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An apocalyptic plume of smoke, known as a pyrocumulus cloud, filled the sky above the Boise Fire near Orleans on Tuesday, reaching heights over 16,000 feet, according to air resources assigned to the blaze. The fire-induced cloud could be seen throughout the region. 

“Looking up the hill from my yard [near Pearch Creek], I could see the flames underneath the plume of smoke,” longtime Orleans resident Mark Dondero told the Outpost during a phone interview this afternoon. “The fire is burning in a part of the Boise Creek Drainage that has never been logged and there is no historical record of fire there. Once the fire jumped from the south side of the creek to the north side, it just ran up the hill through all that dead fuel which led to this big plume of smoke.”

“I used to be a wildland firefighter myself, and these fires have gotten more frequent and more intense over the past 20 years,” Dondero added.

The Boise Fire has doubled in size since Tuesday morning. As of this writing, the fire is listed at 8,617 acres with zero percent containment. The fire has prompted evacuation orders and warnings for some residents along the Humboldt-Siskiyou county line. (A complete list of evacuation notices can be found at this link.) No structures have been destroyed.

Fire activity ramped up in the Boise Creek Drainage after the inversion layer lifted, prompting growth on the eastern edge of the fire, according to a Wednesday morning update from Incident Command. “Despite the fire activity, crews were able to continue firing off the Antenna Ridge Road to deepen containment to provide protection for Orleans.”

Members of the Mid-Klamath Watershed Council (MKWC) and the Salmon River Restoration Council (SRRC) have been working as community liaisons to improve communications between the incident command and residents living near the fire perimeter. 

“Through the community liaison program, we’re reaching out to community members to better assess their needs and concerns, and we’re giving that information back to the fire team,” SRRC Community Liason Bona Fries told the Outpost. “These communities have a lot of fire and knowledge and a lot of knowledge of this area, so we’re making sure that all of the information is being given to the fire team so that they can work more efficiently. We don’t want them to have to go reinvent the wheel when we already have a lot of information that can just be shared.”

Asked to describe the current situation in Orleans, Fries said many residents “are feeling deja vu,” referring to the 2023 SRF Lighting Complex and 2020 Red Salmon Complex that burned in the Six Rivers National Forest in recent years.

“All of these communities just had a big fire and already did all this prep work around their places, and now they’re having to do it again,” she continued. “It’s hard to be motivated to do something that you just did and put the rest of your life on hold to protect your home. It can be overwhelming.”

As destructive as the SRF and Red Salmon complexes were, the fires have created a much-needed buffer for communities surrounding the Boise Fire. 

“What we typically see when these fires move into those recent burn scars is they really slow down because there aren’t fuels to carry the fire,” Fries said. “The Boise Creek drainage hasn’t seen fire in 100-plus years and the fuels are thick. What happened [on Tuesday] was expected due to the heavy fuel load. And we knew that as soon as the fire got established on the opposite side of the Boise Creek Drainage to the north, it had the potential to do exactly what it did yesterday.”

The Incident Command team will host a virtual community meeting on Thursday at 2 p.m. There is not currently a link available for the meeting, but it will most likely be streamed live on the 2024 Boise Fire Facebook page. Other links relating to the fire can be found here.