2017 AZ and NM Fires of interest

[Jim]

or, "how I learned to stop hating smoke and learned to love fire in the forest".

Seriously though, the Kaibab and Coconino sometimes have a liberal fire policy, and unlike the NIMBY people, and other worrywarts and endless do-gooders of central and southern Arizona who complain endlessly about whatever they can related to fire's reintroduction, most people on this website seem to ignore fire on these and lesser visited Arizona and New Mexico National Forests ( Gila and Cibola, in general).

Currently, the Coconino has a small fire with a potential planning area of 55,000 acres, located in a hard to reach spot of the NF, so likely no one will care. It is vital, however, to reintroduce fire to keep hot stand replacing fires from devastating this area of the forest. If you disagree, fine, just remember that for all the hooting and hollering over whatever pet love you may have, low to moderate intensity fire is better than a wind blow Wallow fire in any and all cases.

This area of the forest is part of the Verde River watershed, and it is important for the Phoenix water supply to maintain a well functioning watershed to ensure an adequate water supply. Believe it or not, this reason, and not ecology, timber production or recreation, was the reason (as we were told in school) that National Forests were created; watershed protection. No, I have no source for that other than what we were told.

Snake Ridge Fire
https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5188/

The Snake Ridge Fire does not have a planned end date, but firefighters have determined an approximate 55,000-acre planning area within which the fire may run its natural course. However, this does not mean the fire will move across all 55,000 acres, as specific edges of the fire will be suppressed to protect certain values such as public safety, private property, cultural sites, major transmission lines, trailheads, dispersed camping sites and more. The wildfire will increase from its current size and is predicted to move across approximately 15,000 acres of land inside the determined planning area over the next two weeks

[chumley]

located in a hard to reach spot of the NF, so likely no one will care

The closure currently borders major road access to popular hiking trails on the north side of West Clear Creek. I've been watching it closely, and I'm sure that plenty of people will care if the closure moves 20 feet more.

As Pam has pointed out in recent fire seasons, CNF has been burning all around the WCC drainage for several years now. This seems to be a well-thought-out fire plan. (*strike that. well-thought-out, fire plan, and FS can not be used in the same sentence. My bad!)

Like many of these "managed" fires however, I find it laughable that this was officially reported to have been started by lightning last week.

From what I've seen, CNF has figured out how to turn a fake lightning strike into low-intensity fire without reducing an entire mountain range to match sticks. They should send some folks to Tonto to give them some pointers.

[Jim]

CNF has figured out how to turn a fake lightning strike into low-intensity fire

Oh, not you too.

Didn't we used to have a rolling eye emoticon?


Either way, with regard to the major road, I see the current closure is pretty far from Lake Mary Road, which is what I would call a major road. I would not call FR 81 to be a major road, but clearly we disagree here. Having been down there in July of 2007 (if that is where the Maxwell Trail is, I remember it being a pain to get to, and so I consider it a hard to reach area. I am of the opinion, that easy to reach would be the TH for the Horton Springs trail, or Ice House Canyon. This area is to me, "hard to reach".

Clearly, we disagree on this, as we do on many, many other things. That said, I wanted to have a single place to post links and information to fires of interest. Hopefully, we can keep from having multiple and unnecessary threads for the same things. We already basically had 2 posts for that fire NE of Wrightson, and there are 2 threads for fire restrictions, even if on different NFs.

[flagscott]

Like many of these "managed" fires however, I find it laughable that this was officially reported to have been started by lightning last week.

This was my first thought, too, but then I looked a the weather history. The fire was reported Friday morning, and a storm moved through the area on Wednesday and Thursday. I don't recall any thunder, but the Wednesday morning forecast said there was a chance of thunderstorms.

If the fire had started on a weekend, I'd bet dollars to donuts it was idiot-caused. But a weekday fire when there were thunderstorms in the area? Probably legit.

[flagscott]

BTW, Jim's analysis is pretty much spot on. A low-intensity burn now can help to avoid a high-intensity fire later (at least in ponderosa pine for sure--for other types of forests where the trees aren't fireproof like ponderosas, the calculations are somewhat different).

[chulavista]

Like many of these "managed" fires however, I find it laughable that this was officially reported to have been started by lightning last week.

This was my first thought, too, but then I looked a the weather history. The fire was reported Friday morning, and a storm moved through the area on Wednesday and Thursday. I don't recall any thunder, but the Wednesday morning forecast said there was a chance of thunderstorms.

If the fire had started on a weekend, I'd bet dollars to donuts it was idiot-caused. But a weekday fire when there were thunderstorms in the area? Probably legit.

I can see the south side of the Pinals from my house, often watch thunderstorms on the mountains. I do remember lightening up there, so I believe them when they say it was started by lightening.

[joebartels]

there are 2 threads for fire restrictions, even if on different NFs

at the top of those 2 threads it shows how they are linked to different applicable areas

[Jim]

https://inciweb.nwcg.gov/incident/5171/

A Gila NF fire of interest.

[big_load]

started by lighting last week.

Is this better?

[Jim]

@big_load
The general perspective is that anything humans do is bad, but anything mother nature does is good. I would have no problem with the US FS exterminating a fire like the Pinal or some other one, if they then were allowed to, or had the money to come back out for 6 weeks in July to August to repeatedly light some fires that did more or less the same thing.

However, the nightmare around planning and lighting of fires that humans set is way different than a wildfire, so using a natural wildfire is much, much easier. Natural, too! As this forum demonstrates, most people don't care, don't want fire, and seem to have emotional attachments to a forest in an unnatural state, despite professing a love for nature. Nature brings floods and fire, just as it does gentle summer rains and balmy spring afternoons when the quail call. In the past, wildfire was a lot more regular, and so things were a little different in many, but not all of the ecosystems. The theory is that someday we will return to that. Will we?

[nonot]

The key to healthy forests is to have somewhat regular (every few years?) wildfires that tend to be more low intensity. Due to human development and concerns with danger to structures, I don't think we will every have healthy forests, and have to settle for areas devastated by crown fires that slowly grow back to a state of overgrowth and burn every 80 years or so. I will however give kudos to the FS on their management of the west clear creek area as they have essentially managed that area the best I've seen. I am also fairly impressed with the efforts shown by the San Carlos tribe.

I am disappointed about the conditions of the main Wallow fire area, and the Chediski-Rodeo fire areas, along with Aztec Peak, the majority of the area around the Highline trail east of Payson, and Mazatzals. I haven't yet visited the Galiuros after the major wildfires there but I don't anticipate good things.

I would like to see a policy of not fighting wildfires, but I'm not holding my breath. There's too much money in fire management, along with some reasonable safety concerns related to at least protecting structures and small towns.

[RedRoxx44]

I was on the ground very early when Oak occurred in the Galiuros, I walked near the flames. I could've put that fire out. At the time I thought what a nice little fire, creeping along in the open, with widely spaced trees and bushes and natural rocky breaks. I even said to one of the first crew on the scene " don't let it get into the big trees, tired of walking among black sticks". However if these natural start fires weren't assisted it might be something like this on the books; Oak, 29 acres, Juniper 42 acres, maybe Pinal at 58 acres. And if the assistance didn't involve aerial high intensity fire starting material. Or the burning techniques evolved more in the winter seasons, with more humidity and a lower acreage yield due to lower intensity approach, and a satisfaction with other approaches ( goats anyone? I know, I know, not perfect or practical in most situations).
At this point as someone else said enjoy walking in a pine forest when you can, as most of the southern Arizona sky islands there will be no continuous stands of pines to enjoy, for many many years. I will quote a rancher I spoke to who is involved with some ecological monitoring with the U of A; " The forest service has a very heavy hand in managing these fires, and in certain areas some of the mixed conifers, will never come back due to the soil conditions and climate change"

[flagscott]

The key to healthy forests is to have somewhat regular (every few years?) wildfires that tend to be more low intensity. Due to human development and concerns with danger to structures, I don't think we will every have healthy forests, and have to settle for areas devastated by crown fires that slowly grow back to a state of overgrowth and burn every 80 years or so. I will however give kudos to the FS on their management of the west clear creek area as they have essentially managed that area the best I've seen. I am also fairly impressed with the efforts shown by the San Carlos tribe.

I am disappointed about the conditions of the main Wallow fire area, and the Chediski-Rodeo fire areas, along with Aztec Peak, the majority of the area around the Highline trail east of Payson, and Mazatzals. I haven't yet visited the Galiuros after the major wildfires there but I don't anticipate good things.

I would like to see a policy of not fighting wildfires, but I'm not holding my breath. There's too much money in fire management, along with some reasonable safety concerns related to at least protecting structures and small towns.

The Wallow Fire was, at best, only partly due to FS mismanagement. A large chunk of that fire burned in mixed conifer (spruce, fire, Douglas fir, aspen, etc.). Those trees are not fireproof, and when they do burn, they burn at high intensity, resulting in most or all trees being killed. We call those "stand replacement" fires because the stand of trees is wiped out. In those types of forests (you can also add pine-oak, pinyon-juniper, and anything with a major chaparral component in the understory), fires are pretty much always going to be severe. Even if the FS comes in and thins those forests, a fire can still kill the remaining trees because their bark is not fireproof like ponderosa pine.

The real problem here is twofold: 1) idiots starting fires out of the normal season, which results in fires burning for a long time and in dry parts of the year (like May/June) when they historically would not have been likely to happen. And 2) climate change is creating conditions so dry that in some years, fires are simply unavoidable. Even thinned forests can burn with high intensity if it's dry enough.

The FS and a lot of people in Arizona seem to think that what works in ponderosa pine--thinning forests and conducting regular burns--will work anywhere that has trees. Not true! All of the thinning in the world would not have saved a lot of trees in the Wallow Fire. And aspen-spruce-Douglas fir forests were never meant to be thinned anyway. Their bark is not fireproof. I've hiked through some of the Wallow Fire area, and there are areas where the ponderosa pines survived but huge, old-growth Douglas firs were killed by fires that only burned around their bases, not up into the tree. This means that these areas had gone hundreds of years without a fire. Areas like that would not have benefitted from prescribed burns--they would have just killed everything but the ponderosas.

People just need to accept the fact that Arizona is getting hotter and drier and a lot of it is going to burn. People accuse me of being overly negative for saying stuff like this, but I've read the scientific literature on this stuff, and I'm just a realist. Next time you're hiking anywhere over 9000' in Arizona, look around. Do you see a lot of healthy trees? No--dead trees all over. The higher elevation forests are already getting squeezed by climate change. Fire is just an exclamation point on a process that's been under way for decades. Enjoy the healthy forests in Arizona that you love now, because your children and grandchildren will probably not have that opportunity.