#CrooksFire 4/22/22 Morning Operational Briefing with Kyle Jacobson, Operations Section Chief with California Interagency Incident Management Team 4

Good morning Kyle Jacobson, the operations section chief with Team Four on the crooks fire.

Current fire acreage is 2356 acres with 0% containment. Give you an update from yesterday’s and last night’s activities.

Yesterday, we did see some fire growth to the West in Division Alpha towards Lookout Mountain. It made a couple uphill pushes and did start approaching some structures in the area up there.

We were working rotor wing and fixed wing aircraft with retardant all day in that area, large air tankers and very large air tankers. They were successful in getting retardant around the majority of the structures and the Lookout Mountain area, as well as continuing to put retardant down on a ridge to the south to prevent any further fire progression to the north.

Today, we are also going to be working on some indirect line from Mount Tridel out towards Maverick as a contingency in case the fire does decide to get out of that retardant line and push north as well as working not lying to the south.

As we move over into division, kilo, everything is continuing to hold within its current footprint resources are out there securing and mopping up that perimeter.

The spot fires had been a concern for a few days. They’ve gotten there, they’ve done a lot of great work, they’re mopping these up 100% to make sure that these are no future impacts to the north and to the area of potato patch.

All this line continues to hold all the way into Mount Union.

Yesterday, we were able to get hand crews into the Mount Union area. And they were able to construct direct hand line to the north working towards Mount Davis. They were able to get all the way to Yankee Doodle road. And there’s about a half mile piece that they have left to complete into Mount Davis.

We also had resources on big bug Mesa road. And they were constructing direct line towards Mount Davis as well. So we have resources working from both sides.

To finish that direct cam line construction around Mount Davis. We’re expecting that line to be completed by the end of shift today.

As we move over towards the east side and division November resources have been hot spotting cold trailing, as well as constructing line off of big bug Mesa road and they’ve been able to keep the fire perimeter within its current footprint working down into the five points area.

We’ve also had resources working on indirect dozer line on big bug Mesa road down into the Turkey Creek area. That line has been completed.

And we’ve also had resources direct on the fire perimeter, working hot spot and cold trailing doing line construction where necessary working towards the south towards Moscow peak.

We have seen some fire progression to the south it is backing downhill against the wind. So it hasn’t been a whole lot of fire growth.

But we are seeing some active fire behavior in the timber stringers as that fire continues to back its way south anticipated as we get the crews kind of turning around the corner is to just keep pushing out towards the south and towards the west to try and start locking off this corner.

We’re going to be doing the same from lookout as we’re working South trying to get around the corner that projects delayed a little bit until we really get this North secured under the southwest flow.

That’s going to be our priority focus area. Today we are expecting high winds today 30 plus miles an hour all the way up to potentially 60 miles an hour out of the Southwest.

So those will be trying conditions for the firefighters and that will limit our aircraft and aviation asset use as we move into the operational period today.

But we have been making really good progress on the northern end of this fire and we’re expecting that progress to continue.

And we’re really happy with the work that’s been being done. We expect containment to increase over the next couple of days. Thank you