Photo by Craig Daughtery, USDA Forest Service.
A heavy airtanker concludes a retardant drop on the Santiago Fire in California. Longer, hotter fire seasons are forcing fire managers to make tough choices about where and when they will deploy resources.
The 2007 fire season was the latest in a series of busy
years for wildland fire agencies and firefighters. The fire season roared to life in the spring
in the Southeastern United States, gave
firefighters a bit of a break in June, and returned with a vengeance in July in
the West. After tapering off in most
parts of the country in September, fire season made a curtain call in Southern California in October. This season turned out to be one of the busiest
since 1960, reinforcing the belief of many experts that wildland fire is in an
era of change.
Recap of the Fire
Season
As the country emerged from winter, forecasters predicted a
potentially serious early fire season in the drought-stricken Southeast and
Southwest. Many swamp lands in Georgia and Florida were missing a key ingredient
(water) and were prime candidates for wildfires. These predictions were confirmed as dozens of
fires in the Southeast kept crews working hard during April and May. Fires heavily impacted the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service’s Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, burning 330,000 acres
in the refuge. By the time fires tapered
off, more than a million acres had
burned in southeastern Georgia
and northern Florida.
June was a relatively calm month fire-wise, thanks to good
firefighting and amenable weather conditions.
The most significant wildfire in June was California’s
Angora Fire near the southwest side of Lake Tahoe. This fire burned 3,100 acres and destroyed more
than 230 homes, while forcing hundreds of people to evacuate.
The wildfire situation changed dramatically in early July,
when repeated waves of thunderstorms — many of them coming with little or no
rain — pelted the interior west and the northwest with lightning. Hot temperatures and breezy conditions
greeted lightning fires, comprising the perfect recipe for wildfire growth.
The progression of the national preparedness level reflected
the nation’s worsening wildfire situation in July. (The national preparedness level is a 1-5
scale that reflects the tempo of wildland firefighting and national resource
commitment.) On the Fourth of July, the
preparedness level was at a modest 2. In
a span of just 15 days, the preparedness level leaped upward and topped out at
level 5 on July 19. The national
preparedness level would remain at its highest level for almost six consecutive
weeks.
During the month of July, the western and eastern geographic
areas within the Great Basin out West were
particularly hard hit with wildfires. Nevada alone saw 900,000 acres burn in a three-week
period in July, and Utah and southern Idaho burned almost 1.4
million acres during the month. The
largest Great Basin fire was the Murphy
Complex (actually six fires that burned together), which straddled the
Nevada-Idaho border and burned 653,000 acres of grass and sagebrush. Eventually, more than 3.2 million acres
burned in the two Great Basin geographic areas.
In mid July, fire managers saw a sign they had been
dreading. Fire occurrence was starting
to move out of the relatively light fuels of the Great Basin and progress into
higher elevations and heavier fuels in the Sierras, Cascades and Rocky Mountains.
Fires in heavy fuels require much more work to put out, which would tax
firefighting resources already stretched thin.
By early August, more than two dozen large fires and fire complexes were
entrenched in mountainous areas of the country, and the demand for certain
firefighting resources, like helicopters, fireline supervisors and Hotshot
crews, was growing.
Firefighters doggedly worked through the rest of the western
fire season in August and September. Many
of the immense fires in Idaho and Montana were too remote
for effective initial attack and were destined to grow large and burn far into
September. The Northern Rockies geographic
area (encompassing northern Idaho and Montana) would
eventually see more than 1.1 million acres burn in 2007.
In early October, fire managers in most parts of the country
welcomed autumn precipitation, and the moisture helped dampen the handful of lingering
fire complexes in Idaho and Montana.
By that point, the United
States had more than 73,000 wildland fires
reported, which had burned more than 8.2 million acres. At the fire season’s peak, more than 19,000
people were assigned to fire suppression or support.
By mid-October, however, a huge portion of the Southeastern
United States was back in drought conditions; and the Appalachian States,
particularly Tennessee and Kentucky, experienced scattered large fires
burning in fallen leaves and brush.
The autumn wildland fire outlook noted significant wildland
fire potential in Southern California, based on abnormally dry fuels and the
seasonal occurrence of hot, dry Santa
Ana winds. This
prediction turned out to be right on.
Destructive,
Indiscriminate Fury
Fire season returned to the national stage during the third
week of October, when hot, dry Santa Ana winds struck
Southern California, triggering a series of
major fires. In a five-day period of gale-force
winds winds, more than 20 large fires burned a half million acres, before
onshore winds laden with moisture calmed the blazes. The fires caused massive evacuations, affecting
approximately 500,000 people. Most of
the large fires were burning on state and county lands, but federal
firefighting resources from all agencies pitched in to help.
The late season outbreak of fires in Southern
California pushed the annual tally of acres-burned to more than 9
million acres, making 2007 the second busiest fire season on record since 1960. Each of the past four fire seasons has
eclipsed 8 million acres burned — a benchmark not previously reached since
modern records started being kept in 1960.
Six of the10 busiest fire seasons in terms of acres burned have occurred
since 1999.
Reading Between The Lines
What are some key insights from the 2007 fire season?
First, the factors of hotter and longer fire seasons, biomass
accumulation, and homes built in the fringes of wildlands are converging and
changing the conventional thinking of fire managers across the spectrum. Over the past decade, the average annual
acres-burned has skyrocketed, exceeding previous decadal averages by as much as
50 percent. Fires aren’t necessarily
becoming more frequent, but they are certainly getting larger.
Second, by both design and necessity, fire managers are
adapting strategies and tactics in the face of these trends. With finite amounts of resources, like
helicopters, airtankers, wildland engines and hand crews, fire managers have to
make tough choices about where and when they will deploy resources. All too often, their choices are dictated by
the presence of structures in the path of wildfires. Wildland fire agencies are now firmly in an
era in which fires in wildernesses and other isolated areas are going to
receive less attention than they would have in past years, simply because fire
managers’ options are limited.
Third, even though 2007 was a very busy year, it was a
relatively good year from a safety standpoint.
Tragically, five persons involved with firefighting and fire management
lost their lives in 2007, but this is the lowest number of firefighting
fatalities in a year in the last 25 years.
The 2007 fire season was a fast-paced and busy one, and
experts at the National
Interagency Fire
Center see this year as
emblematic of the new era in fire suppression.
Caption 3: Homes under threat
in the Santiago Fire southeast of Los
Angeles.
Photo credit: Inciweb