Forest Service evaluates damage
While the Dixie Fire still burns, the Burned Area Emergency Response team, a department of the U.S. Forest Service, has already started evaluation of potential hazards as a result of the fire.
The team is currently evaluating potential threats to natural resources, including an assessment of native plant communities. Due to the size of the Dixie Fire, work which is normally completed in one phase has been broken into two phases with the first phase expected to be completed within the coming week.
“After they complete mapping, the team uses that data and analysis to figure out how much, soil erosion can occur, rock slides or rock fall, flooding runoff and debris flows. They’ll also look at whether it could impact human life, safety or the natural resources,” said Cathleen Thompson Burned Area Emergency Response team’s information officer.
Response to wildfire’s are broken down into three phases:
• Fire Suppression Repair
• Emergency Stabilization-Burned Area Emergency Response
In the first phase of fire suppression repair, immediate post-fire actions are taken to repair damages and minimize potential soil erosion and impacts resulting from fire suppression activities. Work during the first phase tends to begin before the fire is entirely contained, prior to the demobilization of an incident management team. During this phase, crews repair hand and dozer fire lines, roads, trails, staging areas, safety zones and drop points used during fire suppression efforts.
The second phase is when the Burned Area Emergency Response team arrives, conducting rapid assessments of fire affected watersheds. The team works to identify imminent post-wildfire threats to human life and safety, property and critical natural or cultural resources on National Forest System lands. The team then takes immediate actions to stabilize threats before the first post-fire damaging events.
Despite the Dixie Fire’s continued activity, Thompson said the team’s early involvement is a normal event. By beginning work during a still raging fire, the team can attempt to prevent further threats before potential rain arrives.
“Their assessments are considered rapid response because it’s an emergency,” Thompson said. “A lot of times, especially in Northern California, we still have
our fire seasons into October or November and that’s bumping up right against when the winter rains, I should say, used to occur.”
Actions being taked by the Burned Area Emergency Response include mulching, seeding and installation of erosion and water run-off control structures. The team may also install temporary barriers to protect recovering areas and install warning signs.
Additional mitigation by the team may include replacing safety related facilities, preventing permanent loss of habitat for threatened and endangered species and stopping the spread of noxious weeds all to protect critical cultural resources.
The third phase, LongTerm Recovery and Restoration, uses non-emergency
actions to improve firedamaged lands that are unlikely to recover naturally. Crews will begin work to repair or replace facilities damaged by the fire that are not critical to life and safety. Possible work during this phase may include restoring burned habitat, reforestation, other planting or seeding, monitoring fire effects, treating noxious weed infestations and installing interpretive signs.
Members of the Burned Area Emergency Response team range from a variety of fields including botanists, geologists, ecologists, engineers and archeological specialists. Every member of the team plays a special role in assuring the right steps post-fire will be taken, said Thompson.
“When the forest supervisor puts together the
team, they may say, ‘Oh, there’s a lot of potential impacts that could happen to the fishery.’ Then we will sure that there’s a fish biologist on the team,” Thompson said. “If there’s a lot of either historical or cultural resources that could be impacted, we’ll make sure we have an archaeologist or two on all teams.”
Two specialist currently working on the Dixie Fire assessment are Lassen National Forest botanist Kirsten Bovee and Plumas National Forest ecologist Michelle Coppoletta. Bovee and Coppoletta have both been analyzing the risk of invasive plant’s being introduced and possibly spreading in native plant communities within the Dixie Fire burn area.
According to their research, Bovee and Coppoletta
have both found following the Dixie Fire’s burn through the Highway 70 corridor, both native and invasive species have already begun resprouting.
The concern of invasive plants appearing in the burn area won’t solely affecting native plants. Fish and mammals relying on native plants may be subject to harm as well if invasive species take over, something Thompson said the team has biologists for.
“The (Burned Area Emergency Response) program says whatever treatments we come up with it, it has to be for the benefit of a critical natural resource species. That’s usually a threatened, endangered species — not necessarily a sensitive one,” Thompson said. “If the (Burned Area Emergency Response) team has concerns about a wildlife species not considered threatened or endangered, they’ll share those findings and concerns with either the state of California Fishing and Game Department
or with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.”
Thompson noted, work by the team is the earliest stages of recovery for the burnt landscape. The teams authority to investigate damage stops past National Forest System lands. When the team notices a possible threat to private land owners, they share their data and analysis with agencies like the Natural Resources Conservation Service, a department of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
The Burned Area Emergency Response team is expected to release their complete data and analysis of the first phase of investigation in the coming days. Following this, the second phase of the investigation will begin.
More information on the Burned Area Emergency Response can be found at https://www.fs.fed.us/naturalresources/watershed/ burnedareas.shtml.