Wildfire Today

A quick 16-second video. It may have been recorded by a member of the El Cariso Hot Shots.

Bomber Drops Fire Retardant On Firefighters – For more funny videos, click here

The Clark Fork Chronicle has a story about a debate going on in Montana about the role of the US Forest Service on interface fires. Here is an excerpt.

U.S. Forest Service officials will not formally respond to recommendations that Montana fire chiefs offered last month to the legislature’s interim study committee. But officials emphasized to the Chronicle that the protection of homes and outbuildings–structure protection–remains near the very top of firefighters’ priorities.

The top priority, always, is life safety–the safety of firefighters and the public, explained Chuck Stanich, the fire management officer for the Lolo National Forest.

“Life safety we hold in highest regard on every fire, every time, everywhere,” Chuck said. “Once we take care of that, then we go to the next priority.”

The next priorities are typically protecting the community’s “values at risk,” which usually include structures, and other cultural and natural resources, such as watersheds.

Those objectives and priorities are established in discussions long before the first start of the fire season, documented in formal plans and agreements, and communicated across a wide range of federal, state, and local firefighting partners, Chuck explained.

Frenchtown Fire’s Scott Waldron appeared in Helena earlier this month to present the state fire chiefs’ report, and offered his perspective on the Black Cat Fire in response to the committee’s questions. He alleged that Forest Service firefighters were not allowed to engage in structure protection, and testified that the agency’s policy of “Appropriate Management Response” could endanger communities.

Without directly addressing Waldron’s statements, Forest Service officials said they hoped to clear up any possible misconceptions about Forest Service policy.

The LA Times has an interesting story about the effects of frequent fires on the vegetation. Here’s a key quote:

“Ecosystems forged over time to thrive by being burned every 60 to 100 years are now being scorched every 10 to 15 years — or even more often.”

And a larger excerpt:

As scientists comb through Southern California’s burnt landscape, they’re finding new evidence that frequent fires are gradually replacing chaparral and sagebrush with highly flammable and prolific nonnative weeds.

Orange County’s canyons offer a stark illustration. The 28,400 acres that burned over three weeks are in various stages of recovery. Upper elevations of the Santa Ana Mountains remain a moonscape.

But throughout the foothills, weeds are in full bloom amid blackened native sagebrush and grass.

Known as “type conversion,” the landscape change is having a profound effect: extending the region’s annual fire season, deepening the threat of mudslides and endangering animal species.

The culprit isn’t the size of wildfires, but their frequency. Ecosystems forged over time to thrive by being burned every 60 to 100 years are now being scorched every 10 to 15 years — or even more often.

Nonnative weeds have been encroaching on Southern California’s wild lands for centuries, carried over in the hoofs of Spanish livestock, accidentally spread through contaminated crop seed, intentionally planted along streams to control erosion.

In recent years, scientists have argued that a fire frequency that would benefit a conifer forest through thinning would destroy a coastal ecology by helping to spread invasive species, such as mustard, star thistle and ripgut brome.

Rich Hawkins, a veteran fire chief for the Cleveland National Forest, learned the rule of thumb from an old forest ranger 30 years ago.

“If a site burns three times within 20 years,” Hawkins said, “you’ll see most of the chaparral lost on that site.”

Because of imprecise historical habitat mapping, just how much of Southern California’s wild lands have undergone type conversion because of fire is unknown.

“But clearly, a large part of the native landscape has already been lost,” Keeley said.

Firefighters hate nonnative weeds as much as biologists do. Mustard, for instance, can quickly grow hip high with winter rains, then dry out just as fast, becoming a field of kindling.

It’s one reason the region’s fire season is getting longer and more destructive. “It makes it impossible to fight a wind-driven fire,” Hawkins said. “That’s why thousands of homes burned down in San Diego County.”