News and opinion about wildland fire
Red Flag Warnings and Fire Weather Watches are in effect for large portions of the southern plains and the southwest.
The maps were current as of 8:15 a.m. MDT on Tuesday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts and maps. For the most current data visit this NWS site.
Above: elevated fire weather predicted for Monday, March 21, 2016.
Many areas in the United States will experience elevated fire weather through Wednesday of this week. Strong winds and low relative humidities, in the single digits for some locations, are the culprit as usual. The critical and extreme conditions are spread from Wyoming, the northern, central, and southern plains, as well as parts of Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Florida, and Texas.
By Wednesday the threat consolidates in the southern part of the area and will affect portions of Colorado, Kansas, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Oklahoma.
The maps were current as of 7:40 a.m. MDT on Monday. Red Flag Warnings can change throughout the day as the National Weather Service offices around the country update and revise their forecasts and maps. For the most current data visit this NWS site.
In March of 2015 the U.S. Forest Service began creating poster-like graphics on topics related to wildfire. The latest one, issued apparently by their Washington office, @forestservice, extols the virtues of restoration following a wildfire.
The three that we have seen could have benefited, in our view, from with a review by a wildfire expert with writing skills.
Restoration can often help return a burned site to the condition it was before the fire more quickly than letting nature run its course. The poster apparently intends to only address restoration after a fire, rather than the general topic of helping an unburned site to return to, for example, a pre-settlement condition before widespread fire suppression became the goal. Non-wildfire restoration usually involves prescribed fire, mechanical thinning, or both.
Burned Area Emergency Response (BAER) efforts after a fire can include mechanical methods, such as planting grass to help reduce the threat of noxious weeds, and installing temporary barriers to protect treated or recovering areas.
The poster puts a very positive spin on “wildfire restoration”:
…eradicates nonnative species and returns the damaged land back to its original condition…
That is an overstatement, making it sound like all nonnative species are removed and the area looks just like it did before the fire. I would replace “eradicates” with “can reduce”, and, “returns” with “helps return”.
We are aware of two other poster-like graphics the USFS released in March, 2015. The one below uses an interesting phrase, “largest fire seasons since the 1950s”.
The other, below, conflates wildfire prevention with fuel management. We wrote more about that last year.
Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore applied prescribed fire to about half a dozen units yesterday live-streaming from the scene two or three times on Facebook. The recordings are preserved and we posted a couple of them here.
The units the park worked on were in the West Beach area, a portion of the 600 acres they expect to burn this spring. The park is on the south shore of Lake Michigan in northwest Indiana.
Photos and videos by Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.
Above: South Kaibab Trail in the Grand Canyon – Panorama Point. NPS photo by Michael Quinn
The Huffington Post in a lengthy article by Kathryn Joyce describes what appears to be a stunning culture of serious sexual harassment being virtually tolerated in some locations within the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service. Ms. Joyce describes numerous disturbing examples of female employees, including a wildland firefighter, being aggressively degraded and humiliated with little if any repercussions for the assailant. In some cases the victims were fired.
There is no accusation that this atmosphere exists throughout the USFS and NPS, but it is disturbing that so many examples are given where high level management made very poor choices, allowing the unacceptable actions to continue and later affect more employees.
An illustration of the abuse is how Cheyenne Szydlo was treated on a Colorado River trip in Grand Canyon National Park. As a wildlife biologist she had to be there to hunt for the Southwestern willow flycatcher, a tiny endangered songbird that historically had nested on the river but hadn’t been seen in three years. Her supervisor believed the bird was locally extinct. It was just Ms. Szydlo and the boatman, a male National Park Service employee, at the bottom of the canyon for nine days, with no way to escape and no cell phone coverage. Even if she hiked a mile up to the canyon rim she would be in the middle of the desert with little if any food or water. The sexual harassment she endured from the boatman, explained in detail in the article, was harrowing and got worse every day.
Ms. Szydlo was not the only victim while working along the Colorado River in the Grand Canyon.
…“What happened to [Lynn] was the most horrifying thing I’d ever seen,” said Chelly Kearney, who had made her own efforts to draw attention to the treatment of women on the river. About a year after she resigned in 2012, she wrote a 29-page letter to Grand Canyon Chief Ranger Bill Wright documenting multiple instances of harassment, assault and retaliation and describing a culture that protected male harassers while allowing victims to be targeted for retaliation. The Park Service requested a formal EEO investigation, but the final report was never distributed beyond the uppermost level of park management and no disciplinary actions were taken.
Following Lynn and Anne’s dismissals, Kearney tried again. She forwarded her letter to [Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent David] Uberuaga, writing that she had witnessed a “disturbing and pervasive level of hatred” toward Anne and her boss and that Anne should be protected by federal whistle-blower laws. She received a brief response from Uberuaga thanking her for her concern…
The stories in the article are horrifying — that federal employees on, and off the job, could be so mistreated by their fellow workers. But even worse, in too many cases nothing significant was done to curtail the harassment. Some victims were fired for reporting it, or had to resign in order get away from an untenable or unsafe situation.
Finally the NPS initiated a high level investigation that lasted for a year and a half. This occurred only after the complaints got the attention of Sally Jewell, the Secretary of the Interior, one level below the President. Twelve women wrote to her requesting a formal inquiry into the “pervasive culture of discrimination, retaliation, and a sexually hostile work environment” in the River District of Grand Canyon National Park.
This January the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General announced that it had “found evidence of a long-term pattern of sexual harassment and hostile work environment” in the Grand Canyon’s River District.
This is not, of course, an indictment of the entire NPS or USFS organizations. At most locations, we hope, the culture does not permit harassment. Or if it is reported, it is dealt with immediately and fairly. But obviously, as reported by Ms. Joyce, there is still work left to do.
Thanks and a tip of the hat go out to Jim.
More from our pilot controlled burn at Bloody Bridge with @NIFRSOFFICIAL, including TV crew. Partnership in action. pic.twitter.com/VxcpxMvfoc
— Mournelive (@Mournelive) March 16, 2016
The Mourne Heritage Trust in Ireland posted this tweet about a “pilot” controlled burn. It appears that it attracted some onlookers. Click on the photos to see larger versions.
Information about Bloody Bridge from Wikepidia:
The Bloody Bridge – The bridge and the Bloody Bridge River, were so named because of an incident during the 1641 Rebellion, during which a massacre of Protestants took place. Its beauty is widely appreciated by tourists who go to see the ‘Brandy Pad’, called after the trade of illegal brandy which was smuggled down this route and from there onwards at the dead of night to Hilltown.
