This is part three in a series of posts about my experience taking the national wildland firefighting course in Belfair during the month of May. I took the course to better understand forest fires and the people who fight them. You can see all the posts here.
The war against wildfires isn’t without collateral damage.
For decades, wildland firefighters’ suppression efforts have eroded soils, destroyed habitat, poisoned streams and left scars on the landscapes they aim to protect.
That’s starting to change as firefighters look at ways to lessen their impact on the environment.
This new mindset was woven into my class during lessons on everything from bulldozer use to after-fire mop-up.
Bulldozers are deployed less frequently due, in large part, to their long-lasting impact on soil and wilderness scenery.
“You don’t see dozers as much as you used to,” said class instructor and Poulsbo firefighter Jay Melrose. “In Nevada, you can see dozer lines that have stayed long after the fire – sometimes 20 years.”
Heavy equipment like bulldozers and tractor plows can rapidly scrape away Trees, brush and flammable ground cover, leaving rocky soil that slows or stops oncoming flames.
Nature takes back these “dozer lines” slowly, leaving long, 30- to 40-foot-wide scars that hikers and other wilderness visitors would rather not see.
Firelines made by hand tools also have an impact, according to a Western Fire Ecology Center report. Firelines kill vegetation, displace and compact soil and degrade water quality.
The dramatic airtanker drops you often see in TV footage can have a big impact on streams and lakes.
“It kills salmon,” said instructor Mike Prevost, also of the Poulsbo Fire Department.
Dousing forests with the red flame retardant can immediately
kill fish or lead to algae blooms that harm aquatic habitats over
time. Some retardants degrade into cyanide that can harm frogs and
other amphibians, according to the WFEC report.
Prevost gave us instruction on how to duck and cover if we’re caught under a drop.
“It won’t harm you initially, but you want to change your clothes as soon as possible,” he said.
The WFEC report also targets the firefighting practice of felling trees to construct safe campsites and helicopter landing areas.
“Besides habitat loss and scenic degradation, an additional impact of tree felling along firelines is, ironically, the creation of new fuel hazards by leaving … downed woody debris and vegetation,” the report states.
I was a little surprised (and so were some of my classmates) when we received a brief bit of instruction on how to lessen the aesthetic impacts of wildland firefighting. Tips included rubbing dirt on stump tops to conceal them from passing hikers.
Firefighters were discouraged from leaving heaps of cut brush. Instead, the brush should be randomly distributed to achieve a more natural look. When possible, fire lines should be blended back into the landscape, especially when they run near trails or roads.
It should be stressed that such aesthetic concerns usually come without mandates, and few firefighters are ever told to go back and pretty up the site of a fire fight.
But as environmental awareness grows and as more people head into the hills to recreate, wild areas – particularly ones on public land – are increasingly valued for more than timber production. And that means firefighters are no longer asked to simply stop fires.
Photos: At top, a bulldozer cuts a fire line at the Pole Creek fire southwest of Sisters, Ore. in 2012. (Tim Kerr/Associated Press). At right, a wildland fire crew cuts a line near Burgdorf, Idaho. (Karen Wattenmaker/National Interagency Fire Center). At left, an air tanker drops flame retardant near Warm Springs, Ore. (Associated Press file photo).