

[npaden]

I'll update the thread with pictures of the damages as well. Here are some panoramic pictures from a the highest vantage point I have on my place. Pretty much the only thing that didn't burn was bare dirt. The road and some long narrow food plots that I planted last October but they never grew because it didn't rain.

This picture is a little over 180 degrees of panorama. It starts off looking north and then pans around to the southeast.

Click here to see a larger image - http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/albums/FisherCo/north_to_east_stitch.jpg

This picture starts off looking northeast and ends up looking southwest.

Here's a larger image if you want to click - http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/albums/FisherCo/east_to_south_stitch.jpg

Last panoramic picture. This one starts off looking southwest and ends up looking due north of a complete 360 for all the pictures combined.

Click here for a larger image - http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/albums/FisherCo/west_to_north_stitch.jpg

The area looking north was the thickest nastiest stuff on my property and you can see from the ashes that there was plenty of fuel to burn there. That area took the brunt of hottest fire. There were actually a few stumps still burning today when I was down there checking on things. The rest of the place didn't exactly come out unscathed, but some of the trees look like they just might have a chance.

I'll update later with some more pictures and some before and after shots hopefully.

Nathan

 

[wyoming556]

Man sounds bad, hopefully the game managed to survive. Sounds like the fires are getting closer to you. My brother who fights fires for the forrest service out of Bozeman just got off the line and is staying in Lubbock tonight.

 

[sweetnectar]

Those pictures are something else. Sorry for your loss.

 

[npaden]

Trailer is toast.

The blind on the hill made it.

Protein feeder made it.

Grain drill is going to take some repairing.

Some of the stumps were still on fire when I was down there today.

My biggest and oldest mesquite burned from the inside out.

I took a timed shot with the camera to try to give some perspective on how big it was.

Another big mesquite gone.

Lost another smaller blind that I had in a different spot.

Maybe you can see it in this closeup?

My tripod stand made it but the big mesquite behind it didn't.

Here's what it looked like when I first put it up.

Not much left of my south fenceline. Wooden posts don't hold up very well to fire.

The crazy thing is that the brush seems to have just completely burned up with no trace left behind. This area had lots of brush mixed in with the grass and it is completely wiped clean.

Not just a pass on by type of fire.

 

[npaden]

This is probably the best single picture showing how bad it is.

You can see a feeder in the middle of the picture. Usually the only ground that you can see is the area immediately around the feeder itself. The bare dirt. Everything else is completely hidden by how thick the trees are. I actually had to cut down some trees so I could have a clear view of that feeder. Now you can see bare ground everywhere.

Here's a winter time picture of the feeder that should give you a pretty good idea how thick it should be. That is after I cut down some trees so I could see the feeder from my blind.

I only found 2 dead animals walking the place. A cottontail rabbit and this bird. Craziest looking bird I've ever seen. I picked it up and put it in the back of the truck to bring it home, but it blew out of the truck. Anyone know what in the world it is?

Oh well, I think I've posted enough pictures for now. If you want to look at more here's the direct link to the photo gallery.

The fire pictures start on page 9 and go from there. If you want to look back at some of the earlier pictures you can somewhat get a feel for what it used to look like.

EDIT - It would help if I put the link in - http://padens.com/v-web/gallery/FisherCo

It will be very interesting to see how things progress from here. If anyone has any specific advice I'm all ears.

Thanks, Nathan

 

[idnative1948]

Nathan, this chit just sucks big time. Don't even know what to say to make you feel better other than to hang in there.

 

[Basser]

Wow....very interesting to see the progression of the fire and how quick it was spreading. Amazing pics you got but unfortunately not in a good way for you.

 

[drahthaar]

I think the bird is a painted bunting. Very unreal pic, such a colorful bird.

Sorry for all your losses there.

 

[BiggWimm]

Sorry about the loss. Looks like you had put a lot of work into the area. Hopefully it wont take long to rebuild and repair.

 

[Dinkshooter]

Looks like a good time to be a corn flinger salesman in Texas.

 

[noharleyyet]

Looks like a good time to be a corn flinger salesman in Texas.

Please don't spread misinformation. We like to call them nutrional biofuel dispersal units.

 

[npaden]

The initial cause of the fire is thought to be lighting but it hasn't been confirmed yet.

The fire started about 5 miles southwest of my place and crossed a paved highway that had fire breaks graded on both sides of the highway to get to my place.

They got it stopped when it got to another paved road a mile east of my place.

Here's the best article on it that I've found - http://www.ktxs.com/news/27830850/detail.html

 

[nidahunter]

I cannot even imagine that kind of devistation. Amazing pictures of what nature can do.

 

[TheTone]

Some pretty crazy pictures you were able to get. Some timely rains would really green things up in a hurry I would think.

 

[1_pointer]

Sorry for your loss. But, I would be extremely interested in some pics in a year or so to see how the area comes back. I know chit about the trees down there, are any of them sprouters or only produced by seed?

 

[npaden]

Went through my photo gallery and came up with a few before and after pictures. I'm almost positive that I've taken pictures to make a panorama from the top of my hill before and just never edited them and posted them. I'm for sure going to try to go back and find them to make some better comparison shots.

On the ones that I did have I tried to crop the burn pictures to match up as closely as I could. Some of the angles are a little different but you get the idea.

Here's my West shooting lane.

South shooting lane.

Looking at one of my spin feeders to the east.

My tripod stand over one of my food plots. This little field is one of the only things that didn't burn.

And this picture just shows the worst of the fire. The tree in the front center of the picture still has green leaves for now, but it completely burned up and the base and then fell over.

That is not a small tree by any means either, just a couple trees up from it is the large mesquite that I was sitting on in one of the timed pictures. The tree laying on it's side was at least 30 feet tall and I wouldn't be able to reach my arms around the trunk of it.

Hopefully I'll be able to find some even better before pictures and over the years do some progression shots. The big trees can't be replaced in my lifetime, but with a clean slate hopefully the habitat can even better than it was before the fire.

 

[1_pointer]

The big trees can't be replaced in my lifetime, but with a clean slate hopefully the habitat can even better than it was before the fire.

IMO, that's about the best attitude you can have. In looking at some of the panorama pics, if those trees respond to fire anything like a Utah juniper, I bet you'll be surprised at how many don't die. Still quite a bit of green on many of them.

 

[Horn Seeker]

Some of it doesn't look "too" bad...hopefully it will come back pretty good. I guess time will tell. I dont know much about that country and fire response. Pretty dry I reckon, so it might be real slow??

That bird is insane...

That one pic said 128 degrees... WOW!