Cottonwood Escaped Prescribed Fire FLA 2012

Three and one half hours after igniting a successful test burn, the Burn Boss declared the Cottonwood Prescribed Burn to be a wildfire and assumed his new role as Incident Commander (IC). Helicopters, hand crews, and engines arrived on the scene. Helicopter water bucket drops knocked the heat out of the flaming front and hot spot fires. Within three hours of being declared a wildfire, the column from the Cottonwood wildfire was knocked down, and robbed of most of its heat by the air assault. Hand crews built containment lines and hose lays were extended from engines to the perimeter of the wildfire. At 1630 hours, the IC was comfortable enough with the current wildfire conditions that he released the helicopters back to their bases.