The nugget., March 28, 2018, Page 19, Image 19

Wednesday, March 28, 2018 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon 19
Living with wildfire in the western U.S.
By Ceili Cornelius
Correspondent
Sisters knows better than
most communities how
much wildfire can affect the
environment, the economy,
and people’s health and
well-being.
The community hosted Dr.
Paul Hessburg on Thursday
evening at The Belfry to
talk about living with the
ever-present threat of wild-
fire. Hessburg is a landscape
ecologist with the Forest
Service’s Pacific Northwest
Research Station and a
member of the University of
Washington’s affiliate faculty.
His presentation, “The Era of
Megafires,” came from the
influence of atypically large
wildfires particularly in and
around Hessburg’s hometown
of Wenatchee, Washington,
where friends’ and families’
homes were destroyed by fire.
The Era of Megafires is a
multimedia presentation dis-
cussing sustainable forestry,
as well as the adaptations
citizens need to make to learn
to live with wildfire. The
talk consists of 34 years of
research into wildfire trends
in the western U.S.
A megafire is considered
to be over 100,000 acres
in size, and since 2015 we
have seen an increase in
fires of this size. There have
been numerous fires across
Oregon, Washington, Idaho
and Montana that are con-
sidered megafires. These
fires take federal funding
and resources to fight. Over
57 percent of the Forest
Service’s budget went just to
fighting wildfires in the past
years. Only 17 percent of
that budget went to firefight-
ing 25 years ago. In the past
few years fire-suppression
efforts have seen an increase
in spending; $50 billion was
spent in a single year in sup-
pression efforts.
Hessburg kept the audi-
ence engaged with appeal-
ing visuals. The audience
watched a video spanning
green forests shot from above
with glorious sun shining. He
asked the audience to think
how this made them feel. The
glorious scene reminded citi-
zens why they moved to the
area with forests like that.
However, he said, these are
not what western forests are
supposed to look like.
“Forests are supposed to
be patchy, with areas of dense
conifer, and then areas of
bare exposed landscape,” said
Hessburg.
The topography, elevation,
and weather all work together
to shape the forest and helps
decide when and where fires
occur. With an increase in
the density of forests, fire is
becoming more intense and
hotter because the under-
growth is not being regularly
burned out in low-intensity
fire.
In the past 100 years
we have suppressed fire.
The “burnout culture” that
the Native Americans had
was lost. Railroads, cattle
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settlements and farms were
put in place in the West,
stopping fire from coming
through naturally. After the
“Big Burn” of 1910, sup-
pression efforts increased.
Inefficient logging and fuel
buildup led to what Hessburg
called “The Epidemic of
Trees” — so many trees in
the forest and so many little
dense trees all close together,
creating the perfect storm
for a hot and fast-burning
wildfire.
One of the leading causes
of these megafires is climate
change. Evidence shows we
are experiencing dryer and
hotter weather for longer peri-
ods of time. Hessburg spoke
of the Alberta wildfire in May
of 2016, which burned in for-
ests that are halfway to the
Arctic Circle. Hundreds of
thousands of people were dis-
placed and lost their homes.
In Canada and the western
U.S., we are experiencing
earlier spring-like weather
and warmer winters with less
snow. Hessburg spoke of how
there will be two or three
times more fires than we have
now by 2050, only 30 years
from now.
Hessburg said, “It’s time
the rules of the firefighting
regime change.” Hessberg
asserts, “Fire and smoke is a
part of our future, no matter
what. We just have to learn to
better live with it and manage
it because we can’t stop it.”
Hessburg’s first adapta-
tion is to create a resilient
landscape by using prescribed
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burning. Prescribed burning
in the spring and fall allows
for dead undergrowth to be
eliminated in a controlled
manner. So, once the fire hits
an area that has been burned,
it doesn’t burn as hot or as
fast because there isn’t fuel to
carry it. The second solution
is to do mechanical thinning
and logging in an efficient
manner. There are ways to
thin the forests that are ben-
eficial to it, so the canopy
isn’t growing close together.
In turn, this logging and thin-
ning boosts the timber indus-
try, where lumber can be
taken to mills and made into
bark, 2x4s and many other
products contributing to the
economy. The third adapta-
tion we must become accus-
tomed to is fire-management
mechanisms. There are over
12 million acres of forest that
need treatment in Oregon and
Washington; fire is supposed
to be in our forests. It will
take over 20 years to treat the
entire area.
The two-to-eight percent
of fires that get out of control
are the ones that cause the
most damage.
A main emphasis of the
talk was to make citizens
aware that it is also their
responsibility to protect their
homes and create a safe envi-
ronment around themselves to
protect from wildfire. Homes
are being built and developed
in the areas of wildfire on
hillsides and mountaintops.
Building a home at that level
comes with a certain level of
responsibility. With steeper
roads and denser forests sur-
rounding the home, Hessburg
emphasizes that citizens need
to be made aware of what is
around them and take action
because firefighters can’t do
it all.
“The homes are difficult
The homes are
difficult to defend, and
once the fire is there,
there is no stopping it.
There has to be defense
done in advance.
— Dr. Paul Hessburg
to defend, and once the fire is
there, there is no stopping it.
There has to be defense done
in advance,” said Hessburg.
Hessburg recommends
having debris cleared at least
30 feet from the home, and
to keep the area around your
home “lean, mean and green.”
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