Fuels treatments are critical to wildland firefighting Success and promoting forest health

 

PENDLETON, Ore. (Sept. 6, 2024) — It's impossible to fully capture the variables and challenges that wildland firefighters deal with moment to moment. Incredibly steep terrain, managing mechanical equipment, inhaling smoke and all in the most extreme heat imaginable. The icing on the cake – attempting to quickly accomplish a fuels treatment to keep the fire out of the canopy. A treatment that could have been implemented outside of fire season. This is the constant reality for fire personnel.

Oregon’s 2024 fire season erupted early and has only intensified as the season has progressed. Persistent hot and dry weather mixed with lightning and red flag wind events continue to be forecast - all hallmarks of extreme fire-weather conditions. Since wildfire is a forgone conclusion, the most effective tactical tool to slow the pace, scale and severity of fire during wildfire season is strategic and pre-emptive fuels treatments. There are already many field verifications from the 2024 fire season that demonstrate fuels treatments can tip the scales.

One example - since first igniting on July 15, the Cougar Creek Fire (24,091 acres) swiftly burnt though mountainous and remote terrain bordering Wenaha-Tucannon Wilderness in the Umatilla National Forest. Days into the fire’s rapid expansion, fire behavior analyst Dean Warner with the Complex Incident Management Team detected an area where the fire markedly slowed its advancement. Upon further investigation, Warner linked this observation to a 2014 fuels treatment that aligned with the fire’s path, a prescribed burn bracketed by the 43 and 44 forest service roads to the north and the upper reaches of Wenatchee Creek and Indian Tom Drainages to the south. The prescribed burn reduced timber stringers in draws and other common fuels associated with the ecosystem. Warner noted, “when a wildfire’s path is intersected by a fuels treatment, wildfire advancement is slowed, intensity is lowered and the positive effects on containment and firefighter safety are many.”

Slowing fire advancement and lowering the intensity reduces the likelihood fire will jump containment lines.  The prescribed burn had removed ladder fuels in the form of snags and understory brush. A cleaner, more predictable, lower intensity fire allows fire personal to engage more safely.  This in turn allows fire managers time to strategically allocate resources like boots on the ground, engines, heavy machinery and aircraft. 

Another benefit of lower-intensity fire is promotion of overall forest health. Fuels treatments designed to reduce surface fuel loads, decrease ladder fuels and increase crown spacing make it unlikely that subsequent wildfire(s) will reach the forest canopy. This in turn supports tree, legacy stand and old-growth survival. Kristen Marshall, Umatilla National Forest South Zone Fuels Planner, observed the correlation between tree survival and reduced fire intensity in the Lonerock wildfire footprint, where fuels treatments intersected the fire path.

Igniting two days before the Cougar Creek Fire, the Lonerock Fire quickly became a megafire (137,222 acres). Megafires are large wildfires that grow to more than 100,000 acres. Marshall notes that, “post fire, in the area where Flatiron Timber Sale and a small diameter thin and slash fuels treatment occurred in 2015, the edge of the treatment unit received the full force of the Lonerock Fire as it ran its way up an untreated drainage.  Once inside the treatment area, where understory trees had been commercially thinned to make space for large, old ponderosa pines, the fire dropped to the ground.” Ponderosa pine bark remained orange, and the canopy retained much of its green needles. In contrast, an adjacent area with no former fuels treatments was heavily charred with no live needles in the canopy. In addition to the ecological benefits these treatments provide economic benefits to surrounding communities as well through the sale of timber and other natural resources.

During an intense wildfire seasons like the one Oregon is experiencing, every preemptive advantage is needed – that’s what programs like the Northern Blues Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Project (CFLRP) offer to local Northeastern Oregon communities. Since 2021, fuels treatments on the Umatilla and Wallowa-Whitman National Forest have been increasing pace and scale through the CFLRP. Working jointly with the Northern Blues Restoration Partnership to strategically implement fuels treatments and restoration efforts across a 10 million acre footprint that includes National Forest, public, private, state, tribal and other federal lands, the CFLRP has accomplished much in the way of fuels treatments, bolstering local natural resources based economies and beyond.

###