I’ve found my hoard of old A-Rock Fire photos, from 1990! I will be preparing a bigger repeat photography article, after I finish selecting and scanning. Like several other fires this summer, the A-Rock Fire started in the Merced River canyon, burning northward. I really believe that this is the model of what will happen to the Rim Fire, if we do nothing to reduce those dead and dying fuels. Active management opponents never want to talk about the devastation of re-burns, as an aspect of their “natural and beneficial” wildfires. Most of those snags have “vaporized” since this 1989 wildfire. Indeed, this example should be considered when deciding post-fire treatments for both the Rim Fire and the King Fire, too.
It should be relatively easy to find this spot, to do some repeat photography, along the Big Oak Flat Road.
Another consequence of doing nothing to reduce the snags or badly burned trees is firefighter safety for the next fire. not to mention the soil damage that will be donw if fire returns before the dead material has rotted. We now have large areas of burned forests in California and other parts of the West where it is no longer possible from a safety standpoint to commit either ground or aerial firefighters because of the danger of people being hit by falling snags. This year, according to Lessons Learned 14 firefighters have been hit by falling trees or their limbs.