Western Fires Today Do More Damage
By Dr. Leon Nuenschwander, University of Idaho College of Forestry
When fire scientists, like me, talk about the effects of fire on air, soil, water, vegetation, and animals, we talk about two principal concepts: severity and intensity. A severe fire is one that remains in place a long time and does deep damage to forest soils. I think of it as a charcoal fire, burning for hours and cooking whatever is above or below. An intense fire is one that burns hot above the ground. These are high intensity flash fires, often wind driven, and move through the crowns of the trees.
Western fires are more severe and intense than anything in the historical record in dry warm forests, like those around Los Alamos, Spokane and Coeur d’Alene. These fires are bigger, burn hotter, and do more damage. In fact, the Los Alamos fire alone probably cost more money than all of our fires combined up to 1988.
There are reasons why these fires are worse than ever. The first is that our forests have changed. Where there were once 60 to 70 trees per acre, there are now hundreds and even thousands. It is as if we stuffed the fireplace with so much wood that eventually it all spilled out into the living room. Then we lit it to get warm.
Another reason is there are more people living close to the forest. When the fires come, our homes burn. Of course we need to protect our homes before everything else. Instead of fighting wildfires burning in the backcountry, we are forced to spend our resources protecting homes and the fires rage on, unchecked. I never met, nor would I expect to meet, a firefighter who would let someone’s home burn without trying to save it. However, even the best firefighter can’t be in two places at one time.
On the other hand, unless we do something to clean out the fireplace before someone strikes a match, we’ll never get a handle on the fire situation. There are several ways to begin to restore some semblance of order in forests far out of control. From a scientist’s perspective, any of them are sufficient.
We can go along as we are now, the fires getting more severe and more intense each year, our neighborhoods going up in smoke, our watersheds in cinders. We can forget about our homes and spend our efforts fighting the main fire, wherever it is, thus reducing losses in forests and rangelands but increasing losses of homes and facilities. Or we can do something about the amount of wood in the fireplace. The easiest thing is to remove enough wood so the fire stays put and does some good.
Logging is one way to do that, but it’s not the only way. We can thin forests, leave the large trees, and donate the wood to people who need it for winter warmth. We can thin the forest and stack the wood in small piles and burn them when the snow comes. We can run a gentle fire in some areas under the trees. But, in some areas we can’t use prescribed fire unless we thin first. I think best results are achieved when thinning and prescribed fire are used together.
Today giant fires are burning like a blowtorch through ancient forests. Many trees, big and small, old and new are dead and gone. But in places where the forest has been thinned, the fire is dropping to the ground, crawling along the forest floor, leaving the forest above intact, a living shelter for people and animals alike. As a scientist, that’s very interesting. As a human being, it’s a lesson we must learn.
I will be studying the effects of these large infernos and the rate that the forests are converting to ashes. As a citizen, neighbor and homeowner, I care deeply about the action we take. I am not willing to continue our current course of increasingly horrible fires until all of our magnificent forested lands are reduced to charcoal.