I’ll skip my apologies for silence in the hopes that you’ll understand that I am currently working on a near-final draft of my book about my life as a firefighter and wildland fires in the west. I’ve opened up paying subscriptions. It’s mid-June, and you can expect Fires in your inbox every Tuesday (if you’re a paying subscriber), I promise. I will be doing a regional breakdown of pertinent activity each week, and the more subscribers I have, the more effort I will put into this, so please share widely.
Recently I’ve been wading through Stephen Pyne’s behemoth text, Between Two Fires. It’s a doozy. Two winters ago I spent over a month (in Europe) reading Fire in America, and reading Between Two Fires has once again made my jaw go slack in awe of Pyne’s wealth of knowledge.
I’m near the beginning, and Pyne has just entered the sixties, the era of the Leopold Report, which at the time seemed to be a changemaking document. It was, kind of, and the Park Service in particular began integrating more abundant prescribed fire into their agency. That is, until the Cerro Grande fire blew up three decades later, near Los Alamos. This was my first year as a firefighter, in the year 2000 when I was nineteen. I was called down to the Viveash (my first ever fire), in New Mexico, which popped up a few weeks after Cerro Grande was contained.
Cerro Grande was a direct product of the Leopold Report. It was a routine prescribed burn that got out of control for many reasons, some of them preventable. I’m not going to go into that. What I will say is that prescribed fire has never been the same since, and that the Cerro Grande and agency fear surrounding escaped fires decreased prescribed fire use in government agencies disastrously. The event is still a specter for the Park Service.
There’s no need for me to get into the details of Cerro Grande itself— I do that in my book. But I will say that, as we edge into what is likely a century of megafires influenced not only by systemic fire suppression, cultural suppression (of Indigenous fire), and destruction wrought primarily by the Forest Service and logging agencies but also by centuries of unchecked grazing, we also edge into the unpredictable age of climate change.
No one can deny climate change now, not even the hardcore climate deniers I worked with in the Forest Service as a hotshot. The debate for them lies in its origins— natural or manmade? I’m not here to engage with that (though please do sift through the science because clearly humans have adversely affected the world’s climate balance).
What I am here to say is that we aren’t doing enough burning. Not nearly enough. I will keep ringing that alarm bell, hopefully more articulately in my book than I have here. For now, I have updates.
It’s been raining here in Seattle. I’m grateful for it. Had it not rained in June we would have been fucked, to state it gently. We still may be. Excluding the Seattle area, much of the west is now considered in severe drought. Even working as a hotshot in the early 00’s I always worried about drought, especially on fires in So. Cal, where I was often sent with my crew. In 2001 California was in drought— it semmed like every year was an interation of some drought cycle. But it’s never been like it is now, with reservoirs already at emergency levels in June, and months of dry weather ahead. California alone is known for its Mediterranean climate; a winter wet(ish) season (depending on location) followed by a long dry season. Rain isn’t going to come in July, unless it’s the kind created by pyrocumulous clouds (and we don’t want that).
The only positive for any region is the southwest, whose monsoonal rains should be showing up in July. The Sierra (California) snowpack had record lows this summer. Why does snow pack matter? Because snow, unlike rain, melts slowly and saturates the soil and fuels (trees, brush) with moisture. Snowpack, whether it’s hefty or sparse, has been melting faster and earlier, leaving the soil and flora to fend for themselves. Even if there’s plenty of rain, rain doesn’t work like snow. It creates rivulets and slides off mountains quickly, not lingering long enough to significantly soak and replenish the soil and both fine and dense fuels.
What does that mean for the Sierras, whose fuels have been adversely affected since the arrival of the forty-niners, who plundered not only gold but also the flora. As Pyne points out (referring to the Leopold Report):
“Among the more spectacular examples the report cited was the western slope of the Sierra Nevada. When the forty-niners had spilled over its crestline, it had boasted a montane forest of large trees widely spaced and routinely burned. By 1963 it displayed a ‘depressing’ vegetative tangle, a ‘dog-hair thicket of young pines, white fir, incense cedar, and mature brush— a direct function of overprotection from natural ground fires.’”
A note that this montane was “routinely burned” by Indigenous Californians, who were swiftly and brutally eradicated by white settlers and government agencies, as well as the Spanish coming up from the south in the pervious centuries.
Anywho, what I’m saying is that there is a lot of history to the condition of the Sierras. It isn’t only climate change. It isn’t only recent development. Its condition can be traced back to the removal of its keepers, though it’s important to keep in mind that many Indigenous Californians are continuously advocating for the presence of fire and trying to reinstate cultural burning, only to be shut down by state agencies like Cal Fire, who ironically also works with folks in some capacities. It’s complicated, of course.
The Sierras, like many other fire prone landscapes, would benefit from the presence of fire throughout the late fall, early spring, and winter. It’s a pipe dream to think that we could catch up with all our backlogged burning, but with community action we can do a lot. We can’t rely on government agencies to fix this. Check out The Nature Conservancy to see the amazing things happening now that began way back when someone purchased a plot of land. That’s how things start. Small.
I had the privilege of listening to Jeremy Bailey speak about TREX, a wildland fire training exchange that helps bring the knowledge of fire and burning into smaller communities and departments. He also raised a brilliant idea— that we have an entirely different work force come in after the seasonal firefighters leave and spend the winter burning.
My intention today was to update you on what’s going on in the fire world, so here’s a bit of that, too.
Here’s June’s Wildland Fire Potential Outlook released monthly by the NIFC. It’s…not great, especially considering that least season was a burner. I don’t see things letting up, like, ever again?
Here’s an interesting piece of writing by Carson Vaughan details a new book by author Chad Hanson that argues for the inevitability of fires. It definitely seems like (the book) it’s worth a read, and the piece raises some interesting points.
Colorado is predicting a long, drawn out fire season.
Despite rain in Seattle, Washington state is in drought, and there have already been fires (there was a red flag warning in April).
But honestly, there isn’t a ton happening right now in terms of fires. Small fires in Montana and Colorado, fires in Arizona.
A reminder: fires are normal. Fires are natural. Fires are regenerating. Despite how scary these megafires are, please let us not get drawn into the news cycle and begin thinking all fires are bad. We wouldn’t even be paying attention to fires as much if half of us hadn’t moved into fire prone areas.
Another reminder: if you pay for this it will happen more frequently. Please become a paying subscriber! If you can’t afford that, I can comp you. Also, please share this!