Big High Top Fire
The Big High Top Fire burned 2,100 acres in Oklahoma, in 2013. It was discovered on March 8, 2013, and contained on March 10, 2013. The cause was recorded as arson/incendiarism.
- Size
- 2,100 acres
- Discovered
- March 8, 2013
- Contained
- March 10, 2013
- Cause
- Human
Map
The burned area boundary MTBS mapped from Landsat imagery, 1,241 acres. Point of origin as reported, 34.798, -95.174.
The record
- Reported final size
- 2,100 acres
- Burned area mapped by MTBS
- 1,241 acres
- Discovered
- March 8, 2013, 6:00 p.m. local time
- Contained
- March 10, 2013, 6:30 p.m. local time
- Cause
- Human, Arson/incendiarism
- State
- Oklahoma
- Land ownership at origin
- Private
- Reporting unit
- Talihina Agency
- Agency
- Bureau of Indian Affairs
- Incident type
- Wildfire
- MTBS fire identifier
- OK3479809517320130308
- MTBS assessment
- Initial (SS)
- Fire occurrence record
- W-652382
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: 2. 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 structures threatened at once
- 3
- Most personnel assigned
- 12 on March 9, 2013
- Cost reported by the teams
- $8,000, in 2013 dollars
- Cause on the reports
- Human
- Primary fuel model reported
- Timber (Litter and Understory)
- Suppression strategy reported
- Full suppression
Other large fires in Oklahoma in 20135
| Fire | Acres | Start | Cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rocky Point Fire | 3,000 | Mar 3, 2013 | Human |
| Buck Trot Fire | 2,108 | Jan 23, 2013 | Human |
| Haney Fire | 1,606 | Mar 16, 2013 | Human |
| Vivian Cemetery Fire | 1,260 | Feb 18, 2013 | Human |
| Mccurtain 3722 Fire | 1,000 | Mar 27, 2013 | Human |
Nearby
Sources
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.