Smoke inundates Metolius Meadows

When foresters ignited piles of slash in the woods near Metolius Meadows in Camp Sherman last week, they also touched off a storm of protest from residents.

An inversion layer pushed the smoke to the ground along the Lake Creek drainage and the smoke mixed with fog to create an impenetrable and unpleasant pall.

"It was like New Delhi on a bad day," said area resident Shane Lundgren.

The air quality was so bad, Lundgren said, that after several days of smoke inundation, some residents left the area to get respite.

Sisters District Ranger Bill Anthony told The Nugget that the inversion was not in the cards when the piles were ignited, and that as soon as it became clear on the third day of burning that smoke was not lifting and being carried away the way it is supposed to, the burning stopped.

"We had actually stopped igniting piles before we started hearing (complaints)," Anthony said. "The way it settled in was not predicted, so we got caught by that."

Lundgren solicited e-mail responses from local residents regarding the burning. Some were heated:

"For the past week, smoky conditions within Camp Sherman have made it impossible to be outside and enjoy our usual fall weather," one couple wrote. "Each morning, we wake up with the dismal scene of thick smoke which even enters our home with all the windows tightly closed. No longer can we take a pleasant walk along the Metolius River or even do our yard work which is badly needed this time of year! We either remain inside our home or drive to other locations where we experience beautiful blue skies and the true 'Indian Summer' which is so very delightful.

"It appears that the mindset of the FS is full steam ahead with the burning program without any consideration to the health and welfare of the Camp Sherman community. It is deplorable that the FS would engage in such a lengthy period of burning under the present weather conditions."

Others were supportive of the burning program:

"Having been in the basin during the B&B (fire) I would like to thank the Forest Service for being proactive when so many other communities are receiving no treatment at all," another resident wrote. "I can put up with a little smoke because I have firsthand knowledge of the alternative and realize the window for burning is so small."

Anthony said he takes the concerns of the residents "very seriously" and that the Forest Service tries hard to avoid negative impacts from its burning program. He noted that the ranger district has an extensive call list to notify people with concerns when a burn is planned.

"One of the things that we've learned from this is that there's not a representative from Metolius Meadows on that list," Anthony said.

The ranger said that the district planned to burn about 200 acres of piles in the Metolius Basin, and got about 100 acres done. Anthony still plans to burn the next 100 acres of piles, but he assured residents that they lie farther from communities and "the smoke will disperse in a different area."

There are between 2,000 and 2,500 acres of hand-piled slash left to burn across the district, Anthony reported.

"And that's a good thing: it means there's a lot of thinning going on out in the forest," he said.

Some of that thinning is funded with federal economic stimulus money.

Thinning is good for forest health and for mitigation of wildfire hazards, but it leaves a lot of slash behind, with no clean, low-impact way to get rid of it.

"Right now the cheapest and easiest way to do it is to pile it and burn it," Anthony said. "The market just isn't big enough to handle the biomass that's generated by all of our forest work."

That leaves the Forest Service with a job to do - a job most residents understand and want to see completed. But they also want to be able to breathe in their own homes, which leaves everyone - foresters and residents of the wildland interface alike - at the mercy of fickle meteorological conditions.

Author Bio

Jim Cornelius, Editor in Chief

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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