The Saint Charles Fire in Pueblo County was estimated at 266 acres Tuesday morning, October 24, and still at zero percent containment. The incident management team said warm temperatures and the lack of humidity recovery overnight had caused the fire to grow substantially, and the Pueblo Chieftain reported today that the fire is now over 300 acres.
Saint Charles Fire photo by Pueblo County Sheriff’s Office
The Saint Charles Fire started October 14. Additional resources have been ordered and are arriving daily.
Crews reported slightly increased humidity and cooler temperatures yesterday, but further warm and sunny conditions were forecast for Wednesday, with shifting light winds picking up in the afternoon. Stronger winds out of the west at 11-15 mph with gusts up to 20 mph were predicted for Wednesday by late evening, with increased winds and fire activity resulting in further smoky conditions.
About 170 firefighters are working on the fire.
Sikorsky UH-60A helicopter at work on the Saint Charles Fire — from the incident facebook page.
Resources include three helicopters, two SEATs, and three large airtankers, along with an air attack aircraft.
Four nearby neighborhoods are on pre-evacuation notice, including Tara J, Simonson Meadows, Aspen Acres, and the entire San Isabel area; the Pueblo County Sheriff issued a burn ban for the county until the fire is contained.
According to the Custer County Sheriff’s Office, the fire is about a half mile from the Custer County line.
Family members of three people who were killed last year in a flash flood that originated from the burn scar of the largest wildfire in New Mexico’s recorded history are suing the U.S. Forest Service. The wrongful death lawsuit, according to a PBS report, was filed earlier this month and alleges the USFS was negligent in managing the original prescribed burn and also failed to close roads and prevent access to areas at risk of flooding after the Hermit’s Peak – Calf Canyon Fire.
Three people from west Texas were vacationing at a family cabin in northern New Mexico in July of 2022 when seasonal monsoon storms hit the burn scar near Tecolote Creek. The resulting flash flood swept the three people to their deaths.
The lawsuit also contends that the USFS failed to warn the victims about the dangers of the wildfire and of potential flooding in the area. Neither the USFS nor the USDA has formally responded to the lawsuit, which states that the USDA did not provide a settlement offer or a denial of the claims that were initially filed in the case earlier this year.
The escaped fire burned more than 341,000 acres between early April and late June in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains and was the largest of the record-breaking New Mexico fire season; it was in fact the largest of 2022 in the lower 48 states. It burned over 900 structures, including several hundred homes, and threatened more than 12,000 other structures in the area. A smoldering prescribed fire project rekindled and escaped control, merging with another prescribed burn that had also escaped. The combined fires burned for months.
The Las Dispensas prescribed fire, 1:07 p.m. MDT April 6, 2022. USFS photo
Congress allotted nearly $4 billion to compensate victims, and FEMA has paid over $101 million so far. Many families, though, complain that the federal government is not acknowledging the extent of the damage or the emotional toll the fire has taken, according to a Denver7 report.
FEMA has paid out just 2 percent of the fund designated to help wildfire victims rebuild. Some can’t wait much longer, and Source NM reported last month that many survivors are in limbo as they await compensation for the fire.
The prescribed fire was originally planned to reduce the risk of wildfire. The first small spot fire occurred at 1:35 and was controlled. At 2:26 another quarter-acre spot fire was caught.
Radio communication with some of the personnel was discovered to be a problem. It was later found that Bravo Holding was using a separate “crew net” and was not monitoring the planned frequency.
Ignition stopped a couple of times as spot fires were suppressed, but by about 4 p.m. when the RH dropped to 10 percent there were at least a dozen spots. Shortly thereafter the burn boss requested contingency resources and all resources were pulled off the fire. At 4:25 a dispatcher reported that the contingency resources were actually in Taos, New Mexico, 70 miles away, at a training exercise.
About 4 hours after ignition began, a dispatcher told the agency administrator that the burn boss and FMO recommended it be declared a wildfire; the administrator made the wildfire declaration and the Las Dispensas burn officially became the Hermits Peak Fire.
An 80-page report (4.7Mb PDF) by the USFS later concluded that management of the prescribed fire generally followed the approved prescribed fire plan for most — but not all — of the parameters. The people on the ground thought they were within (or close to) the prescription limits, but fuel moistures were lower than they realized and the increased heavy fuel loading after fireline prep also contributed to increased risk of escape.
FROM THE REPORT: “We ask them to make up ground on long-needed and far-behind proactive restoration work while barely allowing time to recover from a previously taxing wildland fire response and preparing to respond yet again. We ask them to restore fire process to ecosystems that have evolved to burn, but many of which are now primed for extreme fire behavior due to our own decisions to exclude or suppress fire in these areas.”
A recent study from UCLA found that a projected 2° Celsius increase in global temperatures by 2060 would reduce the number of days when a prescribed burn could be safely set by 17 percent. The Four Corners region could see as much as a 29 percent decrease in favorable days, while the Pacific Southwest could see a 24 percent decrease.
The main driver behind the decrease in safe prescribed fire days is a combination of a decrease in large-diameter fuel moisture across seasons, an increase in vegetation aridity, and an increase in smoke-trapping low-level stagnation events.
“The narrowing of prescribed fire windows, as well as increases in extreme wildfire burning conditions at other times, will further challenge fire and land management agencies and entities already constrained by limited budgets and growing administrative burdens,” the study said.
However, the study also found that winter may increasingly become a viable season for prescribed fires with researchers predicting a four percent rise in favorable days, especially for northern states. Regions that have historically been too moist or too cool to support prescribed fire may see a boost in safe burn days, assisted by vegetation aridification. Additionally, decreases in safe prescribed burn days mainly affect forested locations, while non-forested areas would see substantial safe burn days.
The study ended by recommending a huge shift in USFS agency fire crew staffing. Seasonal wildland fire workers, who are usually laid off over the winter based on historical burn patterns, may need to capitalize on burn days during winter if safe burn days drastically decrease over the summer. The study also pointed to other research that found winter and spring to be underutilized seasons for prescribed fire in California.
“Our findings provide direct evidence supporting recent calls for an expanded year-round fire management workforce whose responsibilities extend beyond fighting wildfires to also encompass the management of prescribed fire,” the study said. “These findings also highlight the growing importance of tangible support—including increased funding and removal of existing regulatory barriers–for cultural burning practices by Indigenous fire practitioners, including via interagency partnerships.”
The U.S. faces a wildfire crisis that costs the federal government $2.5 billion a year — a crisis that a recent report [PDF] concluded the feds can’t face alone.
President Biden’s Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in 2021 created the federal Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission and charged it with recommending improvements to federal agencies’ management of wildfire across the landscape. The commission was tasked with creating new policy recommendations to address the wildfire crisis.
The commission released the culmination of its efforts in September, and it includes numerous proposed changes that forest managers and wildland firefighters have been suggesting for decades. The commission ultimately found that many of these changes are needed soon to adequately reduce the risk of wildfires throughout the U.S.
“The Commission urges Congress to take swift action to advance the holistic solutions needed to reduce the risk of wildfire to the nation,” the report says. “Only through comprehensive action can we hope to prepare for the wildfires of today and, critically, the wildfires of tomorrow.”
The commission listed 148 recommended changes in its report, which focused on eight points:
Shift focus from fire response to pre-fire planning and risk mitigation
Treat the wildfire crisis as a public health crisis
Unify local and federal resources
Improve community and ecosystem resilience in post-fire areas
Increase pay and hiring for wildland firefighters
Update the fire management system with current technology
Significantly increase investments to reduce long-term costs and risks
Enhance work across jurisdictions
“Rather than selecting one or more potential recommendations to carry forward for implementation, the Commission urges audiences of this report to take an ‘all of the above’ approach,” the report says. “There is no single solution to the wildfire crisis; the scale of the issues necessitates solutions that are integrated, comprehensive, and broad in scope. The urgency of this need cannot be overstated.”
Black Mountain Hotshots, September 2012 Mustang Complex, Idaho — Kari Greer photo
Pacific Gas & Electric — one of the nation’s largest utilities whose equipment has ignited some of California’s deadliest wildfires — wants to bury powerlines in some of its most at-risk areas to prevent fires like the 2018 Camp Fire, started by PG&E lines, that killed 85 people and burned the town of Paradise to the ground. Estimated total cost of the Camp Fire was about $422 billion.
But state regulators are balking at the utility’s plan, the Associated Press reported, because it would take too long and cost an estimated $5.9 billion. The company’s customers, who already pay some of the highest rates in the country, would have to foot the bill.
UPDATE 10/18/2023:According to a KEZI-TV report, Pacific Power recently announced it will receive $150 million in federal grant funding to improve its infrastructure for grid resilience and wildfire mitigation. The funding is from the U.S. Department of Energy, with just under $100 million earmarked for PacifiCorp’s grid resiliency project to reduce the effects of extreme weather on the grid serving disadvantaged communities at highest wildfire risk. An additional $50 million is earmarked for PacifiCorp’s Resiliency Enhancement for Fire Mitigation and Operational Risk Management project.
Regulators want PG&E to put protective covers over many of its overhead powerlines instead of burying them. The cover approach is cheaper, but riskier. PG&E says that burying a powerline reduces the chance it will start a fire by 99 percent because it can’t be blown down by windstorms. The protective cover would reduce that chance by just 62 percent.
Vegetation can cause faults and fires electrically. Distribution Fault Anticipation can detect this type of vegetation fault before the dangerous situation escalates. (Texas A&M Engineering)
MyMotherLode.com reported that the company is hoping to bury 2,100 miles of powerlines by 2026. But the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC), whose members are appointed by the governor, has not signed off on the plan, out of concerns about the estimated cost.
The Manteca Bulletin reported that customers would be expected to pay PG&E at least $40 more per month; the burying plan was put forth after the utility’s lowest rates were increased 170 percent or more since 2006.
PG&E originally wanted a 26 percent increase, and is now asking for an 18 percent increase. The PUC said they’d consider a maximum of 13 percent.
PG&E filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 after it faced more than $30 billion in damages for wildfires started by its equipment. The company prefers the burying plan, which it filed with state regulators last year.The PUC will likely decide the issue in November.
The acreage burned to date in California is less than a third of the state’s 5-year average, according to Cal Fire, and experts attribute the lower numbers to the historic winter storms and a record snowpack in the Pacific Southwest. But those “atmospheric river” storms resulted in huge fuels growth that could, with gusty autumn winds, mean wildfires into November or even December.
“Now is not the time for people to let their guard down,” said Brian Newman, assistant chief of Cal Fire’s Amador-El Dorado Unit. “We still have fire season ahead of us before we get into winter rains that would finally end it.”
California’s dry, windy, and hot weather conditions from spring through late autumn can produce moderate to severe wildfires. Pre-1800, when the area was much more forested and the ecology also much more resilient, 4.4 million acres of forest and shrubland burned each year. California land area totals about 100 million acres; since 2000 annual burned acreage has ranged between 90,000 acres (0.09 percent of the state), and 1,590,000 acres (1.59 percent). During the 2020 wildfire season alone, over 8,100 fires contributed to the burning of nearly 4.5 million acres of land.
According to the Sacramento Bee, with 317,191 acres burned so far this year, that’s under 30 percent of the 5-year average of 1.2 million acres for the same year-to-date period. Even though this season’s totaled a “normal” number of new fires, the extra precipitation and cool nights kept the acreage down. Without a dramatic weather change in the next couple of months, California will be experiencing its second straight year of mild wildfire season.
Nighttime on the Smith River Complex, inciweb photo by Adan Castillo Uribe.
Last year, fewer than 363,000 acres burned. This year’s largest fire, the Smith River Complex near the Oregon border, totaled 95,017 — under 100,000 acres. In 2020 approximately 4.3 million acres burned, and in 2021, 2.6 million acres. Climate scientists are confident that warming temperatures have increased the severity and length of fire seasons, but many hesitate to actually attribute California’s mild 2023 wildfire season to climate change. “I tend not to give much credence to the idea that single events and single summers or winters can be ascribed to climate change,” said Hugh Safford, chief scientist of Vibrant Planet and faculty at the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy.
“There’s no question that climate warming is having a major impact on expanding the fire season and increasing severity,” he said. “But California has the highest inter-annual variability and precipitation of any state in the United States. It is normal to go from a record wet year to a record — or nearly record — dry year, and that’s just the way it is.”
According to the Daily Mail, Patrick T. Brown, a lecturer at Johns Hopkins University, says he deliberately omitted a key fact in a climate change piece recently published to ensure that editors would run it — the fact that 80 percent of wildfires are human-caused. Brown gave as an example a Nature paper he recently authored, “Climate warming increases extreme daily wildfire growth risk in California.” Brown said the paper focuses exclusively on how climate change has affected extreme wildfire behavior — but ignores other key factors.
He said academic journals now reject papers that don’t “support certain narratives” and said the media focus on climate change as the root cause of wildfires — including the recent devastating fires in Hawaii. Brown wrote in a piece for The Free Press that this distorts a great deal of climate science research.
But the climate models seen by Erwan Monier, associate professor of climate change impacts at UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, make him predict that this upcoming year’s combination of a strong El Niño and warmer ocean temperatures could mean another wet year. “This is most likely the configuration that will control California’s climate this winter,” he said, “and will have implications for the next wildfire season. Because if we have another very wet winter, that means we’ll have even more moisture that could again lead to mild fires next year.”
We already see effects that scientists predicted, such as the loss of sea ice, melting glaciers and ice sheets, sea level rise, and more intense heat waves.
Scientists predict global temperature increases from human-made greenhouse gases will continue. Severe weather damage will also increase and intensify.
Global climate change is not a future problem. Changes to Earth’s climate, driven by increased human emissions of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, are already creating widespread effects on the environment: glaciers and ice sheets are shrinking, river and lake ice is breaking up earlier, plant and animal geographic ranges are shifting, and plants and trees are blooming sooner. Wildfires and fire seasons are just a piece of the many changes that are coming — changes that are here now.
