By Steve Pyne
We know now that the largest recorded fire in New Mexico history was started by an escaped “prescribed burn,” or rather by two. The Hermit’s Peak fire bolted away on April 6 when unexpectedly gusty winds blew sparks beyond control lines.
Then the Calf Canyon fire raced off on April 9 when similar winds fanned embers in burn piles first kindled in January. The two fires soon merged. Together, as of June 12, they have scorched 320,333 acres, with two-thirds of the fire perimeter regarded as contained.
New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham’s reaction was to insist that federal agencies reconsider their policy on spring burns. The chief of the U.S. Forest Service, Randy Moore, responded by announcing a halt on prescribed burning for a 90-day review period.
Inevitably, the blowups invited comparison to the 2000 Cerro Grande fire in New Mexico that began as a prescribed burn, then blew out of Bandelier National Monument and into Los Alamos. It was the largest chronicled fire in the state’s history — until now.
Prescribed fire is not likely to be challenged in principle. Recognition seems widespread that controlled burning is a legitimate source of good fire that can reduce the threat from areas likely to burn. States from Florida to California have even reformed liability law to encourage burning on private lands.
The real threat to fire management is death by a thousand cuts, each breakdown leading to shutdowns, each partisan group extracting a concession, that together so encumber the practice that it can’t be implemented. There is always something that can cause a prescribed burn to be shuttered. There is no equivalent mechanism to make up the loss.
It’s not news that the Western fire scene has become complicated. The early 20th century days, when one response — extinguish by 10 am the next morning — was adequate, are long past. It was a marvelous administrative stroke: No confusion, no compromise, one size fits all.
But it made the fire scene worse by encouraging ecological rot and an incendiary buildup of fuels. The change in policy was clear and necessary: Fire is inevitable, and we need to manage it.
Today, all aspects of landscape fire are plural. Fire control does not mean one thing; it embraces many strategies. It might refer to protecting towns or sage grouse habitat. It can resemble urban firefighting, or for reasons of safety, cost and environmental health, it could mean containing fires within broad borders.
It varies from extinguishing an abandoned campfire to herding mega-fires rolling over the Continental Divide. It might involve bulldozing around municipal watersheds, or working-with-nature firelines in wilderness. It might mean setting emergency backfires that can resemble a prescribed fire done under urgent conditions..
So, also, with prescribed burning. It might mean burning logging slash or piled cuttings from thinning operations. Or it might refer to broadcast burns that range freely over areas from an acre to a landscape. It can mean burning to improve forage in tallgrass prairie, to prune pine savannas, or to promote habitat for Karner blue butterflies.
Wildfire acts as an all-spectrum ecological catalyst. Good prescribed burns will do the same thing.
The choice isn’t between one strategy or the other; it’s selecting from a variety of techniques that work in particular settings and seasons. We need them all, not least because each strategy by itself can fail.
Fires escape initial suppression at a rate of 2-3 percent. Prescribed fires escape at a rate of 1.5 percent for the National Park Service, or less than 1 percent according to Forest Service records. Managing naturally caused fires has a similar rate of failure. When an escape occurs, however, its destructiveness makes news.
Those figures are not likely to drop. We can’t control the setting of a wildland fire as we can a blowtorch. All we can do is juggle strategies so that each strategy’s strengths fill the others’ weaknesses. The 2000 blowout in New Mexico made prescribed burning more difficult but led to a National Fire Plan. Twenty years later, the fire scene has grown bigger, meaner, tougher. The Hermits Peak fire will likely end up an order of magnitude larger than Cerro Grande.
Inevitably, our future holds a lot of fire. The goal is always to find and employ the right mix of fire for the land.
Steve Pyne is a contributor to Writers on the Range, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a fire historian, urban farmer, and author of The Pyrocene.
Realize too that fore inducing factors have increased, from earlier firefighting years. Such developments as early an aging electrical grid, testing and usages of nuclear weaponry also nuclear reactor’s ‘spent’ fuels and fossil fuel usages and lingering emissions, inducing warmer global temperatures ; rendering usual approaches, increasingly inadequate .
Realize too that fore inducing factors have incrased, from earlier firefighting years. Such developments as early an aging electrical grid, testing and usages of nuclear weaponry also nuclear reactor’s ‘spent’ fuels and fossil fuel usages and lingering emissions, inducing warmer global temperatures ; rendering usual approaches, increasingly inadequate .
When confronting inevitable consequences to years -if not also centuries- of environs destabilizing practices and policies; the effects and also lingering causes, need yet be also further scrutinized, before worsening reoccurrences can be really surmounted. Even when more swiftly newly –epochally enacted- initiatives are implemented. Such, will not ever wisely, just aid and abet less than optimal choices.
I don’t agree with the “it’s only a small percent of the total” argument. That could be used for anything “only a small proportion of firefighters are injured, so…” “there’s only a small amount of sexual assault in the fire ranks”.
Pyne says “Fires escape initial suppression at a rate of 2-3 percent. Prescribed fires escape at a rate of 1.5 percent for the National Park Service, or less than 1 percent according to Forest Service records. Managing naturally caused fires has a similar rate of failure. When an escape occurs, however, its destructiveness makes news.
Those figures are not likely to drop. We can’t control the setting of a wildland fire as we can a blowtorch.”
I’d use the metric “unintentional acres burned from escaped prescribed fire” and having read Southern Torch Master and some Lessons Learned, I’d state instead:
With a focus on improving how the FS does business, we can CERTAINLY reduce the “unintentional acres burned from escapes.”
THANK YOU STEVE PYNE for a column full of clarity. Unfortunately for the agencies, Western residents, and the landscape itself, Randy Moore hasn’t got the capacity (or opportunity) to fully grasp this, let alone act on it.
If the new paradigm for fighting fires moving forward continues, then Rx burns will be less of an issue. Strategies that include burning out massive amounts of acres will end up including proposed Rx projects, or provide opportunities to tie Rx burns into. Smaller burns will still be relevant. Agree, the challenge is to meet targets without having escapes, but the way things are going, might be a moot point.
From a woods burners perspective, we’re selling ourselves way short in the Rx Arena. We have 5 complexity levels for wildfires, and two for Prescribed Fires (3rd doesn’t really count for broadcast burning). We need to start looking at prescribed fire through a wildfire lens and seriously staff these high profile, little room for error burns as incidents with suppression resources. New Rx complexity levels should be 1-5!!
Boom sauce! What a professional and pragmatic approach to what seems to a growing challenge!! Southern Torch – you should call Chief Moore….he could use the help
wild fires are inevitable probably caused by debris left from thinning efforts in the past/
The Forest Service knew it was a dry winter and that moisture levels were very low. They also knew that the winds were much stronger than usual. Yet they went ahead with business as usual. In fact, they left a burn pile unsupervised for three months, just assuming the snow would put it out. It did not go out on its own. Burn piles just do not ‘go out’ on their own. This burn pile blew up into one of the two fires that combined to give us the current so-called ‘wildfire”.
If this is ‘best practice’ on the part of the Forest Service, then perhaps they need to get some experts involved.
“Business as usual” seems to be a recurring problem.
I have burned 1000’s of slash piles in northern Ontario and central Alberta. The vast majority of them will burn themselves out or be naturally suppressed by winter snow. Thankfully, the Boreal forest is known for plenty of snow. That being said, I have had to put some out due to changing weather conditions. It is always a pain in the arse suppressing these charcoal pits. And, it is costly.
The moisture deficits occurring in the southwestern states will cause a change to business as usual if agencies wish to use prescribed fire. Full suppression of a prescribed fire is not normal practice since it increases the cost per hectare. However, if someone wishes to have prescribed fire, they may have to build full suppression into the cost equation. Given the financial/political issues around wildfire management in the US, asking for additional funds is challenging.
As many commenters have said, we have to adapt our ways of thinking. The fire environment is changing. The financial situation seems to get more dire each season. Traditional wildfire management has to adapt, or die.
Question for those who have been RX bosses or have been closely involved in planning them: What types of assets are typically staged around a Rx fire start, just in case it starts getting away? Is there a set protocol of needed assets based on the area to be burned? Certain number of engines, aircraft, etc in the immediate area to react if need be? Great article Dr. Pyne….the quote above from Thatguy is spot on: “It’s important that people realize that the choice is not between prescribed fire and no fire, the choice ultimately is between prescribed fire and wildfire.”
-William Tweed
There is a lot to it but yes. There are elements in a RX plan that address minimum resources needed based off the weather conditions and also contingency resources.
RXB – your name is telling!! Interesting…thanks for the answer to the question…so in your opinion, should the minimums be raised substantially? $5B of new money in the infrastructure bill – I wonder if any of it was earmarked for raising the standard level of contingency resources….?
There is no riskier activity in federal land management than prescribed fire. One of the most influential variables, weather, is also the least predictable. This risk is accepted by GS-6 through GS-9 employees, who have a maximum annual base salary of around $65,000. They are willing to take on that risk because it is the right thing to do for the resource.
I foresee two probable policy shifts from these fires. First, regional offices of the forest service will want to review every burn plan. Second, even after they review it and approve it, they will want final say on putting fire on the ground. Both of these would slow the process down and probably cause good burn windows to be missed.
You don’t have to look very hard to find reasons to not burn. Sometimes they are reasonable, other times not so much, but not burning is always easy.
I come from a simple but diverse background in fire, w/ no real formal education aside from what I needed to work in the 0460 series , I began my career at 18, I was exposed to RX fire right from the beginning, I used to think if we are not putting out fire we should be lighting fire. Well I have come to think with much conviction we should not be in the business of RX west of the Miss River, not just because of the great risk, because we are ill equipped to manage/implement these projects on the scale that is needed to truly make a difference, there just is not enough of us to do the job, we try to implement a large scale landscape rx with only a handful of people, mostly militia, if we are fortunate to have 40-50 folks on a 500 ac burn we may have success, a 500 ac wildfire will have 2-3x that number, I know they are two different things, but just the same. We know a lot about fire, even though Fie Ecology is still fairly new we have made great strides, I had a fire ecologist in my shop and they are a great resource to collaborate with.
Someone said, we need to learn to live w/ fire, be managers of fire, so far we have not done very well w/ either…Let’s be honest, fire has a way of truly humbling us, with all of our tech and huge amounts of suppression resources it will nearly 100% of the time dictate to us our every reaction.
I would work for weeks/months to implement a large scale burn, oh and spend a lot of money, and when you are done you have not made a defense because the fire regime/ecosystem has a return interval of 3-7 years…..so why burn…..not trying to be funny….why?
I say let the mega wildfires punch holes in the landscape, since we can not prevent these types of fires from occurring, maybe we will get there sooner that we think…..
What a mess you all (Still Working) have, maybe it can be fixed, what was the number of escapes 1.0 to 1.5% seems like a very small %, but to those that lose every thing it 100%, we do not get to even try to justify our actions as the greater good….Not for one second……it’s time to stop……East of the Miss keep doing what you are doing. End…..
I was present to see our RX escape and destroy a home and property, I was sick to my stomach for days, we knew we should have hung it up, but the pressure to get it done…..
6/21/22
The ongoing devastations in New Mexico even to recent days, until an intention to tentatively assist, was initiated less than four days ago regarding the largest decimating outbreaks in New Mexico, and currently/presently also the largest national wildfire outbreak. Even so the persistent failure to admit to limits, and concomitantly access more sure -but conditionally- swift advanced procedures; continue to subject millions to untimely disastrous circumstances.
Here is what was said above:
“The ongoing devastations in New Mexico even to recent days…was initiated less than four days ago…and currently/presently also the largest national wildfire outbreak.
Even so the persistent failure to admit to limits…continue to subject millions to untimely disastrous circumstances.”
Please drop the gobblety goop language and just state plainly what your point is!
Maybe I need more coffee, or Judge Luttig, to, assist, in explantion of, and pursuant to clarification, of objective, and intentional subterfuge, as already previously not intended, and defended, although not totally inherently opaque language, results in the unintentional meaning, or meanings, of the simple statement of projected, and detected, eventual, but unavoidable with current intuition, truth.
Thank for cleaning that up. I thought something was wrong with my brain.
I thought I was having stroke, lol
Have ever been a RX boss? It is challenging to say the least. If I s a balancing act of immense magnitude.
Typical, ignorant folks think that everything is black and white. Blame the system. Blame the FS chief. Blame DC. Blame climate change. Blame inflation. Etc.
6/2/22
The ongoing devastations in New Mexico even to recent days, until an intention to tentatively assist, was initiated less than four days ago regarding the largest decimating outbreaks in New Mexico, and currently/presently also the largest national wildfire outbreak. Even so the persistent failure to admit to limits, and concomitantly access more sure -but conditionally- swift advanced procedures; continue to subject millions to untimely disastrous circumstances.
It’s important that people realize that the choice is not between prescribed fire and no fire, the choice ultimately is between prescribed fire and wildfire.
-William Tweed
Well said, Dr. Pyne, as always.
Thank you, Dr. Pyne. Although people like Frank Carroll, who don’t fully support prescribed fire and use of wildfire, will discount your that your expertise “does not include applying our environmental laws to major and significant federal policies and resulting actions,” most of us know better. As you say, fire is inevitable. And even as the climate is changing, we still need to learn to live with it and manage it.
Steve Pyne is the grandfather of creative, thematic, reimagining of the complexities of wildfire in America. Some good points here. His expertise does not include applying our environmental laws to major and significant federal policies and resulting actions. His commentary is necessarily about operational issues and not whether those operational options are legal or sanctioned. His books have guided the Federal fire service for more than 40 years since he put down his Pulaski and left the North Rim fire crew at Grand Canyon National Park.