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2026 wildfire Jackson County, Oregon

East Evans Creek

The fire where the 2026 season's first automated map sets were made, mapped division by division for three weeks by two organizations.

Nights of maps
15
July 21 to August 9
Map sets delivered
37
From two flying teams
Heat sources on the busiest map
3,327
Division Y and X, south, night of July 21
Acres on the incident record
15,580
Read September 13, 2026
East Evans Creek, Division F, the delivered aerial map sheet, with hundreds of heat sources in yellow, orange and purple along a strip of burned ground inside the red daily fire perimeter, the legend and title block at the left.
The aerial sheet for Division F, flown at 11:06 pm on July 26: 302 isolated heat sources graded high, medium and low inside the incident's daily fire perimeter, with the 200 foot mop up buffer. Open the PDF the incident received

The first night through the pipeline

On the night of July 21, the first drone map sets of the 2026 season came through the Collaborative’s automated pipeline, and they came from this fire. Two flights over Divisions Y and X went up a little after midnight. Their maps put a heat perimeter, every heat source inside it graded by intensity, a mop up buffer and the incident’s daily fire perimeter together on one sheet.

On the first map, the pilot found a few areas of heat outside the daily fire perimeter and drew the drone heat perimeter out to include them. That is why a drone flies low and late over a fire that already has a mapped perimeter: the daily fire perimeter is the outline, and the drone looks for the heat the outline missed.

The same night, an Oregon Department of Forestry South Cascade District pilot flew Division X. That map set came out on the district’s own template, under its own seal, the first the pipeline delivered for a pilot outside Rogue Reconnaissance, the founder’s company.

Division by division

East Evans Creek was a long fire to map. The flights started on Divisions Y and X, reached W within days, then O, L, F and A, and Z by the end of July, with spot fires beyond the line, following where crews were working. Most map sets cover one division, or one section of one, so a division supervisor can be handed the sheet for their own ground.

The mop up buffer on the maps moved deeper with the work: 100 feet in from the edge in the first week, 200 feet from July 25, 300 feet from July 27, and 400 feet on one section in August. On the second night the interior of Division X was busy enough to mark as scattered heat, and every source within 400 feet of the line stayed its own point, a place a crew can walk to.

Every map set, in public

Each night’s products are in the Collaborative’s public archive, in the same folder shape and file names the interagency share uses: the aerial and topo sheets, the KMZ, the geodatabase, the shapefiles and the daily log. The table below lists every map set with a link to its night.

On the ground

The fire, up close

A burned tree leaning across a dirt road inside the fire.
A burned tree leaning over a road inside the fire, July 28. Ground like this is why a crew wants to know where the heat is before it walks in.
Burned, bare timber lit at night under a dark blue sky.
Burned timber at night, early on July 30.
The aircraft coming down onto its lit pad at night, July 22.

What the Collaborative did

Two flying teams. The system did the rest.

Every map set on this fire came back as two thermal map sheets, one on aerial imagery and one on a topographic base, with a daily log, a Google Earth file and the GIS layers, on the flying organization’s own template.

  • 222 files in the public archive Filed by night under the folder and file names the interagency share uses, free for anyone to open.
  • 37 map sets carry the daily fire perimeter The incident’s own interagency perimeter, pulled onto the map in red beside the drone’s pink heat.
  • 24 min median, upload to approved maps Across 36 map sets with both times on the record, including the pilot’s own review before approving.
  • 100 to 400 ft mop up buffers drawn Dashed lines a set distance in from the perimeter, measured along the ground, so a crew can see which heat sits close to the edge.

Delivered to the incident

More thermal map sheets from East Evans Creek

Pink is a drone Red came from elsewhere How to read the map

The same Division F map set on a topographic base.
The same map set on the topographic base. Every set goes out as an aerial and a topo pair. Open the PDF
A portrait map sheet of Divisions Y and X north, a long line of heat sources following the fire's edge through timber.
The first map set of the season through the pipeline, Divisions Y and X north, flown at 12:38 am on July 22: 1,907 heat sources, the daily fire perimeter in red, and the drone's own heat perimeter in pink where heat ran outside it. Open the PDF
A portrait map sheet of Division W, Section 2, with dense clusters of heat sources where the fire's edge turns.
Division W, Section 2, flown at 1:30 am on July 24: 499 heat sources along the edge and a 100 foot mop up buffer. A sheet turns portrait when the ground runs north and south. Open the PDF
An aerial map sheet of forested hills, a winding band of pink heat sources, pink hatched intense heat and dotted scattered heat along the red daily fire perimeter, with the Oregon Department of Forestry South Cascade District seal in the title block.
The same night, the first drone map set in the system from a pilot of an Oregon Department of Forestry district: the South Cascade District's aerial sheet for Division X, flown at 3:34 am on July 22 with a Skydio X10, on the district's own template. 1,326 isolated heat sources and one area each of intense and scattered heat, in pink, along the daily fire perimeter in red. Open the PDF

The archive, night by night

Every map set

37 map sets over 15 nights

One row per map set, grouped by night. A flight after midnight counts with the night before it, and the archive files each night under the next day's date, the operational period its maps served. Where two flights covered the same ground in one night, a heat source can appear on both maps, so the nightly numbers are not added into a trend.

  • Rogue Reconnaissance
  • Oregon Department of Forestry, South Cascade District
Night Flown Area By Heat sources Possible heat Mop up buffer
July 21 12:38 am Division Y and X, north 1,907 0 100 ft Open the night
12:53 am Division Y and X, south 3,327 0 100 ft
3:34 am Division X 1,326 0 100 ft
July 22 12:10 am Division X, south 777 0 100 ft Open the night
July 23 12:05 am Division W, Section 1 348 0 100 ft Open the night
1:30 am Division W, Section 2 499 0 100 ft
3:29 am Division W, Section 3 328 0 100 ft
July 24 10:42 pm Not recorded 0 0 100 ft Open the night
11:27 pm Ramsey Spot Fire 11 0 None
1:23 am Perimeter scan 274 0 100 ft
3:20 am Not recorded 228 0 100 ft
July 25 10:13 pm Division O 230 0 200 ft Open the night
3:47 am Division L 90 0 200 ft
July 26 11:06 pm Division F 302 0 200 ft Open the night
3:35 am Division A 57 0 200 ft
July 27 10:50 pm Division Y, north 128 0 300 ft Open the night
2:15 am Division Y, south 203 0 300 ft
3:16 am Division X 168 0 300 ft
July 28 3:00 am Division W, south 442 0 300 ft Open the night
July 29 10:24 pm Division W Spot Fire 58 0 300 ft Open the night
10:35 pm Division W, north 229 0 300 ft
1:46 am Division O, north 122 0 300 ft
3:00 am Division O, south 49 0 300 ft
July 30 11:44 pm Division A 412 0 300 ft Open the night
4:09 am Division Z 123 0 300 ft
July 31 2:03 am Division Z, Section 1 78 0 300 ft Open the night
4:11 am Division Z, Section 2 14 0 300 ft
August 5 2:23 am Division A 114 0 300 ft Open the night
August 7 10:45 pm Division O Spot 15 25 300 ft Open the night
2:48 am Division O Section 1, 2 112 35 300 ft
2:48 am Division O Section 2 65 0 400 ft
August 8 11:20 pm Division O 12 26 300 ft Open the night
2:02 am Division Z 21 2 300 ft
2:16 am Division A and Z 67 25 300 ft
August 9 11:00 pm Division O, Section 3 34 8 300 ft Open the night
2:22 am Division O, Section 1 12 7 300 ft
3:28 am Division O, Section 2 20 7 300 ft

Counted September 13, 2026 from the submission records and the public archive.

  • 6 records on this fire are not counted because they were never approved for release.
Where the images came from
  • Every sheet on this page is the PDF delivered to the incident and published in the public archive, rendered as an image without changes. Each links to its PDF.
  • Photographs and the video loop by Rogue Reconnaissance, the founder's company, dated from each file's own record.

More from the 2026 season

Other case studies

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