A3
THE ASTORIAN • TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019
West struggles to hit goals of fi ghting fi re with fi re
Oregon changed
air quality rules
for planned fi res
By BRIAN MELLEY
Associated Press
KINGS
CANYON
NATIONAL PARK, Calif.
— The thick scent of smoke
hung in the midday air when
a trail along the Kings River
opened up to an ominous
scene: fl ames in the trees and
thick gray smoke shrouding
canyon walls.
Firefi ghters were on the
job. In fact, they had started
the blaze that chewed through
thick
ferns,
blackened
downed trees and charred the
forest fl oor. The prescribed
burn — a low-intensity,
closely managed fi re — was
intended to clear out under-
growth and protect the heart
of Kings Canyon National
Park from future wildfi res
that are growing larger and
more frequent amid climate
change.
The tactic is considered
one of the best ways to pre-
vent the kind of catastrophic
destruction that has become
common from wildfi res, but
its use falls woefully short
of goals in the U.S. West. A
study published in the jour-
nal Fire in April found pre-
scribed burns on federal land
in the last 20 years across
the West has stayed level or
fallen despite calls for more.
Prescribed fi res are cred-
ited with making forests
healthier and stopping or
slowing the advance of some
blazes. Despite those suc-
cesses, there are plenty of
reasons they are not set as
often as offi cials would like,
ranging from poor conditions
to safely burn to bureaucratic
snags and public opposition.
After a wildfi re last year
largely leveled the city of
Paradise and killed 86 peo-
ple, the state prioritized 35
brush and other vegeta-
tion-reduction projects that
could all involve some use
of intentional fi re, said Mike
AP Photo/Brian Melley
Firefi ghter Matthew Dunagan stands watch as fl ames spread during a prescribed fi re in Cedar Grove at Kings Canyon National Park.
Mohler, deputy director of
the California Department of
Forestry and Fire Protection.
Despite the push for more
burns, there are disastrous
reminders of prescribed fi res
blowing out of control —
such as a 2012 Colorado burn
that killed three people and
damaged or destroyed more
than two dozen homes.
Overcoming public fears
by teaching about “good
smoke, bad smoke, out-of-
control fi re and prescribed
fi re” is just one hurdle before
fi refi ghters can put match to
kindling, Mohler said.
“It’s
the
difference
between fi re under our terms
and fi ghting fi re on Mother
Nature’s terms,” he said.
It can take years to plan
and clear federal, state and
local environmental and air
pollution regulations. A burn
among giant sequoias once
took 13 years to accom-
plish, said Michael Theune,
a spokesman for Sequoia
and Kings Canyon National
Parks.
In the American West,
where the landscape is steep
and downed trees, brush and
other fuels have built up over
decades of fi re suppression,
the so-called burn window
can be short because of hot,
dry conditions.
Relaxing environmental
restrictions has cleared the
way for more prescribed fi res
in some cases.
Oregon recently changed
air quality rules for planned
fi res to strike a balance
between smoky winter skies
and bad summer blazes. Cal-
ifornia proclaimed a state of
emergency to allow it to fast-
track brush clearing.
Most states and federal
agencies in the U.S. West
have ambitious goals they
don’t achieve, said Crys-
tal Kolden, a University of
Idaho forest and fi re science
professor whose study con-
cluded that not enough pre-
scribed fi res are being done
in the region.
“They know they need
to be doing more prescribed
fi re, they want to be doing
more prescribed fi re,” she
said. “They are simply unable
to accomplish that.”
Opponents cite the threat
to wildlife and release of
greenhouse gases. In Califor-
nia, some environmentalists
opposed intentional burns
because they can destroy nat-
ural drought-tolerant shrubs
and replace them with fl am-
mable invasive weeds and
grasses.
Rick Halsey of the Cal-
ifornia Chaparral Insti-
tute said reintroducing fi re
through prescribed burns
is appropriate in the Sierra
Nevada, where more fre-
quent lightning-sparked fi res
and blazes historically set
by Native Americans are
believed to improve forests
by clearing brush to allow
taller trees to thrive and open-
ing sequoia seed pods so they
can reproduce.
But Halsey said pre-
scribed fi res don’t help much
of the rest of the state. The
fi re that tore through Para-
dise showed how ineffec-
tive clearing underbrush can
be — it roared across 7 miles
that had burned just 10 years
earlier.
“It was still grasses and
weeds and shrubs, and that’s
the model these prescribed
burning advocates have
used,” Halsey said. “They
say if we have younger fuels
on the landscape, we’ll have
less fi res or lower intensity
fi res, and we can use those
areas to protect communities.
And that has never happened
in wind-driven fi res.”
The state acknowledged
in a draft environmental
impact report that clearing
vegetation may not slow or
halt extreme fi res.
But successful prescribed
burns can save property from
some future fi res, supporters
said.
Four years ago, Cedar
Grove in the bottom of Kings
Canyon escaped a mas-
sive lightning-ignited fi re —
fl ames burned up to where
periodic prescribed burns had
thinned undergrowth. About
$400 million in property,
including employee hous-
ing, lodging, campgrounds
and a water treatment plant,
was spared, said Theune, the
parks spokesman.
Last winter was a very
wet one in California, and
that left brush and vegetation
less volatile through spring.
In Kings Canyon, fi refi ghters
returned in June to burn dif-
ferent segments along a nar-
row strip of pines, cedars and
manzanita between the rag-
ing Kings River and a road
that ends in the canyon.
With other fi refi ghters
standing by in case embers
escaped, a half-dozen mem-
bers of the park’s Arrow-
head Hot Shots methodically
dripped fl ame from gas-and-
diesel torches to ignite dry
pine needles, twigs and other
accumulated material.
A
mosaic-like
pat-
tern of fi re crept through
grasses, pine cones and dead
branches. Downed pon-
derosa pines became occa-
sional fl ashpoints. Teams
with hoses doused fl ames
that threatened to climb liv-
ing trees.
Ideally, Sequoia and
Kings Canyon parks would
burn 10,000 or more acres
a year, Theune said. The
annual target is about a fi fth
of that, and the actual acreage
burned often falls far short of
that goal.
Over two days, the fi re
crew blackened the 218 acres
targeted, doubling the total
area burned last year in the
two parks.
But it was merely 10% of
the parks’ annual goal and
just a tiny fraction of land in
the U.S. West that could be
treated with prescribed fi re.
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