FROM PAGE ONE
A6 — THE OBSERVER
SaTuRday, apRil 30, 2022
FIRE
storms in the Blue Mountains
during April.
He said some units near Sparta,
and a couple on the east side of
Black Mountain, south of Phillips
Reservoir, are the most likely can-
didates for potential prescribed
burning this spring.
Cooke said a couple units north
of Interstate 84 at Hilgard pos-
sibly could dry out early enough
to be burned this spring, but the
potential effects of smoke, given
the proximity to La Grande, could
be a challenge.
Continued from Page A1
weather persisting, a trend that
lasted much of the winter, condi-
tions in some places were almost
suitable for prescribed burning.
If the rain had held off for
another three or four days, Lewis
said burning likely would have
started in a few places.
But then one storm dampened
the rapidly drying woods.
And the parade of Pacific tem-
pests has continued, with rela-
tively brief intermissions, ever
since.
Much too brief to get forests
“back in prescription,” as Lewis
puts it.
What he means is a piece
of ground that’s not so dry that
flames will spread too fast or burn
too hot, but also not so soggy as
to quickly squelch the flames. The
period when a section of forest
meets the necessary criteria typi-
cally happens only during spring
or fall.
In some seasons it doesn’t
happen at all. And Lewis is
starting to think spring 2022
might be one of those.
Steven Cooke, Lewis’ counter-
part on the Wallowa-Whitman’s
Grande Ronde Fire Zone, which
generally coincides with the La
Grande Ranger District, agrees.
“It’s going to be a really short
window (for prescribed burning)
if we even get one,” Cooke said.
As of that day, the Blue Moun-
tain Interagency Dispatch Center
in La Grande, which covers the
Wallowa-Whitman and parts of
the Umatilla National Forest,
reported no prescribed burning
projects completed this year.
“Right now, it’s not looking
good for any prescribed burning
this spring,” Lewis said. “We’ll
see what the rest of the spring
brings.”
If it continues to bring frequent
rain and snow for much longer,
he said the Wallowa-Whitman’s
burning “window” might well
close at least until the autumn
rains (which tend not to be as reli-
able as those of spring).
Dry days
As May progresses, fire man-
agers have another criterion to
add to their list — conifer trees
sprouting fresh green buds.
Once those buds begin to pro-
A much different spring
Jayson Jacoby/Baker City Herald, File
Alex McDonald, left, and Nick Schramm, both members of the La Grande Hot Shots
firefighting crew, talk tactics during a prescribed fire at Phillips Reservoir on April
15, 2021. This April has been too damp to allow for prescribed burning.
liferate, prescribed burning is
more risky because the flames and
heat can scorch the new growth
and stunt the tree, Lewis said.
By late May, prescribed
burning typically isn’t feasible
even if the ground has the proper
moisture content. The growth of
lush new grass — which is likely
after a prolonged period of rain
— also can stymie fire managers,
since green vegetation doesn’t
burn as readily as the desiccated
mat of pine needles and other
debris that predominates earlier in
the spring.
As of now, Lewis said, it would
likely take 10 to 14 days of dry
weather to get forests to a con-
dition where prescribed burning
could be effective.
But for much of April there
hasn’t been more than a few con-
secutive dry days.
That’s not nearly long enough
to dry the ground, Lewis said —
especially ground that was cov-
ered with half a foot of soggy
spring snow.
That was the situation with
many of the places where pre-
scribed fires were planned this
spring, he said.
Snow, as you might expect,
poses a more formidable impedi-
ment to burning than rain does.
Rain mainly soaks into the
ground, and a couple of sunny,
warm days can pretty much erase
the effects of a rainstorm, Lewis
said.
But once the snow melts, the
ground remains about as wet as it
would be after a rain shower, so
the drying cycle is proportionately
longer.
“It just really set us back,”
Lewis said of the multiple snow-
If all the potential burning is
postponed this spring, it wouldn’t
be the first time, Lewis said.
But this year demonstrates how
dramatically different successive
years can be.
Last spring was much more
conducive to prescribed fire.
In mid-April 2021, crews from
the Wallowa-Whitman burned
several hundred acres of pon-
derosa pine forest near Phillips
Reservoir, about 17 miles south-
west of Baker City.
Although a few patches of snow
still survived in sheltered spots,
Lewis said the lack of spring rain,
and the ongoing effects of drought,
left the forest floor dry enough to
sustain flames.
Those blazes killed a small per-
centage of pines, and blackened
the bark and turned the green nee-
dles red on some others.
But Wallowa-Whitman offi-
cials, including Lewis, who toured
the burned areas a few months
later were satisfied with the
results.
Forest managers prescribe con-
trolled fires for multiple reasons
and in multiple situations.
But the common goal is to
reduce the amount of combustible
stuff on the ground — dead dry
grass, mats of pine needles and
fallen twigs and limbs, as well as
the manmade debris left after log-
ging or thinning of trees too small
to be sawed into boards.
Trimming the volume of this
material — what fire officials
simply call “fuel” — can curb
the risk of wildfires during the
summer, when flames tend to be
much more difficult to control due
to hot, dry weather.
Forest Service officials also
say that prescribed fires can spur
the growth of native grasses and
shrubs that are valuable food
sources for wildlife and cattle.
In general, prescribed fires are
intended to mimic fires that used
to burn relatively frequently in
areas where ponderosa pine was
the dominant species — every
decade or so, according to scien-
tists who have studied fire scars on
old growth trees.
Some of those fires were
ignited by lightning.
Native Americans also used
prescribed fire to partially clear
the ground.
Effects on wildfire risk this
summer
The ample moisture during
April likely will have the predict-
able effect of pushing back the
onset of fire season, Lewis said.
But another effect might not be
as obvious, nor is it necessarily
beneficial.
The damp spring probably will
nourish a bumper crop of grasses
— the same grass that would stifle
a prescribed fire, he said.
The trouble is that come
summer, those grasses almost cer-
tainly will turn brown and dry,
turning into tinder that ignites
about as easily as old paper.
That tinder — what fire man-
agers call “fine fuels” to distin-
guish them from, say, fallen logs
or thick limbs — also can con-
tribute to a fire’s rapid spread,
Lewis said.
Ultimately, though, the factor
that tends to define how severe
the fire season is in Northeastern
Oregon is one that can’t be
predicted in advance with any-
thing like the confidence of
estimating how prolific the year’s
grass crop will be.
That factor is lightning.
Those bolts from the sky
spark about 80% of the fires,
in an average year, on the Wal-
lowa-Whitman and on other public
lands in Northeastern Oregon.
(Human-caused fires tend to be
more common on private lands.)
Even during severe drought
years, the fire season in North-
eastern Oregon can be tranquil
if lightning is either rare, or it is
accompanied by heavy rain that
either douses the fire altogether or
stifles its spread long enough that
firefighters can control it.
That was the case in both
2020 and 2021, when fire danger
reached extreme levels in
the region, but there were few
large blazes.
Then
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davis Carbaugh/The Observer
Puddles of rainwater and mud on Friday, April 22, 2022, give evidence of the heavy equipment used in
forest management work completed this winter in the Red Apple section of the Mount Emily Recreation
Area near La Grande. The highly debated forest management project drew a mixed bag of concerns from
local residents.
T HE O BSERVER
MERA
Continued from Page A1
“The deeper the snow
cover, the less likely those
soils are to freeze,” he said.
“These are things that could
have been prevented with an
appropriate method of log-
ging, which they decided not
to select because of cost.”
After being purchased
by Union County in 2008,
MERA has seen countless
hours of volunteer work and
locally funded trail proj-
ects. Barlow voiced displea-
sure on behalf of the many
MERA trail advocates who
have spent time and money
on the trail system.
“They need to restore the
trails in a timely manner,
because the county did not
pay any money for those
trails,” Barlow said. “They
were built by donations from
people in the community and
volunteer hours. To be fair,
they need to fix all that.”
Barlow noted that some
MERA residents and users
are reluctant to volunteer
efforts to clean up a mess the
county made.
“I know at least 30 people
that won’t lift a shovel to
help. They feel like the
county slapped us in the face
Jennifer Smith
davis Carbaugh/The Observer
A large pile of slash sits near the Bridleway Horseback Trail at the
Mount Emily Recreation Area outside La Grande on Friday, April 22,
2022. Union County Parks Coordinator Sean Chambers stated that
the slash piles from this year’s Red Apple Forest Management project
will be burned early next winter.
with this, so let them fix the
trails,” Barlow said. “My
take was, let’s collaborate
and get the trails back and
running. Let’s do a walk-
over to talk about the good
and the bad and we can just
move on.”
Rehabilitation
With MERA’s most high-
traffic visitation months on
the horizon, Chambers noted
that the unpredictability of
spring weather plays a role
in the cleanup process, and
he emphasized that it will
take time to get MERA back
to the way it was before the
forest management project.
“One day of good weather
doesn’t make for good work
construction conditions,”
he said. “If we can string
together a few nice days, it
really does dry out the soil
to where we can make some
improvements. By and large,
that hillside is still very wet.”
According to Chambers,
that process will include
grass seeding monitored by
the county, reseeding land-
ings after controlled burns
of slash piles, weed control
and letting certain areas heal
naturally.
“We’re working with the
seasons and the timeliness of
it all,” Chambers said. “Two
years from now, someone
who knew no better would
probably walk through there
and not be able to tell any-
thing happened. That’s the
hopeful outcome, but it’s
going to take a couple years
to get back to that phase.”
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