Indian Valley Fire’s Response to the Lava Fire
The Lava Fire started in far northern Gem County on September 2. As of October 20th, inciweb.wildfie.gov reports that the fire, started from a lightning strike, has burned 97,585 acres and is 94% contained.
Additionally, according to www.nifc.gov/nicc-files/sitreprt.pdf, this fire has cost $35.5M to battle as of October 21st.
On Sunday, September 8 the Lava Fire erupted into a much larger and aggressive fire. Many in the area saw the large plume of smoke and the pyrocumulus cloud that day. Inciweb reports that the fire was 2,493 acres the morning of the 8th and by their evening update they had estimated the size of the fire at 30,000 acres.
On September 10th it was reported that the fire was at approximately 69,658 acres and that it had merged with the Boulder fire the day before. The combined acreage of these two fires, now considered just the Lava Fire, was at 78,457 acres. The Lava fire has also burned around the north, west and south sides of the burn scar left by the Four Corners fire in 2022.
Josh Barritt has been a resident of Indian Valley for almost 20 years and has been the Indian Valley Rural Fire Chief for about the past two years. I went to speak with him at his shop in Indian Valley in late September, where he repairs and maintains heavy agricultural equipment.
He told me that on Tuesday, September 10th the Lava Fire was threatening homes in the area of South Grays Creek. Indian Valley fire responded and requested mutual aid support from both Midvale and Council fire departments.
In addition to the volunteer firefighters that responded from three departments, several private citizens also responded with equipment that was critical in stopping the fire. Tony Dunham, Eric Sprague and RJ Holmes all showed up with their dozers and began clearing a fire line, at the direction of Chief Barritt. These individuals had previously spoken with Josh, and had volunteered their services should the need arise.
Chief Barritt’s ‘Plan A’ was to complete and hold the dozer line mentioned above. ‘Plan B’ was to fall back to the fence line should the fire jump the dozer line. ‘Plan C’, if everything else failed, was to fall back to individual homes and to protect those.
On the evening of the 10th the dozers started work clearing a fire line in the South Grays Creek area. This line ran roughly to the northwest to the Grays Creek area. Barritt estimated that the line was about 3 miles long and about 3 dozer widths wide in most places. That’s about 9 miles of dozer line placed by local citizens at their expense.
In addition to this dozer work, Indian Valley Fire had all 5 of their brush trucks on scene along with about 13 volunteers. Council fire sent one brush truck with crew and Midvale sent two brush trucks and two water tenders, with crews.
Of course, none of this work occurred in a vacuum. Barritt told me he was coordinating with local BLM staff on his plan and work. The dozer line that he had placed was technically not in the Indian Valley Fire district - it was on BLM land. Instead of waiting for the fire to get to his district he pushed out onto BLM land to provide a buffer zone. With this dozer line buffer zone, the fire still came within about 3/4 of a mile from homes in the area.
The dozer line was completed late the night of the 10th and into the morning of the 11th. The last dozer left the scene about 3:00 a.m. that night. Fire crews stayed on hand until about 4:30 a.m. before calling off. Josh Barritt told me he got about an hour of sleep before he went back out to check on things.
The dozer line, and the efforts of the volunteer firefighters, held the fire back. No homes were lost in the area. However, some area ranchers did lose cattle to the Lava Fire. The Idaho Fire Map website reports that the Lava Fire has destroyed 4 residences and 9 other structures. It does not state where those losses were.
Chief Barritt would like to thank Midvale Fire and Council Fire for sending aid, Tony Dunham, Eric Sprague and RJ Holmes for their hours of dozer work and, of course, the Indian Valley volunteer fire fighters. All deserve recognition.
