Forest fires generate a great deal of attention while they are raging. Walls of flame plunder hillsides, creating smoke plumes visible for many miles. Lives and property are at risk. News crews cover the drama. Eventually the fires are controlled, or burn themselves out. The news coverage shifts to new dramas somewhere else. But large swaths of burned land remain, changing landscapes for years or even generations.
Are the huge blazes that have come to be called megafires inevitable? Or can we take steps to lessen their impact?
In this diary, I will look at a portion of Okanogan County, Washington that has been familiar to me for years. It was featured in this story posted in September 2014. In August of this year, I arrived at my cabin just as two megafires threatened to consume Aeneas Valley and the towns of Tonasket and Republic. In a series of diaries posted here, I documented the events from the point of view of a forester whose property was jeopardized by both fires. Today I will discuss, using pictures, maps, and narratives, about one arm of the North Star fire that seemed to be on the verge of overwhelming the valley, but was abruptly contained. How did that happen? How can these lessons be applied elsewhere in the West?
Some readers will disagree with my conclusions, perhaps vehemently so. Conventional wisdom will be challenged. Sacred cows will receive no quarter. With that in mind, remember these rules of engagement:
• Markos’ Rule #1, DBAD. In particular, personal attacks and accusations of shilling will not be tolerated.
• Read the entire diary before commenting. Yes, it’s a long one, but I am covering complex topics for which brevity is not a virtue. The last time I wrote about a contentious subject, people who clearly had not read the diary unleashed all sorts of invectives in the comments section. This generated much heat, but no light.
• I will identify the area well enough that anyone can go there and fact-check for themselves. If your conclusions differ from mine, I welcome the debate, whether it be today or months from now.
Why are the fires so bad now?
Let’s start by taking a trip back to 1910. That year saw tinder-dry forests similar to 2015, but the human equation was very different. Logging was largely unrestricted, and dry logging debris stretched for miles on end. Miners and settlers poured across the countryside, building fires whenever and wherever they pleased. Recently-built railroads provided numerous sources of access and ignition. When fire conditions reached extreme levels, three million acres in Washington, Idaho, and Montana were consumed in short order.
Gifford Pinchot headed a young government agency known as the US Forest Service. He, among others, advocated for total suppression of wildfires from that point forward. Some knowledgeable Westerners argued in favor of allowing natural fires to burn as they had since the end of the last Ice Age. They understood that frequent, low-intensity fires would be better than rare but uncontrollable major ones, but Pinchot won the political battle. The era of suppression had begun.
For a few decades this strategy appeared to be the right choice. People living and working in the rural West often encountered unbroken stretches of green forest. Sure, there were occasional fires and insect outbreaks. Visitors would grumble about the log trucks loaded with timber from clearcuts and thinnings. But they had access to millions upon millions of acres of nature’s bounty where they could camp, hunt, fish, or just get away from the city for a spell. Telling stories around the campfire was a nightly ritual (today, with burn bans, the campfire might net you a hefty fine).
At first many forests, particularly in the drier parts of the West, were open and park-like, with perhaps 50 to 100 large trees on the typical acre. But silently, year by year, the forests were changing. The lack of frequent fire allowed young trees to grow in the sunny openings. Some were of species that did not tolerate fire. Before long there were hundreds, sometimes thousands, of trees per acre of all sizes, creating what is known as ladder fuels for the inevitable forest fire. A fire could now easily leap into the crowns of otherwise fire-adapted trees such as ponderosa pine, killing the biggest and best specimens. Additionally, the densely packed trees competed for finite moisture, nutrients, and sunlight. Weakened forests sometimes fell victim to insects whose populations grew exponentially in the presence of such an abundant food source.
As the twentieth century rolled along, opposition to logging increased. Environmentalists succeeded in blocking timber sales throughout the West, and harvests from public lands plummeted.
Even timber sales whose purpose was to keep forests thinned to healthy stocking levels were vigorously opposed. Dry-climate forests with limited carrying capacity often reached the dubious double-whammy of having far too many trees, growing in configurations that invited calamitous fire. Mortality became inevitable; the only question was whether the Grim Reaper would be bearing insects, fungi, parasitic plants, drought, fire, or a combination of all of them.
Meanwhile, more and more people have chosen to live and vacation on private lands in close proximity to the large blocks of public forests, creating what has become known as the wildland-urban interface. Each house, cabin, or campsite is a potential ignition source. Every property owner (myself included) wants their piece of paradise saved from destruction when fires loom.
Add the wild card of climate change, and the stage is set for the Age of Megafires.
The North Star fire
2015 began with a mild winter and reduced snowpack in northern Washington. By midsummer, forests were exceptionally dry. On or about August 14, a front brought a combination of lightning and fierce winds. Sparks caused by humans added to the toll. Numerous fires appeared almost simultaneously. On a calm day this would be a challenge for local fire crews. With the wind and low humidity, the blazes quickly got out of hand. Extra help would be slow to arrive, because the elite fire teams were already busy elsewhere.
Roughly 13 miles southwest of Republic and 23 miles southeast of Tonasket, lightning struck a section of rocky, broken terrain known as Devil’s Canyon. Although the land along Lyman Lake Road a mile or so to the east was nearly flat, the canyon presented enough of a challenge to overwhelmed firefighters that it quickly burned out of control.
On August 18, I wrote:
My understanding is that there are four separate fires: the giant North Star fire which is mainly on the Colville Indian Reservation; a large fire on the south flank of Dugout Mountain and a smaller one to the north; and the Devil’s Canyon fire to the northwest of the others (for administration purposes, the fires are generally grouped together as the North Star fire). The latter fire is of greatest concern to me personally, because it is closest to the cabin and has fewer roads to jump in order to threaten my part of the world.
Early in the day, it looked like the crews might have a chance to get a better handle on the fires. But shortly after noon the wind picked up, whistling through the trees on the property, and causing trees to go up in flames farther down the valley.
Perhaps an hour later, the Devil’s Canyon blaze reached the ridge. Where only smoke had been visible before, orange flames made their appearance.
After darkness fell, I noticed a new patch of fire even closer than the ridge. Was it a spot fire that had managed to go against the prevailing wind, or was it a backfire? A bit later, a long line of new flames confirmed that it was a backfire. With a bit of luck, a good buffer will be established before tomorrow’s winds and low humidity.
I watched this section of the fire with great anxiety. Each day’s perimeter maps and infrared heat maps told the unfolding story: The back-burn was keeping the Devil’s Canyon portion of the fire at bay. At the same time that other frontiers of the North Star fire expanded alarmingly, this boundary hardly budged after that surge to the ridge. When asked, fire bosses told me that their crews were taking advantage of tracts of woods that had seen managed thinnings and controlled burns. I wanted to see for myself what had happened, but understandably the fire zones were closed to the public. I would have to wait. On September 27, as the elite crews pulled out of the area, the “road closed” signs were quietly taken down.
My route is shown in yellow.
My tour began on Lyman Lake Road, about two miles south of its junction with Aeneas Valley Road. This wide gravel road is a major access route for parts of the Okanogan National Forest and the Colville Indian Reservation. Numerous side trails lead into the woods, and into the occasional private ownership. Tempting fate, I followed the same path as last year, past the point where my truck’s ball joint failed and left me “Stranded in the Deep Dark Woods.” The purpose of that ill-fated excursion, after all, was to inspect the controlled burns that the Forest Service had conducted the previous winter. That very same stretch of woods became a major battleground in the efforts to stop the North Star fire and its companion blaze in Devil’s Canyon. It made total sense revisit the area.
September 2014 photo of USFS fuel-reduction project.
To my great relief, as I entered Forest Service ownership, the land was much the same as before. This year’s crop of downed pine needles and dry grass had burned, but most of the trees were fine. Some big ponderosa pines had coal-black bark near the ground, but they had evolved to withstand such assaults from fire.
I continued south for about three miles, occasionally stopping to wander around the woods and take pictures. Even the denser patches of woods to the east were largely intact. Fire crews might have set backfires at night in order to slow down the North Star fire before it reached the road.
Small trees can act as ladder fuels, bringing fire to the canopy.
Then I turned west onto Forest Service Road 200, following it for two miles through thinned forests. Having been intentionally underburned two winters ago, this stretch of woods offered very little fuel for the summer fire. Some spots had not burned at all. Nearly every tree was alive and green. Newly fallen pine seeds dotted the forest floor.
Right side of road did not burn.
At a fork in the road, I took Road 220 to Cox Meadows. Last September, thick grass covered the aspen-fringed meadow. A leaning cabin and roofless shed begged to be photographed. Could they possibly have survived the fire? As the meadow came into view, so did the cabin! The shed was gone, reduced to ash.
Cows had grazed the grass to stubble. Fire had approached the meadow from the southeast, raining embers into the field and leaving blackened patches everywhere. If the short grass could burn so readily, it’s a wonder that the cabin survived. A fire crew might have doused it with water in order to save a bit of history.
The aspen groves had barely been singed, leaving me to wonder whether this had happened naturally, or whether aircraft had dropped water along the edges of the meadow. In the distance, a slow-moving helicopter came into view. The pilot seemed to be following the perimeter of the fire, in order to revise the fire map or to provide other information.
To the west, the fire evidently had struck during the hot part of the day, gaining power as it reached steeper slopes. Green trees gave way to brown ones, and then to naked black sticks. Even the previously-treated areas suffered major losses. While it was hard to tell for certain, it appeared that the Forest Service had completed logging here, but had not done a controlled burn. The extra fuel on the ground burned so hot that most of the trees were lost.
Dead needles were permanently bent to show the wind direction when the fire hit. A few totally-singed trees might survive to put out new growth next season if the fire-resistant buds were not heated to critical temperature. But lacking their usual crop of needles from previous growing seasons, recovery will be slow, and bark beetles will be waiting to finish what the fire started.
Dead needles are curved in direction of wind at time of fire.
Green bud from top of downed tree.
Carnage was everywhere. Some trees had burned in two at the base and now lay on the ground. Others remained standing but were held up by precariously thin pieces of wood. Any of them could fall without warning, which is one reason the fire zones remain closed to the public for so long.
Ponderosa pine burned in two by fire
After light fire, pine seeds litter the ground.
Severe fire removes all ground cover.
Stumps and roots had burned, leaving deep, irregular holes where the earth was still hot. Ground cover, including pine needles, pine cones, and understory vegetation, had been vaporized. Nothing remained but mineral soil, rocks, and ash.
Overhead there were no pine cones to be seen, meaning that no seed sources were nearby. Trees might be slow to return to this land without replanting.
By the time I’d driven a mile west of the meadow, I was surrounded by the skeletons of crowned-out trees. Fire behavior can be fickle; the swirling flames had spared groups of trees in the distance while consuming the rest. I took a few more pictures and turned around.
Aftermath of crown fire.
Back at Lyman Lake Road, I found the junction with Road 500. Following the contours of the land, this road first goes north, then west, then southwest, conveniently wrapping around Devil’s Canyon. It was here that fire crews lit the night backfire that I could see from my cabin.
Road 500 served as a fire break.
Large mounds of rock jutted from the earth, creating broken terrain that would be difficult for firefighters to operate in. But the road itself stayed mainly on gentler ground. In between the outcrops, forest managers had thinned the timber and conducted a cool-weather burn, as they had done in the other nearby locations. Aeneas Valley Road lay less than a mile to the north. If the woods along Road 500 had not been treated, and the fire had continued out of Devil’s Canyon unabated, it might well have roared into Aeneas Valley. Instead, the night burn on August 18 created a blackened zone that the canyon fire could not breach.
A successful backfire was set less than a mile from Aeneas Valley.
And so it is, that within the boundaries of one of the largest wildfires in the modern history of the state of Washington, in a month with some of the most extreme fire weather imaginable, large swaths of green forest remain; and the sprawling wildland-urban interface of Aeneas Valley was saved. This did not happen as a result of a bold stroke of genius or a previously unknown technology. Instead, it was the result of tried-and-true management practices that have been known for decades. When trees are farther apart, and managed burns are done during the cool season, there simply is not much remaining to burn when the megafire arrives.
Nor was this success due to any unique circumstances found in Aeneas Valley and nowhere else. The same methods can be applied in other dry western forests with favorable terrain. In fact, they have been proposed repeatedly, for years.
Why have they not been carried out? Because some environmental groups vehemently oppose virtually all logging on public land. Armed with large war chests funded by well-meaning members, they have gone to court to delay or completely stop proposed fuel-reduction projects, as well as other timber sales. Try doing an online search, using the name of an environmental advocacy group plus the words timber sale lawsuits. You will get a result similar to this search. Scrolling through the results, one pattern is obvious: charismatic animals such as wolves, lynx, owls, and salmon are repeatedly used as props in their lawsuits and in their press releleases. From their point of view, relatively small timber sales will bring doom to these animals, while the risk of a quarter-million acre forest fire is not that big of a deal. After the fire will come renewal. Their logic escapes me.
What are they gaining by this, and how do their actions benefit the environment? Draw your own conclusions. For my part, I have laid out the facts based on my observations, aided by a few decades of practical forestry experience. Nothing has been embellished or cherry-picked.
I’ve recently been made aware of the writings of ecologist George Wuerthner. In this article he lays out the case for letting the megafires burn. If you scroll to the last set of comments, you can see my rebuttal. I will say it here: George Wuerthner is wrong. Our western forests, even the ones we regard as pristine, are in their present state due to human manipulation. It will take more manipulation – yes, logging in some cases – to return them to a more viable condition. Will fuel treatments work every time? Of course not. A hot enough fire, on a windy enough day, will overwhelm the best defenses.
My next diary will cover the Tunk Block fire. Were the same management practices employed there? What was the result? Will my conclusions about the North Star fire hold true, or will I have to retract what I’ve written today? Stay tuned.
Furthermore, large fires are the major source for dead trees critical to forest ecosystems. We need large wildfires to rejuvenate and sustain healthy forests. (George Wuerthner)
Correct me if I’m wrong, but aren’t living trees the key to healthy forests? (foresterbob)