News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
The Sisters Ranger District is getting set to touch off a round of prescribed burning projects under a smoky pall from last year's Wizard Fire.
That blaze started from a one-hour prescribed burn on September 24 in the Metolius Research Natural Area. The next day, the fire escaped control lines and climbed up Green Ridge, ultimately burning 1,847 acres and costing about $4 million to suppress.
"The Forest Service is very disappointed in what happened last fall," said Sisters Ranger District fire specialist Jinny Pitman.
Pitman said that the escape was due to a breakdown in communications among those responsible for patrolling the fire. New and more intensive protocols for patrol and mop-up and the communications associated with those operations have been created for the whole region, Pitman told The Nugget.
"It was a lesson learned Central Oregon-wide," Pitman said.
New protocols include morning and afternoon briefings during patrol phases, so that no assumptions are made about who is in the communications loop.
"We're working together as hard as we can to monitor these burns throughout their patrol and mop-up phases," Pitman said.
She noted that increased vigilance in patrolling and new management guidelines were implemented in the spring burning season and will continue through the fall.
In the wake of the Wizard Fire last year, some questioned the validity of conducting any prescribed burning in fall, when fuels are dry from summer - and in the midst of what most consider to be the most beautiful time of year in the Sisters Country.
Pitman acknowledged those concerns, but she is emphatic that fall burning is critical to both the health of the forest and the safety of local communities.
"What we're trying to do is bring back historical processes to bring back balance to the ponderosa pine ecosystem," she said.
Brush and small trees can be cleared out through mechanical thinning, but only through burning can foresters remove thick layers of duff. And that duff has to have dried out from winter rains and snows in order to burn.
"We've got years and years of duff that's suffocating the soil," Pitman said. "We couldn't mimic surface fuel removal with machinery."
Pitman is concerned that aesthetic considerations - the impact of smoke on lovely fall days, the temporary but somewhat shocking appearance of blackened trees and brown needles - will trump the health and wildfire safety benefits of burning.
"It's highly likely that someday it (prescribed fire) will no longer be a tool in our tool box," she said.
That, she believes, would make it very difficult to manage forests effectively.
"There's a hard truth about forest management," she said. "It's not always aesthetically pleasing in the early stages. The result is a safe, resilient, healthy forest."
Pitman said that updated information is available for hunters and local residents at http://www.fs.fed.us/central/oregon/fires.
For more information contact Pitman at 549-7644.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
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