Here is a talk I did about mapping wildfire hazards in the City of Chico, and about ways climate change is amplifying wildfire threats in Butte County. Originally presented at @IAWF #FireClimate2022. We highlight @ChicoFD’s prescribed burning program. https://youtu.be/jTe8xTmQfG8
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The last 10 minutes of this interview has a segment about moderating the effects of firing operations on wildfires, and a story about a landscape-scale firing operation on the 1999 Bucks Fire, in the North Fork Feather River.
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Zeke… thank you for that interview and especially that clip. Klump’s statements echo what many of us retired wildland firemen feel…the backfire groups in the wildland fire services are out of control and doing more damage than good.
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July 2, 2022
IN 1974, I was newly appointed CDF Assistant State Forest Ranger ( ASFR…now Battalion Chief) in the Badger District of Tulare Ranger Unit and old brush fire Ranger from Miramonte Camp named Bill Halley told me “The Chamise won’t burn until the Buckeye loses it leaves”.
Years later in the early 1980’s I was working in the Whitmore District of Shasta Ranger Unit and large part of my job was planning and conducting large ( what we now Call Landscape scale) range and veg management burns. Our unit goal was to burn 10,000 acres annually, most of that in the summer and early fall. I had validated Bill Halley’s words over the years, but since I was now fuel sampling in the wildlands and executing large scale brush burns I could now make the correlation between live fuel moisture and fireline intensity.
I was selected as one of the Cadre to develop and teach courses in California Advanced Fire Behavior which later evolved into S-490. The course was necessary to provide instruction the the new staff hired to administer the newly formed Chaparral Management program. I wrote the lesson plans for the Advanced Fire Behavior potion of that program…basically I used the lesson plan from the S-590 course taught at the National Advanced Resource Technology Center ( NARTC, now NAFRI) at Marana, Arizona but I included topics on marine influence, geographic wind events like Santa Anas and Sundowners and keyed back to California fuels. I included the correlation of certain indicator plants to measured LFM’s in those lessons. Those lesson may have been presented elsewhere, but to my knowledge its the first time they were written and formally presented.
Its important to understand the term critical fuel moisture. In both live and dead fuels the CFM is the point at which that fuel adds to the combustion process. If the CFM is above critical, the moisture acts like a heat sink and reduces Fire Line Intensity ( FLI).
When we sample for Live Fuel Moisture we collect both new growth and old growth samples. These are weighed, placed in a convection oven and dreid, then reweighed. We used microwave ovens before I had a convection proven available, and found that the microwave burned some portions of the sample and left others undercooked.
Live fuel moisture in brush peaks in the early summer…may go as high as 200% and then taper off as the heat increases and the plants enter summer dormant period.
Critical LFM’s in new growth Chamise is 60%, in Manzanita its 80%. The LFM in NEW growth in important in determining the flammability of brush. In poor growth years you’ll see the report of “no new growth, old growth samples , etc”
In my area, around Redding, Ca. and up to about 4,000 feet elevation the California Buckeye leaves turn yellow when the Manzanita LFM is around 90%… the Poison Oak leaves turn red at similar numbers. That should be warning sign to field firefighters that the brush is nearing critical LFNM and when the fire comes into alignment with wind, slope and solar heating the brush will burn as if its a dead fuel. The LFM will vary with aspect and soil conditions. Those plants on South or West facing slopes, in thin poor soil go dormant sooner.
Chamise is more volatile and usually has a higher component of dead in the canopy, so it will carry fire at higher LFM’s… that how and why we can burn South and West slopes of chamise in the winter.
Dead Fuel Moistures (DFM) are prime indicators for extreme fire behavior. A 10 hour fuel stick at 4% or lower should be an alert… a 1000 hour ( (3 to 8 inched diameter) DFM of 9% or less in the Sacramento Valley area ( PSA 5 ) should be regarded as a serious warning of potential extreme fire behavior.
The best indicator for 1,000 hour fuels approaching critical is the fact that those large diameter fuels will not self extinguish in a no wind situation, they will burn to white ash.
If anyone wants current information about forest fuels and various fire indexes I their area I recommend the Northern California Geographic Area Cordination Center website …Northern California Geographic Area Coordination Center
One of the best books on the subject of fuels and brush modification is Lisle Green’s booklet “Burning by Prescription in Chaparral”…PSW Technical report PSW-51 which is available online.
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Hard to talk about Jan van Wagtendonk without talking about his mentor, Herold Biswell. Interesting read here about Biswell, and the uphill battles he (and Jan) fought to get prescribed burning accepted by academia and fire suppression agencies.
An excerpt:
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Good burn yesterday west of Forest Ranch, in Butte County. Here is a thread with some videos. We’ll have a longer video about the project on The Lookout YouTube soon. https://twitter.com/wildland_zko/status/1595107430777569280?s=20&t=zKfjeJVYdbxbFJPy8Lz4CQ
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Not prescribed Fire but thinning of forest in NJ. Don’t hear too much about wildland fires out there or measures to prevent them. Article shows a glimpse of the issues faced when trying to clean up our forests.
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Video about a burn we did last week near Forest Ranch, California.
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The Wall Street Journal sent a photographer and reporter out to a burn Chico FD did earlier this month at the Chico Airport. Their article - about how firefighters are taking advantage of a mild spring to do more RX fire - came out this morning.
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Burned about 120 acres of grass and star thistle with Chico FD and many cooperators in Bidwell Park this week. This project put black on the ground at the mouth of Big Chico Creek Canyon in an area that has strong downslope night winds and a history of fires pushing toward the City of Chico at night.
Objectives were to create black at edge of City, kill yellow star thistle, and train.
The event was open to red-carded volunteers, and run in cooperation with the 2022-23 Plumas TREX Prescribed Fire Training Exchange. The event was run by a Chico Fire IC (Deputy Chief) and 2 Chico FD firing bosses. Other participants included Butte County RCD, CSU, Chico Ecological Reserves, Plumas Underburn Cooperative, Butte PBA, Watershed Center, CCC, Chico Parks Dept, PG&E, Defensible Space Solutions (DSS), Deer Creek Resources, Terra Fuego Resource Foundation, and others.
One unique thing about this event was that Chico FD ran the incident with 2 Divisions, with one of these staffed with a majority of non-FD personnel. This wouldn’t have happened 2 years ago. Local cooperators like the Chico State Reserves and RCD are getting their people a lot of torch time - some of the students and Reserve employees have gotten over 30 burn days in the past year in a wide variety of fuel types, and have been building a lot of trust with the agencies.
Though Cal Fire was not on site, they indirectly support this work with a lot of funding through their workforce development grants. The Hayfork Watershed Center sent a Type VI engine and 2 instructors under their ‘All Hands All Lands’ CF funding, and many of the Chico State Students and Reserve staff, Plumas Underburn Cooperative and Firesafe Council staff, myself and other contractors are being paid out of similar grants.
We’ve been training Fire Effects Monitors (FEMOs), taking videos and field observations, and mapping star thistle pre-burn to try to dial in better prescriptions for star thistle control. This is the second burn on this site in 3 years. We had plenty of cured grass to carry the fire through the thistle (still fairly green), and think we met our YST objectives in most areas.
We had mixed results burning star thistle a couple week ago at the Chico Airport. In areas of sparse star thistle with a good (dried) grass crop, the thistle was killed, but in pure stands of YST that weren’t cured, there wasn’t enough dry fuel to carry fire very well without good wind. If we want to control heavy infestations of thistle, we need to be burn later in the summer. Fall burning isn’t ideal because it drops all of its seed by then… I’m hoping the relationships and trust we’re building here will make it easier for us to take on some in-season burns in appropriate areas moving forward.
Here are some videos of firing ops.
https://twitter.com/wildland_zko/status/1672803980769103872?s=20
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Cal Fire SHU did a VMP prescribed burn today at Ross Ranch, near Shasta College, and LNU supported Fire Forward in a burn near Sears Point Raceway, yesterday. Anyone else working on in-season burns in California?
https://twitter.com/CALFIRESHU/status/1682050783473467393?s=20
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SCU burned some acreage at Grant Ranch in Santa Clara County last week. Target was close to 300ac but not sure what they actually got up to. CZU has done a few small ones in the SFPUC watershed and at Filoli Preserve in Woodside.
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Prescribed fire along side wildland use fire.
North to South:
Sagehen RX
North Beardsley RX
Quarry WFU
Big stump RX
Rabbit WFU.
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So I work for the forest service and I am also apart of my counties local PBA, but what is a good route to get more involved in prescribed and management fires? what are the short and long term goals to do so?
If I was outside looking in, I’d probably get a hold of Pyrogeograghy on this site.
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Go talk to your fuels staff?
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thank you I will try doing that when I go back to my engine towards the very end of the season currently away on an interagency engine.