Fire and Fuels

Char sent in this “Marketplace” piece; I thought it worthy of its own post. I think it’s an interesting juxtaposition with my own experience of today.

The perspectives are fascinating.. we can imagine a Marketplace done in Colorado..

A wildfire denudes hills of vegetation. Often all that’s left is ashes and blackness. When Richard Minnich looks at a charred landscape after a wildfire, he doesn’t mourn the loss of the plants killed in the blaze. ”I’m not crying at al,” he says. “I’m saying, wow, you solved your fire problem for a while. The energy is gone.”

You would ask the folks in Manitou Springs what they think about denuding hillsides and the ensuing flooding.

“Straight ahead of me, I’m looking at solitary houses on the tops of hills,” Minnich says. “It just ticks me off to see that.”

I’m glad that scientists get to give their personal angry feelings. But I wonder how many other scientists are not quoted.. they could be angry about the impacts of smoke on public health or.. one can imagine a variety of things.

“In Southern California, we have a total suppression strategy,” says Lorine Buckweld, a suppression battalion chief with the U.S. Forest Service. “In other words, that means every fire will be suppressed with as many resources as we can throw at them to keep them small. Because of the threat to the Wildland-Urban Interface.”

The Forest Service now spends more than half of its budget fighting wildfires. Most of which they are spending fighting in and around structures, housing developments and the like, not in and around wilderness areas.

Environmental history professor Char Miller is one of many critics who doesn’t think the public should be footing the bill to protect homes in high-risk fire zones. And he says we’re not factoring in the human cost when we build in these areas.

Duh… if there were no risks to folks, at this point, no one would fight fires. So of course most of the costs are to protect people. But people, towns, open spaces, parks, etc. are hopelessly intermixed in a great deal of the west. Now.. not “we are building”. We have built. We have homes, communities, and open spaces and parks with infrastructure. We can’t go back and kick people out. And there is a legitimate fairness question.. people who build near coastlines, rivers that flood, hurricanes, and earthquake-prone regions.. should we be footing the bill for those? How about those folks around Mt. St. Helens and other volcanoes?

I’m not against some kind of extra charges for some kind of federal insurance for these folks.. but also the others.

And what proportion of the fire bucks are protecting isolated homes.. what proportion neighborhoods and towns, what proportion community infrastructure.. what proportion keeping it controlled so it doesn’t get so big that it can’t be controlled, and burns up power lines, fairgrounds, libraries, and people and animals without time to evacuate, etc.

In general I think extrapolating from California chaparral to the “dry west” (the headline) is a very bad idea.

I had an interesting experience today. Went for a hike with my dog on the local (higher elevation) open space. As the trail turned toward home I saw a little extra whitish tint to a mountain in the background. I knew it was a tiny fire but who to call? do they already know about it? Seems like no one would do a prescribed fire at 3PM in August, but who knows? Who should I call, if anyone?

I walked more quickly to the parking lot, where I saw an Open Space employee, who had called it in through his chain of command. Shortly thereafter, fire trucks pulled in; I asked a guy if there was a road where the fire was and he said there wasn’t.

Later I went home and went to the post office; this is what the fire looked like from the post office parking lot.

I think you can click on these photos to see the fire more clearly.

So here’s my question is there a “Report a Wildfire” phone app that automatically lets you report a wildfire based on your GPS location? You can imagine it bringing up a map and the reporter locating where they see the smoke, and that information going to the local authorities. You can even imagine a screen coming up saying “this fire has already been reported” or “this is a new report, give us your phone number so we can call you and get more information.” Seems like something like this should exist, but I haven’t found one in my internet search.

I’ve been interested in fire acreages since the discussion of the black-backed woodpecker habitat.

I ran across this story this AM. It sounded like the Beaver Creek fire was 85 square miles. That seems pretty big to me. But then at the end of the story they talked about the Pony Complex (229 square miles).

So naturally I got curious about all of the current acreages.Here is a great NIFC site that tells you many things you might want to know. What I thought was interesting was that this year at this date, we seem to have a lot fewer wildfire acres than in past years. I wonder if I am reading this wrong?

Also the Beaver Creek link seems to be broken, I wonder if it got subsumed into another fire?

Check it out. http://www.fs.fed.us/wildlandfire/

If Derek is correct in quoting, in his post below, that “The AWR has repeatedly made the preposterous claim that “sediment from logging will rival that of wildfire.”

The below story seems like evidence that suggests that wildfire impacts can be much more severe than that from vegetation treatments and roads using BMP’s.

Here’s a link, below is an excerpt. Check out the videos on that site.
You can also search on “manitou springs flood photos” and find many good ones that are copyrighted.

MANITOU SPRINGS, Colo. – Following a burst of heavy rain over the Waldo Canyon burn scar, a new round of flood waters rushed down into parts of Manitou Springs on Monday.

According to the National Weather Service in Pueblo, 0.43 inches fell in less than 20 minutes. Shortly thereafter, 7NEWS reporter Molly Hendrickson saw brown waters flooding city streets and the Colorado Springs Fire Department reported that the flow of Fountain Creek had doubled.

U.S. 24 was closed in both directions near Manitou Springs at 2:40 p.m. because of flooding. It reopened around 4:30 p.m., when the threat of flooding had subsided.

A flash flood warning was issued for the area earlier by the National Weather Service, covering both the Waldo Canyon and Black Forest burn scars. The warning expired by 4:15 p.m. but a flash flood watch covers the area until 3 a.m. Tuesday.

The watch cited saturated, unstable soils and the potential for heavy rainfall as potential causes of more flash flooding. That rain is possible throughout the afternoon and evening.

As the flood waters subsided in Manitou Springs Monday, El Paso County health officials said they are concerned about the presence of tetanus bacteria.

The bacteria can make humans sick with flu-like symptoms, even paralyze muscles. Emergency responders fear the bacteria may have been carried by the flood waters onto city streets where volunteers are working.

“It’s in dirt. It’s in soils. It’s in feces,” said Manitou Springs Fire Chief Keith Buckmiller. “We just want to make sure the people helping us don’t get hurt,” he said.

Volunteers and residents doing clean-up are advised to get vaccinated. A free clinic will be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Tuesday at the Community Congregational Church at 103 Pawnee Avenue in Manitou Springs. Vaccinations will be provided while they last.