News and opinion about wildland fire
Above: carved by Marta Lujan at the Junkins Fire southwest of Pueblo, Colorado.
Here are photos of Smokey Bear Jack O’Lanterns sent to us by our readers so far this year.
Instructions with a template for carving your Smokey Bear Jack O’Lantern.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Allen and Doug.
A rancher in the United Kingdom is blaming the death of one of his cows on a sky lantern that landed on his property. These devices are small hot air balloons lofted into the air by fuel burning at the base.
Below is an excerpt from an article at Farmers Weekly:
…Last year, David Rowlands of Grange Farm, Mickle Trifford, Chester, experienced the problems of sky lanterns first hand. The Rowlands family lost one of their pedigree Red Poll breeding cows to a sky lantern around bonfire night.
“She started staggering, so we treated her for staggers, but obviously it had no effect.
“The vets assessment was that the oesophagus had been pierced by wire from one of these wretched things, leading to asphyxiation,” Mr Rowlands explained.
“These sky lanterns have either wire or bamboo frames and essentially they’re cannon balls floating.
“Eventually they land and if they land in a field with cattle grazing, the cattle will investigate.
“The animals are inclined to chew things like this, the wire will splinter, penetrating their throats and causing swelling. It leads to asphyxiation, a horrible death taking about 48 hours.”
“How an animal-loving nation can tolerate this sort of risk to cattle and sheep baffles me,” he toldFarmers Weekly.
But Mr Rowlands hopes if more councils ban them it will help as he says he doesn’t think it is deliberate nastiness of the people releasing them, more that they simply don’t understand the risks.
“Our cows don’t think they are worth the risk,” he said…
Sky lanterns are banned in 39 of the states in the U.S.
Above: Junkins Fire, southwest of Pueblo, Colorado. Photo provided by the Incident Management Team on October 19, 2016.
There have been many discussions recently on this website, in the scientific community, and in the more public arena about why the number of acres burned in wildfires has been increasing rapidly over the last several decades. From the mid-1980s through 2015 the average number of acres burned has grown from about 2 million acres a year to around 8 million. Some people like to claim that this was caused by climate change, environmentalists preventing timber from being harvested, or other factors. However, to complicate the issue, some data appears to indicate that between 1920 and 1950, 10 million to 50 million acres burned each year.
It is very difficult to say that one factor caused fire occurrence to change. While comparing acres burned in the early part of the 20th century to what we are seeing in recent decades, many variables need to be considered:
–Weather and climate trends. This has been vigorously discussed in many venues.
–The capacity to suppress wildfires. In the first two-thirds of the 20th century the ability of land managers to suppress wildfires was very different from what we have today. Fire engines now carry many times more water, and transportation systems enable quicker initial attack response. Helicopters and air tankers were brought into the equation. Heavy equipment became more prolific and capable. More efficient communication and dispatch systems were created. Fires are detected more quickly. Firefighters are routinely brought in from hundreds or even thousands of miles away.
–The wildland-urban interface is growing. More people are living and recreating where previously there was less human activity. This can increase the number of fire starts, and the endangered structures often have an effect on the priorities of firefighters and where they are deployed, as opposed concentrating forces where they are most likely to contain the fire.
—Changes in how timber is managed and harvested.
–Fire suppression can result in longer fire return intervals and increases in the amount of fuel available for the next fire.
–Fuel treatments: mechanical and prescribed fire.
–Changes in the vegetation: non-native species, insects, disease.
–Accuracy of the fire occurrence data. Can the data for 1920 be compared with the data from 2016? The fire occurrence data at NIFC for 1962 through 2015 shows a huge swing beginning in 1983 and 1984, with the number of fires overnight dropping by about 50%, a trend that continued through 2015. This leads one to lose confidence in the data. One would think that the more modern era, post 1984, would have more accurate information than previous decades.
–Changes in wildfire management policy: full, limited, or no suppression.
Our readers will probably suggest even more factors that affect the number of fires and acres burned.
Considering all of these variables, I am skeptical of reports saying that just one is responsible for changes in the number fires and acres burned.
“…Our research findings provide scientific justification for using soil moisture data from in situ monitoring networks in fire danger rating systems. Such soil moisture data are increasingly available and are not currently being used in the context of wildfire preparedness. ”
Above: The percent of maximum soil moisture available to plants in the top 16 inches in Oklahoma, September 11, 2016.
David M. Engle, along with other scientists at Oklahoma State University, are making a case that soil moisture should be used as one of the components in determining grassland fire danger ratings.
To assess the herbaceous fuel dynamics in grasslands, they conducted 3 studies:
1) A study that used a database of large wildfires in Oklahoma to examine the relationship of fire occurrence and fire size with soil moisture;
2) An intensive field-based study to quantify and subsequently model herbaceous fuel load and moisture content in grassland patches that differed in time since fire and, therefore, proportion of live and dead herbaceous fuel load, and;
3) Modeling the influence of herbaceous fuel dynamics and weather conditions on fire behavior in tallgrass prairie.
Their final report can be read HERE.
Author Bill GabbertPosted on Categories Uncategorized1 Comment on Residences at risk from wildfire in the western states Above: Residences in 13 western states with a high or very high wildfire risk. CoreLogic.
CoreLogic has put together a report that looks at the residential properties in 13 western states that are potentially exposed to wildfire risk. It is an evaluation of the total number of properties at various risk levels, along with the estimated costs of reconstruction of single-family residences.
Would you like to have Smokey Bear looking at your trick or treaters from a Halloween Jack O’Lantern? Here’s how, thanks to the Virginia Department of Forestry:
Print this stencil, which looks like this, below:
Then:
Option #1
Or, Option #2
And,
5. Send us a photo of your result. (We will post some of them.)
Here’s one created by Josh Quinn in 2015:
