Fire News - Feb. 2008

Feb. 27, 2008
FireSafe Montana Conference:Rural Growth, Climate and the Wildland-Urban Interface

Firesafe conference depicts smoky future

Feb. 26, 2008
Hanford Reach wildfire recovery under way

3 Firefighters Injured Battling Dozens of Wildfires Across Texas

Feb. 25, 2008
Ag chief cleared of contempt

Feb. 24, 2008
Greenery emerges after October blazes, but it's likely non-native plants

Firefighting funds already gone: Wildfire outbreak drains state forestry agency's 2008
budget for blazes

Feb. 23, 2008
Agriculture Chief's Priority: Avoid Jail

Feb. 20, 2008
Group: Quit studying, start preparing for firestorms

Feb. 14, 2008
Senators rip Forest Service over wildfire budget cuts

Feb. 13, 2008
Climate change linked to worsening western wildfire seasons

Feb. 8, 2008
Tweak wildfire policies, say forestry profs

Feb. 3, 2008
Researchers Analyze Retardant Use

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UPI
Feb. 29, 2008 at 11:27 PM
http://www.upi.com/NewsTrack/Science/2008/02/29/researcher_wild_california_
just_a_memory/6711/

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 29 (UPI) -- A California researcher said nearly all of California's 31 million acres of forest have been changed in some way by humans.

Pollution, roads, mining, logging and development have left obvious marks on the California wilderness but urbanization and fire suppression are the greatest threats to forest health, the San Francisco Chronicle said Friday.

Forest fires near homes have to be controlled, removing fire as a natural method of keeping the forest understory -- the area of a forest which grows in the shade of forest canopy -- from becoming overgrown. State fire officials said development in "wildland-urban interface zones" contributed to the devastation from last wildfires.

The U.S. Forest Service said the overly dense forests combined with drought have played a part in recent bark beetle infestations. Studies have shown that 25 percent of California's forestland, close to 4.9 million acres, are at risk of deadly insect infestations and disease during the next 15 years.

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By David Nolt
New West
Feb. 27, 2008
http://www.newwest.net/topic/article/firesafe_montana_holds_inaugural_conference/
C57/L35/

The wildfire issue is a pressing one in the New West. Fire seasons are getting longer and drier by the year, fires are more severe, and, to top it off, the modern western migration is bringing an unprecedented influx of homes into the wildland-urban interface (WUI).

As wildland fire suppression operations increasingly consume dwindling Forest Service budgets and taxpayers grow ever wearier of footing the pricey bill of defending homes in the WUI, the onus for preparation and protection is increasingly falling on homeowners and local communities.

In 2006, interested parties from the public and private sector gathered in Helena at the Montana Communities and Wildfire Conference to begin a new discussion on the WUI and the West’s changing fire seasons. According to organizers, participants expressed overwhelming support for the formation of a non-governmental non-profit to perform public education, outreach and on-the-ground assistance in wildfire mitigation in the WUI. The result is FireSafe Montana, which held its first annual conference in Bozeman this week.

“Growth in Montana has certainly created issues along the interface that are really challenging for the local fire community,” Gallatin County Administrator Earl Mathers said, opening the conference. “Policy from above is well and good, but the real work is done at the local level.”

Though wildfires are now more often allowed to run their natural course, the West is still living with the effects of yesteryear’s suppression policies. Montana has no shortage of choked, overgrown forests, and the presence of more and more homes in and along these forests all but guarantees more suppression.

The goal of FireSafe Montana is to prepare and protect people living in the WUI while simultaneously restoring forest health and reducing the need for large-scale suppression. The group’s main work is assisting local FireSafe councils in educating residents in the WUI and helping them create “survivable space” around their homes and communities – a clearinghouse of sorts for WUI residents.

According to FireSafe Montana organizer Pat McKelvey, FireSafe mitigation means homeowners can not only be active in making their property safer but also in restoring unhealthy, overgrown forests. Careful, selective thinning, according to McKelvey, is essential in making forests healthier and safer.

“Our decisions are about what trees to leave,” McKelvey explains. “All our work is environmentally sensitive.”

Not even one year old, the organization is already creating strong relationships between environmentalists, loggers and the firefighting community. Jake Kreilick of the Wild West Institute and FireSafe Montana summed up the organization’s task by saying, “We are responsible to a whole bunch of ecosystems and social expectations.”

The Tri-County FireSafe Working Group, a precursor to FireSafe Montana, has raised over $3 million in grants using matching funds from federal, state and private sectors to be used for education and wildfire fuels reduction in the state. FireSafe Montana organizers plan to follow a similar approach. Pat McKelvey says mitigation and restoration work can also be a boon to local economies, which was literally on display at the conference by companies offering everything from in-home fire retardant sprinkler systems to smokeless, sparkless wood burners.

New homes in the WUI have certainly been a boon to Lars Forsberg, owner of Andesite Property Rehab. Forsberg’s business specializes in wildfire fuels reduction, but his clients are not your run-of-the-mill Montanans; the majority of his work takes place in Big Sky at the ritzy Yellowstone Club. Virtually all of the Yellowstone Club is in the WUI, and Forsberg kept himself plenty busy last summer.

“Last year was maniacal,” Forsberg says with a hesitant smile. “I worked seven days a week from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m. from mid-April to mid-September. I was losing my mind.”

Losing his mind, maybe, but he was also making a pretty penny in the process; Andesite’s business has tripled every year since its inception.

Peter Stark of North Slope Sustainable Wood is also finding a niche in wildfire fuel reduction. Stark presented the story of how he turned a forest restoration on his property outside of Missoula into a thriving business offering high quality, local wood products.

As the discussion turned from wildfire business to policy, Forest Service Helena District Management Officer Dave Larson weighed the benefits of his job against the larger issue of societal priorities such as education and care for veterans.

“I’m a firefighter, but I’m also a dad,” Larson said. “I think of all the good we could do with that money.”

Exact numbers for fire suppression costs are hard to come by, but according to the Montana Department of Natural Resource Conservation (DNRC), firefighters suppressed wildfire on 74,482 acres last year. Fire information officers at the conference threw out numbers of between $6,000 and $9,000 per acre for suppression costs last year. According to the DNRC, about 47 percent of the costs of structure protection are borne by Montana taxpayers. So, the fires of 2007 cost taxpayers somewhere between $210 million and $315 million, give or take a million.

“The rate of new construction [in the WUI] is definitely a concern,” Paula Rosenthal of the DNRC said.

The DNRC is being proactive in the face of development in the WUI by forming guidelines and educational programs, according to Rosenthal, and FireSafe Montana can aid in that process.

“The biggest thing the councils can do at this point is help county governments get a hand on all this development.”

Insuring homes in the WUI is another pressing issue. Don Lorenson of State Farm Insurance was on the steering committee for FireSafe Montana, and he was also the conference’s lone representative from the insurance industry – an industry he says is largely uneducated and absent on wildfire issues.

“The biggest losses to the insurance industry are due to hurricanes,” Lorenson explains. “Wildfire is a relatively small part, but it doesn’t mean it’s not important.”

Lorenson said even something as simple as an “insurance company-friendly” form for WUI residents would go a long way in helping homeowners and insurance companies. The form would allow underwriters to better identify the complex risk issues involved in a particular home. With the trend of more high-value homes entering a volatile wildfire environment, Lorenson says a little insurance could go a long way.

Climate, Community Preparedness and Wildfire’s Forgotten Victims

On Tuesday morning, Faith Anne Heinsch of the Montana State University Numerical Terradynamic Simulation Group presented on climate change’s effects on wildfire in Montana. Heinsch contributed to University of Montana climate scientist Steven Running’s work on the Nobel Peace Prize-winning 2006 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Using historical climate analysis and sophisticated computer modeling, Heinsch presented a stark assessment of the futures of Montana and the Northern Rockies.

The average temperature in Montana has risen 1.5° to 2°F in the last century. Twelve of Montana’s last 13 years ranked as the warmest on state record. A dramatic increase in Montana March temperatures is resulting in mountain snowpack melting three weeks earlier. Since 1986, the western fire season has increased by 78 days with a four-fold increase in fires over 1,000 acres and a six-fold increase in the number of acres burned. All of this adds up to increased wildfire, pest epidemics, forest mortality and a decrease in streamflows and biodiversity.

“We’re looking at this being more of what we can expect over the next 10 to 15 years,” Heinsch explained. “The real thing that’s going to drive things here is precipitation.”

Precipitation is the hardest climate system to model, but Heinsch says Montana can expect a shift from snow to rain in the winter and less precipitation in the summer resulting in 30 to 50 percent less streamflow. By 2050, according to Heinsch’s models, Montana could be 5°F warmer with 10 percent less precipitation.

Heinsch summed up her message for the conference in one simple phrase: “Conditions are going to be riper for fire.”

As the effects of climate change are felt around Montana, a FireSafe group in the state’s capital is leading the way in large-scale community preparedness in Montana’s capital. Sonny Stiger and Steve Larson of the Tri-County FireSafe Working Group presented their work on public education in Helena, where the entire southern boundary of the city lies within the WUI. Stiger, Larson and others mapped fire zones around the city and also orchestrated a citywide ban on shake shingles, which are more prone to catching fire from spot embers.

Wildfires in Helena’s south hills and in Bozeman’s Hyalite area would also pose very serious threats to both cities’ water supplies. Forest Service Bozeman District Ranger José Castro spoke briefly on a long-term plan he is spearheading to protect the Hyalite Reservoir and Sourdough Creek water supplies, which produce 98 percent of Bozeman’s drinking water. Castro said a large fire in the Hyalite area would effectively shut off Bozeman’s water supply due to sediment contamination in the water. Such an emergency would likely require a FEMA response to bring water into Bozeman, and the erosion effects on the watershed would be felt for decades.

The keynote address on Tuesday came from Bob Mutch, 38-year Forest Service veteran of fire management and research. Mutch gave an emotional presentation on the catastrophic California fires of 2003. Twenty-three people died in the fires, one of which was a firefighter, and Mutch said “22 of those 23 people were essentially forgotten.”

“You can hardly find a word anywhere on those civilian deaths,” Mutch said.

Mutch organized a report on the civilians’ deaths published by the Lessons Learned Center. Using pictures of 16 of the civilians who died in the fires, Mutch gave – by memory – the victims’ names and stories, choking up several times during the presentation. Mutch also told the story of the six other civilian victims, all men over the age of 50 who died of heart attacks as they watched their homes burn.

“What can they tell us,” Mutch asked. “Why have we forgotten them? Where is our compassion? How could we in the Forest Service write reams of papers on a firefighter and blow off the rest as not worth the ink?”

Mutch’s sober presentation underscored the human stakes at issue in the wildland-urban interface. He emphasized the need for the United States to drastically change its approach to the WUI with a greater emphasis on “Prepare, Stay and Defend.” Mutch received a standing ovation as he closed by commending the efforts of FireSafe Montana.

“You’re on the right course. You’re on the right track.”

Correction: This story originally stated FireSafe Montana has raised over $3 million in grants. This is the amount the Helena-based Tri-County FireSafe Working Group has raised over the years. The error has been corrected.

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By Scott McMillion
Bozeman Daily Chronicle
Feb. 27, 2008
http://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2008/02/27/news/20fire.txt

The future looks dark and smoky.

Coming summers will bring more and bigger wildfires to the Northern Rockies. But it also will bring fewer firefighters, less equipment for them to use, and more and more homes to protect in flammable landscapes.

That’s the message spelled out Tuesday by climate and firefighting experts at a conference at the Bozeman Holiday Inn.

“We’ve got a lot less of the toys we need to do the job we’re doing out there,” said Wally Bennett, a veteran commander of a Type I incident command team, the type of force that tackles large and complex blazes.

Bennett was one of the speakers at the three-day conference organized by FireSafe Montana, a fledgling nonprofit group that is trying to motivate landowners, county governments, developers and other entities to do more to protect private land before wildfire reaches it.

Several years ago, Bennett said, firefighting teams had 32 large retardant planes available to them. Last year, they had 16.

The number of 20-person hand teams has declined from roughly 750 to about 450 over the same time period, he said, and that number is likely to fall further.

“There’s not enough to go around,” he said.

That’s partly because a rookie firefighter can earn about the same pay flipping burgers at McDonald’s.

Meanwhile, a warming climate is bringing earlier snowmelt along with hotter, drier summers, said Faith Anne Heisch, a climate researcher who works with Steve Running, the University of Montana professor who was part of the Nobel-prize winning International Panel on Climate Change.

Since 1986, the fire season in the West has grown 78 days longer, six times as many acres burn annually, and there have been four times as many fires of 1,000 acres or more, compared to a 10-year average, she said.

“We anticipate fire seasons are going to be longer and more severe,” she said.

Plus, the number of homes in the wildland urban interface continues to grow.

“The development of the urban interface” has been the biggest change in firefighting in the past 15 to 20 years, said Steve Frye, another veteran fire commander. That means fires are “threatening more communities and higher values.”

Accordingly, wildland firefighters are having a national discussion over the appropriate level of federal protection to offer private property.

“A great debate over the past year would be putting it mildly,” Frye said.

But with increasing fire threats and a shrinking pool of firefighting resources to tap, gut-wrenching decisions lie in the future, Bennett said.

For a long time, firefighters have had to make decisions n based on road access, fuels, water availability and other factors -- about which homes to protect when the flames arrive.

In the future, “we may have to making decisions on which community to protect,” Bennett said.

That’s where organizations like FireSafe can play a critical role, said its Montana president, Pat McKelvey.

The goal is to get community members working together, involving citizens, planners, developers, homeowners associations, local fire departments and others. The group offers expertise on reducing fire dangers and can help secure grants for fuel reduction projects. Several states already have established FireSafe councils, McKelvey said.

If homeowners prepare their property in advance of a fire, the odds improve that firefighters will stick around to help defend it.

“It’s your risk,” McKelvey said. “They’re your assets.”

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Associated Press
Feb. 26, 2008
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/6420ap_wa_hanford_reach.html

TRI-CITIES, Wash. -- The Fish and Wildlife Service is closing 30,000 acres of the Hanford Reach National Monument for wildfire recovery work.

The 30-day closure likely beginning Tuesday in the Wahluke (WAH'-look) Unit will keep people out while planes spray poison to kill nonnative grasses and plants.

The service is seeding native grasses and hand-planting shrubs in areas burned by summer wildfires.

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Fox News
Feb. 26, 2008
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,332600,00.html

ROBERT LEE, Texas --  Firefighters across West and Central Texas continued to battle wildfires Tuesday that burned at least 200,000 acres, injured several people and forced the temporary evacuation of the 1,500 residents of Robert Lee, an official with the Texas Forest Service said.

Fire officials were waiting for daylight Tuesday to assess the scope of one massive wildfire stretching across Sterling, Reagan and Irion counties in Central Texas that could be as large as 500,000 acres, said David Abernathy, an incident commander with the forest service. Airplanes will fly over the fire during daylight Tuesday to obtain more accurate mapping data, he said.

At one point the blaze moved so quickly — fueled by 50 mph winds — that flames were consuming an area the size of "a football field every minute," Abernathy said.

Three firefighters were injured in Archer County when two fire trucks collided head on after one swerved around a car that pulled out into the road, Abernathy said. One of the firefighters was airlifted to an area hospital, an Archer County dispatcher said. He survived but his condition was unknown.

Abernathy said he was aware of at least two dozen separate fires across the state and expected there were "many, many more that we won't know about" until local fire departments report in.

At least 18 counties reported wildfires to state emergency management officials. There are 25 local disaster proclamations in effect.

Officials blamed strong winds, sudden shifts in the wind and dry air. Some fires were likely started with winds blowing down power lines, sparking grassfires that grew out of control, Abernathy said.

"We had so many fires that there is no possible way to have enough firefighting resources for that many fires," Abernathy said. "Texas had the same conditions that you might expect in Southern California with some of their Santa Ana winds. The right conditions came together. It's extremely rare for us to see that."

There have been no reported deaths and just three buildings destroyed.

"That's just remarkable," Abernathy said. "Firefighters saved countless homes around the state. We'll have to lay it out just to luck that some of these large acreage fires are in areas that just weren't populated."

About 100 to 150 evacuated Robert Lee residents were settling in Monday night at the gymnasium of the Bronte School District, where cots were set up for the evacuees. The evacuation order was lifted later that night, Abernathy said.

"They basically came with just themselves and their children," Superintendent Alan Richey said. Some brought their pets.

Bronte is about 12 miles from Robert Lee.

A fire of about 4,000 acres in Coke County caused the Robert Lee evacuation, said Anne Jeffery, an information officer for Texas Forest Service.

Fires across the state Monday included about 30,000 acres in Sterling County; about 7,000 acres in Archer County; about 3,520 acres in Callahan County; and about 500 acres in Mason County, Jeffery said.

Some homes were evacuated near the town of Cottonwood in Callahan County and near Mason in Mason County, Jeffrey said.

Earlier in the day, about 200 homes were evacuated in Odessa due to a wildfire. Those residents were allowed back home by early evening, said Andrea Goodson, a spokeswoman for the city of Odessa. The fire, which moved south of the communities, has burned between 4,500 and 5,000 acres, she said.

Firefighters were battling blazes in 40-50 mph winds throughout several counties, but mostly away from populated areas, said Midland Fire Chief Russ Conley.

"So far we've been fortunate," Conley said.

Strong winds and warm temperatures fueled the wildfires in mostly rural areas of West Texas as the fire danger was classified as "extremely critical" by the National Weather Service.

The wildfire warning was in effect because of forecasts calling for strong winds and low humidity in western and central Texas, ideal conditions for the spread of wildfires.

Before Monday, wildfires had burned about 100,000 acres and destroyed about 60 homes and other structures in the past month. Two years ago, numerous outbreaks scorched 2.25 million acres statewide and killed 20 people.

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By John Cramer
The Missoulian
Feb. 25, 2008
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/02/28/news/local/news02.txt

U.S. Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey walked out of federal court a free man Wednesday in Missoula, wearing not an orange inmate's jumpsuit but the gray business suit with American flag lapel pin he had donned for his contempt hearing.

U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy cleared Rey, the Bush administration's top forest official, and the Forest Service of contempt and withdrew his threat to jail Rey or ground all fire retardant air tankers until the agency evaluated the environmental impact of the chemical slurry.

Molloy did not rule on the merits of the Forest Service's environmental analysis, and the watchdog group whose lawsuit prompted the showdown said it planned to take new legal action to challenge the agency's finding that aerial retardant causes little harm to fish and other aquatic creatures.

“We accomplished what we wanted to do, which was to make the Forest Service follow the law,” said Andy Stahl, director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, based in Eugene, Ore.

In his testimony, Rey apologized for the Forest Service's tardiness in following the judge's order to complete an environmental analysis of the potential harm from ammonium phosphate, the primary ingredient in retardant dropped on wildfires.

But Molloy was not mollified and forced Forest Service employees in their testimony to acknowledge their “systematic disregard of the rule of law.”

Before announcing his ruling, Molloy delivered a blistering criticism of the Forest Service, saying only a threat of contempt prompted the agency to comply with the nation's top environmental laws - the National Environmental Policy Act and the Endangered Species Act.

The judge also questioned the federal government's battery of lawyers who handled the case, dismissing their “ attempts” at explaining the delays and their “parsing of words to create unjustifiable arguments.”

Rey and other Forest Service officials maintained they had acted in good faith, but Molloy said it was “shameful” that it took a threat of contempt to make the agency comply with the law.

“Something's remiss,” Molloy said. “I don't know if it's the lawyering or an institutional matter.”

The case drew national attention because of the prospect of a top White House official being jailed and the nation's fleet of retardant tankers sitting on the tarmac as the United States grapples with record-setting wildfires and firefighting costs, which now consume nearly 50 percent of the Forest Service's budget.

Government lawyers spent time Wednesday explaining the importance of aerial retardant, saying it is critical in helping to control wildland fires.

The case stemmed from a 2003 lawsuit brought by Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics after the Forest Service dropped fire retardant that killed 20,000 fish in Oregon in 2002.

In 2005, Molloy ruled that the Forest Service violated the law when it failed to go through a public process to analyze the potential environmental harm from aerial retardant.

Since then, Molloy has granted the agency a series of extensions to complete an environmental review, which it filed in October.

The Forest Service amended its review last week after receiving additional information from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the U.S. National Marine Fisheries Service.

Forest Service staffers attributed their delay to several factors, including delays caused by their sister agencies and the complexity of studying retardant's potential impact on more than 400 species across the nation.

The Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service found that fire retardant jeopardizes dozens of endangered or threatened species, but that the risk can be reduced if the retardant is applied carefully under certain conditions.

The Forest Service said retardant can be used without significantly affecting those species as long as the agency monitors their mortality and health and takes steps to keep the chemical slurry away from waterways.

The Forest Service uses an average of 15 million gallons of retardant on fires a year, although that figure has reached 40 million gallons during severe fire years in the past decade.

The FSEEE wants to use the suit to force the agency to change its firefighting policy to an emphasis on fire prevention around communities and allowing fires to burn if they pose minimal threat rather than extinguishing most blazes.

Edward Little, a biologist with the U.S. Geological Survey, testified that more than 25 years of laboratory and field research indicates that aerial retardant has a negligible toxic effect on fish, amphibians, insects, plants, mammals and birds.

The Forest Service several years ago stopped using the one chemical in retardant that was toxic to aquatic and other species, he said.

Joseph Carbone, a NEPA specialist for the Forest Service, testified that the agency completed a broad review of the retardant's potential ecological impact, but it didn't consider the cumulative impact of retardant drops and ground-based firefighting.

“If you start to bring in every possible connected action ... in using retardant, then you're into many conditions and scenarios and you're going down a path of so many unknowns,” he said.

In his closing argument, Department of Justice attorney Michael Guzman maintained the Forest Service had acted in good faith and that its actions, however tardy, did not warrant a finding of contempt.

He told the judge putting Rey behind bars and grounding retardant tankers would serve no purpose.

The watchdog group's lawyer, Tim Bechtold of Missoula, said the Forest Service had acted like a petulant child who only stops putting his “hand in the cookie jar” when a threat is leveled.

“The Forest Service needs a little adult supervision,” he said.

Bechtold added that Rey deserved to be punished, “and based on his cutting the Forest Service's budget, I can't believe they wouldn't want to see him in jail, too.”

Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist who has directed U.S. forest policy since 2001, smiled at his opponent's jab.

After the hearing, Rey said he takes his obligation to follow the law seriously, but that he would not rush the Forest Service's scientific decisions, in part, because environmental groups are eager to level accusations of political interference.

“If we had to do it again, we would have done things a little differently,” he said.

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By Robert Krier
San Diego Union-Tribune
February 24, 2008
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20080224-9999-1m24recover.html

Emerald hillsides that were recently scarred by wildfire look like an uplifting reminder of nature's resiliency. But looks can be deceiving

Dense chaparral covered the top part of Bernardo Mountain this month after wildfires in October. The green scenes that appear so striking may be signs of struggling ecosystems.

Ecologists say it's too early to tell how well native plant communities as a whole will rebound after October's fires. The initial signs are mixed.

Some native plants are popping up amid scorched earth. Those areas could fully recover and return to their natural state. But other burned spots, especially those that didn't have time to rejuvenate after the 2003 fires or other recent blazes, appear to be altered permanently.

The green scenes that appear so striking to passing motorists actually may be signs of struggling ecosystems. The less-attractive, barren slopes that retain much of their blackened appearance often are healthier.

“Anything that's greened up right now has probably been because of alien plants,” said Jon Keeley, a fire ecologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. “They're the first things to germinate.”

Those alien plants, also called exotics or non-natives, complicate nature's recovery, which has been otherwise brightened by abundant winter rain.

From a short-term, fire-management perspective, things are clearly improving.

“The environment looks so much better than it did just a few months ago,” said Rich Hawkins, fire chief for the Cleveland National Forest. “We're getting good amounts of rain every few weeks. That's fantastic for the health of the plant communities in general. And it will allow for relatively rapid recovery in the burn areas.”

Ecologists are finding evidence that areas burned twice in recent years may never recover fully. The Elfin Forest area between Escondido and San Marcos, which burned in 1996 and again in last year's Witch Creek fire, is showing severe distress, said Rick Halsey, director of the California Chaparral Institute in Escondido.

“We're seeing absolutely no germination of native species, especially the wild lilac,” Halsey said. “What we're seeing up there is the elimination of that species. What's doubly tragic about that is, those weeds can produce enough fuel for fires every few years.”

Most chaparral species need at least 20 years between fires to regenerate, Halsey said. An estimated 123,000 acres of the approximately 369,000 acres burned in San Diego County last year also burned in 2003.

“The areas that hadn't burned in 50 or 100 years, they'll do fine – if they don't burn again soon,” Halsey said. “But the way the fire frequency is going, they're likely to burn again before they have a chance to recover. 

At the San Diego National Wildlife Refuge in South County, many non-native plants are thriving at lower elevations where coastal sage scrub usually grows, said U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist John Martin. Most of those areas had plenty of non-natives before the Harris fire in October, Martin said. None of the refuge burned in 2003.

“It's as we expected,” Martin said. “They're coming back like gangbusters.”

The refuge has received grants totaling $292,000 to eradicate non-natives, he said.

Chaparral in the higher elevations on San Miguel Mountain on the refuge, which hadn't burned in at least 30 years, is faring better, he said.

“That plant community is generally more resistant to weed invasion,” Martin said.

After a fire, non-native plants – if they are present – tend to get a head start on the natives, which usually sprout and thrive later in the year. The non-natives can rob natives of sunlight and nutrients, and when the non-natives die later in the season, they are more susceptible to fire.

Non-natives tend to have a harder time getting established at higher elevations, Hawkins said. The green growth now visible along freeways in burn areas is most likely non-natives, he said. In Fallbrook, where the Rice fire hit, and in Escondido, where the Witch Creek fire burned, many non-natives are flourishing.

“That's not all bad,” Hawkins said. “It helps stabilize the soil.”

But ecologists fear non-natives could be gaining the upper hand, and that would lead to a transition to a different ecosystem. Ecologist Spring Strahm has been monitoring habitats around the county as part of a San Diego State University research project since before last year's fires. Strahm said she has seen a lot of early-season, non-native plants.

“It's gonna be hard to tell whether the fire tipped the balance in favor of the natives or the exotics,” Strahm said. “It's not clear to me whether the exotics can get into these areas that burned really hot. It's possible that the native shrub community could recover. We'll have to wait and see.”

Scorched slopes that now appear free of non-natives, especially those hills that burned a second time, still may be at risk, said fire ecologist Keeley. He plans to return to San Diego from Central California in late March to assess dozens of reburned areas.

“What we may see is the decimation of the natives,” Keeley said. “And the next year, the aliens can move in.

“There's reason to believe we're looking at the potential for disaster in a lot of those areas. We have the potential for an extreme conversion from natives to alien grasslands.”

Strahm said it could be years before the fate of large, native shrubs is clear, but she has been pleased to see a profusion of some native flowers.

“What we are seeing are a lot of annuals and bulb species that put a lot of biomass below the ground,” Strahm said. “One of the most outstanding flowers that I love, the chocolate lilies, we're seeing in the South County. I have never seen this many before in one spot. They're just phenomenal.”

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Firefighting funds already gone
Wildfire outbreak drains state forestry agency's 2008 budget for blazes

By Luz Lazo
Times-Dispatch
Feb 24, 2008
http://www.inrich.com/cva/ric/news.PrintView.-content-articles-RTD-2008-02-24-0185.html

Entering the second week of the spring fire season, the Virginia Department of Forestry already has spent its entire 2008 funds for firefighting.

Preliminary estimates indicate that the outbreak of wildfires across the state two weeks ago that led Gov. Timothy M. Kaine to declare a state of emergency may have cost the department about $500,000, spokesman John Campbell said.

That's the agency's budget for firefighting for the entire year, Campbell said. "We are thinking we are tapped out ... and we are just beginning the year."

The estimate includes expenses such as overtime payments and gasoline, as well as the use of helicopters and other heavy equipment. It doesn't include the localities' expenses, he said.

The National Guard, which was sent to help several counties, may have spent an additional $175,000, Campbell said.

Across the state, officials are still trying to calculate the financial losses from the 348 wildfires two weeks ago.

The fires, fueled by high winds, were caused mostly by downed trees that hit electrical wires. The fires consumed nearly 16,000 acres, about 4,000 more acres than burned in all of 2007, forestry officials said.

The Forestry Department will help local governments cover the costs of some of the local resources used to fight the blazes. The largest fire was in Dinwiddie County, along Old Stage Road. The 2,800-acre blaze took three days to get under control with the help of about 100 firefighters, local authorities said.

In all, Dinwiddie had six large fires that burned a total of about 3,100 acres, according to official estimates.

Dennis Hale, chief of Dinwiddie's Fire and Emergency Medical Services, said that between overtime hours for emergency personnel and equipment rentals and labor, the county's costs are estimated at about $20,000.

He said the county will likely pay only about $5,000 because the Forestry Department is expected to pay three major contractors the county hired to help with bulldozers and other emergency equipment and services.

County officials say Dinwiddie saved a lot thanks to residents who provided heavy equipment as well as dozens of people who volunteered to fight the flames. The county's fire department has only three paid employees.

"Our expenses would have been astronomical if we hadn't had so many volunteers," Hale said.

County Administrator W. Kevin Massengill said the fire along Old Stage Road is probably the largest fire in the Dinwiddie's history.

Henrico, Brunswick, Louisa and Sussex counties also had large fires that week. And some requested state aid and equipment.

Determining the exact cost of the damage could take weeks or even months, local and state officials said.

"That would be an ongoing process," said Hale, who noted that property owners will look at the extent of the damage as well, including replacing fences.

The good thing is that no loss of life was reported across the state, authorities said.

"We are lucky no one was hurt," said John V. Talmage, chairman of the Dinwiddie Board of Supervisors.

Now, he said, it's time to continue assessing the damage.

As for the Forestry Department, officials said they are still concerned about the dry conditions and the possibility of more fires this season. A request for more funding for this year will soon go to the governor's office, Campbell said.

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By Matthew Daly
Associated Press
Feb. 23, 2008
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gWQ4GDWvwAAMD5oAmQuRlqfGSD9gD8V03H080

WASHINGTON (AP) — He overhauled federal forest policy to cut more trees — and became a lightning rod for environmentalists who say he is intent on logging every tree in his reach.

After nearly seven years in office, Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey still has a long to-do list. Near the top: Persuade a federal judge to keep him out of jail.

Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist who has directed U.S. forest policy since 2001, also wants to set up state rules making it easier to build roads in remote national forests and restore overgrown, unhealthy forests by clearing them of small trees and debris that can stoke wildfires. And he wants to streamline cumbersome regulations that can paralyze actions on public lands.

A Montana judge, accusing Rey of deliberately skirting the law so the Forest Service can keep fighting wildfires with a flame retardant that kills fish, has threatened to put him behind bars.  For Rey, who faces a court date Tuesday, the prospect of jail time is daunting. But it's just one more obstacle as he attempts to rid federal policies of pesky paperwork and endless litigation that slows forest managers from cutting down trees.

Rey's signature accomplishment — passage of the 2003 Healthy Forests Restoration Act — quickened approval of projects to thin overgrown forests, so they can be completed within months rather than years. The law, the first major change in forest management in a quarter-century, has helped restore healthy forests after decades of neglect and mismanagement, supporters say.

"We are now treating four times as many acres as we did when this administration came into office," Rey said in an interview, "and those treatments are showing the desired effect."

Devastating wildfires in California last fall that charred about 800 square miles and killed 10 people, burned about 2,200 homes — half the number of homes destroyed in similar fires in 2003, Rey said.

Rey's critics say talk of "treatment" and "thinning" is code for Rey's real goal: cutting more trees in service of his former timber industry cronies.

Environmentalists routinely denounce Rey as the "Karl Rove of the forest": a Machiavellian figure who serves as the brains behind the Bush administration's aggressive effort to reverse Clinton administration policies that sought to rope off broad swaths of forest land for preservation. One group even declared Rey "Public Lands Enemy No. 1" after he proposed a failed plan to sell surplus forest land to private interests.

"He's tried to oversee a radical dismantling of the safeguards that the public really wants for its public lands," said Doug Heiken, conservation coordinator for Oregon Wild, an environmental group.

The object of such fury is unlikely. At 55, the short, bespectacled Rey looks more like a high-school math teacher than a ruthless tree killer. With a salt-and-paper goatee, the soft-spoken Rey has a dry wit that masks his determination to remake forest policy.

"I'm not sure forests need Karl Rove," Rey said, laughing.

Josh Kardon, chief of staff to Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Rey revels in his notoriety.

"Mark has always enjoyed a good joust and likes reliving those battles while he sips wine and strokes that legendary goatee," Kardon said.

Born in Canton, Ohio, Rey became interested in forests as an Eagle Scout. He later earned degrees at the University of Michigan in forestry, wildlife biology and natural resources policy.

After a stint at the Bureau of Land Management, he began working for the timber and paper industry in 1976 and was vice president of the American Forest and Paper Association before joining the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in 1995.

As lead forestry staffer for the panel's two top Republicans, Idaho's Larry Craig and Alaska's Frank Murkowski, Rey was a key figure in a number of controversial bills, including one to hasten so-called salvage logging after forest fires.

Craig, who pushed for Rey's appointment, said Rey knows more about forest management than anyone else in Washington.

"He will be viewed, I think, as one of the more successful undersecretaries," Craig said, citing the healthy forests law and increased focus on the cause and suppression of wildfires.

Chris West, vice president of American Forest Resource Council, a timber industry group, gives Rey's tenure a B-minus. "Mostly because they didn't get as much done as they could have and should have" with a Republican administration and GOP Congress for six years, West said.

Rey acknowledges the point, but he said budget constraints in a time of war have limited his options.

His biggest regret? "I didn't get to be undersecretary for natural resources during a time of budget surpluses and above-average rainfall," Rey said. "There's nothing I can do about either."

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Group: Quit studying, start preparing for firestorms
Former fire chief calls on region to rely less on state, form regional fire authority

By Dave Downey
North County Times
Feb. 20, 2008
http://www.nctimes.com/articles/2008/02/20/news/top_stories/1_15_092_19_08.txt

RANCHO BERNARDO -- In unveiling a report on regional firefighting strategies at a news conference Tuesday, former San Diego fire Chief Jeff Bowman said, "Much of what government does is this."

Bowman stooped down to pick up a pile of documents nearly a foot thick. "This is what we produced after the (2003) Cedar fire."

There is no need for more studies, said Bowman, who lives in Escondido.

"The time for action is now," he said.

Speaking from a hilltop cul-de-sac where three Rancho Bernardo homes were incinerated in the Witch Creek fire last fall, Bowman and other members of a group called the San Diego Regional Fire Safety Forum outlined a checklist of actions they believe the region must take to avoid a similar catastrophe.

They called on the region's most influential agencies to buy four new firefighting helicopters and 50 fire engines, and consolidate the numerous rural fire districts into a regional fire authority like one in Orange County, among other things.

Most of the recommendations are based on ideas that have surfaced in the months since the October wildfires. Bowman's recommendations focused on San Diego County, while a recent report by a state Blue Ribbon Commission surveyed California's firefighting response.

Bowman's group is composed of retired fire officials, academics, firefighter union representatives, consultants and a chaparral plant expert.

Members gave no price tag and did not recommend a funding source, saying that was something for politicians to decide. Bowman retired in June 2006 as chief of San Diego's Fire Department because that city refused to spend as much on firefighting as he contended was necessary. And now he is calling for the same kind of big investment that taxpayers have thus far been reluctant to pay for.

As in the 2003 blazes that swept across much of Southern California, the October wildfires hit San Diego County the hardest, this time destroying 1,750 homes and businesses in the county, torching 368,000 acres and launching the largest evacuation in California history.

The report may be viewed at: www.SDfiresafety.org.

"It is good to see the open-mindedness and creativity that is in this report," said San Diego County Supervisor Ron Roberts, in a telephone interview later Tuesday.

At the same time, Roberts said it will be a significant challenge to come up with the kind of money required to pay for the equipment.

"When you start talking about helicopters and night flying and all that, you're talking about huge dollars," Roberts said. And, he added, "I haven't noticed anyone stepping forward with a big pot of money."

Roberts is co-chairman of a new Regional Fire Protection Committee, composed of elected officials from across the county, to explore ways to prevent another disaster on the scale of the 2007 fires. And he said the forum's ideas will be explored.

"This is not going to fall on deaf ears," Roberts said.

The forum advocates the purchase of four new helicopters with the ability to fly at night – three by the county and one by the city of San Diego – to boost the region's firefighting fleet total to seven helicopters. Later in the day, the San Diego City Council took care of one of those when it voted to spend $16 million on a second helicopter.

Bill Middleton, a Ramona resident and retired assistant fire chief for San Diego, said seven helicopters would give San Diego County half the number Los Angeles County employs to protect a region of similar size. He said that could help put many wildfires out in those critical early hours before they are fanned by ferocious Santa Ana winds into infernos.

For the ground attack, the group recommends the county purchase 50 firetrucks that would sit idle much of the year, then be pressed into service during the Santa Ana season. With off-duty firefighters staffing the engines, this strategy would effectively double the firefighting response in the first four hours of a firestorm, the group says.

This particular recommendation reflects one Roberts and fellow county Supervisor Bill Horn made in December, when they asked county administrators to explore funding options for such a 50-truck fleet.

While the county is exploring creating a county fire department through the consolidation of several rural fire districts, Bowman said the region should go further and create an Orange County-like regional fire authority governed by a board of elected officials. That board would have the responsibility of marshalling resources in areas where they are most needed, he said.

Bowman said the regional authority would give San Diego County control over its firefighting attack, so the fractured region would not have to rely on the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, or CalFire, to allocate engines and helicopters.

Other recommendations were to encourage:

- The removal of flammable material, including stacks of wood and wooden patio furniture, within 30 feet of homes, and discourage the placing of palm trees and ember-showering plants within 100 feet.

- All area cities to adopt a modified version of the International Urban-Wildland Interface Code, following the example of the county, Solana Beach, Del Mar and most fire districts in the county, so embers aren't able to penetrate new homes.

- Existing homeowners to replace fire-prone roofs and install attic vents designed to block embers from entering houses.

"We live in a fire-prone environment," said group member Rick Halsey, director of the California Chaparral Institute. "But the environment is not the enemy, it's our ignorance (that is the enemy)."

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By Noelle Straub
Jackson Hole Star-Tribune, Washington bureau
Feb. 14, 2008
http://www.jacksonholestartrib.com/articles/2008/02/15/news/wyoming/
be4f7a061d297bf8872573f0000851da.txt

WASHINGTON - Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and several other Western senators tore into U.S. Forest Service officials on Thursday over a lack of funding for wildfire preparation and suppression.

Tester slammed proposed cuts at a time when "we're one lightning strike and a good wind away from burning the whole damn state down."

Under President Bush's proposed 2009 budget, the agency's budget would drop $373 million from 2008 levels, to $4.1 billion. Dollars would be cut from wildfire preparedness, hazardous fuels reduction and other fire operations. The Forest Service asked for $982 million in those categories, a decrease of $115 million from 2008.

It proposed to boost regular suppression funding from $846 million to $994 million. But the agency also received $432 million in emergency funding for fire suppression for 2008, outside the regular budgeting process. Taking that into account, suppression dollars would be a 22 percent drop.

Money for state and private forestry programs, research, maintenance, management and law enforcement also would decline from 2008.

"I see the Forest Service being severely hamstrung by the amount of money that they use on forest fire fighting," Tester said. "I think it takes away from their ability to manage. And I look at this budget, and I see a decrease in the dollars that are set aside for forest fire fighting. And it tells me you're going to have to find that money somewhere else."

At the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing, Tester blasted the agency for not asking for as much money as it will likely spend on fires. Congress in recent years has passed emergency or supplemental funding bills with money for firefighting after the agency spent more than it had budgeted.

"This budget is very frustrating to me," Tester said. "If I budgeted on my farm the way this is budgeted, I'd never get the crops in the ground."

Agriculture Undersecretary Mark Rey explained that the Forest Service determines how much to budget for firefighting based on an average of how much it cost over the past decade.

Since fire seasons have been growing more severe recently, using a five-year average instead would mean the agency would have to ask for a larger amount. But Rey defended use of the 10-year average, saying members of Congress have implicitly expressed support for it by passing the agency's budget each year.

"I am not going to whack your budget out because I don't agree with the 10-year average," Tester replied. "That's incorrect and it's stretching it to the max."

Rey testified that despite more fires than in 2006 and a 49 percent increase in acres burned, the cost of suppressing forest fires was $127 million lower in 2007, because of cost-containment measures. Tester attacked that statement as being contradictory.

Rey said the agency isn't happy about the increase in acres burned, but that the acreage would not have been smaller if more money had been spent. He said there is not a direct correlation between the amount spent and acres burned, in part because the agency now will sometimes allow fires in wilderness areas to burn.

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Reno Gazette-Journal
02/13/2008
http://www.firerescue1.com/wildfire-prevention/articles/350636/

SPARKS, Nev. — Efforts must be made around the West to treat fire-prone landscapes in an effort to prevent increasingly devastating fire seasons, a federal official said.

Stopping the spread of cheatgrass and other invasive plants that help fuel fires will be expensive, but the move is increasingly critical as a warming climate creates longer and more intense fire seasons, said C. Stephen Allred, assistant secretary of the Interior.

"The challenges we have with fire are huge," Allred told the Reno Gazette-Journal before a speech Monday to a convention of the National Association of Conservation Districts in Sparks.

Last year, about 9.3 million acres burned nationwide. The toll was even worse in 2006, 9.8 million acres burned nationally, according to the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

"I expect they portend things to come in the future," Allred said, citing climate change as a potential key factor.

No matter where one stands in the debate over the cause of a warming climate, there's little doubt the phenomenon is worsening the danger of catastrophic wildfires, Allred said.

"There's no question we are in a period of pretty rapid change and decreasing moisture," he said.

Worsening fire seasons in the West are now followed by increasingly serious ones in the southeast part of the country, Allred said. Firefighters continued to battle hundreds of fires in North and South Carolina that ignited over the weekend.

The national fire center in Boise, Allred said, used to be a seasonal operation.

"No more," he said. "It's a year-round operation, and there are no down times."

It's not enough to fight fires while they are burning, Allred said. He said it is also critical that steps be taken to restore burned areas.

Cheatgrass, named for its ability to cheat the seeds of other vegetation out of water and nutrients, crowds out native grasses and sagebrush, ignites easily and quickly sprouts in burned areas to provide fuel for future fires.

The annual grass now dominates at least a third of the 48 million acres of Nevada managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and is also spreading across Utah, Idaho and Oregon.

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By Mike Stark
Billings Gazette
Feb. 08, 2008.
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2008/02/08/news/state/27-tweakpolicy.txt

As wildfires ramp up in Montana and more people move into fire-prone areas, it's time to tweak the state's approach to fire policy, two current and one former university forestry professors say.

More emphasis should be placed on protecting communities from wildfires, primarily by preventive work to keep fires from burning too close, and a more hands-off approach should be taken with fires burning away from developed areas, they said in a letter to state legislators.

That would not only save money but would also allow fire, in some places, to continue to play the restorative role it has had historically, said the letter, signed by Paul Alaback, a professor of forest ecology at the University of Montana; Cathy Whitlock, an earth sciences professor at Montana State University; and Tom DeLuca, a forestry professor at UM for 12 years before taking a job with The Wilderness Society in 2006.

The letter was sent to the Legislature's Fire Suppression Interim Committee, which formed last fall during a special session convened to allocate $82 million for firefighting costs.

Fires in Montana last year cost roughly $40 million.

Those costs will only continue to climb if the approach remains the same, DeLuca said Thursday. "We're definitely in a climate swing right now ,and we could see broad-scale fire occurrences pretty regularly," he said.

A 2006 study published in the journal Science said Earth's warming climate is making fire seasons longer, more intense and more dramatic in the West, especially in the Northern Rockies.

Since 1986, the average fire season in the West has been 78 days longer than it was in the 1970s and early 1980s, the study said.

Add that to an increase in the number of people moving into fire-prone areas that abut forests - about 60 percent of new homes nationwide in the 1990s, according to a federal estimate - and trouble is bound to happen.

Over four of the past seven years, the federal government spent more than $1 billion fighting fires, and Montana spent more than $100 million, the professors said.

"With the wildland-urban interface likely to grow larger each year in Montana, there will never be enough resources to suppress all fires," they said. "To manage fire and learn to better live with fire, we need to focus on what works."

That includes continuing the initial attack to put out 98 percent of new fires within hours last year.

But it also includes continued effort to safeguard homes and communities, including use of fire-resistant materials in construction, landscaping with less-flammable plants and keeping firewood, trees and other burnable items away from homes.

"That's where we're going to get the most bang for our buck," DeLuca said.

Allowing some fires to burn that are away from developed areas can also save money and manpower, they said. The savings come immediately in reducing firefighting expenses and also in the long run because more regular fires keep fuels from accumulating and exploding into large-scale blazes.

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By John Cramer
The Missoulian
Feb. 3, 2008
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2008/02/03/news/mtregional/news07.txt

Fire retardant dropped from aircraft has been found to kill fish, but a new study on Mount Jumbo suggests it also spreads some species of noxious weeds across Montana's native grasslands.

The study raises the possibility that the red slurry, while helping to slow a wildfire's advance, could ultimately worsen grassland fires by promoting the growth of cheatgrass, one of the most flammable invasive weeds in the West.

“By no means does this suggest that retardant should be eliminated as a method for fire control, only that there may be an environmental cost” to native grasslands, said Levi Besaw, a Salish Kootenai College student and the study's lead researcher.

Besaw and University of Montana researchers are studying the effects on annual and perennial plants from 13,000 gallons of fire retardant dropped on Missoula's Mount Jumbo during the Fourth of July fire in 2006.

According to preliminary results, the retardant's fertilizerlike nutrients significantly increased cheatgrass and tumbleweed mustard, both exotic annual species, at the expense of native perennial grasses on the mountainside.

The invaders benefit from the jolt of nitrogen and phosphorous in the slurry, which native and exotic perennials largely ignore because they are accustomed to nutrient-poor soils.

Cheatgrass and tumbleweed mustard didn't spread where the fire burned alone, but they exploded in areas that were burned and hit with retardant, the study found.

The two invaders have spread from 51 percent to 88 percent on Mount Jumbo since the retardant was dropped, although two perennial invaders, spotted knapweed and Dalmation toadflax, decreased.

The Fourth of July fire burned about 320 acres and fire retardant was dropped on about 12 acres of Mount Jumbo, where noxious weeds have become widespread over the past 20 years.

The two-year study, which is to be completed next spring, is being conducted by Besaw and Giles Thelan, a research specialist at UM's plant ecology laboratory.

The researchers have reseeded areas that were burned or doused with retardant to see which native plants grow back the best.

Nationwide, federal and state agencies drop an average of 15 million gallons of retardant annually and up to 40 million gallons in some years on wildland fires.

Fire retardant is about 85 percent water, but ammonia compounds constitute up to 90 percent of the retardant product. Thickeners, which give the mixture its molasseslike consistency, make up the rest. The slurry reduces the intensity and speed of wildfires by robbing them of oxygen and slowing fuel combustion.

Invasive weeds have spread across the United States in recent decades, crowding out native plants, worsening wildfires, reducing ecosystem diversity and damaging wildlife forage.

Cheatgrass is a major culprit in the West. It depletes soil water that native plants need and takes over burned land, creating volatile fuel for future wildfires.