The Cellar Fire is Expected to Remain Active Today

Cellar Fire – July 19, 2019 Morning Update

Acres: 7,293 acres Percent Containment: 0 %

Start Date: July 14, 2019 Cause: Lightning

Origin Location: 16 Miles South of Prescott, AZ Jurisdiction: Prescott National Forest

Fuels: Upper elevation: Ponderosa pine. Lower elevation: Brush, Grass and Chaparral

Resources: 367 personnel including 7 Hot Shot Crews, 6 Type 2 IA Crews, 2 Dozers, and 6 Engines

Another active fire day is expected today. The fire remained active overnight due to poor humidity recovery. Fire activity is expected to increase throughout the day, especially in areas where slope and winds align.

Hot shot […]

We were hoping to not have to post another update today but conditions warrant it. The fire activity has kicked back up. We are not certain why it picked back up but based on normal fire behavior, it could have been as simple as the temperature (with the sunlight) went up as it usually does around mid-afternoon and overcame the moisture levels.

As you can see from the pictures, the smoke is nowhere near what it was 48 hours ago, it is mostly white which implies (but does not ensure) that lighter fuels are burning. White smoke is better than the […]

From Roger at Walker Fire

Walker Fire had a busy and productive morning attending a cooperators meeting (local departments are considered “cooperators”) in Prescott Valley and then out to the Incident Command Post (ICP) to meet with the Operations Section.

The bottom line from this morning is no bad news. “No bad news” is not the same as being out of danger. We said yesterday we would need several more good days and today appears to be off to a good start. Relative humidity and dew points are favorable for now and because of this there was no real growth overnight […]

From NextDoor:

Public Information Officer David McAtee, Yavapai CountyAgency
Cellar Fire Update

A Cellar Fire Community Meeting will be held tonight, July 18, at 6 pm at Glassford Hill Middle School, 9601 E. Panther Path, Prescott Valley, AZ. American Sign Language (ASL) and Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) services will be provided. We plan to Livestream the meeting on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/PrescottNF/ and the recording will be posted after the meeting is over. If we are unable to livestream or lose the connection, we will record the meeting and post highlights afterwards. No Facebook account is required to view the video.

There are […]

Here are three places to see the current conditions.

https://maps.nwcg.gov/sa/#/%3F/34.2978/-112.2275/10

https://tinyurl.com/CellarFireMap

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6443/

CELLAR FIRE INFO is available on Inciweb
Date(s): Jul 17, 2019

Cellar Fire information is now available on Inciweb: https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/6443/

#AZFire Follow @PrescottNF for updates

Read the entire article at: https://www.fs.usda.gov/alerts/prescott/alerts-notices/?aid=53641

Email from Roger, the Walker Fire Chief:

Walker Fire attended a second meeting at 1600 for the Cellar Fire. The purpose was to transition from the Type 3 Incident Management Team (IMT) to a Type 1 IMT–this represents an escalation in response.

The first image (Link Below) is the same view point as last night and you can see far less activity today, more of a haze than that churning dark stuff yesterday.

https://walkerfire.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Cellar_1.png

Today was a good day in terms of operational effectiveness. They made good progress getting around the top corner of the fire from the NW flank […]

We attended a briefing today at noon and got some information.

There was not a ton of information and we’ve been asked to go back for another briefing at 4pm. We were told the fire is at 6500 acres.

The blow up we saw yesterday was caused by erratic weather conditions.

The smoke right now appears to be more of a white-ish haze, not the churning darker smoke we saw yesterday. We should hope that the current haze persists.

The fire is in a lower and hotter location than Walker and today’s weather in Walker is good–cooler and more humid […]