Larry Haftl.com
Anatomy of a Forest Fire
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A thunderstorm cell moves through the mountains late in the afternoon. Numerous strikes hit the ground, but only one starts a small fire. Not enough rain falls from the cell and the fire grows. Eventually a lookout spots the growing fire and reports it to the ranger district. Even though it's dark and the area around the fire is rugged and not easily accessible, the district dispatches its initial attack crew. Catch a fire quick enough and it stays small.
By the time the initial attack crew gets to the fire, it has already grown to several acres, thanks to the abundant dry fuels. Through the night and into the morning the crew tries to build a line around the slowly growing fire. With the dawn come reinforcements - hand crews ferried in by helicopter. Now the fire covers about 40 acres and is spotting a little, but the crews think they can still get a handle on it before it gets much bigger. They are wrong.
The rising sun gives energy to the fire. The relative humidity begins to drop, a wind generated by the growing fire picks up and the fire begins to move. Within a few hours the crews have to be pulled back for safety. As they pull out, they are treated to the sight of a fire roaring upslope through heavy timber and fine fuels. The smoke column is impressive. Back at the district office, decisions are made and calls placed to get help. A lot of help. Air tankers, helicopters, hotshot and other hand crews, engines, an overhead team, caterers, portable toilets, and all the other resources needed to contain a large forest fire - and support a large number of firefighters - are called in. The incident gets a name, shows up on the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) daily situation report, and the battle to contain the fire begins.
Over the next several days, weeks, or months firefighters will struggle to contain, control, and eventually mop up the fire. Sometimes the weather helps, sometimes it hinders, but eventually the fire will be controlled. Eventually it will die.
During its life the fire will generate a lot of heat, smoke, haze, and overtime for the crews - if they are lucky. It will also generate a lot of stories.
TV crews will try to get some dramatic footage for a 15-second sound bite on the evening news, photographers will hunt for possible award-winning shots, and reporters will root around for human interest angles to flesh out the facts. You can almost judge a fire's news value and the air time it will get by the size of the smoke column it generates, and as the column dies so does the public's interest.
The firefighters will also be collecting stories, or at least images and impressions - personal ones about the fire and what happened to them or others while fighting it. The events that trigger those stories and impressions can happen at any time, but like the public stories most seem to occur when the fire is up and running. Eventually, like the media, the firefighters will finish their job and move on to other fires and other stories.
For the media and the firefighters the compelling element is the fire itself. Their interest grows as the fire grows, and dies as the fire dies. For anyone who's been up close and personal with fire, especially big fire, that's understandable. Fire is a compelling primal force, and being close to fire, especially big fire, is an adrenaline rush. For the firefighters there is the additional satisfaction of being part of a crew that kicked butt on the fire.
But there is an aspect of the fire that is often overlooked by both media and firefighters alike. It's the fire's aftermath. Perhaps that's understandable given the intense and dramatic nature of fire. Understandable, but unfortunate because the aftermath of a fire holds a potential treasure trove of stories. Not the hair-raising, action-adventure stories that the fire itself offers, but the kind of stories that can give us profound insights into how natural systems really work. Insights that may help us understand and coexist more positively with the natural world around us.
So how do you collect aftermath stories if you are a firefighter who's down the road as soon as the fire is controlled? Or a reporter who's down the road even sooner? Easy. Pay attention to what is happening and ask the right people the right questions. It also helps to understand that the aftermath does not begin when the fire is out, it begins after the fire runs through an area. It's usually called mop up.
Consider the simple anatomy of a fire that started this article. It could have come from any one of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fires that occur all over this country each year. It's actually a rough approximation of the North 25 Fire that burned above Lake Chelan, Washington, in the Wenatchee National Forest.
The fire itself was significant: almost 8,000 acres burned, several multi-million-dollar homes were threatened, more than 1,000 firefighters and overhead, four air tankers, 15 helicopters and who knows how many engines were brought in, and the Fire made a six-hour run that turned more than 3,000 acres of forest into something resembling a nuclear blast zone.
But if you missed the spectacular first run you wound up with what one hotshot crew superintendent called "just another fire." Hotshot crews get to see a lot more big Fire than most people. To the less experienced and to those responsible for protecting the multi-million-dollar homes, the fire offered ample excitement.
With homes threatened and a smoke cloud hanging over most of Lake Chelan, the fire managed to make the TV news for a few nights and got some ink in the newspapers. It also deserves some ink here. But in the process of collecting the bits and pieces that make up the fire's story, several clues to interesting aftermath stories popped up. They were easy to miss, but they were there. The clues were buried in the Incident Action Plan, in a few brief comments made during the morning shift briefing, in a casual encounter with a district resource specialist, and while standing on the edge of the nuclear disaster zone. Once you spot the clue, a few questions in the right ear can open up entirely new story lines. Take for example, the following lines from the Incident Action Plan: "Minimize air operations within spotted owl activity centers. Within 1/2 mile of spotted owl nest site use helicopter water drops rather than drops from fixed wing aircraft to reduce the potential for nest/roost tree breakage. This fire will affect the number of nesting pairs and the amount of nesting habitat within the Shady Pass LSR." Spotted owl activity centers? And what's an LSR? Off to find Rick Acosta, information officer for the incident management team.
"The Northwest Forest Plan allocates different areas for different land management direction," said Acosta. "LSR stands for Late Successional Reserve, the kind of old-growth, mixed understory forest we have up here. A tiny finger of the Shady Pass LSR wraps into the upper reaches of the drainage up 25 Mile Creek where the fire is burning [the fire is called the North 25 because it is burning on the north side of 25 Mile Creek]. This finger is in the Chelan Ranger District and the rest of the LSR goes back over the ridge above the fire and into the Entiat Ranger District. About 75,000 acres in all. This little finger has spotted owl habitat. It is the farthest eastern range of the spotted owl in the entire Cascades. At least one spotted owl nest is in the burned area and the spotted owl activity center is just outside of the burn."
The conversation with Acosta turned to other matters, but fortunately a chance encounter later that day with Janeen Tervo, resource advisor with the Chelan Ranger District, helped clarify what an activity area is. "It's a place where the owls hunt," said Tervo. "There was one nest inside the fire perimeter. The fire burned patchy in that area and there is still a chance the nest survived. We won't know until the area is secure and we can go in and check it. The activity area is just outside of the burned area. A lot of their habitat is gone, but if the owls survived the fire they will probably find someplace else to nest, some way to survive."
The conversation turned to wildlife in general and Tervo told this great story about one of the Chelan Rappellers who ran into a cougar a few weeks before while hiking out from a small, remote fire. By the time Tervo finished her story, it was time to go up on the fire line, so finding out the fate of the owls and learning how and if they will adapt to the radically altered landscape would have to wait for another day.
During the conversation with Acosta, the fire took on an ironic quality. "As a result of the 1994 fires where we had 180,000 acres on fire in this county, the Wenatchee National Forest entered into the dry site strategy where we try to implement projects to reduce our heavy fuel loads. The fuel loads are the result of fire exclusion from our dry site forests id since pioneer days. Before that, we had fires coming into our lower elevations every 10 to 15 years - low-intensity fires that cleaned up the forest floor. But those :e fires have been actively suppressed and now we have trees growing up under the larger trees, and these understory trees are serving as ladder fuels. So, instead of having low-intensity surface fires, like in pre-settlement days, we have catastrophic fires that are carried from the forest floor up the ladder fuels and into the crowns of the old-growth trees. Our dry site strategy is meant to reduce the fuel loads and also to maintain and enhance spotted owl habitat."
So what's the ironic part? The dry site strategy includes mechanical thinning followed by prescribed burns. After several years of effort the district finally found a logging company that was willing to come in and harvest the understory trees -- trees between five and 14 inches in diameter. The contract to do the logging was awarded the day this fire began, and most of the area that would have been thinned is now black. The district is already planning to re-survey the area, but this time it will be more on the order of salvage logging.
If you're interested in aftermath stories, there are several buried in that information. What happens to spotted owls that have their habitat burned down around them? How can commercial logging actually benefit the spotted owls? What can you make from trees that are only five to fourteen inches thick? How about salvage logging? What's it like to cut and process trees that are mostly charcoal on the outside? What considerations are taken into account when the burned area is re-surveyed? How many of the dead trees should be left in place and why? And that is only skimming the surface. Each one of those questions could lead to other interesting stories.
Clues for interesting aftermath stories can come from direct observations. Standing on a road that runs through some of the most intensely burned areas, the first thing you notice is the obvious - a forest of black sticks. But then you might start to notice the birds. Lots of birds. Everywhere. So what are all these birds doing in the middle of the nuked zone? Having the feast of their lives. Turns out that the fire forces the bugs that have been living inside the tree bark to come to the surface and become easy pickings for the birds. "The fastest way to increase bird populations is to introduce fire," said Al Murphy, Chelan district ranger. "The fire drives the insects out of the trees and other insects come in to feed on the dead trees. This increases the food base and the bird population skyrockets. Fireweed will come in after the fire. It's a strong nitrogen fixer and the m hummingbirds and other sapsuckers love it."
The fire will not be so kind to other wildlife, at least in the short run. "There is great summer deer range near the ridges and great winter range near the lake," said Murphy. "We'll probably have a downfall in deer, bear and cougar populations for a year or two, but eventually it will come back even better. The cougar population around here is phenomenal," and once again the story about the Chelan rappeller's encounter with a cougar came up. So did fire refugia.
Fire refugia is a term applied to the islands of unburned areas within a fire's perimeter. When you look at them they make no sense. Why did those patches survive completely intact when all around them is a blackened wasteland? Turns out those islands are an important part of the natural cycles. "They will last for two or three fire cycles," said Murphy, "and they carry the genetic legacy of the area. They are very valuable. They also provide what may be the only habitat for wildlife in that area." Another aftermath story?
As district ranger. Murphy is ultimately responsible not only for containing and controlling the fire, but also for dealing with its aftermath. As the incident management team worked to contain the fire. Murphy gave them authority to use what some considered a risky but courageous mop up strategy. "I told them to make the lines solid and secure, go in 100 feet, knock down the hot spots, make sure to burn out as much as possible close to the line, and then leave it. We've all been taught to root fire out. I was taught that starting back in 1969, but over the years I began to think that if it is in the fire it is not a risk. Our biggest safety risks during mop up are from snags, rolling debris and rocks. Our biggest potential damage to the resource is also during mop up, when crews potato patch - stir up the topsoil when they get their hands down into it to make sure it's cool. That not only destroys the viable roots of many of the native plants, but also provides the perfect seed bed for noxious weeds.
"In 1924 there was a tremendous debate in the Forest Service over Paiute forestry (let it burn) versus aggressive suppression. In 1935 they came out with a policy that lasted until 1978 that was the 10:00 a.m. policy - put the fire out by 10:00 a.m. the first morning, or gear up to put it out by 10:00 a.m. the next morning. That changed in 1978 to what we call an appropriate suppression strategy. We're still adapting to that, but we are still using some of the same mop up strategies that came out of the 1935 policy. I'd like to urge more line officers to consider this light hands on the land mop up.
Murphy was as ardent as he was articulate in explaining the reasoning behind the unusual mop up strategy, but toward the end of the conversation he really began to grin as he described events surrounding the start of the fire.
"We had our 10-person initial attack crew up there about midnight [August 4] and the rappellers out there about 5:30 in the morning. I flew the fire about 6:30 that morning. We mapped it at about 22 acres and I thought they had it. I was pleased they were fighting that fire so aggressively, but when the sun came out and the winds came up I was more pleased that they left when it was time to leave. Once the energy of that fire got going there was nothing we could do to stop it. Three thousand acres went up between noon and sundown. It charged down a ridge to the creek and then blew all the way up the big ridge. Randy [Whitehall] said he could see spots way up ahead."
"The fire didn't run much in the morning," said Whitehall, crew boss of the Chelan Initial Attack Crew and incident commander on the fire until Jim Furlong's Type II team took over. "We had a spot that occurred at night but didn't show up until morning. I put two people on the spot and then it did a small run of maybe 200 yards up a ridge. That was more than two people could handle. The fire would torch and spot, torch and spot. Not much wind in the morning, and then it picked up significantly in the afternoon. The major run was around 1:00 or 2:00 p.m. until sundown. The fire was backing into the wind upslope maybe 15 chains per hour, but when it finally started going and spotting out in front of itself it would make a major run up a slope, slow down on the back side and then make another major run up the next slope."
"The FMO, the district ranger, all of us thought we were going to be able to snag it that morning [August 5]," said Patty Jones, assistant base manager for the Chelan Rappellers and one of the first rappellers to reach the fire. "But when the sun came up, fire activity increased and we started getting spotting up the hill and across the drainage. We had a fire weather watch for that afternoon and it happened. By noon the winds picked up. We had a snag fall across our line that caused some spotting below us. It was time to leave. From that point until sundown it really blew up."
There were no major runs after that first day, but there was still a lot of fire and a lot of hard work by a lot of firefighters. Burnouts became the order of the day as lines were established. The fire burned up to, and in some places over, a ridge above Lake Chelan. The slope between that ridge and the lake was extremely steep (the Incident Action Plan noted that many places along that slope had a 100 percent gradient). It was not the kind of place you wanted to send firefighters into, and the incident management team didn't. But at the same time it was important to secure that slope because winds off the lake could push fire eastward along that slope and right into those expensive lakeside homes. The result? A fire line cut right down that steep slope on the eastern edge of the fire and then a lot of burnout supported by a lot of helicopter bucket drops to make that line secure.
If the North 25 Fire still appears on the NIFC daily situation reports it's because there is no practical way to close the line along that ridge. Only the fall rains will eventually control that fire. Until then crews will continue to patrol the fire lines and start work on resource rehabilitation (another aftermath story possibility?).
There are a lot more story possibilities that come from a fire like this. Stories about the fire, its aftermath, and everything in between. Keep your eyes and ears open, ask a few questions now and then, and the stories will pop up all around you. Even though most fires have the same basic anatomy, they all contain conditions and incidents that make them unique. The problem is story possibilities that seem endless and editorial space that isn't.
But limited space or not, it would be unfair to end the story of the North 25 Fire without telling you about the cougar encounter.
Seems that four of the Chelan Rappellers went into a remote area a few weeks before the North 25 Fire to take care of a small fire. They put the fire out and then had to hike back out. I've heard of cost effectiveness, but somehow this seems ridiculous. Anyway, one of the rappellers was sent to find an easy route out of the area. He took off wearing shorts, a T-shirt, boots and radio to find an alleged trail a ridge or two away from the fire. As he hiked along, he flagged the trail. He came over a ridge and had to negotiate through a lot of blowdown. As he came out of the blowdown, he turned to get a backsight on his trail and came face to face with an adult cougar. The cougar was about 12 feet away, crouched down, tail twitching.
So what was the first thing that ran through the mind of our intrepid rappeller? "This is gonna really hurt!" The rappeller shouted. He even picked up a stick and started waving it, but the cougar still had lunch on his mind. The rappeller thought maybe the squelch noise from his radio might scare the cougar away, so he turned it up. The cougar started coming at him. Off goes the radio.
Details got sketchy at this point, but apparently the cougar spent the next 30 or 40 minutes eyeing the rappeller while the rappeller slowly worked his way out of there. Eventually the rappeller got out without being attacked, and the cougar - in all probability - went off to find something less strange to eat.
The insight here? Radio squelch makes a great cougar call.
Happy hunting (stories or cougars), and remember to be safe out there.
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