Kelly Andersson, Author at Wildfire Today

Maui agencies stall investigators

Kelly AnderssonNovember 29, 2023November 29, 2023WildfireHawaii, Lahaina, Maui2 Comments

The Honolulu Civil Beat has reported that three county agencies on the island of Maui have been subpoenaed by the state attorney general’s office after failing to provide information needed for the state investigation into the August wildfires.

The hurricane-driven Maui firestorm was the worst fire disaster in the U.S. in over a century; the New York Times reported on August 13 that fatalities resulting from the Maui fires had surpassed that of the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California; it was the deadliest wildfire since the 1918 Cloquet inferno in Minnesota killed hundreds of people. Both locals and experts were pleading with tourists from the U.S. mainland and elsewhere to cancel vacation plans and spare locals and emergency responders the drain on scarce resources. Hotels and other lodging options on Maui were scrambling to shelter evacuees and the suddenly homeless.

A local CBS affiliate reported that dozens of homes and businesses were destroyed on the western part of the island of Maui, the second largest and third most populated island in the state. HawaiiNewsNow reported that witnesses described apocalyptic scenes; residents said an overwhelmed fire force, fighting flames all day in powerful winds, could do little as flames ripped through and leveled most of the historic district of Lahaina.

Not quite four months later, the state investigation is focused on fire locations and a timeline of events, and it’s still lacking critical facts, according to the Fire Safety Research Institute, which was hired by the state’s attorney general. “Until that happens, this critical process cannot move forward,” said Attorney General Anne Lopez. She said some Maui agencies have cooperated with investigators, but that subpoenas were issued to the Maui Emergency Management Agency, the Maui Department of Public Works and the Maui Department of Water Supply. The Honolulu Civil Beat said it contacted all three agencies and got no response from any of them.

Mahina Martin with Mayor Richard Bissen’s office said the county has “cooperated fully” with the investigation but that the county has not shared everything investigators have requested. She explained that some items were submitted to investigators, about 20 more are pending, and another dozen require federal Department of Homeland Security clearance before they can be produced. She said investigators have finished more than 90 interviews of county personnel.

Civil Beat asked the attorney general’s office what information it is seeking through the subpoenas but they declined. In the aftermath of the historic fires, Civil Beat filed records requests with the Maui Emergency Management Agency — including text messages, emergency operations center activity logs, requests for assistance to the state and its continuity plan, and an outline of who is in charge if top leadership is absent, as was the case on August 8 when the fires started. MEMA has not provided any of these records.

A report by The Hill said the fires damaged or destroyed more than 2,000 structures and burned over 2,000 acres, according to FEMA records. The rebuilding could cost upward of $5 billion.

Other Maui agencies, meanwhile, have handed over requested information to investigators and the AG’s office. “We appreciate the cooperation of the Maui fire and police departments, and while we continue to work through some issues, their leaders and line responders have been transparent and cooperative,” Lopez said.

Enviros sue Park Service over planting sequoias

Kelly AnderssonNovember 28, 2023December 1, 2023Wildfirelawsuit, NPS, sequoias1 Comment

The National Park Service plans to replant sequoia groves in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, where fires in 2020 and 2021 caused lasting damage to sequoia groves on federal land, but environmentalist groups in California say it would set a legal precedent and be a huge mistake.

Four groups filed suit against the NPS on November 17, saying the agency’s efforts violate the law, because designated wilderness areas prohibit human involvement in the ecosystem — even if it includes planting trees.

Three fires in two years that killed giant sequoia trees. The darker green areas represent groves of giant sequoias.

Surveys of sequoias on NPS land found that in 2020 and 2021, almost 20 percent of all giant sequoias in their natural range that were over 4 feet in diameter or more were killed by fire (and neglect) or were expected to die in the next few years. In 2020, surveyors estimated that 10 to 14 percent of the entire Sierra Nevada population of giant sequoias over 4 feet in diameter were killed in the Castle Fire. The following year, the KNP Complex and the Windy Fire burned between 2200 and 3600 sequoias over 4 feet in diameter; those sequoias were killed or are expected to die within 5 years.

CBS News reported on the project a year ago:

The NPS announced the seedling-planting project and said it was “concerned that natural regeneration may not be sufficient to support self-sustaining groves into the future, particularly as the fires killed an unprecedented number of reproductive sequoia trees in the groves themselves.”

Chad Hanson, director of the John Muir Project, one of the groups that is suing, disputes that conclusion. Sequoias actually “depend on high-intensity fire in order to reproduce effectively,” Hanson told CNN. “Nature doesn’t need our help. We are not supposed to be getting involved with tending it like a garden.”

Advocates at Wilderness Watch, Sequoia Forest Keeper, and the Tule River Conservancy first sued the NPS in September to stop a separate project by the agency to cut and burn trees in the same designated wilderness areas, cutting on about 1000 acres of forest land and designating 20,000 additional acres as available to “manager-ignited fires and associated activity,” according to the complaint.

“Recently burned groves are RESTORING THEMSELVES — as they have done for more than one hundred centuries!” according to the Sequoia Portal, whose mission is to add existing roadless areas of the Sequoia National Park, National Forest, and National Monument to the National Wilderness Preservation System. “Millions of sequoia seedlings carpet these burned groves,” says the Portal. “Do they think the public is stupid enough to think that any agency can replace full-grown 3200-year-old red barked sequoias? ALL the iconic ancient giants started as tiny seedlings, and they are already growing — immediately seeded by their scorched giant sequoia parents! As it has always been in the groves. And the majority of the largest giants are NOT DEAD.”

The John Muir Project, a nonprofit focused on protecting federal forests, joined the lawsuit on November 17, amending it to include the sequoia replanting project as part of the complaint. The groups now jointly accuse the NPS of illegally encroaching on federally protected land in both of the projects.

Firefighter on the Windy Fire applies water on a burning giant sequoia tree. Photo uploaded to InciWeb Oct. 11, 2021. — Firefighter on the 2021 Windy Fire applies water on a burning giant sequoia. InciWeb photo

The complaint in U.S. District Court in Fresno is an addendum to a suit filed earlier this year that challenged the NPS for other work in wilderness areas of Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks. Besides planting seedlings, NPS crews have been thinning and burning around sequoia groves to reduce wildfire risk, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Both the fire-prevention work and the tree-replanting project followed in the aftermath of fires that wiped out unprecedented numbers of sequoias.

NPS staff declined to comment on the lawsuit, but confirmed that replanting had already begun in two sequoia groves back in mid-October, before the latter complaint was filed.

“The Park Service has to abide by the 1964 Wilderness Act,” said Kevin Proescholdt, conservation director at Wilderness Watch. “We should still allow these natural ecosystems to respond as they want to the changes brought about by the changing climate. The more that agencies will allow natural fire to burn and perform its role, the better these wilderness forests will be,” he said.

The groups claim the projects were approved after required processes of environmental review and public engagement were circumvented by declaring they were “emergency” projects that would not have to meet those requirements.

The NPS said in its project announcement it would replant only in areas that field surveys showed insufficient natural regeneration to successfully re-establish, as they would if they hadn’t experienced severe fire effects in recent fires.

timber

Lomakatsi summit at Sun River focused on fire

Kelly AnderssonNovember 18, 2023Prescribed FireLomakatsi, Paiute, rxfireLeave a comment

Inside the Homestead Conference Hall at Sunriver Resort in central Oregon last week, six Native Americans sang, danced, and drummed with volume enough to rattle windows. The powerful performance by the Mountain Top Singers of the Paiute-Shoshone Tribe kicked off two days of panel discussions, networking events, and cultural celebration for tribal and nontribal guests at a Lomakatsi fire learning summit.

Leaders and youth representatives from 17 tribes in the Pacific Northwest were involved in the event, according to a Bend Bulletin report. Participants focused on improving ecological health of Pacific Northwest forests, mainly with the knowledgeable and responsible use of fire.

For more than a century, immediate suppression of wildfire was the go-to solution enacted by the Forest Service and other agencies after lightning ignitions or human-caused starts. Wildland officials and scientists now agree that over-suppression has caused forest health to decline and has set the stage for the megafires that now rage across the West, killing humans and destroying homes and burning huge swaths of land from Mexico to northern Canada.

Jefferson Public Radio recently reported that even people who disagree vehemently about the details of the best ways to manage forests can always find some ground on managing wildlands to be more fire resilient.

The Lomakatsi Restoration Project’s Tribal Ecological Forestry Training Program focuses on collaboration with tribes and tribal communities through ecological restoration initiatives. The Program is heavily involved in the restoration work required to make forests fire resilient, using both modern technology and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) from the region’s tribes, who for millennia used fire to manage the forests where they lived.

Lomakatsi film: Tribal Hands on the Land

Lomakatsi Founder and Executive Director Marko Bey and Tribal Partnerships Director Belinda Brown talked to Jefferson Public Radio about training and a film about it, and their expanding efforts to bring more indigenous people into the fold. Lomakatsi welcomes a new cohort of young tribal adults this fall, and is especially grateful to videographer Ammon Cluff for bringing this video to life.

Crew members also contributed to collaborative landscape-scale restoration projects across southern Oregon, including the West Bear All-Lands Restoration Project, Rogue Forest Restoration Initiative, Ashland Forest Resiliency Stewardship Project, and post-fire restoration Bear Creek, as part of the Ashland Creek Ponds Riparian and Ecocultural Restoration Project.

Lomakatsi operates programs across the ancestral lands of aboriginal peoples who lived and live in the watersheds of the Willamette River, Rogue River, Klamath River, Umpqua River, and Pit River, in what is now called Oregon and California. From sagebrush hillsides and mixed conifer forests, to oak woodlands and riverine systems, they offer respect, recognition, and gratitude to the past, present, and future inhabitants of these landscapes, to whom they dedicate this work.

“Tribes have for time immemorial carefully managed these landscapes with carefully applied fire, with Indigenous practices. The agencies have a real interest in that at this time,” said Marko Bey, founder and executive director of Lomakatsi, the nonprofit group that organized the event in Sunriver.

Bey said the summit was an opportunity to bring tribal members together to share different skills, traditions, and adaptive management strategies. He believes that tribes can play a central role in national management of forest health.

Representatives from all nine federally recognized tribes of Oregon attended the summit. Eight additional tribes with ancestral lands in and adjacent to Oregon were also present.

Myra Johnson-Orange, 74, an elder from the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs, said she was pleased the conference brought together Native and non-Native people for joint learning panels.

“Sometimes, non-Native people need to understand better where we are coming from as Native people,” she said, “and how we understand the land and how we have taken care of it since time immemorial. We learn from agencies, but they are learning from Natives, too, how we need to be considered and consulted.”

Lomakatsi operates programs across the ancestral lands of aboriginal peoples who lived and live in the watersheds of the Willamette River, Rogue River, Klamath River, Umpqua River, and Pit River, in what is now called Oregon and California. From sagebrush hillsides and mixed conifer forests, to oak woodlands and riverine systems, they offer respect, recognition, and gratitude to the past, present, and future inhabitants of these landscapes, to whom they dedicate this work.

The firefighters pay cut may be averted. Or not.

Kelly AnderssonNovember 17, 2023Firefighter pay, OpinionCongress, pay cut8 Comments

A long-running effort to permanently boost pay — an effort that’s often felt fruitless and never-ending for thousands of federal firefighters — may be gaining traction in Congress, but it may very well be too little too late to prevent mass resignations in the coming weeks.

In Congress earlier this month, the House passed an amendment to extend a temporary pay increase of $20,000 (annually per firefighter) through next year, which was approved by President Biden. Another bill to make a pay hike permanent remains stalled, though, and NPR’s Morning Edition reported that this latest budget deal averting a federal shutdown will also — for now — avert a massive pay cut for federal firefighters that was expected by November 17 — today.

Wildland firefighters on the Spring Creek Fire in Colorado on July 2, 2023 — inciweb photo.

But how many times can individual firefighters and the fed employees’ union and the Grassroots Firefighters warn Congress about high-centering itself in managing wildfire crises?

“Basically this is like a band-aid. It’s not a fix. We need a fix,” says Mike Alba, a union organizer. Alba is an engine captain on the Los Padres National Forest.

Rookie firefighters now make only about $15 hour — which is (dismally) up from just $13 an hour after Biden approved a temporary increase back in 2021. Funds from the infrastructure law later gave many firefighters a $20,000 boost in pay. Tom Dillon, a captain for the Alpine Hotshots based in Rocky Mountain National Park, says everyone’s talking about their paychecks when they should be focused on firefighting tactics and safety.

“It’s kind of a slap in the face,” Dillon says. “The folks on Capitol Hill, some of them aren’t even aware of who we are and what we do and that there is a federal wildland firefighting workforce.”

Crews are now challenged with not only more severe and longer fire seasons, but also by flattening overtime pay, dwindling retention, suppressed hiring abilities, and growing mental health challenges. Alba says this onetime pay bump is a kind of a lifeline: he can spend a little more time with his kids. He will probably keep his higher pay for a while, but just till January — unless Congress actually manages to make the 2021 pay boost permanent.

But morale is low, and the union representing federal employees (a percentage of whom are firefighters) warns that at least 30 percent of the federal firefighter ranks will likely quit if pay isn’t permanently boosted — and soon. They are tired of sweating next month’s rent or living in their cars, and the struggle for a decent wage has worn out more than a few.

As The Guardian reported back in 2021, federal firefighters are often living out of their cars (!) because the job doesn’t pay enough for basic housing costs — even for a single person, let alone a young firefighter trying to help support a family.

The federal government — including at least five different agencies that employ wildland firefighters in the U.S. — fights and manages fires in all 50 states. Every major fire in the country relies on federal firefighters and the resources and funding and massive response that the federal government can and does provide. Federal agencies, however, now face a severe and costly retention problem with the wildland fire workforce. If Congress cannot fix this, and the federal firefighting forces continue to bleed fire crews and employees, what’s the backup plan?

Burners light up Nachusa Grasslands in Illinois

Kelly AnderssonNovember 15, 2023November 16, 2023Prescribed FireIllinois, Nachusa, Nature Conservancy, rxfire, TNC2 Comments

A Nachusa fire crew hit a 24-acre project area of the grassland Tuesday, November 14, for a prescribed burn on the prairie habitat. Fire has historically been an important and natural part of the prairie; clearing the ground cover stimulates new growth, and many native plants rely on wildland fire to open seed pods and regenerate. Sauk Valley Media sent their ace photographer to track the 10-person crew at Nachusa Grasslands as they worked to put in firebreaks, put down a water line, and ignite the grasses so the fire will burn in their planned direction.

Nachusa Grasslands RxFire — Conditions were just right for a prescribed fire on November 14 at Nachusa Grasslands in northern Illinois. Fire managers hope to do another burn at the end of the week. Photo courtesy Alex T. Paschal.

The 4,100-acre Nachusa Grasslands preserve consists of large remnant prairie, woodlands, and wetlands reconnected through habitat restoration to create one of the largest and most biologically diverse grasslands in Illinois. Including 4,000 acres of restored and remnant prairie, Nachusa Grasslands is home to 180 species of birds, more than 700 native plant species, and a herd of bison.

The Nature Conservancy purchased the core of the preserve in 1986, recognizing that Nachusa offered a terrific opportunity to restore a diverse native grassland.

Working hand-in-hand with Nature Conservancy staff, volunteer stewards collect and plant seeds, manage invasive species, repair wetlands, and conduct prescribed burns to preserve this ecosystem.

RxFire Nachusa — Prescribed burning: A volunteer fire crew sets a prescribed burn at Nachusa Grasslands preserve in Illinois. ©Andrew Simpson / The Nature Conservancy

The Friends of Nachusa Grasslands has a calendar online for its volunteer workdays; hunting season is scheduled in early December and the spring RxFire season will start up in March 2024. If you’re interested in volunteer opportunities, most workdays are scheduled on Thursday and Saturdays.

The Nachusa Grasslands and its visitor center are south of Rockford, Illinois and about a 2-hour drive west of Chicago.

The Friends organization is established to fund endowments for long-term protection of the Grasslands, conducting and encouraging stewardship, supporting science and education, and protecting the land here. Nachusa Grasslands is open from dawn to dusk, and visitors are welcome to hike in the non-fenced areas. Wildlife inhabitants include a herd of bison, which range across 1,500 acres and are often not visible from the Visitor Center or the roadsides. Almost 10 years ago, 30 bison were introduced to Nachusa Grasslands from three preserves owned by The Nature Conservancy in South Dakota, Iowa, and the Dunn Ranch in Missouri. Wind Cave National Park bison and elk, photo ©2013 Bill Gabbert

Originally part of the herd from Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota, these bison have been tested and show no traces of cattle genes. No hiking is permitted inside the fenced North or South Bison Units.

The bison and the grassland vegetation species all benefit from prescribed fire and the Nature Conservancy’s fire research, and this fire — like others at the Grasslands — was timed for weather and fuels conditions that would be conducive to a controllable prescription burn.

“Wind and dry air is what determines whether we can have a burn,” Nachusa Director Bill Kleiman on Tuesday told photographer Alex Paschal.

A light south wind pushed the flames and smoke north, so crews planned for locations of the firebreaks and road warnings for motorists traveling the area. The burn was roughly an “L” shape on Carthage Road, and two separate crew units started the process on either side — so the fire could burn together in the middle.

“If the side upwind doesn’t have enough of a firebreak,” Kleiman said, “it can jump it and burn the other side.”

Alex Paschal has a photo gallery from the burn [HERE].

Appeals commission rejects British Columbia landowner’s claim of neighbor arson, sticks him with $450K bill

Kelly AnderssonNovember 14, 2023Safety, Uncategorizedburn piles, Canada, escapesLeave a comment

Clarke Matthiesen claimed his neighbors’ grandson caused the 2019 fire that originated on his property, and not his unregistered burn, according to the CBC News.

It took B.C. Wildfire Service crews two weeks to contain the fire that started as a holdover from Matthiesen’s debris burn. He’s now on the hook for about $450,000 after an appeals commission rejected his claim that his neighbors’ grandson started the fire. The Forest Appeals Commission dismissed his appeal, finding that his explanation was “both unproven and unlikely.”

Investigators had concluded that a holdover fire from an improperly extinguished open burn of Matthiesen’s was the cause. The burn covered around 224 square metres — under 2500 square feet — and a holdover fire can smolder underground for days or even months. “The burning of a large debris pile, as in this case, is inherently risky and can result in significant destruction if wildfires result from the burning. It is the responsibility of those engaged in such burning activity to ensure they have met the legislated requirements,” the appeals decision says.

The wildfire burned for about two weeks some 150 kilometres west of Quesnel, B.C. Matthiesen was ordered to pay $179,344 for damage to Crown resources, $260,369 for the cost of fighting the fire, $7,546 for reforestation costs, and a $2,350 administrative penalty.

Matthiesen hadn’t raised his arson theory with any officials or investigators in the four years before his appeal. He did not have a burn permit for the fire he started, and had no firefighting tools or water nearby as required. An investigator said Matthiesen’s burn pile included root wads from trees, which are often involved in holdover fires.

“The appellant was unaware of the degree of risk posed by holdover fires, the appropriate way to check for hotspots, or the need to maintain a fuel break even after the initial burning phase,” the decision says.

Matthiesen is one of the latest people ordered to pay huge fines under a section of provincial law that allows the government to recover suppression costs from those responsible for starting wildfires. In another recent case, another man was billed for another 2019 fire, according to another CBC News report.

A northwest British Columbia resident was billed more than $100,000 to cover the province’s cost of a fire that started on his property four years ago. Eldon Whalen was ordered to pay $100,688 for a fire that spread from a burn pile on his property in the Kispiox Valley northwest of Prince George.

The open fire was deliberately ignited, and if not for the response of the B.C. Wildfire Service, the impacts would likely have been even more widespread, according to the decision from B.C.’s Forest Appeals Commission.

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