The first of two posts.
Wildfires in Colorado: a hot, tragic, and complex issue.
The High Park Fire
On June 9, 2012, around 6 a.m., a lightning strike ignited a fire in the forest just north of the Buckhorn Guard Station west of Fort Collins, Colorado. (See area maps of the fire here, here and here and this fire progression map [pdf].)
Temperatures were high that day (peaking at 96 degrees Fahrenheit), relative humidity was low, in the single digits (“epic dryness,” as Incident Commander Beth Lund put it), and the winds were up. Just the recipe for a wildfire. And it certainly worked that June.
Within a day, the fire had spread to 8,000 acres. By noon on June 11, the fire had covered almost 37,000 acres [pdf]. It would take 21 days and eventually more than 2,000 firefighters working around the clock to suppress the fire, which would, at times, give rise to flames as tall as 300 feet [pdf].
The High Park fire from space, taken on June 10. (Source: NASA)
When it all was over, the High Park fire in Larimer County had torched some 87,000 acres, making it the second largest fire in the state's history*. In all, 259 homes were destroyed, and one person was killed. The final cost of the suppression activities: ~$39 million.
The High Park fire was not only extensive; it was incredibly intense, at times spawning rapidly moving 50- to 100-foot walls of fire [pdf] with temperatures reaching, according to some residents, 2,000 degrees. (See the Denver Post’s image gallery.)
Entire trees were incinerated into charcoal. Soils were literally burned and left devoid of organic carbon. And homes were turned into ash. Even structures built with fire-resistant materials were not immune, torched from the inside out, ignited by intense radiant heat entering the home through the windows.
Water a Huge Issue
Once the fire was finally contained on June 30, the recovery began. It is an ongoing process, and it has not been easy, especially for those who lost their homes (more on that later).
A little-appreciated but major impact of the fire was on the municipal water systems. (See also here and here [pdf].)
The fires left the forest soils covered in ash and without vegetation and hence vulnerable to erosion.
And so thunderstorms following the fire brought huge quantities of ash and sediment [pdf] into the Poudre River, temporarily turning the water black and forcing operators of a water treatment facility for the city of Fort Collins to shut off intake from the Poudre River (one of two sources of its drinking water) for three months last year.
With each new storm, the facility's operators must monitor the quality of their source waters and be prepared to shut down. Officials still worry that water supplies from the Poudre River might have to be interrupted again. (How Fort Collins is addressing ongoing water quality concerns.)
The Fort Collins experience is only one example. Ten years and millions of dollars after the Hayman fire [pdf], operators of the Cheesman Reservoir (which "supplies 15 percent of Denver's water") are still trying to figure out what to do about all the ash and sediment dumped into their facility.
The New Normal?
Sadly, the High Park fire was not an isolated event.
Something is going on, and it's not just in Colorado. The West, along with other places, is seeing the advent of the "megafire." Over the past decade wildfires have become more frequent, more severe, and larger, sometimes destroying tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of acres of forest.
And with more people living in fire-prone areas, fires have become more destructive, burning more homes and putting more people, including firefighters, in harm’s way. (You can find out if you live in a high-risk area by using Colorado State’s interactive “risk assessment” tool.)
Firefighters in Colorado are currently working to contain several fires in Colorado, including one that is being billed as the state's "most destructive wildfire" and one that has claimed at least two lives. More on the Black Forest wildfire here and here.
A Fact-Finding Trip to Colorado
What's going on? To try and find out, I led a team of Nicholas School faculty, staff, and board members on a three-day, fact-finding trip to Colorado last week.
We viewed fire-scorched forests from the perspective of a helicopter and on foot. We visited forests decimated by pine bark beetles and we spoke with people who represent a wide range of viewpoints, including scientists, U.S. Forest Service officials, a park ranger, water managers, businessmen, residents, a natural resources policy advisor to a U.S. senator and Norm Christensen, the founding dean of the Nicholas School and one of the world's experts on forest fire and recovery.
In Part 2, which will be posted tomorrow, I’ll share details of what we saw, heard, and learned from these diverse voices and the evidence on the ground.
______________________
End Note
* The Hayman fire, which consumed some 138,000 acres in 2002, was the largest fire ever recorded in Colorado and the “most destructive in terms of acres burned.”
Crossposted with TheGreenGrok | Find us on Facebook