North Minidoka Fire
The North Minidoka Fire burned 31,616 acres in Minidoka County, Idaho, in 2008. It was discovered on August 18, 2008, and contained on August 20, 2008. The cause was recorded as equipment and vehicle use.
- Size
- 31,616 acres
- Discovered
- August 18, 2008
- Contained
- August 20, 2008
- Cause
- Human
Map
The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 32,365 acres. Point of origin as reported, 42.796, -113.487.
The record
- Reported final size
- 31,616 acres
- Burned area mapped by MTBS
- 32,365 acres
- Area inside the final perimeter
- 31,553 acres
- Discovered
- August 18, 2008, 11:42 a.m. local time
- Contained
- August 20, 2008, 10:00 a.m. local time
- Cause
- Human, Equipment and vehicle use
- State
- Idaho
- County
- Minidoka County
- Land ownership at origin
- Private
- Reporting unit
- Idaho Falls District
- Agency
- Bureau of Land Management
- Unit
- IDPRI
- Incident type
- Wildfire
- Unique fire identifier
- 2008-IDBUD-000351
- MTBS fire identifier
- ID4290411346820080818
- MTBS assessment
- Initial
- Fire occurrence record
- W-577692
- Perimeter map method
- GPS-Flight
The three sizes are three measurements: the size the agency reported when the fire was out, the burned area MTBS drew from satellite imagery before and after, and the GIS area inside the final perimeter, unburned islands included. They rarely agree exactly.
From the incident teams’ reports
The status summaries (ICS-209 forms) the incident teams filed: 5, from August 18, 2008 to August 22, 2008. These are the teams’ own estimates, written while the incident was running, and personnel is totaled from the resources each report lists. A fact the reports leave blank is not shown, and a zero on the form is treated as blank.
- Most personnel assigned
- 79 on August 18, 2008
- Most aircraft assigned
- 3
- Cause on the reports
- Human
- Primary fuel model reported
- Tall Grass (2.5 feet)
- Suppression strategy reported
- Full suppression
Acres reported by day
The largest rise between two days’ reports was 16,616 acres, on August 19, 2008.
Reported acres by day, as a table
| Day | Acres | Change from the day before |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 18, 2008 | 15,000 | |
| Aug 19, 2008 | 31,616 | +16,616 |
| Aug 20, 2008 | 31,616 | 0 |
| Aug 21, 2008 | 31,616 | 0 |
| Aug 22, 2008 | 31,616 | 0 |
Other large fires in Idaho in 200812
| Fire | Acres | Start | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| South Barker Wfu Fire | 37,725 | Aug 7, 2008 | Natural |
| Nature Fire | 14,869 | Aug 27, 2008 | Human |
| Neibaur Fire | 7,831 | Jul 27, 2008 | Human |
| Shoshone Basin Fire | 6,773 | Sep 29, 2008 | Human |
| Willow Wfu Fire | 5,664 | Jul 14, 2008 | Natural |
| Cabin Creek Fire | 5,500 | Jul 30, 2008 | Human |
| Border Complex (Cayuse) Fire | 5,311 | Jul 18, 2008 | Natural |
| Central Grade Fire | 4,862 | Jul 10, 2008 | Human |
| Westy Fire | 4,320 | Aug 11, 2008 | Natural |
| Sand Shed Fire | 3,847 | Aug 1, 2008 | Human |
| Snow Hole Fire | 2,967 | Aug 8, 2008 | Natural |
| Rattlesnake Fire | 2,520 | Aug 5, 2008 | Human |
Nearby
Sources
Perimeters from the National Interagency Fire Center’s Interagency Fire Perimeter History, compiled from the Forest Service, BLM, BIA, Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, the Alaska Interagency Fire Center and CAL FIRE. Burned areas and ignition dates from Monitoring Trends in Burn Severity (MTBS), a program of the US Geological Survey and the USDA Forest Service. Fire reports from Short, Karen C. 2022, Spatial wildfire occurrence data for the United States, 1992-2020 [FPA_FOD_20221014], 6th Edition, Forest Service Research Data Archive, doi.org/10.2737/RDS-2013-0009.6. Records before 2014 were joined by this site: a fire report to the burned area its MTBS identifier names, a perimeter to the burned area it lies in when the names or the sizes agree. Incident figures from ICS-209-PLUS: St. Denis, Lise A., Karen C. Short, Kathryn McConnell, Maxwell C. Cook, Nathan P. Mietkiewicz, Mollie Buckland and Jennifer K. Balch, 2023, All-hazards dataset mined from the US National Incident Management System 1999-2020, Scientific Data 10, 112, doi.org/10.1038/s41597-023-01955-0; data on figshare, doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.19858927.v3, licensed CC BY 4.0. This site matched each incident to the fire by the dataset’s own links where it has them, and otherwise by name, start date, state and size, and left out figures too large to be possible for a fire of its size.