(Editor’s note. Today we are welcoming another writer and photographer to the Wildfire Today family. Tom Story, based in Phoenix, is a former newspaper photographer, now self employed editorial and commercial shooter, a one time National Interagency Fire Center contract photographer, and a longtime friend of the wildland fire community. Tom not only researched and wrote the article, but took the photos as well. Bill.)
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The crew from Kaibab National Forest Engine 314 — (left to right) Berkeley Krueger, Ben Winkler, and Keith Halloran, consult a map as they plan the day’s managed ignitions on the Sitgreaves Complex August 8, 2014.
“When monsoons arrive in northern Arizona, it is the ideal time for us to manage fires. Fire plays an absolutely essential role in keeping the forest healthy and in reducing the likelihood of high-severity fires that could threaten our neighboring communities,” said Art Gonzales, fire staff officer for the Kaibab National Forest.
So when a lightning strike on Sitgreaves Mountain, between Flagstaff and Williams, Ariz., on the evening of July 13, 2014, ignited a fire, one of several started on the Kaibab National Forest from summer thunderstorms that day, the Kaibab had plans in place to manage it as a resource benefit fire with the hope that they would be able to have the fire treat up to 19,000 acres of mostly ponderosa pine.
Ground fire from managed ignitions moves across the floor of the Kaibab National Forest on the Sitgreaves Complex August 8, 2014.
Resource benefit fires are managed for multiple objectives including reducing accumulated forest litter and fuels, maintaining fire in a fire-adapted ecosystem, increasing firefighter and public safety, and protecting cultural resources and wildlife habitat.
The Sitgreaves Fire occurred in an area that had been clear cut in the late 1800s-then reseeded, leaving a large area of similar aged trees and because of subsequent policies by the Forest Service, pretty much untouched by fire for over one hundred years.
The Grand Canyon National Park Helicopter, Papillon Helicopters’ A-Star B3 8PA, was used on the Kaibab National Forest’s Sitgreaves Complex for aerial ignition using a plastic sphere dispenser (PSD), August 8, 2014.
We have devoted a lot of “ink” to the Pagami Creek fire that burned over 92,000 acres in Minnesota’s Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in September. The U.S. Forest Service has received much criticism for their decision to only manage it, rather than suppress it, not expecting the wind events that pushed the fire dozens of miles to the east and south.
Taking a view that differs from many others that have been expressed publicly is Rod Sando, a former commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Here is an excerpt from an article he wrote for the Star Tribune:
…When the Pagami Creek fire started, the decision was made to allow it to burn. It was located well inside the wilderness, and it was unlikely under normal conditions that it would travel outside the wilderness boundary.
That, of course, changed with the very unusual weather, which caused the fire to completely change its character. The probability of this was extremely low, and the actions taken before Sept. 10 were prudent and within the usual assessment of risk.
One significant fact that should be understood is that when a fire has extreme behavior, as in the case of the Pagami Creek fire, it is nearly impossible to control. The only alternative is to let it run its course and get out of the way.
It also needs to be appreciated that predicting fire behavior is one of the most complex and difficult tasks land managers must face. Even with good weather forecasts, it is still very difficult to predict how fire will behave.
Meanwhile, the long-term benefits of the Pagami Creek fire (and others in the future) will enhance the values of the BWCA. It may not seem so at the moment, but restoring fire to the system in this fashion is the best alternative if long-term ecological integrity is to be protected.
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It is important that we support the managers who have the courage to take the risks necessary to use fire to manage the land rather than second-guessing their decisions.
The official review of the fire will help everyone assess what was done, and I expect it to show that the Forest Service operated in a competent and professional manner. To continue with blame and recrimination at this point is counterproductive.
Will suggestions for improvement emerge? You can count on it.
The lessons learned from this fire will certainly strengthen the program, and we should have confidence that the next time this occurs (which could be as long as 100 years from now), it will be managed as well or better.
My thanks to the Forest Service for doing the best that it could under very difficult circumstances.
Evacuating horses during a fire storm
The wildfires of October, 2007 in southern California required over 1,000,000 people to evacuate, destroyed at least 1,500 homes, and burned 500,000 acres. An article at the Horse Channel describes the plight of Micaela Myers, a horse owner that struggled to relocate two horses that were in the path of one of the fires.
As standards for particulate pollution continue to tighten, land managers that approve or conduct prescribed burns must manage smoke production carefully to minimize smoke impacts in sensitive areas. BlueSky Playground is an interactive, web-based tool for exploring smoke emissions and resulting downwind smoke concentrations from wild and prescribed fires. It connects to state-of-the-science models within the BlueSky Framework, providing access to powerful modeling tools in an easy-to-use interface. BlueSky Playground is freely available and requires no login to access the core features. BlueSky Playground has recently been expanded to provide more useful tools for prescribed burn planning and is part of the Wildland Fire Decision Support System Air Quality suite (WFDSS-AQ). We will demonstrate BlueSky Playground and show how it can be used in both wild and prescribed burn analyses.
Comments on articles here at Wildfire Today
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Pagami Creek fire, burning near Lake Polly, 9-12-2011. Photo: Hans Martin, USGS
When lightning ignited the Pagami Creek fire in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness on August 18, the Superior National Forest made a decision to not suppress it, but to herd it around as necessary to keep it within a reasonable maximum management area while allowing natural processes to do their thing. After 12 days the fire burning in the northeast corner of Minnesota had only grown to approximately 130 acres, and fire management officials may have thought things were going well — until September 12 when everything went to hell. Strong winds gusting up to 35 mph spread the fire 16 miles to the east. And now, $5.7 million and 93,000 acres later, you have the third largest fire in the history of Minnesota, meteorologists are tracking the smoke as it passes over China, and the local newspaper, the Ely Echo, has written a scathing editorial criticizing the decisions the U. S. Forest Service made.
I spent a lot of time on specialized “fire use” incident management teams managing these types of fires. It IS possible to manage a fire, herding it around, without fully suppressing it. But there are dozens of variables that have to be scrutinized by extremely knowledgeable, experienced, smart people to pull it off successfully. Something in the equation was missing on the Pagami Creek fire, and it just points out how difficult a limited suppression strategy can be to perfectly execute over a period of weeks or months. Sometimes you make good decisions or you are lucky, and the weather makes the team and the agency look good. Other times, mistakes in judgement are made and the weather blows them up into a hundred thousand black acres, and smoke columns are tracked across China.
