How old burns can impede wildfires
Opposition to suppression is gaining currency in state
YOSEMITE WEST — When a wall of flames raced up the hillside at Avalanche Creek on a recent afternoon, firefighters in Yosemite National Park had to act quickly.
The giant Ferguson Fire was headed toward the south rim of Yosemite Valley, and if crews didn’t stop it here, the fire would open up on the edge of the park’s most beloved spot. Already, 10,000 acres of Yosemite had been charred, and much of the park was entering its third week of closure.
But just as the blaze began spitting hot embers out of the creek drainage and across Glacier Point Road, where helicopters with water buckets and engine teams with chain saws had staked their line of defense, firefighters caught a break — at least for the moment.
The fire struck a patch of forest that had burned in a previous fire. With fewer trees and less brush to serve as fuel, the flames began to taper off. The conflagration slowed, a pause that crews hoped would become a turning point in the firefight and one that forestry experts say highlights the benefits of having a regular regime of fire on the landscape.
“When these fires push into old burns, there’s progress,” said Kelly Martin, chief of fire and aviation management at Yosemite, who has been helping oversee the 96,000acre Ferguson Fire. “It’s basically fighting fire with fire.”
As California grasps at ways to prevent the increasingly intense blazes seen in recent years, the idea of letting fire burn in the state’s wildlands, instead of trying to prevent it, is gaining currency.
Experts say allowing natural fire to run its course or setting controlled burns, when people and property aren’t threatened, will reduce hazardous vegetation and make future wildfires far less catastrophic. One of the main
reasons the situation has gotten so bad, experts say, is that decades of fire suppression have broken the cycle of fire that’s inherent to forests, creating an unnatural buildup of tinder.
As much as 50 percent of the land consumed by the Ferguson Fire hasn’t burned since record-keeping began in the 1930s, according to the U.S. Forest Service. Historically, conifer forests in the Sierra burned as often as every 10 years.
While federal and state land managers have long dabbled in planned fire, they have yet to fully embrace it, even as last year’s devastation in the Wine Country and this summer’s deadly inferno in Redding are hastening the call for change.
“There can’t be a more compelling and urgent case to do this,” Martin said. “The only way we can get out of this problem we’re in is to have a different relationship with fire.”
When the Ferguson Fire ignited just west of Yosemite in the Sierra National Forest on July 13, Forest Service officials made the call to aggressively attack it. The towns of El Portal and Mariposa were nearby, as was the national park with its glacial canyons and towering waterfalls, and 4 million annual tourists.
“There were no questions asked,” said District Ranger Denise Tolmie. “It’s a fullsuppression fire.”
But about 30 miles to the east, where another blaze is burning, the same Forest Service officials made a different decision, one that suggests at least an emerging interest in new tactics.
When Tolmie got the report of the lightning-ignited fire near the headwaters of the San Joaquin River on June 11, she decided not to send a strike team to stop it. The Lions Fire was burning a comfortable distance from roads and communities, so she would let it go.
“We felt the fire effects would be positive,” Tolmie said.
The 9,000-acre fire has since cleared vast stands of dead and dying red fir, which, left around, would have increased fuel loads in the forest and added risk for homes in nearby Mammoth Lakes, according to the Forest Service. The fire also has helped boost forest health, officials say, by restoring nutrients in the soil and creating space for new plant life.
Tolmie said she’d like to see more of the ecosystem and fuel-reduction benefits of such strategies, but hurdles stand in the way.
First and foremost is ensuring that fire, when allowed to burn or intentionally set, is safe. The Forest Service has tight restrictions on when blazes like the Lions Fire can run their course. The fire has to be an adequate distance from cities and towns, for example, and enough firefighters must be on hand to monitor the situation.
The fire also has to overcome community resistance. The Smokey-Bear mentality pushed during nearly a century of fire suppression has left much of the public hostile to burns. This mind-set has hardened as more people have staked out homes in California’s wilderness areas.
Then there’s the smoke. Many parts of the state are suffering poor air quality, including basins around Yosemite. Residents and local air regulators don’t want more smoke in the sky than necessary.
On the Lions Fire, the Forest Service is trying to limit the number of smoky days by helping the blaze move along more quickly. Firefighters have been sent in to light fires on tracts of land at the head of the burn.
“We’re trying to build ourselves up to do more fire across the landscape,” Tolmie said. “There’s just a lot we have to take into account before burning.”
This year, the Forest Service has set fire to about 60,000 acres in California, officials say. The state Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or Cal Fire, which also manages a portion of California wildlands, burned another 19,000 acres over the past year.
While the amount of burning is increasing for both agencies, it’s still a small fraction of the combined 50 million acres statewide that the two departments oversee. For perspective, uncontrolled wildfires scorched about 1.2 million acres in California in 2017.
Many who study forestry and wildfires say a lot more planned burns are needed to keep dangerous blazes from erupting.
“There’s no way thousands of houses should be burning like this,” said Stephen Pyne, fire historian and professor at Arizona State University. “You have to get rid of the vegetation or you have the fuel. What you’re doing in California is getting your burning of fuel under the worst possible conditions — during wildfires.”
Pyne said California should be setting prescribed fire to several million acres of land each year. Other states do far more, he said, especially in the Southeast, where year-round rain and gentler topography make it easier to conduct controlled burns.
Florida ignites about 2.1 million acres of land a year, according to state records.
This spring, California Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order to improve forest management, which includes a bid for more prescribed burning as part of an effort to address the increase in catastrophic wildfire.
Fifteen of California’s 20 biggest fires have occurred since 2000, with the Ranch Fire in Lake, Mendocino and Colusa counties recently slipping into the top spot. The blaze has burned nearly 300,000 acres.
Last year’s Tubbs Fire in Napa and Sonoma counties remains the state’s most destructive fire, with 22 people killed and more than 5,000 buildings burned. The Carr Fire in Redding recently notched the sixth-worst toll in state history, claiming seven lives and destroying more than 1,500 structures.
While misguided forestmanagement policies are just one reason that fire has become more devastating, a warming climate and more development in California’s wildlands also contribute, making planned burning vital, said wildfire specialist Max Moritz with UC’s Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
“We need to become more comfortable with fire as a tool,” he said. “Prescribed fire could do a lot of good, restoring these forests to healthy conditions and reducing the fire hazard.”
The state budget, which took effect in July, includes $30 million for the formation of several new Cal Fire crews devoted exclusively to conducting planned burns and clearing hazardous vegetation.
Meanwhile, those in charge of a handful of national forests in California, including the Sierra National Forest, are planning to revise their forest management plans to encourage more prescribed fire.
Back at Avalanche Creek, where hundreds of firefighters with air support were working to keep the Ferguson Fire from moving toward Yosemite Valley, the flames remained stubborn.
At one point, as the blaze pushed across Glacier Point Road, a camp of unsuspecting fire personnel was trapped up the dead-end street and ordered to take the unusual step of sheltering in place.
The group eventually made it to safety, but the firefighting effort hasn’t been without casualties. Two crew members have died on the fire, and several have been injured. About 10 buildings have been destroyed. Meanwhile, the local tourist industry has lost millions as countless vacations have been canceled.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
“This is the last critical piece,” said Greg Cole, foreman for the Fulton Hotshot Crew out of Glennville (Kern County), whose team was using chain saws and metal rakes to create a break at the head of the firestorm. “We’re just trying to cut the heat out.”
His crew’s greatest progress came where the 1,045-acre Avalanche Fire burned in 2011 and the adjacent 3,047-acre Grouse Fire burned in 2009. The fire was advancing less quickly there, and firefighters had more time to put in their “containment” line.
“The old fire scars are providing opportunity,” said Tom Efird, a spokesman for the Forest Service and a former district ranger for the Sierra National Forest, pointing to a knob with fewer trees and less brush to catch fire. “We don’t want it to get into the timber again, which makes it so much harder to get a hold on the fire.”
Efird said the slower pace of the burn was representative of what fires looked like when the forests burned naturally.
“It’s replicating what used to be,” he said.
The old burn areas turned out to be pivotal for firefighters. By Monday, containment of the blaze was estimated to have grown to 86 percent. Fire officials were almost ready to declare victory.
Yosemite Valley was scheduled to reopen Tuesday, after a 20-day closure, and the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias, to the south, opened Monday morning.
“When it made its run out of Avalanche Creek, there was quite a firefight,” said Mark von Tillow, the incident commander overseeing the suppression effort. But “the last couple of days have been really good for us.”