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2026 wildfire Josephine County, Oregon

Interstate 5 at milepost 57

A first perimeter on initial attack beside the freeway, then two flights a night for the crews mopping it up.

Nights of maps
5
August 1 to August 5
Map sets delivered
10
Flown by Rogue Reconnaissance, the founder's company
Heat sources on the busiest map
925
Whole fire, night of August 2
Acres on the incident record
100
Read September 13, 2026
The delivered aerial map sheet from the night of August 2 on Interstate 5, hundreds of heat sources in yellow, orange and purple inside a pink heat perimeter beside the freeway and a neighborhood, the legend and title block at the left.
The aerial sheet flown at 10:20 pm on August 2: 925 heat sources graded high, medium and low inside the 96 acre heat perimeter, with a 100 foot mop up buffer and the freeway along its west side. Open the PDF the incident received

A first map on initial attack

The Interstate 5 fire was reported on the afternoon of August 1, beside the northbound lanes near milepost 57 in Josephine County. The aircraft came over from the East Evans Creek fire on a lend, and the first three map sets carry that lend on their record.

The first flight went up at 6:49 that evening, in a gusty north wind, with onlookers gathering and traffic running on the freeway beside the launch site. That first map was a perimeter only, 96 acres, delivered straight to the incident commander and the night division. Two more flights followed after midnight, and the last, at 3:45 in the morning, was for the morning briefing.

Two flights a night

For the next four nights the same automated missions flew at the same height on the same grid, most nights twice: once in the evening for the night shift, and again around three in the morning for the day shift’s mop up. The heat sources on the evening maps went from 925 on August 2 to 100 on August 5, and the mop up buffer on the maps widened with the work, from 50 feet to 300.

Close to people

This fire burned beside a freeway with people close by, and the launch site sat next to an apartment building. On the night of August 3 the pilot notified the air medical service of the flights before going up, and walked out between flights to check the map against the ground.

On the ground

The fire, up close

A laptop and batteries in the back of a truck, with fire engines and firefighters beyond it and a smoke column over the hills.
Planning the night flights on the evening of August 1, with smoke still rising behind.
The drone on a landing pad lit red at dusk, beside a chain link fence, with an apartment building and fuel trucks behind it.
The aircraft on its pad before a night flight, August 1, with an apartment building beside the launch site.
A log lying in white ash at night, glowing red underneath.
A log still burning under the ash on the night of August 3, where the map graded high heat.

What the Collaborative did

One flying team. 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.

  • 66 files in the public archive Filed by night under the folder and file names the interagency share uses, free for anyone to open.
  • 21 min median, upload to approved maps Across 10 map sets with both times on the record, including the pilot’s own review before approving.
  • 50 to 300 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.

How a map is made

From a thermal mosaic to a map, layer by layer

The whole fire at 3:45 am on August 2, the night of August 1: the stitched thermal mosaic from that flight first, then each layer of the delivered map set, in the map's own symbols.

Thermal mosaic of the whole fire beside Interstate 5 on its first night: burned ground in shades of grey with bright white hot spots, clipped to the fire's outline on a dark background.
The thermal mosaic from the 3:45 am flight on August 2, clipped to the fire, with the layers of the map set made from it. Every heat source on the map is drawn; none is moved or left out.
  1. The thermal mosaic Hundreds of thermal frames from one night's flight, stitched into one thermal image of the ground. The whiter the ground, the warmer it reads.
  2. IR heat perimeter The outer edge of the heat, as the pilot mapped it, drawn in pink because a drone flew it.
  3. Intense and scattered heat Hatched where the heat is continuous. Dotted where many small heat sources sit close together.
  4. 143 isolated heat sources Each single heat source outside those areas, a pink dot with a black ring. Each is a place a crew can walk to.
  5. Mop up buffer A dashed line a set distance in from the heat perimeter, so a crew can see which heat sits close to the edge.

  6. Pink is a drone. Red came from elsewhere: a crewed aircraft's map or the incident's daily fire perimeter. Every map the Collaborative makes follows that rule, so anyone on the fire can see at a glance what the drone found.

    How to read the map

Delivered to the incident

More thermal map sheets from Interstate 5 at milepost 57

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

The first map sheet of the fire, a pink heat perimeter only, drawn over aerial imagery beside the freeway.
The first map, flown at 6:49 pm on August 1 on initial attack: the heat perimeter only, 96 acres, with a 50 foot mop up buffer. Open the PDF
A topographic map sheet with intense heat and scattered heat drawn as hatched areas and heat sources as points.
The map for the morning briefing, flown at 3:45 am on August 2: intense heat and scattered heat drawn as areas, and 143 isolated heat sources. Open the PDF

The archive, night by night

Every map set

10 map sets over 5 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.

Night Flown Area Heat sources Possible heat Mop up buffer
August 1 6:49 pm Perimeter scan 0 0 50 ft Open the night
12:20 am Whole fire 509 1 None
3:45 am Whole fire 143 0 50 ft
August 2 10:20 pm Whole fire 925 0 100 ft Open the night
3:45 am Whole fire 636 0 100 ft
August 3 11:03 pm Whole fire 531 0 150 ft Open the night
3:07 am Whole fire 386 0 150 ft
August 4 11:30 pm Whole fire 241 0 200 ft Open the night
3:45 am Whole fire 239 0 200 ft
August 5 11:10 pm Whole fire 100 0 300 ft Open the night

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

  • 2 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 by Rogue Reconnaissance, the founder's company, dated from each photo's own record. A vehicle's license plate is blurred.

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Every sheet on this page went to the incident.

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