Colorado Burning [Reader Post]

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Ten years ago on Jun 8th, carelessness by a forest service worker started the most devastating forest fire in Colorado history known as the Hayman Fire [pdf]. The burning of a relatively healthy but dry forest covered more than 133,000 acres and destroyed more than 550 buildings and charred the ground with such heat is was said to sterilize the soil. Colorado has the potential for a fire 30 times as devastating as the Hayman fire.

The wildfire fighting community was ill prepared to fight this fire that could be surrounded and was easily accessible from several airports, and a network of roads. Despite the accessibility, the Hayman fire raged across Colorado with 100 foot flames destroying everything in its path. Since then, federal, state and local officials have made some plans [pdf] for future fires.

Unfortunately, those future fires are not far off. The mountain pine beetle is killing trees in Colorado at the rate of 200,00-400,000 acres of trees each year. The total of dead tree acres now exceeds 5 million acres in Colorado with millions more acres in 7 other western states and even into Canada.

The US Forest Service has let contracts for the removal of dead trees in some areas as lumber. In other areas they pay companies to thin trees and burn the slashing creating clear cut lanes from which to fight future fires. These companies can take their trucks and skidders off the road to accomplish their contracts.

At the same time as the government pays contractors to salvage wood and thin forests, the private citizen must pay $45/cord for fire wood taken off of public lands. They are only allowed to drive off of the maintained roads the length of the vehicle. No mechanical equipment can be used to skid cut logs up to awaiting pick-ups. There are several hundred thousand families who burn wood as a heat source in Colorado. They could be used with good management to assist in the thinning and cutting of the millions of acres of dead trees all over Colorado's forests at little or no expense to the government. When I presented this idea to the local Forest Service representative, they said there are rules they must abide by!

It might be a lightning strike or a careless hiker. Whatever the source of the spark, it will start off the most devastating fires ever known in North America. President Clinton closed 70% of the access roads used by firefighters and recreational users in the past. More than 3.7 million acres are designated wilderness areas where there are no access roads. Many more acres have been recommended for this designation by the current administration. Local Forest Service employees openly talk about how wide spread and how impossible it will be to stop this expected fire, but government bureaucracy prevents them from maximizing preventive efforts.

This is a disaster for everyone. The fire will release into the atmosphere uncounted tons of carbon dioxide as well as particulates that will affect the east coast of the US and beyond. All of those endangered plants and animals that wilderness areas were designated to protect will likely be gone. The extreme temperatures of burning dry pine will sterilize the soil and kill many of the seeds forests need to recover. We only need to look at the Hayman Fire to see a small part of the major impact these fires will have.

Today, the High Park fire east of FT Collins, CO expanded from 2,000 acres to 36,000 acres. Fire fighters have no estimate when it can be manageable. They cite the beetle killed pines as major contributors to the difficulty in controlling the fire. Other fires in Utah, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming draw wild land fire fighters from fighting the Colorado fires. Who will fight the fires when Colorado Burns!

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At last count, the fire is progressing at 1 mile per hour over a 10 plus mile front. that is about 6400 acres per hour unless the wind changes or it rains.

‘There are rules they must abide by’? The mountain pine beetle must not have gotten the memo. Reminds me of the Chinese revolution when the city professors were sent to run the farms. Of course I can picture several hundred thousand people with their Craftsman chainsaws hitting the woods every Saturday with those access roads closed so the EMT’s have a bad day too. Hats off to the Fire Fighters!

Yes keep the locals out of the National Forest. Close the roads, outlaw timber cutting, wood-cutting. Align the Forest Service with the large environmental eco terrorists (I’ll Get back to this) and claim the areas critical habitat for the Mexican Spotted Own or those cute Mexican Wolf pups. Allow the forest to grow over, let the trees die and rot, reduce the the sunlight with overgrown canopy’s. And let Mother Nature manage it all. Well here in Arizona and most National Forests that is what has and is happening. Five years ago in white mountains of AZ the Rodeo Chediski fire burned 500,000 + acres. Last year the Wallow fire east of that fire destroyed another 550,000 + acres. Today just across the boarder in NM 300,000+ acres are on fire with no end in site. North of us in Colorado there is another fire out of control with hundreds of thousands of acres burning. N ow back to the term of eco terrorists, what else can you call them when their policies of filing lawsuit after lawsuit to keep the National Forests “Natural” and pristine for the so called endangered critters. Well they left it to Mother Nature and when Mother Nature decides to clean up their mess she does it with a vengeance. Damn the Spotted Owl, to hell with the Wolf Pups it is survival of the fittest, and if you can’t outrun the flames you perish.

@Bufalobob: That is so true. The Western Colorado Congress, an environmental organization, fought against a chip board mill that was cutting the old stands of aspen trees. They succeeded in having the mills shut down and move out. The WCC used the cry that all the aspens would be cut and lost. Their knowledge of the aspen was severely lacking. Aspens are a pioneer tree that reclaims disturbed land. They reclaimed the minimg areas, forest fire areas and snow slides. Eventually, they die as the dark timber grows up and shades them. The only way to keep aspen groves is to clear cut them. They regrow from the roots.

If you could see what the Hayman fire did to the soil, no one would ever want a forest to grow naturally without thinning or clear cutting. All of the organic matter that took centuries to accumulate in the soil and necessary to retain water for plant growth was baked out. After 10 years, the fire site still looks like a nuclear blast had sweep over the landscape. With out a change in policy, all of Colorado and most of the west will look just like the Hayman site.

Let the MFers burn. Moonscape the shizz out of Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. Then those of us who understand intelligent forest management can point and say, “Where is your Gaia now? You’ve suckled on the teat of Mother Earth and drank of the poison to the point that you are blinded by your own stupidity. Had you properly managed the forests that you were entrusted to maintain, this wouldn’t have happened.

“Had you allowed managed logging and recreational woodcutting, you wouldn’t have all the bug-killed trees that you have now. Those bug-killed trees are a sign that there are too damned many trees too damned close together. Bugs don’t attack healthy trees. They attack those trees that are stressed out and fighting the other trees for the meager resources that are available.

“Had you allowed low-intensity fires to burn naturally, and developed a properly managed plan for prescribed burning, you wouldn’t have the trash trees and ladder fuels that contribute to the fire danger. ”

We don’t call them the Forest Circus and Bureau of Land Manglement for nothing. Get the MFing bureaucrats out of the top spots, and put people who understand forest and land management in.

A couple years ago a transformer blew up on a power pole a couple hundred yards from my house and started a forest fire. Luckily, it mostly went up the hill away from our house. It probably burned only ten acres, but I learned a lot of things from that experience. First and foremost, I learned that I can’t count on the fire department to protect my property. They didn’t even respond to this fire for 52 minutes, and then they focused on the leading edge of the fire and wouldn’t even send someone down to assist my wife who was using about 300′ of garden hose to fight it. I was at a neighbors at the time and cut off from my wife by the flames.

The second thing I learned is that my wimpy little 2 GPM water well was totally inadequate for fire fighting. So I had our little stream dammed up to make a 50,000 gallon pond. Then I put in a high-pressure fire pump and a distribution system so now I have 1-1/2″ risers, hoses, and fire nozzles all over the property. I also had all the trees within 50′ of my house removed.

Luckily I live in a state where I didn’t need a single permit to do all of this.

This just plain eco-bureaucracy with it’s collective heads up their arses. Anyone who knows anything about forest fires knows that when the timber isn’t thinned out on occasion, the chance of forest fires goes up. That is how nature corrects for over population of foliage. Isn’t it better to allow judicious logging to clear out the excess, whereby this natural resource can be used, rather than wait until it becomes a danger to wildlife (including endangered species), firefighters, residents and their homes? This is the difference between wise conservation minded stewardship of the land and ecological extremism.

@Smokey Behr: Smokey B., You did a FINE job of contrasting Environmentalists (who fancifully believe doing nothing keeps land like a paradise) and Conservationists (who realize a light hand on the land can help keep a balance.)

Here in liberal CA the Environmentalists are in charge.
That’s why a rust beetle was allowed to run rampant in the ”mountains” all around the LA basin.
When the fires came lots of folks lost everything.
Their property was filled with still-standing dead, bone-dry trees.
They went up like the tinder it was.
Took homes and all else with them.

CA didn’t seem to learn the lesson.

Edited to add:
Colorado has been out of whack into Environmentalism for a long time.
I remember liberals coming out to the mountains to winter feed the overpopulated deer.
Nature had a different solution….CWD.
Overpopulated deer passed on this rare disease to the point that a huge die-off occurred even with food all around them.
See, one symptom of this family of diseases is lack of appetite.

I lost a cabin getaway in the Hayman burn area. I am not allowed to rebuild in kind because local building codes only address the latest governmental regulations. Once again a governing body increases the burden and makes sure you’re an even bigger loser. I could afford rustic but not pristine and up to code.