Prescribed Burning
Prescribed BurningIt's a promising tool, this idea of prescribed burning to defuel forests and help restore ecosystem health. But it's risky business, too, and smoke clouds public acceptance.
I THOUGHT FIRE SEASON HAD ENDED. BUT THE SCENT OF PINE SMOKE IN MY NOSTRILS LATE LAST OCTOBER TOLD ME SOMETHING DIFFERENT.
Deep in Oregon's ponderosa paradise on Winema National Forest, my wife Maurine and I had just finished flagging a new interpretive trail as Forest volunteers. As we drove a remote road just east of Crater Lake National Park, we smelled the smoke. Then we saw flames.
We relaxed a bit when we spotted a yellow-shirted, hard-hatted fire crew from the Chemult Ranger district. They were matter-of-factly tending flank and back lines (see illustration, page 16) on a low-intensity ground fire they'd set earlier. It gradually burned through bitterbrush and light woody debris, mimicking the natural understory fires of old and thus protecting a stand of mature ponderosas. The fire was moving ionals throughout the U.S. In other words, the present emerging technology is a lot more parochial (meaning practical) than political - a refreshing thought.
"Honey, your fire has escaped.!"
"There's no guarantee you'll not get a big rip," (see terminology sidebar, page 57) says a Forest Service fire officer on the eastern seaboard.
"When you're messing with fire, there's always a chance one will escape," echoes his counterpart in California's Sierras.
"The fuels are tricky..." adds Ron Meyers, who directs prescribed fires for The Nature Conservancy from his base in Florida.
Such concerns are real.
Paul Tine, acting Forest Service fuels specialist for the sprawling eastern U.S. region, remembers well what he calls "the lowest day I've ever had in my 18-year career." As fire boss on a 40-acre prescribed burn on Minnesota's Superior National Forest in the '80s, he had taken a little time off to attend a fire seminar, leaving his mop-up crew in good hands after about nine days of solid progress. Then he received a call from his wife.
"Honey, your fire has escaped!" she reported. Apparently a rogue wind had come up, and his prescribed burn had suddenly become a 2,000-acre "project fire," to use Forest Service lingo.
On May 5, 1980, a 213-acre slash burn in jackpine on Michigan's Manistee National Forest, fanned by the winds of an unexpected cold front, jumped a major highway, consumed 25,000 acres in one afternoon, took the life of one Forest Service firefighter, and destroyed 44 homes on adjacent private lands.
And early in 1993, a 15,000-acre prescribed fire on New Mexico's Santa Fe National Forest was going fine - until 60-mph winds unexpectedly struck a small stand of pinyon pine and juniper, producing a crown fire that caught a burning crew off-guard, killing one member (even though the Buchanan fire was later pronounced an ecological success).
Tales like these are, thank heavens, exceptions in the new prescribed-fire technology. And though the learning curve has shown clearly that such fires can help control fuel overloads while...
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