Forests & People - About Fire

Fires and People

The ninteen-eighty-eight fire season was a game changer in the Western forests, especially the forests in the Northern Rockies. 

It was dry, very dry.  One of the measurements forest fire scientists use is the moisture content of dead wood on the forest floor.  There are the twigs and small branches called flash fuels and there are the medium size down trees that would normally take 100 hours to burn (+ or -), finally there are the large tree trunks on the ground that would normally take 1000 hours to burn (+ or -).  The thinking is, the bigger the piece of wood the more moisture content there is in its middle causing it to burn more slowly.  In the summer 1988 the thousand-hour-fuels were about as dry as kiln dried lumber in the lumber yard — that’s dry.  That means it wouldn’t take much heat to get them burning and they would burn with high intensity and, of course, the flash fuels would burn hotter and faster than “normal” because they held almost no moisture.  

At that time, fire behavior science held that fire didn’t spread in even aged lodgepole pine stands.  There isn’t enough fuel on the ground to carry the heat.  During the summer of ’88 the green tree tops were so dry that heat from fuels on the forest floor was not needed to carry a fire through the tree crowns, flames exploded from tree top to tree top causing whole forested ridges to ignite with frightening speed.

That summer The Canyon Fire in the Bob Marshall Wilderness had been allowed to burn from the time it started in July, it was burning within the prescription for fire in the Wilderness.  But the forest was drying through the summer and on September 6,  jet stream winds touched the ground causing the fire to blow up, burning outside the prescription.  Fire fighters tried to hold it, but it couldn’t be stopped.  September 6 and 7 the Canyon fire burned 180 acres every sixty-seconds for 18 hours, much of the burned forest was mature lodgepole pine.  When it stopped, the fire had burned 240,600 acres.  That was dramatic, but the news media didn’t pay much attention to the Canyon Creek fire, and there was a good reason.

The nation’s attention that summer was focused on the fires in Yellowstone National Park, Yellowstone Lodge was threatened, Cook City, north of the Park, was threatened.  Politicians were helicoptering around the fire, some spouting threats and ultimatums.  That didn’t help anything.  There were 9000 firefighters fighting the Yellowstone fires, in the end 800,000 acres were burned - that’s a lot.

Smoke jumper comin' in.

On the northern border of Montana, near Canada, the Red Bench fire broke out on September 6 and roared from the Flathead National Forest across the North Fork of the Flathead River into Glacier National Park.  It was finally controlled on December 1, the last fire controlled that year.  There were 71 large fires in the Northern Rockies that terrible summer, September 10 was the worst day, twenty major fires were burning, with 16,000 people engaged in fighting them. 

John Mumma, the Regional Forester for the Northern Region of the Forest Service summed it up, “In 1988, the Region experienced more days of extreme burning conditions than any other year in recorded history.  New maximum levels of energy release, burning indices, and rates of spread were established.  Fire behavior observed that summer baffled the experts with its unprecedented and never-before-observed intensity.  We obtained new knowledge and new experience in the summer of ‘88.  If need be, we can do it again and do it better because of what we’ve learned.”  (John W. Mumma. “Northern Region, Summer of ‘88” letter and booklet to firefighters, March 1989)

Fire Management -  Fire Science

  

The actions taken on wild fires in National Parks, National Forests, BLM lands and Wilderness are governed by fire management plans.  Most of these plans were developed in the 1980’s and were in effect in 1988.  An important objective in these plans is to allow fire to play a more natural role in the western forests.  The natural role of fire, before white settlement, was for fires to pass through a forest from time to time, in many areas the fire cycle was about every ten years. The dryness and fire behavior in 1988 showed it doesn’t always work well to impose a natural fire occurrence onto a forest that has been made unnatural by eighty years of eliminating fire from the forest.  When the dry years come there is a lot of fuel accumulation ready to burn - hot!

As bad as the 1988 fires were, 1910 was worse.  There had been no significant rain since March in the Bitterroot Mountains of Montana, Idaho and Washington.   The first fire that year was on April 29, by August there were hundreds of small and medium size fires burning. Then, on August 20 and 21, hurricane force winds rolled over the small fires whipping them together into a blazing inferno that swept over three million acres of mountain forests, destroying several small towns and one-third of Wallace, Idaho.  At least 85 people were killed.  Smoke from the fires reached New England.  By the time the fires were over, Forest Service rangers had employed over 10,000 people to fight the fires, including Company I of the 125 Army Infantry.

The 1910 fires initiated a national debate about fire management.  The majority, and the powerful, were on the side insisting all fires be put out as quickly as possible.  A minority, mostly scientists, argued “fire has an important role in the forest and where possible should be allowed to burn.”  The scientists lost.  The new policy was simple, understandable and powerful, “put out every fire start by 10:00 am the next day.”  If a Forest Service ranger missed that target, it wouldn’t be long before there was a different ranger on the district.  Of course every fire wasn’t put out by 10:00 am the next day, but fire as a part of the forest ecosystem was greatly reduced.  The “10;00 am Policy” was supported by: increased fire science research, fire organizations on Forest Service ranger districts, fire lookouts, mule pack strings to haul fire fighting supplies to remote fires, smokejumpers, forest roads, truck mounted pumpers, aerial fire attack, helicopter fire attack, fire shelters, even improved shovels for fire fighting.  An intense fire prevention campaign was launched to remove fire from the forest and make fire a villain.  Smokey the Bear was, and is, the star, even the Disney movie “Bambi” played into it nicely .  This policy against wild fire has continued for more than 90 years, it change forest ecology throughout North America and became a model for the rest of the world.  It took until 1988 to see the policy’s results, and they weren’t all good. 

In the 1930’s some forest scientists began to sound the alarm that the effective fire control was allowing too much dead wood to build up on the forest floor.  It took until the 1970’s for this reality to become widely accepted.  Of course, the problem was, when there is a fire start, these heavy fuels will build so much heat the crowns of the trees will dry, catch fire and spread rapidly, burning completely our of control and often unstoppable by human effort. 

The agencies began developing fire management plans that would allow fires to burn in certain areas - far from people’s structures and human activity - under carefully prescribed conditions.  If a fire burned out of the prescribed boundaries or if weather conditions were developing that could put fire outside the prescription, the fire would be put out, or fought to reduce its spread.   In addition to fire prescriptions stating the conditions a fire may be allowed to burn there are fire prescriptions to accomplish certain desirable things in the forest.  Fire scientists light prescribed fires with the objectives to burn fuels on the ground, to prepare the land for seeding or planting trees, to stimulate wildlife browse and improve the beauty of the forest - yes, prescribed fire can do all that.   The news media’s term for these fire prescriptions is “let burn policy.”   That term is such an over simplification it has zero accuracy and is terribly misleading, yet it is perpetuated because it is so simple.

A new word came into the fire vocabulary after 1988, Mega-fires.  Mega-fires defy the assumption that increased wildfire threats can be matched with greater fire suppression force and planning.  American Mega fires in 2000, 2004, 2013 and in fires in Australia burned right through the old myth that enough effort can stop a fire.  Mega-fires burn until a change in weather stops their rampage.  Fire fighters can try to protect high value areas and properties that are in the fire’s anticipated path, but those efforts are certainly not always (or often) successful.

The formal reviews after the fires of ‘88 decided that the fire plans were basically sound scientifically and economically and are socially responsible.  But, there were needs for much better coordination and information flow between federal land management agencies, states, local fire officials, the news media, the local public and politicians.  There needed to be better science about forest fires and weather.  That has been the effort since the fire season of 1988.