Another Fire!

Fires are part of mountain living, but this is the third fire right in my neck of the woods and it's only early June! The previous two of 2007 (see prior posts) were both caused by electricity, but this latest one appears to be human caused and broke out yesterday morning, upriver about 15 miles.

Living along a river as I do, the sound of sirens whizzing by and filling up the canyon with their wailing is normal, and in the morning I recall hearing numerous sirens and thinking there must be an accident of some sort up the canyon. By early afternoon however, smoke was quite visible and by evening, it made a nice big brown plume that filled the eastern skyline above Kernville. This morning, the air has a very smoky smell and it's a bit hazy out. So far, the fire is approximately 1500 acres.

The mountains around here need to burn, they truly do, as fires have been suppressed for too many years. Without intermittent fires to clear out fuel build up, huge, raging fires sooner or later clear things out. Fire is a part of the natural cycle of life in the mountains, and humans have interfered with this cycle for a century now, totally messing up how fires and plant communities interact and making it so that when fires do start, they often destroy everything and at times sterilize the soil due to the intensity of the heat. Sterilized soil is not a good thing as new growth is very very slow to take hold as no seeds survive the heat, and rains tend to wash away top soil that has no living roots in it.

Five years ago we had an extremely large fire burn through this part of the southern Sierra, the McNally Fire, and it burned for over a month, filling the air in the Kern Valley with very thick smoke for weeks, and burning hundreds of thousands of acres. A couple years prior to that was the Manter Fire, another huge fire which also burned on the Kern Plateau, and there are areas from that fire where the ground was sterilized and the soil is still pretty much bare of growth.

Prescribed fires are the human way of trying to get the fire regime back to a more "natural" pattern, but with humans using fire science to control the parameters under which a fire burns. Some prescribed fires are set on purpose, others are set by lightning, but allowed to burn. For a fire to be allowed to burn, it has to meet certain standards and that's where the fire science comes in. There are all sorts of variables that come into play during a fire, and these variables affect how the fire behaves, and the variables themselves vary (ergo: variable things vary), depending on winds, temperatures, type of fuels (trees, brush, grass), fuel moisture (how wet the things that will burn are), the slope (how steep the terrain), the exposure (does the slope face west or northeast), and so on. There are now computer programs that aid in figuring out what fires will do. However, even a fire that meets all the parameters can escape if suddenly the wind picks up, or a drying wind comes through. Fires can even make their own winds and weather. The hotter and more acres that are burning, the more dangerous the fire becomes.

Meanwhile, we have another fire in the area. Sorry, no pictures this time as I am about to depart for a week long camping trip and I don't have time to take photos this morning.


Postdata: It's now July 4th and this fire is still creeping along. It is burning slowly in extremely steep terrain and every now and then flares up and a helicopter drops water on some hot spot. From what I glean from a USFS employee, the fire is still going, still has a small crew on it, but due to the terrain, continues to slowly burn without crews or helicopters being able to put it out or even totally contain it, so the fire has a slight potential to get large. The website to look up fire info can be found here: http://www.inciweb.org/incident/685/

Fire in the Mountains

Fire broke out yesterday and brought a bit of excitement to this small mountain town as the fire trucks, air tankers, and one helicopter began a flurry of activity to gain the upper hand on this fire. Fire is a part of mountain living. Many plant species in this area thrive after a fire burns through, and fires in wilderness areas are often allowed to burn (depending on circumstances). But when fire is near human settlements, suppression is of utmost priority, and that was the case with this particular fire, as it started right in town, at the base of a steep mountain, bordering federal lands (BLM and USFS).

I spent Sunday morning at the Kern Valley Nature Festival (a yearly event) and as I drove back to my little town, encountered smoke, fire trucks, and air support all focused on the mountainside just behind the elementary school. All afternoon a helicopter made trips between the river and the fire, and 4 air tankers dropped fire retardant while a reconnaissance plane circled high above. The fire burned about 400 acres by dark, and this morning wasn't putting out much smoke. Hand crews worked on it during the night and today, more crews will be arriving.

From my back porch I could see the helicopter down along the river making water pickups, so I took a walk down that way with camera in hand.





Update on the fire: May 2, Wednesday. The fire grew to near 2,000 acres and seems to be far from town now. It spread eastward, into the mountains, and no buildings were burnt. I can still hear the sounds of aircraft, but they are way off in the distance. The terrain where this particular fire is burning is very steep, with grass , scattered brush and some trees.

Video of helicopter siphoning water out of river! (turn up your sound for full effect)