Article on western wildfires: water sources and homes nearby

[RosieTR]

This was written with Colorado in mind but certainly has implications for the entire West, all of which had/is having a bad fire season this year. I thought it was interesting the idea that making the forests safer to live near may make them more attractive to live near, which actually ups the risk (at kind of the end of the article). I also thought it was scary that that Horsetooth Reservoir was potentially threatened. There are two water sources for the city: Horsetooth and the Poudre River. The latter ran black after the fires, which is actually a threat to New Belgium Brewing. I wonder how many communities out there this year are going to be dealing even more seriously with water problems after all the fires this summer and fall? Not everyone got a grant to thin forests in and around their water source so this may be a very big deal in the next year or so.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_21553981/danger-woods-40-percent-national-forests-overgrown

[Tussiemussies]

Very sad situation...

[San Onofre Guy]

The power that home builders have in the west is amazing. During the past 30 years we have built in areas where fire is a regular occurrence and then people are shocked when hundreds of homes burn in large fires. Buffer zone buffer zone buffer zone. Then when officials propose special taxes for those who live in fire prone areas people scream and yell. Fires are not a problem as long as we don't allow development in fire prone areas.

[razz]

Add buffer zone and better planning for flood zones as well. Many tragedies are the result of poor planning.

[Rogar]

That was an interesting article. In terms of a shift in policy from forest management and a let it burn philosophy to one of fighting all fires regardless, I would guess that at least in the Colorado front range areas the expansion of home building in forested areas is a huge part of the equation. It seems like an impossibly infinite project to thin all the forest in areas with homes and the threat to life and property prevent a let it burn policy. Forest fires have historically been nature's way of managing a healthy forest. Sadly that just doesn't seem like a good option any more. It is my simplistic understanding that fires in areas of spruce and lodge pole pine will eventually re-vegetate to their natural state, but the recent intensely hot crowning fires in the foothills ponderosa pine forests destroy the areas ability to re-vegetate to the original natural ponderosa forest, and so are forever lost.

[RosieTR]

Yeah, Rogar, I think it just depends on the area and the fire. In very huge hot fires, yeah it's rough to get stuff to grow. If the fire is patchy then it has a better chance. My understanding is that wildland officials (from gov't, community groups, academic groups and property owners) are trying to change the way things are done. There's more of a non-profit + govt interaction and fire restoration is started in some cases while the fire is still burning or as soon as possible after. Efforts are made to reseed with native plants which can sometimes actually improve a forest if invasive species were an issue before. So we are learning, which is encouraging!:)
As far as more homes being built near forests, I think the jury is still out for the short term. Because of the housing problems and recession and now fires being in the news all over the West all summer I think that will decrease for awhile. However, memories are short. People are great at acting in the face of an immediate threat but it will be interesting to see how many do fire mitigation in the coming years. If I had to bet, I'd say many of the folks who had to evacuate this year and whose homes were barely saved will be motivated to do what they can to ensure success in some future fire. People who held their breath every time they smelled smoke this summer but who didn't have a close fire will be less likely to, even though actually their homes are *more* at risk than homes that had fire all around, because it just means the forest still needs to burn sometime soon. OTOH, nest year or the year after will be floods or blizzards or something else that we should probably be anticipating now but aren't. Hindsight is 20/20, after all. That said, I have made very clear to DH that I would not like to live in the mountains....he's more intrigued by the notion. Deer and bears eating the garden, cougars and coyotes eating the pets, early and late frosts, winter threat of power outages and blizzards, summer threats of fire, no thanks. But some people love it.

[RosieTR]

Learned some more while doing some restoration work this weekend. In some ways, it's a mess because private landowners can basically do what they want (or not do anything). So if you're a landowner and your property burned, you can just leave it. Which means runoff will be majorly problematic. OTOH, there are grants and public/private partnerships for property owners who are willing. We worked one person's property in this situation. He has 40 acres of basically black sticks, so we spread grass seed and raked it in all day. He'll do the mulching, to the tune of $400/acre, with some help for about half that or even maybe a little more. Still, even $100/acre x 40 acres isn't cheap. I have no idea what his financial situation is, but some of the mountain folks are self-employed, or built their homes with what little retirement money they managed to save so they aren't necessarily terribly wealthy. However, without some of the mitigation process, the river will run black and the local breweries (of which New Belgium is one) will have water quality problems that could affect production. Yes, people can live without beer but it's a major factor in the economy here, affecting hundreds or maybe even nearly a thousand jobs. And on and on. On the plus side, only about half the fire perimeter was considered moderate to severely burnt, meaning 40,000 acres will likely recover in the spring, esp if we get a wet (or even normal) winter. I know some places this year were way worse, like half a million acres burnt in Oregon :0! Fires are normal and big fires are probably normal, but fires hot enough to leave large swaths as burnt sticks is not so normal.

[Spartana]

I just received a bill for $150 per habitable structure from the Calif Fire Authority to cover extra fire fighting costs on the property I owned last year (the bill is for the 2011 tax year) in SoCal. That's in addition to other fire fighting related costs that were already paid via my property taxes. Apparently, even if you didn't have a wildfire in your area, they are still adding on an extra fee to certain properties in fire prone areas. I support that extra cost myself since I choose to live in that kind of area. The cost of fighting those kinds of wildfires, and protecting people's homes, is staggering, and I think a portion - maybe the majority - of that cost should probably be shared amongst the home owners who live in those kinds of areas.

As for the water supply, well many of the big Super Scooper planes pick up water from the various lake resiviors near where I use to live and use those to fight fires further away. I don't know how that would actually impact the water supply but if it's low to begin with - as it usually is in summer or drought years - then I can imagine it will impact everything from the plant and animal life to industry and recreation - and the revenue that recreation brings to a community. So is just "letting it burn" the solution? Should lots of resources of all kinds and man-power be used to save a few people's homes? Homes that may be insured? What about the air pollution factor to letting fires burn? What about the potential flooding and mudslides that can occur after the fires due to lack of vegetation? I'm at a loss to find any good solution.

[awakenedsoul]

I received the same bill. We were lucky this year, but have had many wildfires in the past.

[RosieTR]

I just received a bill for $150 per habitable structure from the Calif Fire Authority to cover extra fire fighting costs on the property I owned last year (the bill is for the 2011 tax year) in SoCal. That's in addition to other fire fighting related costs that were already paid via my property taxes. Apparently, even if you didn't have a wildfire in your area, they are still adding on an extra fee to certain properties in fire prone areas. I support that extra cost myself since I choose to live in that kind of area. The cost of fighting those kinds of wildfires, and protecting people's homes, is staggering, and I think a portion - maybe the majority - of that cost should probably be shared amongst the home owners who live in those kinds of areas.

As for the water supply, well many of the big Super Scooper planes pick up water from the various lake resiviors near where I use to live and use those to fight fires further away. I don't know how that would actually impact the water supply but if it's low to begin with - as it usually is in summer or drought years - then I can imagine it will impact everything from the plant and animal life to industry and recreation - and the revenue that recreation brings to a community. So is just "letting it burn" the solution? Should lots of resources of all kinds and man-power be used to save a few people's homes? Homes that may be insured? What about the air pollution factor to letting fires burn? What about the potential flooding and mudslides that can occur after the fires due to lack of vegetation? I'm at a loss to find any good solution.

Yeah, I don't know. I think at least in CO they let part of the High Park fire burn where it wasn't in danger of threatening any structures. There are areas that have 1000 ponderosa pine per acre that should have 50-100 per acre. If the fire burns less hot, the natural vegetation will come back the way it's supposed to and the watershed issues aren't as great. It's the super-hot fires that scorch everything, even the soil down a couple inches, where there are real problems. When that happens, the ash actually becomes hydrophobic (water-repellent) leading to even worse runoff problems. Right now there's a fire in Rocky Mtn National Park so it will be interesting to see what they do with that. They are officially stating full suppression but I'm surprised they'd use the resources for that: it's in beetle kill area so it will actually clean that out, it's not threatening any structures, it's likely to snow on the fire and dampen it or at least keep it at a lower temp, and west of it is the Continental Divide which is about as effective a barrier as anything. OTOH, I hate, hate, hate to see that area burn because it's where I really like to hike so on an emotional level it's sad and frustrating to me. I suppose that illustrates that there are political responses as well as scientific ones, which always means there's not an easy answer.