DailyAstorian.com // TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2018
146TH YEAR, NO. 47
ONE DOLLAR
Driven by
climate change,
fire reshapes
the landscape
Forest policy,
development
influence fires
By MATTHEW BROWN
Associated Press
Heartprint Productions
Chad and Toniann Churches with their son, Cyrus.
Coast Guard couple
inspired during son’s
leukemia treatment
Six months of
chemotherapy
By JACK HEFFERNAN
The Daily Astorian
T
he Churches had mixed emo-
tions when their first child,
Cyrus, was born last year.
During Toniann Churches’ preg-
nancy, they threw a gender reveal
party. The family has a lot of girls,
so they were excited to find out they
were having a boy. Still, it was some-
thing new, and the Astoria couple’s
imagination ran wild whenever they
held their newborn son.
“You start to re-evaluate your
future, get a little excited and a lit-
tle nervous,” Chad Churches said.
“You just start to dream. It, like,
reignites your imagination, like,
what are they going to be like
when they grow up?”
That dream took a frightening
turn about four months later when
Cyrus was diagnosed with leuke-
mia, prompting months of rigor-
ous treatment and unusual living
arrangements. For six energy-drain-
ing months, the new parents relied
on the inspiration offered by their
son, as well as some help from their
Coast Guard peers.
‘Hoping it was wrong’
As the Churches held their baby
BILLINGS, Mont. —
Wildfires have charred more
than 10,000 square miles so far
this year, an area larger than
the state of Maryland, with
large fires still burning in
every Western state, includ-
ing many that are not fully
contained.
Whether sparked by light-
ning or humans, fire has long
been a force shaping the
landscape of the West.
Hot, dry winds can whip
flames into firestorms that
leave behind charred waste-
lands prone to erosion and
mudslides. Other fires clear
out underbrush, open the for-
est floor to sunlight and stim-
ulate growth.
Government
agencies
in recent decades effec-
tively upended that cycle
of destruction and rebirth.
Fire suppression policies
allowed fuels to build up in
many Western forests, mak-
ing them more susceptible to
major fires.
Those influences are
magnified as development
creeps ever deeper into for-
ests and climate change
brings hotter temperatures.
Recent images of subdivi-
sions ablaze thrust the power
and ecological role of wild-
fires into the spotlight.
A look at the environmen-
tal effects of wildfires:
Smoke and ruin
Coast Guard
The Coast Guard stepped up to help one of its own.
son, they noticed something differ-
ent. He had a low-grade fever for
more than a week, his stomach was
pale and he was crying more than
usual.
“Even when you held him and
stuff, he would just sit there and
be really uncomfortable,” Chad
Churches said.
The Churches took Cyrus in for
a blood test. They imagined a num-
ber of scenarios, but the true cause
of their son’s pain shocked them.
“I was kind of upset just because
I was hoping it was wrong,” Toni-
ann Churches said. “Other people’s
kids get leukemia. Not yours.”
Cyrus and his parents spent most
of the next six months at Doernbe-
cher Children’s Hospital in Port-
land. Stuck in a new environ-
ment as the disease progressed, the
first month was the hardest, Chad
Churches recalls.
“It was just constantly finding
out worse information as it pro-
gressed,” he said.
As Cyrus struggled to sleep
while repeatedly vomiting, his par-
ents took turns resting near him.
Most immediately fire
brings destruction.
Temperatures
from
extreme fires can top 2,000
degrees Fahrenheit — hot
enough to kill all plant
life, incinerate seeds hid-
den beneath the surface and
bake the soil until it becomes
impervious to rain.
The lifeless landscape
becomes prone to severe ero-
sion, fouling streams and riv-
ers with silt that kills fish and
other aquatic life. Torrents of
muddy debris following fires
last year in Southern Cali-
fornia killed 21 people and
destroyed 129 homes.
U.S. Geological Survey
scientists say the problem
is getting worse as the area
burned annually by wild-
fires increases. A study last
year concluded sediment
from erosion following fires
would more than double
by 2050 for about a third of
western watersheds.
Smoke from this sum-
mer’s Western wildfires
— a potential health haz-
ard for at-risk individuals
— prompted the closure of
Yosemite National Park for
more than two weeks and
drifted to the East Coast ,
according to NASA. Recent
research says it also impacts
climate change as small par-
ticles spiral into the upper
atmosphere and interfere
with the sun’s rays.
Climate questions
Scientists broadly agree
wildfires are getting bigger
in North America and other
parts of the world as the cli-
mate warms. But still emerg-
ing is how that change will
alter the natural progression
of fire and regrowth.
The time interval between
wildfires in some locations
is getting shorter, even as
there’s less moisture to help
trees regrow. That means
some forests burn, then
never grow back, convert-
ing instead into shrub land
more adapted to frequent fire,
said Jonathan Thompson, a
senior ecologist at Harvard
University.
“They get stuck in this
trap of repeated, high-se-
verity fire,” Thompson said.
“Through time we’ll see the
California shrub land shift-
ing north.”
Similar shifts are being
observed in Colorado, Wyo-
ming’s Yellowstone National
Park and Glacier National
Park in Montana, he said.
See FIRES, Page 7A
See COAST GUARD, Page 7A
‘IT WAS OUR TOP PRIORITY TO HELP THAT
FAMILY. IT WAS TOUGH BECAUSE THEY JUST
WANTED THEIR SON TO BE BETTER.’
Lauren Walton | chief petty officer at Coast Guard Air Station Astoria
AP Photo/Eric Risberg
Standing rainwater pools where a Fountaingrove
neighborhood home once stood before a wildfire in
Santa Rosa, Calif.
Why did Mount St. Helens form to the west?
New research paper by
Oregon State published
By KRISTIAN
FODEN-VENCIL
Oregon Public Broadcasting
For years, scientists have wondered why
Mount St. Helens is out of line with other
volcanoes on the Pacific Northwest’s Ring
of Fire.
Oregon State University scientists think
they now have the answer.
Oregon State geophysicist Adam Schultz
and his team think a giant subsurface rock
formation, about 25 miles in diameter,
diverted magma and melted rock off the
Ring of Fire’s arc.
That formation, known as the Spirit Lake
batholith, pushed the magma westward.
“It seems like what we call the Spirit
Lake batholith is probably the reason why
Mount St. Helens actually pops up far to the
west of where you would anticipate it to be,”
Schultz said.
Older imaging studies show the structure,
density and temperature of what’s under the
mountain, and more recent use of magneto-
telluric measurements — which show the
Earth’s subsurface electrical conductivity —
reveal fluids like magma.
The Oregon State team said it layered the
two types of images together and created
a much clearer picture of what lies below.
It’s being published this week in the journal
“Nature Geoscience.”
Oregon State University
See MOUNT ST. HELENS, Page 7A
Mount St. Helens is several miles west of where it might be ex-
pected to be when looking at the Ring of Fire.