Fires in French Creek
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Topic created by furlong47 on Mon Apr 9, 2012 at 9:56 pmhttp://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/local&id=8614354
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Reply by edscott on Mon Apr 9, 2012 at 10:15 pmThe Reading Eagle site [http://readingeagle.com/article.aspx?id=378727] description puts it near the lower end of Shed road and going East with the wind. As long as it remains a ground fire, which is likely as there are very few evergreens in the area, it is exactly what that side of the hill needs. Certainly is the easiest way to make our existing map more accurate.
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Reply by EricW on Tue Apr 10, 2012 at 10:27 amThe Daily Local News (Chester Co) reports that fire officials came with "tourist maps probably taken from the French Creek park visitors' center."
Any chance these maps are the ones we're thinking about? -
Reply by edscott on Tue Apr 10, 2012 at 6:49 pmI just took some FCE maps over to them. They had an "official park map".. the little green folder that can be picked up at the office on their command center table with an area outlined in red. The guys that were there seemed to appreciate our map. The fire is considered under control and probably did us a huge favor in helping to restore the FCE terrain to the way we have it mapped. Most if not all the area affected is in the area of FCE that we have yet to update. I'll take a walk as soon as the area is open to the public and check it out. (I probably have around 10 geocache containers to replace)Here is a bit of the current article on the Reading Eagle website:Frassetta said the French Creek park, which covers more than 7,000 acres in Berks and Chester, will be fine.
In fact, he said, it may have gotten the cleanup it needed.
A freak October snowstorm snapped off the tops of thousands of trees and those trunks and branches were sitting on the forest floor with leaves intact, providing the fire with a steady source of fuel.
"It will be interesting," Frasetta said. "This is actually beneficial to the environment here. There will be plants and flowers that will come back that haven't been there for quite a while. It makes a good seed bed for plants that couldn't make it through the leaf litter." -
Reply by yoyonateo on Tue Apr 10, 2012 at 10:17 pmwell maybe my course will have a little bit more extra terrain for me to use in august. Last time i ran in french creek was in febuary? and the snow storm did take its toll on the beautiful woods there. Maybe the fire helped out there and will produce some speedy fast and clean woods. After field checking i will be interesting to see what new areas i will be able to use once again.
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Reply by edscott on Wed Apr 11, 2012 at 10:06 amThe fire probably didn't change the new version that we will use this summer. The areas beyond the ridge trail have not been updated yet and that version of FCE is out of stock. The good news is that if we get the rest rechecked and print that area ikn 1:10000 it will be a lot cleaner than it was last week.
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Reply by yoyonateo on Wed Apr 11, 2012 at 10:27 amWhen will the new map of FCE be ready for me to start planning courses on?
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Reply by edscott on Wed Apr 11, 2012 at 6:31 pmFred Kruesi is piecing it together. Hopefully he will have it ready in a few weeks. If you want to use some of the outlying areas for Red and Blue the old map could be laser printed with those courses on it and the new version used for the shorter courses. I've just found out that abpout 40 of the 400 acres covered by the fire were within Hopewell Frunace property... most likely the NE corner of the property. That area was fairly clean, so I would guess all that burned were leaves and some branches that came down in the October storm.
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Reply by Nancy on Thu Apr 12, 2012 at 12:23 pmExcerpt from Daily Local News, 4/12/12:
According to Bell, the fire’s western most advance was a power line running through the eastern edge of Hopewell Furnace Historic Site. The southern portions of the fire reached Baptism Creek and Mill Run Trail, and the northern end was along an “east-west line” from Miller’s Point in the ridge area. Bell said the fire’s furthest reach east was Mill Run Creek in the direction of St. Peter’s Road -
Reply by edscott on Tue Apr 24, 2012 at 6:11 pmJudy and I just got back from a 7 hour tour of the fire area at French Creek. In general it was a "good fire", but there were definately some hot spots where the ashes were white indicating a long burn time. Most of the area that is burned is covered with blackened bits of wood and few if any dry leaves. Standing dead trees are burnt up head high or more, live trees are scorched to mid calf or knee high levels. Visibility is great, but the boulders look a bit bigger when there are no leaves around their base so some unmarked ones will look like they should be on the map. I saw two "new" circle ditches. One is mapped as a charcoal terrace and the other as a small knoll. Of course the vegetation thickness has changed, but mostly to put in back into agreement with the map. The fire crews made a few new trails, but they will soon be gone unless the bikers start using them.[edit 4/25.. Judy says to add... If you have trouble identifying Colliers huts (circle ditches) or charcoal terraces now would be a good time to go looking for them. They are easy to spot (except I sometimes use the soil color and everything is black right now) and the circle ditches are very easy to spot when they are not full of leaves.]
We didn't walk the perimeter of the burn.. but here is what I know of what was affected. Get out your FCE map.....Go to where the ridge trail crosses the north-south power line about 700 meters East of the Shed Road/345 junction. Go South on the power line 5.5 poles. Draw a line from there NE to the sharp bend on the ridge trail. The south side of that line has been burned. Looking down the hill on the power line it has been burned most of the way to the creek and some fingers of burn extend toward the Baptism Creek pavilion. We did not go down to see how far those areas went, but there were reports earlier that no buildings were harmed. From the sharp bend mentioned above, the trail down the hill to the junction with the Raccoon trail (where we had a start about two years ago) is burned on both sides. From the Raccoon trail junction with the Ridge trail and following the Ridge trail South then bending East up the hill, there is very little burned ground to the right but everything to the left is burned. The area SW of "Round Top" between the trails is burned. Willis Knob is burned.... fire got hot again there. Much of Bear Hill NE of the Buzzard Trail is burned, but there the fire moved quickly and even left some leaves behind. I suspect the southern part of Bear Hill is not burned... that's a shame it needed it.... and I saw no indication of equipment going out toward Miller Point. I saw nothing to indicate any burn North of the ridge trail from the Miller point trail to Shed Road. ....another area that needed a good fire. I'll be going back later in the week to check on some more geocaches and will check some of those other areas, but I suspect what we've seen is the majority of what was involved.Photos at https://picasaweb.google.com/115862287196699200832/FrenchCreekFireAreaLet me know if this link doesn't work correctly -
Reply by edscott on Mon May 7, 2012 at 8:31 amEric Weyman and I took a walk around the NE and SW areas of the fire area. I've updated the generalized fire map and added a couple more photos to the album referenced above.
