Crowning fury: Anger toward the Forest Service has been smoldering for a century. Raging wildfires brought it roaring to life.
Like so many in the devastation zone, she squarely places the blame on the USFS, not only for starting a prescribed burn in the windy month of April — when gusts reached 70 miles per hour — but for a century of conflict with rural communities. Known locally as La Floresta, the USFS is often seen as a feudal lord, a faraway government entity that has accumulated vast holdings with little idea of how to properly steward them or enough funds to do the job.
Indigenous knowledge reveals history of fire-prone California forest
Combining multiple lines of evidence, Knight and her team show that the tree density in this region of Klamath Mountains started to increase as the area was colonized, partly because the European settlers prevented Indigenous peoples from practising cultural burning. In the twentieth century, total fire suppression became a standard management practice, and fires of any kind were extinguished or prevented — although controlled burns are currently used in forest management. The team reports that in some areas, the tree density is higher than it has been for thousands of years, owing in part to fire suppression.
Human-triggered California wildfires more severe than natural blazes
Human-caused wildfires in California are more ferocious than blazes sparked by lightning, a team led by scientists from the University of California, Irvine reported recently in the journal Nature Communications. The research could help scientists better understand fire severity and how likely a blaze is to kill trees and inflict long-term damage on an ecosystem in its path.
Can we replace fire with mechanical thinning in Southwest Colorado?
The spate of burn-induced wildfires led Forest Service Chief Randy Moore to suspend the agency’s prescribed fire operations to conduct a 90-day review of its protocols and practices.
Yet, amid renewed awareness of the risks of prescribed fire, forest ecologists and biologists say fire serves an irreplaceable role in Southwest Colorado’s mixed conifer and ponderosa pine forests, and that limiting the use of fire would do more harm than good.
Fires spread as firefighters plead for pay raise promised last year
Federal firefighters still haven’t received a pay boost approved last year. It’s not known which employees will get the money once it is implemented. In some high-risk areas, the U.S. Forest Service has only half the staff it needs.
Meanwhile, the number of acres burned as of Wednesday was 112 percent higher than the 10-year average, according to the government’s wild land fire outlook. Drought, heat and wind are creating additional fire hazards.
Forest Service barely, sorta met burn requirements before Hermits Peak fire, plan shows.
Author Tom Ribe, a longtime wildland firefighter, has said it was “extremely risky” to light a fire on a windy April day and that the forecasted winds and humidity should have given a burn boss pause. He and other experts, however, said wind and relative humidity are just two of many factors a burn boss considers when they approve a burn.
4 Investigates: The prescribed burns that started the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire
“They are professionals, and I respect that very much, but obviously it was a risky thing to do given the dryness of this year,” said Tom Ribe, a fire scholar.
Ribe worked for the National Park Service for years doing prescribed burns in California and in New Mexico. He lived in New Mexico for most of his life and even wrote a book on the 2000 prescribed burn that turned into the Cerro Grande wildfire near Los Alamos. “I can’t imagine that the place was, as we call, ‘in prescription,’ which means that the conditions were right to do this,” Ribe said.
Massive fires should be a wake-up call
More research and experience show that prescribed burning is an excellent remedy for our fire-starved forests. Though the prescribed burn that was partly responsible for the fire’s ignition was very badly timed, in principle, carefully executed prescribed fire is a key answer to our unhealthy forests. Another approach lets large areas burn when lightning starts fires in moderately wet conditions. We need to get our forests back in balance with fire.
Forest Service finds its planned burns sparked N.M.’s largest wildfire
After decades of embracing a policy of putting out fires as quickly as possible, federal and some state officials have come around to the idea of prescribed burns in recent years. The basic concept, backed by science and Indigenous groups’ long history of using intentional fire, is that modest controlled burns can clear flammable vegetation and preempt the kind of destructive megafires that have devastated the West. Experts have called for more fire on the land, and the Biden administration has announced plans to use intentional burns and brush thinning to reduce fire risk on 50 million acres that border vulnerable communities.
But extreme drought and record heat, worsened by climate change, have made it more difficult to use intentional fire as a preventive measure. Longer wildfire seasons have narrowed the window of time when firefighters can set controlled burns safely. Bureaucratic obstacles, combined with public fear that an intentionally set fire could escape, have also prevented some forest managers from using prescribed fires.
Fighting fire with fire: Controlled burns remain essential as US wildfires intensify
"There's a lot of politics in play," said Matthew Hurteau, a professor at the University of New Mexico, who studies the effects of wildfires and climate change on Southwestern forests.
"After a plane crashes, we don't shut down all air travel for three months," he said. "The worst thing that can happen to our wildfire situation is that it get politicized."
The decision will affect the 193 million acres of land managed by the agency. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore called it a pause, "because of the current extreme wildfire risk conditions in the field."
He acknowledged 99.48% of prescribed burns go as planned and said the forest service will conduct a national review and evaluation of its program during the three-month hiatus.
It's the wrong message at the wrong time, said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council.
More evacuations ordered as Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire continues to spread
The other week Ribe snapped a photo of the fire from just outside Santa Fe and between the wind and the sheer size of the fire impressed him, and the fire crews who are holding their own.“I’m actually really impressed with how the firefighters are doing it and holding this all over the place this is an extraordinary fire to deal with I’ve worked on other forest fires over the last 30, 40 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Ribe.
Cerro Grande fire victims were ‘fully compensated’ decades ago. NM gov seeks the same in 2022.
But Tom Ribe, author of “Inferno by Committee,” a book about the Cerro Grande fire, told Source New Mexico recently that there might be some key differences.
For one, many of the Los Alamos fire victims were Los Alamos National Laboratories employees with Ph.Ds. That made it easier for them to draw the nation’s attention and navigate the FEMA aid process.
In the area burned by the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire, many of those who suffered losses are low-income.
So finding a way to reach those who were impacted and fully compensate them will potentially be a new challenge from this latest escaped prescribed burn, Ribe said.
In light of all this, Ribe said of the folks affected by the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire:
“They’re going to need an advocate.”
Let's Talk: forest management
Prescribed burns are a commonly used land management technique that reduces the amount of combustible material (leaf litter and dead grass naturally occurring in the natural landscape) and performed only when conditions such as humidity, wind, and temperature are ideal for managing fires, and not conducted unless all required weather conditions are met.
Echoes of the Cerro Grande wildfire 22 years later
Tom Ribe, wildland firefighter and author of “Inferno by Committee,” a book about the Cerro Grande fire, said he sees plenty of parallels so far between what happened in 2000 and what happened in early April this year.
The Forest Service’s prescribed burn was “extremely risky,” he said. He recommends agencies only do prescribed burns in the very early spring or the late fall. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently called on the federal government to change its prescribed burn rules for the Southwest for that same reason.
In 2000, when the Park Service lost control of Cerro Grande, condemnation was swift about the timing, in particular. Many called the Park Service officials “amateurs,” Ribe said.
“The Forest Service piled on with that, too,” at the time, Ribe said. “And now we’re seeing that anybody can do it. Anybody can make a mistake.”
As feds stay quiet on state’s largest-ever wildfire, theories circulate about its cause
On Monday, Michelle Burnett, a spokesperson for the United States Forest Service, declined to comment on whether investigators are looking into whether the Calf Canyon fire started earlier than April 19. The service also did not answer how it arrived at April 19 as a start date. “The comprehensive internal Declared Wildfire Review of the Las Dispensas prescribed fire is still ongoing, and the cause of the Calf Canyon fire remains under investigation. It would be premature to comment until either of those is complete,” she said.
There are now two investigations unfolding while the merged Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire grows: One into Calf Canyon’s origins and another as to how the prescribed burn escaped to become Hermits Peak.
Some answers to the second question lie in the past, said Tom Ribe, a wildland firefighter and author of “Inferno by Committee.” Just look at the last time we were in this mess — 22 years ago.
One month in, New Mexico’s largest-ever fire fuels anger and despair
Prescribed burns are controlled, intentional fires meant to clear vegetation and reduce the risk of disastrous wildfires, and experts say they rarely go awry. When considering a prescribed fire, authorities rely on models that take into account temperature, humidity, fuel moisture, wind speed and direction, said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and co-founder of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. Wind in particular tends to be a wild card, he said. “It’s very often that when these prescribed fires burn beyond their plan, it’s because there was a change in the wind, in wind speed or wind direction,” he said. “It’s extremely rare that it’s a matter of negligence.”
Governor promises a temporary halt to prescribed burns while wildfires rage in New Mexico
An expert and wildland firefighter, Tom Ribe, told Source New Mexico that it was “extremely risky” to ignite a prescribed burn on a windy April day in New Mexico. He also said the forecast conditions should have given a burn boss pause April 6, but he also stressed the decision to ignite a prescribed burn is a complex and difficult one based on many factors.
Governor promises temporary halt to prescribed burns
An expert and wildland firefighter, Tom Ribe, told Source New Mexico that it was “extremely risky” to ignite a prescribed burn on a windy April day in New Mexico. He also said the forecast conditions should have given a burn boss pause April 6, but he also stressed the decision to ignite a prescribed burn is a complex and difficult one based on many factors.
COIC, Heart of Oregon Corps receive nearly $1 million to launch C. Oregon Wildfire Workforce Partnership
(The) Central Oregon Wildfire Workforce Partnership…will train and employ over 140 local youth and young adults in wildfire reduction and related skills. In addition to gaining on-the-job training, certifications, and knowledge in fire fuel reduction practices, youth in the program will receive wages, scholarships, additional workforce training in both soft and hard skills to prepare them to enter the professional workforce.
Why climate change makes it harder to fight fire with fire
Last summer, the Forest Service’s chief, Randy Moore, restricted the use of prescribed fire on agency lands to make sure resources were available to fight wildfires. He also ordered a pause on allowing backcountry fires to burn if they provided ecological benefits and didn’t threaten homes or infrastructure.
The halt was temporary, but it was enough to make some ecologists fear that officials’ recent championing of fire could still go into reverse. If the goal is to return the land to an older ecological state, one in which frequent natural fires kept forests vibrant and resilient, then the scale of the task is staggering.