Fire Season

It has already started! Fire season in the forests varies from each area of the country. Areas of the west are already burning as I write. When I was a park ranger, I was on the inter agency fire fighting team and we flew all over the country fighting forest fires. My favorite ones were in the west. I loved the west and enjoyed getting to see new areas of this beautiful country at government expense. Of course, I was working long hard hours and that beautiful country was on fire! Really though, MOST fire areas were hardly noticed the next season. In fact, fighting fires actually caused the next fire to be even worse! I got paid to fight them, but I knew that it was really futile and that small regular fires were actually a good thing. The small regular fires burned out the duff and kept the forest healthy. In fact, some trees could only produce seedlings after a fire. I saw many fires burn around the trees and do no harm to them. The next spring the forest would be even more alive with fresh green growth and you had to look very carefully to see where the fire had been. When we fight fires, we allow the fuel to build up and when a fire does come, it is fierce and burns everything, even the big trees. It actually sterilizes the soil and new growth takes many years to occur. I saw this latter type in Yellowstone. I fought those fires in 1987 and to be honest I doubt there would have been much difference, aside from a couple of buildings we saved, had we just let nature take its course. Fuel buildup over the years caused conditions to be so volatile that we could do little aside from saving our own skin. I went back to Yellowstone in 1993 and some of those areas that had such high fuel content were still completely dead. Other areas where there was not so much fuel were more alive than ever and the fire actually helped. Of course, I did get to visit the historic Old Faithful Lodge and it would have been gone had we not been there to fight the fire. I do miss the adventure of fighting those fires, but feel that whole policy needs to be looked at closely.