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2026 wildfire Wheeler County, Oregon

Rowe Creek Complex

The largest fire in the archive this season, flown along the line by three organizations and two kinds of drone, from late July to the end of August.

Nights of maps
19
July 28 to August 30
Map sets delivered
48
From three flying teams
Heat sources on the busiest map
6,917
West zone, night of July 28
Acres on the incident record
373,927
Read September 13, 2026
The delivered topographic map sheet for the West zone of the Rowe Creek Complex on July 30, pink hatched and dotted heat areas running along the red daily fire perimeter across open hills, the legend and title block at the left.
Hummingbird Drones' topographic sheet for the West zone, flown at 8:32 pm on July 30: 26 areas of intense heat and 10 of scattered heat, in pink, along the incident's daily fire perimeter in red. The objective on the record that night was to monitor the growing fire edge, the structures and the dozer line. Open the PDF the incident received

Three organizations on one complex

The Rowe Creek Complex was reported on July 15 in Wheeler County and grew into the largest fire in the Collaborative’s archive this season. Hummingbird Drones flew it first, on the night of July 28, scanning the West zone perimeter to watch the line and look for spot fires outside it.

Over the next month two more organizations flew the complex through the same system: the Oregon Department of Forestry’s South Cascade District from the night of August 18, and the Oregon Department of Forestry from August 23. Each delivered its maps on its own template, and every one came out with the same layout, the same symbols and the same colors, so a crew handed any of them read it the same way.

Night by night along the line

Early on, the objectives on the records read like the fire: monitor the growing edge, the structures and the dozer line; scan between drop points and around structures.

By late August the work had narrowed to the heat still near the line. On the night of August 22, Hummingbird Drones flew a field in Division N three times. The last flight went up at 4:30 in the morning, recorded as a final scan of the hotspots in that field for the day shift, after the night shift had done its work. The South Cascade District delivered three map sets of its own that night, and the table below shows every one.

Weather, and a judgment call

The records carry the conditions the crews flew in: winds gusting past 35 miles an hour before midnight, a night that started clear and turned to 45 mile an hour winds and light rain around one in the morning, and a flight the Oregon Department of Forestry cut short for wind after scanning a small part of its area.

On the night of August 29, an Oregon Department of Forestry pilot found strong heat signatures on and right beside a group of structures at the top of a creek drainage. They all had the same strength, size and position against the buildings, so the pilot removed them from the data and wrote on the record that it was unclear what they were. A map a crew acts on needs that kind of call, made by a person and written down.

What the Collaborative did

Three 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.

  • 288 files in the public archive Filed by night under the folder and file names the interagency share uses, free for anyone to open.
  • 44 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.
  • 14 min median, upload to approved maps Across 45 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 Rowe Creek Complex

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

An aerial map sheet of a river valley in dark terrain, a pink heat perimeter and pink heat sources running along a red daily fire perimeter, with the Oregon Department of Forestry South Cascade District seal in the title block.
The Oregon Department of Forestry, South Cascade District's aerial sheet for the night of August 22, flown at 4:46 am with a Skydio X10: 127 isolated heat sources and the drone's heat perimeter in pink along the interagency daily fire perimeter in red, with a 100 foot mop up buffer. Open the PDF
A topographic map sheet with one tight cluster of pink heat sources inside a large red daily fire perimeter.
The same district's topographic sheet for the night of August 21, flown at 1:00 am: 222 isolated heat sources in one tight cluster, well inside the daily fire perimeter. Open the PDF
A portrait topographic map sheet showing a green outline of the area the flight covered along the red daily fire perimeter, dashed cyan mop up buffers, a few pink heat sources and a launch symbol.
An Oregon Department of Forestry sheet for the night of August 28, flown at 11:50 pm: the area the flight covered in green, seven isolated heat sources, the launch point, and mop up buffers at 100 and 300 feet inside the daily fire perimeter. Open the PDF

The archive, night by night

Every map set

48 map sets over 19 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.

  • Hummingbird Drones
  • Oregon Department of Forestry, South Cascade District
  • Oregon Department of Forestry
Night Flown Area By Heat sources Possible heat Mop up buffer
July 28 9:30 pm West zone 0 0 None Open the night
9:30 pm West zone 0 0 None
9:30 pm West zone 6,917 0 None
July 29 8:33 pm West zone 541 0 None Open the night
July 30 8:32 pm West zone 0 0 None Open the night
6:54 am West zone 0 0 None
July 31 8:30 pm West zone 0 0 None Open the night
August 1 8:48 pm Perimeter scan 0 0 None Open the night
11:30 pm Near structures 0 0 None
1:10 am Near structures 53 0 None
August 16 1:00 am Perimeter scan 24 0 None Open the night
August 17 10:00 pm Perimeter scan 110 0 300 ft Open the night
August 18 10:00 pm Perimeter scan 59 0 300 ft Open the night
12:13 am Spot fire 43 0 None
August 19 11:14 pm Heat scan 0 0 None Open the night
2:30 am Heat scan 0 0 None
3:53 am Heat scan 8 0 400 ft
5:52 am Heat scan 6 0 None
August 20 11:00 pm Heat scan 403 0 400 ft Open the night
11:06 pm Heat scan 2 0 None
11:12 pm Perimeter scan 10 0 300 ft
2:45 am Heat scan 18 0 None
5:23 am Heat scan 75 0 None
August 21 10:00 pm Heat scan 27 0 400 ft Open the night
11:00 pm Perimeter scan 27 0 None
1:00 am Heat scan 222 0 None
August 22 9:30 pm Division N 20 0 400 ft Open the night
11:00 pm Perimeter scan 23 0 300 ft
1:30 am Heat scan 61 0 100 ft
1:51 am Perimeter scan 5 0 300 ft
2:00 am Division S 15 0 400 ft
2:00 am Division N 0 0 400 ft
4:30 am Division N 8 0 400 ft
4:46 am Heat scan 127 0 100 ft
5:10 am Heat scan 66 0 100 ft
August 23 9:00 pm Division N 0 0 300 ft Open the night
12:50 am Not recorded 4 0 None
August 24 9:52 pm Heat scan 0 0 None Open the night
11:19 pm Perimeter scan 11 0 300 ft
12:31 am Not recorded 3 0 300 ft
2:43 am Division C 0 0 400 ft
August 25 10:00 pm Perimeter scan 0 0 None Open the night
12:25 am Division A 0 0 400 ft
August 26 11:58 pm Perimeter scan 37 0 300 ft Open the night
2:30 am Division N 10 0 300 ft
August 28 11:50 pm Heat scan 7 0 100, 300 ft Open the night
August 29 11:30 pm Heat scan 7 0 300 ft Not in the archive
August 30 12:30 am Heat scan 1 0 300 ft Not in the archive

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

  • 13 records on this fire are not counted because they were never approved for release.
  • 4 approved map sets are not in the public archive.
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. The name of the pilot printed in each title block is covered, because this site names organizations, not people.
  • The objectives, weather and notes quoted on this page are from the submission records the pilots filled in.
  • The incident record is the interagency record in WFIGS, read September 13, 2026.

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