Wildfire Suppression

Speaking only for myself, for the most part I blame Smokey Bear.

Susie and I needed to go to the coast last Sunday, and had a chance to travel down Highway 199 along the Smith River. While the Smith Complex wildfire isn’t yet completely contained, the road has been re-opened for one-way traffic on the weekends and for limited times during the week (supposedly with a pilot vehicle). We made it Sunday with only an hour delay, and now we’re hoping to get back north tomorrow. All we need to do is get up early enough to load her sewing machine and support materials into the car, post this blog entry, and make it to Gasquet in time to get in line for the 11:00 transit window. Hope we make it.

Be that as it may, the burn scars along the Redwood Highway were really something, but considering that this is the third time that the area between the Collier Tunnel and Patrick Creek has burned in the past two decades, this should probably come as no surprise.

What was a surprise, however, was the reality of the burn pattern. We came through the tunnel expecting to see the entire drainage along the river toasted, much like north of the tunnel on the the Oregon side that burned to Crispy Critters stage during the Slater Fire of 2020.

Imagine our delight (so to speak) when much of the roadside looked like the image, above. Sure, huge tracts of land have been scorched (and in some areas totally fried), but there were also many areas where the blaze only took some of the trees (and much of the ground-hugging brush), but left the old growth. The lower trunks were charred, but the upper portions are still green and vibrant, and it is clear that much of the forest — in selected areas — is going to survive.

(Fun fact: I saw a similar phenomenon along Taylor Creek after the 2018 Klondike Fire, and even take my G102 classes there during Winter Term to pass on the lesson.)

So why the mixed severity of damage? Well, it’s really quite simple. All of us (or at least most) would intellectually agree that wildfire is an important contributor to the health of the forest… in a natural setting. Here in the Pacific Northwest, for example, abundant rainfall and a temperate climate contribute to luxuriant growth, and the hillsides literally explode in vegetation. The trees — as well as the brush, not to put too fine a point on it — do better than fine.

This is where wildfire comes in. Regular conflagrations do a great job of staying close to the ground and burning away what are called ‘ladder fuels’ — brush and downed branches that can and will choke the forest floor.

Ladder fuels are called that because they allow the fire to climb off the forest floor and into the upper portions of the trees. This is bad, and pretty much everyone who cares about such things agrees that they need to be removed if any attempt at fire suppression has a hope of being successful. There are basically two ways this can happen: either by natural causes (wildfire), or what is euphemistically called ‘manual release’ (chainsaws and machetes, and a lot of sweat and money).

The wildfire option is obviously cheaper, and has the added advantage of being the way nature has always done it (see the 6th Law of GeoFantasy). It also works in the long-term, and will keep the forest floor the way it’s supposed to be.

But however they are removed, the ladder fuels are simply gone, and not there to allow the fires to ‘crown’ — the term used to describe a fire that jumps from treetop to treetop.

So why blame Smokey Bear? Again it’s simple, and it seems to me (and many others) that there are two contributing factors. The easy one — which actually doesn’t involve everyone’s favorite forest bear — is obvious: our dysfunctional federal government cannot even fund itself, much less an army of manual laborers with chainsaws. But the second, and probably more consequential reason is that wildfires are not allowed. The U.S. Forest Service lobbies to get all of us —starting with elementary-school kids — to join Smokey’s effort at fire suppression. As such, excess ladder fuels have built up on the forest floor to the point that any fire that starts is guaranteed to be well fueled.

I discuss this very thing in the opening chapter of my soon-to-be-published novel (Marker Bed, by yours truly). The point of this particular sub-plot is that it is already too late for much of the forest (including here in the Pacific Northwest). Without a revision of priorities by The Powers That Be (along with some heroic efforts at manual release), it’s ALL going to burn. A fire will come that we will not have the resources to put out, or humans will have run out of time and won’t be around to put it out. Either way, it’s all gonna burn in the end.

But all is not bleak! The moral of this part of the book is this: Mt. Mazama erupted 7700 years ago and created Crater Lake. Draw a circle fifty miles in diameter centered on Wizard Island. Ten seconds after the eruption there was absolutely nothing alive within that perimeter: no trees, no deer, no bugs… no effing brush.

It was a completely sterile environment, with a hundred feet of volcanic ash over top of where Becky’s Cafe now offers the best fresh huckleberry pie in southern Oregon (in season, of course). And here we are 7700 years later, and old growth Douglas fir and sugar pine (six or more feet across at the base) are falling over, victims of old age.

The earth’s ability to rejuvenate itself sure gives one hope.

But… with that being said, Susie and I don’t have seven thousand years to wait. When fires start in our local area, both of us put on our contrition hats and beg for them to be put out as soon as possible… whatever it takes. We’ve evacuated three times since our first panicked retreat in 2002 when the Biscuit Fire burned 500,000 acres, and we still rent a storage unit in Grants Pass every summer to hold our irreplaceable photos and such.

I often feel completely hypocritical, but still don’t want the baby pictures of our kids and grand-kids to go up in flames…

If still interested, click here for an earlier post on wildfires.