wildfire - 3 Quarks Daily

by Mark Harvey

Turner Gulch Fire, Adams County Fire and Rescue

Walking across a piece of my land the other day, I noticed that various grasses had become entirely brown from lack of water. Bromes and Poaceae, normally still green this time of year, looked brittle and were the color of tea. Cheat grass, that invasive species from Eurasia, looked even yellower and drier than it normally does. I picked some of the cheat grass, also known as downy brome, and it practically crumbled in my hands. This has been the driest year I can remember in my part of western Colorado. I don’t just mean statistics based on snowpack and rainfall, because that is only part of the story. Other factors include evaporation rates, timing of the snowmelt and residual lack of moisture in the soil from last year. The first clue that this is an exceptionally dry year came when a spring-fed lake on our ranch never filled with water. Normally by the time the snow melts off, the lake fills to the brim and holds water through the entire summer. This year, even in June it was empty.

Another spring-fed pond that normally stays full all summer is already half empty.

The land has a feeling of wanting to ignite and explode with the slightest spark. It’s the cheat grass that scares me the most for it’s incredibly flammable and covers tens of millions of acres in the intermountain west. Cheat grass has a biological advantage over other native grasses because it germinates earlier than most others, which gives it a head start in the competition for water and soil nutrients. It also dries out sooner than other grasses as the summer wears on and serves as what’s called a “ladder fuel” when it comes to wildfires. The term ladder refers to a ground plant’s ability to help fires climb up onto trees.

According to Glenn Lewis, a fire behavior analyst, the moisture content in western Colorado’s plant communities is at near historic lows—in the 97% percentile since records have been kept. Read more »

by Mark Harvey

Airplane drops fire retardant on wildfire

On the morning of July 22, 2016, an illegal campfire in Garrapata State Park near Carmel, California got out of control. Within a day, the fire grew to 2,000 acres. Within two days the fire grew to 10,000 acres. A month later the fire was at 90,000 acres and still largely uncontained. Ultimately the Forest Service and other agencies deployed thousands of firefighters and spent close to $260 million in an effort to contain it. The fire was finally “contained” three months later in October. During the three months of the fire’s life, bulldozers cut close to 60 miles of roads/firebreaks and aerial tankers dumped about 3.5 million gallons of fire retardant on the flames. The bulldozing and the aerial retardant work had little effect and what really helped put the fire out was October’s cooler temperatures and more humid air.

The fact of the matter is most wildfires go out by themselves.

The effort to fight large wildfires with expensive planes, helicopters, fire retardant, and bulldozers has been likened to fighting hurricanes or earthquakes: it’s costly and mostly futile. While developing fire-resistant lines and fireproofing buildings at the urban-forest interface can be very effective, trying to control massive blazes of tens of thousands of acres is like burning money.

Fighting wildfires is big business. When you stage thousands of firefighters in camps, you need catering services, laundry services, mobile housing, heavy equipment, and fuel. Caterers can gross millions of dollars to support large crews and local landowners make thousands of dollars renting their land and facilities for staging areas. Read more »

Tag: wildfire

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