Loggers began to become fewer and fewer and fewer. Stands of timber were not being logged and not being grazed near as heavy. The Forest Service didn’t have the timber sale profits to fund positions and didn’t have the need for so many personnel so our work force began to be reduced radically. The same fire that started just 10 years earlier was not being hit with that dozer that was just down the road on that timber sale. There were now fewer loggers and Forest Service personnel in the woods. The trees started to crowd in and the fuel loads on the ground began to become heavier and heavier. As stands of timber began to become way overcrowded they began to over-compete for water. Every last drop of water. When a tree is stressed it gives of a pheromone that calls in the bugs. Ips, western pine beetle, mountain pine beetle, red turpentine beetle, spruce budworm, douglas-fir tussock moth and others. These bugs started killing large numbers of trees. After a few years these trees began falling on the ground. It really doesn’t take long. You would be surprised at how fast this happens.
Now introduce the same lightning pattern that we have always had to this stand of timber. The results of this is what you see before you now only it’s getting worse by the day. Manmade fire is also occurring in larger numbers than we have ever seen. Fire is getting into stands of timber that have not been managed since the 70’s and 80’s and that is more than enough time to have an over-story of large trees with an intermediate stand of timber under it, with a young stand of trees under it and fuel bed of a portion of all of these age trees on the ground laying on the forest floor. These stands of extremely overstocked trees created a canopy that is incredibly difficult for rain to penetrate. The fuel bed of dead trees laying on the ground becomes dryer and dryer. The green trees remaining are feverishly competing for what???? Yep, that’s right…. WATER. We have trees more densely populating the ground than we ever have had in history. Live fuel moistures in the green trees are very low because the trees are competing with each other for every last drop of water. The ground that these trees are growing on was never meant to support the amount of vegetation that currently exist on it. This causes trees to grow suppressed, slow, and susceptible to disease and insects and in a lot of cases die at a young age.
Prescribed burning has become much much more difficult than ever before. We have smoke management now. You have to check the forecast on the day of the burn. If smoke from your prescribed burn is forecasted to move towards areas of population then you most likely are not going to burn in that spot that day. As the areas you would like to prescribe burn get closer and closer to town it becomes increasingly more difficult to get a forecast that is favorable to move smoke away from the population center that the prescribed fire creates. You may go multiple years without getting a favorable smoke forecast for the prescribed burn near town. What happens to that fuel bed next to town? It gets deeper and heavier and more dangerous in a place that needs the fuels treated the most. People are so much more sensitive to seeing smoke than they ever have been before and rightfully so. Nobody likes to breathe smoke but the option of not breathing smoke is not an option. Your 2 choices are to breathe prescribed fire smoke in the spring or fall or to breathe wildfire smoke in the summer months. The choice of “neither” is off of the table. This is not negotiable.
Lightning is hitting trees just like it always has. The huge difference is what the stand of timber looks like compared to 30 years ago. By the time a fire engine or Initial attack crew get to the fire it is a much different animal than it was at the beginning of my career. Early in my career that fire would be skunking around in some pine needles and light grass and slowly making its way downwind or upslope. The fire was usually not in any danger of getting into a heavy pocket of dead and down woody debris (fuel). That lightning strike is now in heavy fuels and moving towards more heavy fuels. It is intense with much longer flame lengths and much more heat than ever before. It requires more effort to contain. The same amount of wind on this fire is a much bigger issue. More resources are needed. Helicopters, air tankers with retardant, more line diggers, more fire engines, more dozers more everything. Now expand this across the West. Now look really big picture. What happens now when you get a lightning bust across the West? California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico. 30 years ago most of these lightning strikes happened near a logging outfit, were in stands of timber that had been grazed and logged and had fuels treated with machines or prescribed fire or both. Now when you get a lighting bust and these fires start in dense overstocked, heavy fuel bed of dead trees some of them are not caught in that first day. They begin to grow and get larger. You call for extra resources from your neighbors. They tell you that they were just about to call you for help. You start calling for help from neighboring states. They tell you the same thing… We were about to call you for help. You put out orders for hot shot crews, fire engines, dozers, water tenders, 20 person crews, helicopters, and heavy air tankers and at the same time California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico is doing the same thing. All because the same lightning pattern that we have always had is starting fires in stands of timber that look nothing like they ever have before. All the available resources are divvied up amongst all the new fires. Nobody gets all the resources they wanted. The fire is burning in a fuel bed that begs for as many resources as it can get. You’re forced to make do with what you can get. Fires are “herded” away from new housing developments if they can. All the while you keep placing orders for more help but so is everyone else. I have fought fire in Alaska, Washington, Idaho, Montana, California, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico, Alabama, Texas, Louisiana and of course Oregon throughout my career. The issues are not localized to my little corner of Oregon.
At the local level you may have had 25 lightning strike fires. You may have caught 24 of them. The 1 fire that you didn’t catch becomes a 100,000+ acre multi-million dollar fire.
Global warming? So this is a huge question facing us today. Is Global warming to blame for what I just described to you? In my opinion the answer is…. It is a very small piece of the puzzle. Maybe 5% part of the problem? Global warming didn’t start the fire. In most cases lightning did. In NE Oregon I have not seen more lightning now than in the past. Matter of fact I think I have seen less in the last 10 years. Did global warming cause the increase of overstocked stands in the forest? Did Global warming cause the trees to over compete for water? Maybe? Did global warming cause NAFTA? I do believe NAFTA is getting worked on so that is a small help. Did Global warming cause the huge increase of fuels laying on the forest floor? Maybe a little? Did Global warming cause the mills to shut down? Did Global warming cause the loggers to go out of business? Did Global warming cause the Endangered Species Act? Did Global warming cause current day timber sales to be economically unfeasible? Did Global warming cause timber prices to drop dramatically since the late 1980’s? Did Global warming cause our increased NEPA and EA document requirements? Did Global warming cause our Timber Sales to be litigated? Did Global Warming cause our reduction in workforce? Did Global warming cause the issue of not getting all the resources to the fire that we ordered? Did Global warming cause prescribed fire smoke issues? Did Global warming cause our springs and streams to dry up because there are so many more trees per acre than ever before competing for water? Maybe a little? If we fixed Global Warming tomorrow would the wildfire risk be diminished? I don’t believe it would. It may be a tiny little part of the issue but it’s not the answer.
The scary part of all of this is that large fires are here to stay. Stands of timber are way too crowded. Competition for water by all of these trees is more than the springs, streams and rivers can handle. Resources are harder to get to fight fire. Fires are burning in a fuel bed that we have never seen the likes of before.