Fire and Fuels

Pretty sure this isn’t about wildfire risk based on this map.

The Hotshot Wakeup is best at covering this stuff, but we have folks in the media saying that wildfires will get worse, due to climate change.

Meanwhile, we also have the military-industrial complex developing early sensing and unpersonned firefighting helicopters, which conceivably can reduce spread.

We have fire retardant litigation, the EPA working on permits,  one fire retardant contract that is under protest and can’t be awarded, and one for more “environmentally friendly” retardant that eats away at the metal in aircraft such that some will not be available for the 2024 fire season.

I’m not sure how scientists can model the climate fingerprint of all that.

We have power companies shutting off power (so conceivably we will have fewer ignitions) although their approaches raise questions (in Colorado the PUC will be investigating), and maybe also have unequal impacts based on socioeconomic conditions.

More than 150,000 Xcel customers lost power because of the intentional shut offs or damaged equipment during the winds that included gusts of nearly 100 mph Saturday into Sunday. As of 10 a.m. Wednesday, the company reported 75 outages affecting 929 customers.

Residents and at least one food bank were forced to toss unrefrigerated food, and several metro Denver schools were closed through Tuesday. Employees at a Boulder wastewater treatment plant had to scramble to make sure raw sewage didn’t flow into Boulder Creek when power was cut to the plant’s two electric substations.

Then there’s this fascinating story from the San Fran Chronicle on for which zip codes State Farm will be non-renewing policies. We can check out the map and see .. whatever it’s about, it’s not about wildfire.

According to the article:

State Farm wrote in state filings that it would not renew policies “that present the most substantial wildfire or fire following earthquake hazards, or that are in areas of significant concentration.”

And probably not about earthquakes.  If you go to that link it says:

Excellent story from the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network. While some of us think that NEPA via plan amendments would be good, the work that the San Juan is doing without a plan amendment is also good.

 Assessing local fire danger, weather data, and utilizing Risk Management Assistance (RMA) analytical tools, the Forest developed a plan to bring the fire out to the prescribed fire unit/POD boundary. The local team conducted a structured risk-based conversation using the Incident Strategic Alignment Process (ISAP) framework, where agency administrators and local stakeholders collaboratively evaluated critical values at risk, developed strategic actions, documented risks to responders, and determined the probability of success.

The story is worth reading in its entirety, I just excerpted the lessons learned below.

Key Lessons Learned

Identify windows of opportunity: Fuel and weather conditions and resource availability are dynamic. Thinking outside the box can help realize opportunities to manage wildfire differently. Additionally, this year’s large incident can be used as the next fire’s best holding feature – as demonstrated during Trail Springs. Incorporating new disturbances into pre-response planning can help maximize their potential as holding features.

Provide clear leader’s intent: Without clear intent from agency administrators, firefighters and IMTs default to their experience and often suppress fires at the smallest possible size and earliest possible opportunity. Clear intent is required to consistently execute an alternative approach, and ensure we leverage our highly skilled fire workforce in pursuit of strategies that will more effectively reduce long-term ecosystem, community and firefighter risk.

Invest in stakeholder engagement: Working with partners and local collaboratives well before a fire starts is imperative to fostering a sense of shared responsibility. Ongoing communication and dialogue with stakeholders before, during, and after fires is critical to a successful, long-term fire management strategy. These efforts build social capital to better support complex decisions both now and in the future.

Leverage analytics and facilitate risk-based dialogues: Using analytics to facilitate strategic, risk-informed, and transparent dialogues can improve alignment between incident leadership, land managers and firefighters on the ground, resulting in higher quality decisions and increased trust.

Be prepared: Facilitating and participating in collaborative pre-season strategic planning efforts, such as Potential Operational Delineations (PODs), can help prepare a landscape to manage fires more proactively by creating a common operating picture and institutionalizing local fire knowledge. Additionally, actively preparing for long-duration events, anticipating, and mitigating late-season workforce fatigue, and building local fire management programs with the needed skill sets to manage long-duration fires can help develop local capacity and evolve the fire management paradigm.

Communicate the “why”: Good decisions may come with considerable institutional and personal risk, but with thoughtful, inclusive, and transparent processes risks can be considered more holistically. Understanding the “why” behind decisions provides critical context and can help create alignment between land managers, incident teams, firefighters, and the local community.

Historical fire regimes and the 2020 Labor Day fires on the west side of Oregon and Washington with locations of large (>10,000 ha) and small fires (<10,000 ha), b) Reburns following the 1902 Yacolt Fire in 1902 in the western Washington Cascades, c) Reburns following the 1933 Tillamook Fire in the Oregon Coast Range.

2020 fire perimeters and mapped extent of “stand-replacing fire” in 1902 and perimeters of known large westside fires.

I know many folks are interested in this topic…here’s the link.  We might have talked about these studies before. Thanks to Nick Smith !

Hidden stories of fire: tree rings reveal fire histories of Pacific Northwest rainforests

Until reasonably accurate and ecologically appropriate language is used by the Forest Service and their collaborators to describe their forest management strategies and activities, fundamental ecological issues will not be well understood, and the necessary paradigm shift to protect our forests and communities will not occur.

A range of misleading language and terms, picked up by many including the media, create confusion and miscommunication. For example, the term “forest restoration,” when used by the agency, often means aggressive cutting and too-frequent burning of large tracts of forest, sometimes removing as much as 90% of standing trees and most of the natural forest understory. Generally conservation organizations and members of the public do not consider such activities, with the resulting damage to soils and waterways, to be ecological restoration. Instead they consider restoration to be strategically improving the overall structure and function of forest ecosystems and processes while causing minimal impacts. Strategies to achieve this include replanting riparian areas, protecting soil microbiomes, promoting beaver habitation, fencing out cows, and decommissioning excessive forest roads. The goal is to create conditions that hold moisture in forest ecosystems, which makes landscapes naturally more fire resistant and bring them into a state of greater ecological integrity.

“Restoration” has become a euphemism the Forest Service uses, borrowed from the language of conservation, that makes what the agency actually does to our forests more palatable. Other misleading agency forest management terms are “thinning” (removing most of the vegetation from a forest is too heavy-handed to be considered thinning), “fuels treatments” (trees and understory are so much more than fuels), “forest health” (there are no clear parameters for forest health), and forest “resiliency.”

“Resiliency” means the capacity of an ecosystem to return to its previous condition after impacts, such as fire. Forests that have been impacted by having had large amounts of vegetation removed due to aggressive cutting and continued too-frequent prescribed fire do not tend to return to their previous condition, and perpetually remain in a degraded state. Untreated or very lightly-treated forests that are allowed to regenerate after a fire may return to their previous condition. So which is resiliency?

The Forest Service concludes analysis of the vast majority of its vegetation cutting and burning projects with a “Finding of No Significant Impact.” Such findings are based on criteria of significance although the findings are often challenged, but the actual words imply that the impacts are relatively minor and not substantive enough to be particularly concerned about – even though we can often plainly see otherwise. A Finding of No Significant Impact is routinely applied to highly damaging projects that leave forests ecologically broken for decades to come. The impacts of such projects cannot be reasonably called “not significant.”

Interested parties trying to obtain information about Forest Service landscape management often must rely on FOIA, or the Freedom of Information Act. However, substantive FOIA requests can now literally take years. When the requests are finally fulfilled, it’s often too late to be useful. To call this “Freedom of Information” from the Forest Service is yet another misnomer. It might be more accurately called the “Nearly Impossible to Obtain Information Act” at this point.

In 2022, three wildfires were ignited by the Forest Service in the Santa Fe National Forest during implementation of prescribed burns, which escaped and burned a total of 387,000 acres. There have been many articles and op-eds written locally and nationally about these fires that point to them as examples of why we need even more thinning and burning of our forests to moderate the effects of wildfire, without mentioning the fact that the fires were actually caused by escaped prescribed burns — or that fact was included, but as more or less a footnote. The Cerro Grande Fire, which was ignited in 2000 due to an escaped prescribed burn (by the US Park Service that time) has also been used as such an example. To do so, without acknowledging the importance of agency prescribed burns having precipitated these same wildfires, amounts to a kind of circular reasoning that suggests we need even more of what caused much of the wildfire we are trying to prevent  – albeit with some procedural changes and further safety measures. It’s a misuse of both language and logic, and clouds the underlying issues.

Articles and op-eds concerning the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire often make statements such as “the Forest Service accidentally triggered New Mexico’s largest wildfire.” This is not entirely false, as the fire was not started on purpose. But what is much more accurate to write is that the Forest Service recklessly or negligently ignited New Mexico’s largest wildfire. The agency had to know it was a substantial risk to ignite the Las Dispensas prescribed burn, which precipitated the Hermits Peak Fire, during a particularly intense high wind pattern, with red flag warnings nearby. The agency had to be clear that if the fire did escape, it would likely spread fast and be very difficult to extinguish until the monsoons came months later. Locals were warning those responsible for the burn not to light up a burn at that time, because it was obvious to them that it would be very dangerous. The Forest Service did not heed their warnings. The Chief’s review of the Hermits Peak Fire indicates that the Forest Service was feeling pressured to catch up on implementing prescribed burns, because they have committed to greatly increasing cutting and burning treatments in our forests, even though safer burn windows are decreasing due to the warming and drying climate.

Additionally, Forest Service personnel knew fire was spreading from the Calf Canyon burn piles 10 days before the Calf Canyon Fire officially broke out during a high wind event. They made efforts to contain the spreading pile burns. They also carried out aerial surveillance over the pile burn area during those days. It was predictable that in early April, the winds could rapidly spread any escaping fire. That the agency did not make a full out effort to address every pile, considering that they knew some of them had been smoldering and that high winds were coming, has at least the appearance of recklessness and/or negligence. Almost two years later, no analysis of this fire has been released by the Forest Service. To use the word “accidentally” in regards to the ignition of this destructive wildfire, which burned entire communities, does not provide any realistic understanding of what likely occurred. A realistic understanding could be a basis for making sure such a catastrophe never happens again.

During the weeks after the Calf Canyon Fire began, the Forest Service identified the cause of the fire as “under investigation,” even though they had been surveilling and attempting to contain the escaping pile burns from the beginning of the incident. Given this, “under investigation” cannot be construed as a reasonably accurate description of what the Forest Service knew about the cause of the Calf Canyon Fire. They surely knew the cause from the very beginning with an extremely high degree of probability. It took several weeks for the Forest Service to finally announce that the Calf Canyon Fire was also precipitated by their own actions. This lack of transparency created even more distrust and anger in an already traumatized community.

In a recent article about the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, the Forest Service was quoted as stating “Record-setting blazes have become common in the West, where risks have reached crisis proportions.” This statement is somewhat true, and yet highly misleading at the same time. It would be substantially more accurate to at least mention that much of the total “wildfire” burning in our forests is intentionally ignited by the agency.

In August of last year, I wrote an article titled “Forest Service Wildfire Management Policy Run Amok.” In it, I described three New Mexico wildfires in just over a year that were greatly expanded due to intentional ignitions by the US Forest Service. I provided evidence, based on thermal hot spot maps, that during the over 325,000 acre Black Fire, New Mexico’s second largest wildfire, up to half of the fire was likely intentionally ignited by the Forest Service.

Since that time, I met with some local Forest Service leadership along with other conservation organization representatives, and a Forest Service fire specialist confirmed that the agency did intentionally ignite much of the Black Fire, from approximately 10 miles to the south and 6 miles to the northwest of the main fire.

Of course, I asked why the Forest Service expanded and ignited the fire to this extent, burning most of the Aldo Leopold Wilderness, and with substantial collateral damage. We were told it was done for “resource management objectives.” That means the fire expansion was essentially a huge Forest Service intentional burn, similar to a prescribed burn, but with no prescription or advanced planning and/or NEPA  (National Environmental Policy Act) analysis. Yet the Forest Service has continued to call this a “wildfire.” with no mention of the role they played in the expansion of the fire. That is a misleading use of the word “wildfire,” since much of the fire was deliberately ignited by the agency. This perpetuates a cycle of even more cutting and burning, since the Forest Service is trying to moderate the effects of the seemingly increased amounts of wildfire.

So what actually is the wildfire “crisis” that the Forest Service is talking about? I believe it’s possible that overall, the Forest Service ignites or expands wildfires to an extent approaching a third to a half of what is counted as wildfire acres burned. No one should simply accept the Forest Service’s use of the term “wildfire crisis” when the agency is expanding and igniting such a major proportion of the fire on our landscapes. Such wildfire expansions have become policy — it’s referred to as applied wildfire. If we are experiencing a wildfire crisis, then it’s a crisis that can be quickly mitigated by the Forest Service simply refraining from igniting so much unplanned wildfire in our forests.

Fires of all intensities are natural and beneficial to fire-adapted forested landscapes. An open and honest process that defines clear parameters for managing wildfire is required in order to safely and effectively allow moderate amounts of naturally-ignited wildfire to burn in our forests. A revised wildfire management policy must be created through a transparent NEPA process. This means using language that is not loaded with unproven and controversial assumptions or agendas. Otherwise, what has happened to the residents so severely impacted by the Hermits Peak/Calf Canyon Fire, and to our forests, many of which have become over-cut and over-burned, will happen again and again. We should not accept the agency’s statements about a wildfire crisis uncritically.

As long as the media, conservation organizations, and the public continue to accept euphemisms and double-speak to describe forest management strategies and activities, we will not collectively have the understanding to resolve the underlying issues. The issues must be publicly acknowledged with clear and direct language, even though there will always be substantial differences of opinion. The Forest Service and their collaborators should be thoroughly questioned on their use of misleading language. Somehow, the Forest Service and their collaborators, along with conservation organizations, conservation scientists, and the public, will have to come together with a mutual ecological language and understanding. Then, we can design ecologically beneficial projects that allow our forests to reset in a warming climate.

Graphic composite photos:
Top left – Santa Fe watershed, thinned in the early 1990’s and burned twice. Photo: Fred King.
Top right – Prescribed burn smoke over the Santa Fe ski basin. Photo: Satya Kirsch.
Bottom left – A USFWS firefighter watches a prescribed fire. Retweeted by Santa Fe National Forest. Photo by USFWS.
Bottom right – La Cueva Fuel Break, thinned in 2017 and burned once. Photo: Lyra Barron.

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Sarah Hyden is the co-founder and director of The Forest Advocate. The Forest Advocate is a not-for-profit organization that advocates for forests and publishes news and resources for forest protection, with a focus on the Santa Fe National Forest.

Some of you may remember the Patrick Brown and Nature kerfuffle.  I’ve got a whole future post that on “Patrick Brown didn’t go far enough” and one of the “emperor has no clothes” issues is that many climate modelers don’t, or can’t, incorporate actions of people on the landscape to adapt.  Often, they don’t involve or model the work of what we might call “adaptation communities” or specialists in hydrology, wildlife, botany, forests and so on.  As historically, in science world, physics (as in atmospheric modeling and vapor pressure deficits and so on) is cooler than.. all the other sciences.  And as I’ve said before, the models don’t include new and improved technologies that the US is spending megabucks on, either (think wildfire sensors and unpersonned helicopters). It looks like one of the talks is by a person studying ignitions.. which seems important.

So I wanted to give a shout-out to the sciences who always seem to be at the bottom of the scientific pecking order.. the social scientists. And these have continuing ed credits for the Society of American Foresters and the Wildlife Society.

Forest Service R&D has a week devoted to their work: ScienceX Human Dimensions week.  Here’s a link. Here’s the agenda:

Thanks to a TSW reader for this. Anyone interested in viewing and reporting back, please let me know.

Biden officials due on the Hill to address wildfire crisis

Two Senate committees plan hearings this week on reducing the threat of wildfires for forests and nearby communities.

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On Tuesday, The Energy and Natural Resources Committee will take testimony from Biden administration officials on the findings and recommendations of a federal wildfire commission created through the bipartisan infrastructure law.

On Thursday, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hear from state, federal and local officials on responding to the continuing crisis.

The federal commission’s report issued in September 2023 lays out the situation in and around the nation’s forests, especially in areas of the West prone to drought and other climate-related dangers.

Federal fire suppression costs exceed $2.5 billion a year, and total wildfire costs across all types of landscapes and ownership may be in the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars a year.

Commissioners — made up of state and local officials, researchers and others — recommended greater coordination among officials at all levels of government, including tribal agencies, as well as a re-thinking of land management approaches.

At the same time, the leaders on Energy and Natural Resources, Chair Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and ranking member John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) have pushed their own solutions to the problem.

Last fall, they introduced legislation titled the “Promoting Effective Forest Management Act,” S. 2867, which would tilt federal policy toward timber harvesting by boosting logging workforce training, requiring forest-thinning targets and pushing back on Biden administration policies that could result in less harvesting of mature and old growth trees.

The Biden administration, however, has been cool to the proposal, as well as a separate revegetation plan from Manchin.

Officials from both the Interior and Agriculture departments, among others, will be on hand to answer questions about the recent wildfire commission’s report.

The report noted that the federal government has put more money into reducing hazardous fuels such as dead trees or thick overgrowth, but it said officials have paid less attention to reducing the danger in built-up environments. Emphasis could be placed on fire-safe construction and defensible space near homes and other buildings, for instance, the report concluded.

As a person with several friends in the local wildfire preparation space, it seems to me that the way the Commission was structured did not necessarily hear from the “boots on the ground” community types and the difficulties they run into, accessing and spending the federal dollars that are already there.  Again, as I’ve said before, it’s not about homes alone, it’s about infrastructure and barns and animals and evacuations and so on.

In addition, the report said, federal officials should consider policies that encourage a new relationship with fire, recognizing fire as an “integral and beneficial component” of forest management.

The commission said the government should “dramatically increase” the use of prescribed fire and cultural burning practices to make fire-adapted forest more resilient, in addition to maintaining timber harvesting, forest thinning and managed grazing of livestock.

Fire use
The recommendation for greater use of fire may raise questions with some lawmakers, as many Western communities already struggle with smoke from wildfires and face public pressure not to create more with fires lit on purpose.

Allowing some naturally lit fires to burn for ecological benefit is still more divisive, as some lawmakers and policy advocates press the U.S. Forest Service to return to an old policy of quickly extinguishing every reported fire, especially in places experiencing drought.

All of those approaches together are needed to lessen the crisis, while the government helps communities to coexist with wildland fire that’s a natural part of the landscape in many areas.

“Just as there is no single cause of this crisis, there is no single solution,” the report said.

Such changes will come at a cost, the report said, including establishing a year-round federal workforce aimed at wildfire policy and increasing wages and benefits for firefighters.

Congress has acted on the wages, extending a raise implemented a few years ago by the Biden administration, most recently in appropriations for the current fiscal year that ends Sept. 30. But lawmakers have done so in patchwork fashion in recent years, advocates say, failing to make the increases permanent and ensuring that the money will be available for the long term.

The Government Accountability Office, among witnesses for the Homeland Security hearing, has made several recommendations on wildfire policies, including tightening controls on contracted services and procurement for disaster recovery, bettering recruitment and retention of wildland firefighters and improving delivery of post-fire assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Schedule: The Energy and Natural Resources hearing is Tuesday, March 12, at 10 a.m. in 366 Dirksen and via webcast.

Witnesses:

Meryl Harrell, deputy undersecretary, natural resources and environment, Department of Agriculture.
Joan Mooney, principal deputy assistant secretary for policy, management and budget, Department of the Interior.
Cody Desautel, executive director, Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation.
Madelene McDonald, senior watershed scientist, Denver Water.
Kelly Norris, Wyoming state forester.
Schedule: The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing is Thursday, March 14, at 10 a.m. in 342 Dirksen and via webcast.

Witnesses:

Lori Moore-Merrell, administrator, U.S. Fire Administration.
David Fogerson, chief, Division on Emergency Management and Office of Homeland Security, Nevada Department of Public Safety.
Jamie Barnes, director, Forestry, Fire and State Lands, Utah Department of Natural Resources.
Lucinda Andreani, deputy county manager and Flood Control District administrator, Coconino County, Arizona.
Christopher Currie, director, Homeland Security and Justice, Government Accountability Office.

Right after I posted Steve’s op-ed, I was sent a piece by the editorial board of the East Oregonian media group along the same lines.  That’s what peacekeeping leadership looks like.  Local journalism is more than just coverage of local issues; it’s the people involved.   They can be voices in the community who are interested in its well-being, not stoking resentments, or finding the shortest distance between the facts and a narrative such as “incipient Bundys.” People in communities need to get along over time; people in our country do, too, but, sadly, some national media seems to see their role as furthering divisions and encouraging outrage.  It’s not their fault in a way, it’s a business model that works, but we can support local journalism and journalists to the best of our ability.  Here’s a link.

A good case in point is the current hullabaloo around the U.S. Forest Service and Grant County regarding a 2022 prescribed fire that spread beyond its start on the Malheur National Forest onto private land owned by the Holliday family.

On Oct. 19, 2022, Grant County Sheriff Todd McKinley arrested Rick Snodgrass, a Forest Service employee, while the prescribed fire that Snodgrass was in charge of was still burning south of John Day.

On Feb. 2, 2024, a grand jury indicted Snodgrass on one count of reckless burning, a Class A misdemeanor.

The entire case should leave most readers with a slight distaste on the palate.

On the big picture level, the case is in some ways a classic local versus federal dispute, but why this incident has been drawn out for this long is a mystery.

Snodgrass was doing his job, a job delegated to him by his superiors. The arrest is believed to be the first case of a Forest Service firefighter being arrested in the course of his normal duties.

Anti-government sentiment is nothing new to Eastern Oregon. As a culture, we tend to be suspicious of the federal government and hold dear the concepts of personal land ownership and dislike interference from federal and state governments. Those sentiments are ingrained into our culture as Americans.

Yet this case in Grant County remains baffling on many levels. Local and federal officials are at loggerheads while an individual who was following orders and adhering to established protocols for prescribed fires is left holding the bag.

This incident should have been handled in a totally different way and through appropriate channels.

The prosecution of this case only serves to exacerbate already existing tensions about federal land management in Grant County and Eastern Oregon. Feeding and stoking anti-government feelings may be convenient for some but hardly qualifies as problem-solving.

Instead it looks absurd. Worse, the prosecution could impede efforts to find common ground and solutions to the growing danger that wildfire poses.

Prescribed fire is a vital tool, but not always a perfectly precise one.

Legitimate concerns or disagreements regarding prescribed burns or other land-use issues should be addressed through proper legal channels and in a manner that is in line with our system of laws.

The fire ignited by Snodgrass and his crew torched some trees during the afternoon, when the wind picked up, and embers spread onto land owned by the Hollidays.

The ember started a fire that burned an estimated 20 to 40 acres of the Hollidays’ land.

If the Hollidays can show that the fire damaged their property, or reduced its value, then they have legitimate grounds for a civil suit against the federal government.

That, rather than a criminal case, is the appropriate legal venue for trying to punish the Forest Service.

I’ve been noticing a tendency for federal agencies to become more vague and abstract about what exactly they’re doing, with many agencies seemingly having identical programs, or overlap (or run against each other). At the other end of the spectrum, we need to ask “what is the work that needs to be done that doesn’t have anyone stepping up to do it?”  When I read Steve Ellis’s  op-ed about the Arrested Burn Boss case, I wonder how many Forest Service folks are assigned the role of peacemakers.  And if the Forest Service doesn’t have that role because they are involved in a dispute, what is the role of local institutions in peacemaking? I’m thinking here of Steve’s previous piece in which members of a religious group did the work of protecting a community from flooding.  I would bet that many folks in religious institutions have excellent dispute resolution skills, and are acknowledged community leaders, but there are plenty of others who are community leaders of various kinds.  Perhaps this is an opportunity for them to exercise their skills for the well-being of all.

Here’s Steve’s op-ed. It ran in newspapers in Pendleton, Baker City and LaGrande this AM:

Destructive wildfires have resulted in the devastating loss of communities, loss of life, impacts on human health, untold damage to our watersheds, and the pumping of massive amounts of climate-changing carbon dioxide into our atmosphere. Conditions are such that large fires are becoming difficult, if not impossible to suppress.