From a Colorado TV station (emphasis added):
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KKTV) – Firefighters are getting closer to full containment on an 83-acre fire burning on the Hayman Fire burn scar in Jefferson County.
The fire was reported early Saturday afternoon 3 miles northwest of the Cheesman Reservoir. Named the 560 Fire after nearby Forest Service Road 560, the fire is burning in an area thick with dead and fallen trees.
“These trees not only create a tripping hazard for firefighters but they also put firefighters at risk from falling trees. The fire is burning in very steep and rugged terrain,” the U.S. Forest Service said Sunday.
Despite the hazards, firefighters made significant progress Sunday into Monday, bringing containment up to 80 percent. They have also been able to keep the fire from growing; USFS says the new reported size — 83 acres, up from a reported 68 on Sunday — was due to better mapping.
“Firefighters were able to map the entire fire today and that mapping increased the acreage to 83 acres. The 560 fire has not grown but some hot spots still remain in the interior of the fire as dead trees from the old Hayman burn scar continue to burn,” Forest Service said Monday.
For whatever it’s worth, here are the photos from the story Steve posted.
Am I the only one who does not perceive “grave danger” here? Yes, there are down logs and some standing snags from the earlier Hayman Fire, but I don’t see great resource risk here… I suspect area will “green up” pretty quickly after fire subsides.
I also do not perceive “grave danger” here. As FDR said, in this specific case we have “nothing to fear but fear itself.”
Well, I was hoping to find something to back up the writer but…
https://www.google.com/maps/@39.2533797,-105.3274508,142m/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
Just like you said, Jim.
One can also see that not much has grown back since the Hayman Fire.
I spend a fair amount of time in the area, and I think the point was that due to the dead and fallen trees it is harder for firefighters than it would otherwise be. But there is no particular “grave danger”- I don’t think the article said there was.
I don’t remember salvage being a big issue in this country at that time, perhaps due to lack of timber industry? Maybe someone else remembers more. And indeed, the Hayman Fire was in 2002 and there are areas with little regeneration. There have been different studies that seem to come to different conclusions as to why – distance from seed sources? https://www.fs.fed.us/research/highlights/highlights_display.php?in_high_id=975
climate change?
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2017/01/30/colorados-wildfire-stricken-forests-showing-limited-recovery
To go back to a previous topic, it makes you wonder what the conditions were for the trees that were burned to become established when they did (100-200 years ago? during the mining era?)
Not too far away from there, yesterday, I did visit this thinning yesterday which appears to have been an intervention by Denver Water to put a shaded fuelbreak on a ridgetop to help suppression folks. Indeed, this may have been seen as a “logging operation” in the “backcountry” (I have never seen this defined precisely). But no logs were removed as there are no roads. Maybe others know more about this prescription?
Luckily, unsalvaged post-fire landscape are heterogeneous and remain so for decades, so when reburns do occur, they typically affect just a small subset of the previous burn footprint, and add another layer of diversity to the landscape.