RUFFIN PREVOST The Billings Gazette | Posted: Monday, October 6, 2008 12:00 am
WAPITI (Lee News Service) - Though the Gunbarrel fire is not yet extinguished - its eastern flank is still smoldering - forest managers are already sharing lessons from the big blaze, and say it will serve as a model for fighting wildland fires next summer.
Started by lightning July 26, the fire covered more than 106 square miles in the Shoshone National Forest north of Highway 14-16-20, between Yellowstone National Park and Cody. It cost more than $11 million to manage.
Administrators let some fires burn as a natural means of clearing the forest of dead or dying timber, and the Gunbarrel is the largest such "beneficial use" fire ever allowed in the Rocky Mountain region.
Though a defunct, uninhabited guest lodge managed by the Shoshone Forest burned, the only privately owned structure lost to the blaze was a 75-year-old doghouse, also uninhabited. Only a few injuries and no deaths were reported.
Citing priorities of public safety, containing costs and maintaining safe travel along the North Fork Highway, forest managers say they are pleased with how the fire was handled, and say public support and solid help from cooperating agencies were key to their efforts.
Defensible space
But the circumstances that allowed for successfully managing a fire that often raged with ferocious intensity across more than 68,000 acres didn't happen by chance. They are largely the result of efforts by forest workers and owners of cabins and lodges to clear trees, brush and other fuels from around structures.
"We felt more comfortable allowing fire in the North Fork corridor because we had worked to create defensible space," said Clint Dawson, north zone fire management officer for the Shoshone National Forest.
Under Forest Service policy, the decision to manage a fire for beneficial use must be made within eight hours of its discovery.
The Gunbarrel blaze began around noon and was reported at 1 p.m. By 3 p.m., Dawson was surveying the remote site from the air, and saw that the fire already had covered more than 100 acres, with winds blowing at 30 mph.
By 6 p.m., Dawson and others had analyzed a number of complex risk factors and recommended to Shoshone Forest Supervisor Becky Aus to let the blaze burn, and to manage it for beneficial use.
"We were all confident, so we figured maybe it's time for a fire like that," Dawson said.
But that confidence in being able to protect lodges and cabins was soon tested.
Dawson and Park County Fire Marshal Russ Wenke recalled the first three days of August, when howling winds pushed the fire far ahead of where anyone expected it to go. Just days after Wenke assured worried homeowners at a public meeting that he was sure he could protect their cabins, the fire tore into Moss Creek and Aspen Creek.
"Those areas were not as protected as we would have liked," Wenke said, adding that no sprinklers had been set up around nine cabins in the two drainages, and only limited crews and engines were available.
"Everybody had their hands full," he said. "It was a little dicey."
As the fire advanced on Moss Creek, the lone crew had to leave the area, unable to return for more than an hour. They discovered the blaze had come within 50 feet of one cabin, and about 10 feet from an outhouse.
The situation was similar in Aspen Creek, where an unused doghouse near Charlie Crowell's cabin was lost.
Crowell, who lives in High Point, N.C., and visits Wyoming about six times a year, has owned the cabin since 1992. He said he has worked with the Forest Service to thin trees around the property.
Two winters ago, crews cut trees and cleared brush in both drainages, reducing the fuels that create high-intensity fires that leap from the top of one tree to the next. Workers treated more than 16,000 acres along the North Fork corridor through prescribed burns, selective logging and removing fuels around structures.
Crowell credits that work with saving his cabin.
"I can't express how grateful we are for what was done. If all that hadn't been done, it wouldn't be here," he said.
Top Forest Service fire experts for the region have visited Crowell's cabin and other spots nearby, where the scorched earth and nearby green trees clearly show how the fuel reduction work helped save buildings and spare firefighters unnecessary risks.
Wenke and Dawson said local agencies worked well with the Forest Service.
"It increased my level of confidence in whatever kind of disaster we have," Wenke said, adding that personnel from every group were "worked hard" during the fire.
"I think this fire brought out the best in all the agencies we worked with," Dawson said.
Not everyone is completely pleased with how the fire was managed. Some lodge owners, though appreciative of the efforts of fire crews, have said they would have preferred a more aggressive approach in fighting the blaze.
Fire managers have said that steep and rugged terrain made safely attacking the fire's western flank virtually impossible, and certainly impractical, until it burned within a short distance of nearby lodges, finally allowing for defensive burnouts.
Others have criticized the loss of Sweetwater Lodge, an uninhabited wilderness guest lodge managed by the Forest Service.
Dawson said protecting inhabited private structures was the priority, and that preparations were being made to protect Sweetwater Lodge, but came too late.
An extra day to fight the east end of the blaze also would have limited its spread across Jim Mountain, but dry, hot, windy weather created dangerous and unpredictable conditions and confounded forecasts for how the blaze would move, he said.
New growth
Big game animals seem to have endured the blaze without harm, Dawson said, adding that he saw elk grazing around burned sections near Trout Creek within days of the fire's passage.
New flowers, forbs and grasses will sprout next spring, and the enhanced forage will benefit deer, elk and bighorn sheep.
With most whitebark pine trees in the area already lost to beetles, the fire is not likely to mean a major loss of the whitebark pine nuts prized by grizzly bears, he said.
In fact, the aftermath of the blaze will eventually promote new growth of the trees by clearing the area, making it easier for Clarks nutcrackers to cache seeds from healthy trees, which results in new saplings.
Dawson said there is a potential for silt to be a problem in creeks and the North Fork of the Shoshone River if burned areas see too much fast-moving water from rapid snowmelt or from summer thunderstorms.
Much depends on the weather, and not every fire results in silt and erosion, he said.
"After the Boulder Basin 2 fire in 2003, we were really concerned with Boulder Creek, but it has not been an issue," he said.
The Forest Service is unlikely to engage in widespread reseeding, even in heavily burned areas, he said.
"After the fires in 1988, they spent about $1 million doing that, but the way the soil and terrain is around here, it's hard to do much better than nature," Dawson said.