A barrage of lightning strikes and erratic winds sparked fires across California and the West last weekend, forcing evacuations from several towns and threatening thousands of homes. Fire crews battled to head off the blazes yesterday, with temperatures in the high 80s offering little relief.

Late summer is normally prime fire season in the American West, and record heat and dryness have left the region particularly vulnerable this year. Anticipating these conditions, the Forest Service has temporarily suspended a long-standing policy of allowing small fires to burn out, according to a memo from the agency's deputy chief of forestry.

While the memo acknowledges the necessity of employing fire as a tool of restoration, noting that suppression of all fires "is not a desirable approach in the long-run," it cites the need to protect life and personal property -- as well as budgetary concerns -- in its decision.

The Forest Service is likely to have its hands full this season. A large fire is currently threatening three towns in northern Colorado, while other fires continue to burn in California, Idaho and elsewhere.

The Ponderosa fire in northern Colorado has prompted the evacuation of several thousand rural residents, and it is threatening more than 3,000 structures in the towns of Viola, Shingletown and Manton.

The California fire, which is burning through rugged, densely forested terrain spanning the counties of Shasta and Tehama, 170 miles north of Sacramento, was sparked by last week's lightning storm. About 1,200 firefighters have been deployed to rein in the blaze, which was 5 percent contained yesterday.

In Idaho, a major fire is burning through Boise National Forest, near the town of Featherville. The Trinity Ridge fire had scorched 88,500 acres as of yesterday.

More fires continue to burn across the West, from Washington to New Mexico. The National Interagency Fire Center has set the national fire preparedness level at 4, indicating that more than 60 percent of available fire crews are currently deployed.

Short-term fix for long-term problem
Forest managers agree that the current fire risk is primarily a combination of two factors -- higher-than-average temperatures and a profusion of fuel, the product of nearly a century of fire suppression policies.

Recognizing widespread overgrowth in American forests, in the late 1970s the Forest Service began reintroducing policies of prescribed burning and allowed many smaller, natural fires to burn out on their own, provided they didn't threaten lives or property. The decision this summer to attack all fires, while not a direct reversal of this policy, does represent a departure from that practice of natural restoration, said Jennifer Jones, a public affairs specialist with the Forest Service.

"We realize that we are making some trade-offs here," she said. "We're working within short-term fiscal restraints, and that almost always requires making tough choices."

The Forest Service's suppression budget was cut 6.3 percent this year, she added, while the country has experienced a rise in fire severity. Suppression costs for both 2011 and 2012 have been above the average of the past 10 years, requiring the service to transfer other funds from areas like research and recreation, she said.

Initial attack and suppression can be far less expensive than managing fires until they run their natural course, she added.

Forest managers are also worried that, given the heightened vulnerability of the landscape, small fires could easily burn out of control.

Under the new policy, any decision to allow fires to burn will have to be approved by regional forest managers. That is likely to result in a reduction in fire restoration, Jones said.

"Anytime you have an organization dealing with budget reductions, you're going to face agonizing choices," she said.

4 Comments

1. 1. dbtinc 02:41 PM 8/21/12

   Protect property as best one can and let the rest burn - it's nature's way of restoring balance to the forests.

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2. 2. sciencefire 04:12 PM 8/21/12

   The Ponderosa Fire is in Northern California - not Colorado.

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3. 3. Bob_CA 04:16 PM 8/21/12

   Bad idea at peak fire season, dbtinc. The forests of today haven't a chance when left to burn under the worst conditions. Such hot fires destroy everything, and while the forest might recover in decades, soil erosion and watershed degradation will start immediately. We have to restore the forest with mechanical clearing of the understory and controlled burns during the months when they will really stay controlled, and that isn't now.

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4. 4. Pronatalist in reply to Bob_CA 04:44 PM 9/2/12

   Reply to Bob_CA:
   
   I agree more with dbtinc. We have to let some forest fires burn natural, even during droughts, when the potential for fire growth is rated "Extreme," because we simply can NOT "control" always the "wildness" of nature. Yes, man is supposed to alter nature, but we aren't God, and can't really "control" everything. And to get in the way of a massive wildfire rolling across the forest, simply is not safe. Such hot fires, often simply can NOT be stopped, until the weather changes anyway. The fires get so hot, because the forest is so overgrown and poorly managed by government incompetence. But if nature "wants" to burn the forests that bad, if past forest fires were so pent up and prevented, then it's going to burn no matter what we do? And humans simply aren't obligated to fighte forest fires where our interests don't make it cost-effective. And the fires often are not that hot, all the time, but might make major runs during hot or windy times of day, until the forest fire is just too massive to fight anyway. Supposedly, the patchy burn patterns, may help "restore" the forest to an eventual more healthy condition?
   
   Nature is not going to wait around, while enviro-wackos stall any reasonable forest logging or thinning, with frivolous and endless lawsuits. And piddly small "controlled" burns, done by incompetent make-work jobs, don't really treat the millions of unhealthy acres? And why don't we have more logging and firebreaks anyway?
   
   Some forest fires burning out in remote and unpopulated places, may simply not be worth the high cost of suppression, when firefighting resources are needed more in other critical and populated places. So I think it makes sense to let some moderate wildfires, and some fast-growing wildfires, just do their thing, left for nature to manage.
   
   However, how do we know that government weather modification, such as HAARP and chem-trails, isn't partly responsible for such wildfires breaking out? Or maybe government employees, looking for more work?

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