Mopinko and Will's piece convinced me to post here again (bodacious photos 2-nite)

DemoTex

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Sun Jul-10-11 10:27 PM
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Mopinko and Will's piece convinced me to post here again (bodacious photos 2-nite)

I'll try to mellow some. All I ask is that if you don't know much about a subject that I ...... no, I won't even go there. But here is the latest from the fire lookout tower:

Yesterday had it all: storms, lightning, fires, accidents, rescue operations, and more ..

The storms started early on Thursday (7/7) morning. My
lightning/thunder detector (Nick) woke me up at about 2 am. I saw
distant lightning flashes to the southwest. By 3 am those storms were
close enough to be a concern of mine.

Shortly after dawn I called the National Weather Service office in
Pendleton. OR., with a Skywarn spotter report of a cell near the
lookout tower that was putting down abundant lightning, nickle-size
hail, and winds gusting to 45 mph. The storms continued to move across
the southern portion of my area of responsibility until mid-morning.
By the time the storms moved east and dissipated, the BLM lightning
map showed 90+ strikes.

I went on duty two hours early, at 7:30 am, and fire crews were called
in early to start heading in my direction for any fires that might pop
up. Indeed, the first smoke popped up at about 10:30 am.

Since the smoke of this fire was coming up from behind Polytop Butte,
I could only estimate the fire location. The engine dispatched to the
fire was having a hard time finding it. My battalion commander climbed
the old abandoned lookout at Fox Butte (136 steps up, all
half-rotten), and provided a cross azimuth on the fire, so I worked up
a better position solution on the hard-to-find fire. Engine 634
finally found the fire, which was about 100 feet shy of being outside
the Deschutes National Forest and in The Devil's Garden (BLM
territory). USFS Engine 635 joined E-634 on the 1/3 acre fire. Later,
a BLM fire truck did show up (responding to a rancher's report of the
fire).

In the middle of this fire activity, I heard ATVs chugging up the
trail to the lookout. It was two Deschutes County sheriff's deputies
and ten volunteers on a search-and-rescue training exercise. They
often come up to East Butte to eat their lunches and rest. Several of
the volunteers came up the steps to the lookout, including Harry.
Harry is on East Butte fairly often because he does volunteer work for
COVHOPS, the group of USFS and others that maintain the 300+ miles of
ATV trails in East Fort Rock. Harry is a little older than me - say,
maybe, 65.

At about 1:30 pm the group of search-and-rescue riders set off down
the trail to continue their training. About ten minutes later I heard
- then saw - several of their 4-wheelers coming back up the trail and
turning down the road that runs up the butte to the lookout. Strange,
I thought. Once they were gone down the road, I thought I heard voices
on the trail below the summit of East Butte. Strange, I thought.

Then I got a phone call from another lookout saying that he had just
heard a 911 ambulance dispatch to East Butte for an injured rider.
Since nobody had reported anything to me, I assumed that the ambulance
call was part of their search-and-rescue training operation.

A few minutes later a member of that group showed up below the lookout
tower, on foot, and asked me about helicopter landing areas on the
butte. He confirmed that there had been a serious accident. One of the
4-wheel ATVs had flipped over and pinned the rider - Harry.

I then had to deal with a helicopter medevac operation and a wildfire.
The rest of the story is in the photos (link below).

This morning (Friday 7/8) a Bend TV station - according to another
lookout - reported that Harry is in stable condition. Here is a link
to the Bend Bulletin piece on the accident:
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OR_ATV_ACCIDENT_OROL-?SITE=ORBEN&SECTION=STATE&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT