This September Oregon had 5 fires in the Cascades which burned over 100,000 acres each. Most of this damage came in just a couple days when Western Oregon experienced extremely low humidity and heavy winds from the east. These conditions combined with dry forests at the end of summer led to small fires blowing up and many more starting and growing quickly.
Now that Oregon has had a bit of rain, the fires and mostly under control and there aren't many recent hot spots. (To check hot spots go to Caltopo). The heavy rains of November, December, and the rest of winter should put the fires out quickly, but there's a lot of destruction that can't be undone. Plus, there's going to be a lot of landslides coming.
For years, big fires have swept across California. There's been a couple big fires near Oregon's southern border over the last few years, but nothing bad in Oregon...at least not the Oregon Cascades. Just last summer I was running near Detroit, Oregon (near this year's Beachie Creek and Lionshead Fires), and thought to myself there's no way this will burn. For years, I've been convinced that Oregon's fires season will turn into what California has experienced. But I was pretty sure that it wouldn't happen that soon. After all, Oregon is hundreds of miles north. Plus, Oregon is so much wetter.
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| Fresh snow on Mt. Jefferson, big trees on the hills...how could this burn? |
Turns out things happened a lot faster than expected. With over 1 million acres burned this summer, there's no doubt that Oregon was on fire. Once the fires started going, it was scary how fast they spread. The wind started blowing on a Monday afternoon and by Tuesday, Governor Brown had invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act. After the fires took off, I said to one good friend that it was a good thing for us that the fires didn't start on the weekend. We've gone running in the hills outside of Detroit on plenty of weekends and had we been there when the fires blew up it would not have ended well for us.
But that's what people in Lyons, Mill City, and other small town on the west end of the Santiam Canyon experienced. Fire on both sides of the road and no warning. People lost their houses and businesses. Some people lost their lives. And this was just one area that was affected. With the Riverside Fire blazing to the north and the Holiday Farm Fire and Archie Creek Fire to the south, Oregon suffered greatly. I can only imagine the loss that some people experienced.
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| Detroit, Oregon Photo: Mark Ylen |
After all the fires this summer, I started thinking about how all the fires began and how we can prevent more huge fires in the future. The best way to stop fires is to keep them from starting. Yes, it's impossible to stop lighting strikes, but a fair number of fires are caused by humans. In 2020, the Oregon Department of Forestry counted 900 fires in Oregon (through October 14th), with 733 of these being human caused. That's over 80% that people started...so there's a lot of room to improve.
Frankly, human caused fires really make me mad. They are completely avoidable. It's not very hard to put out a fire, it's probably easier than making a fire in the first place, but you still have to do it! If I were in charge of things, this would be the first thing I'd target in fire prevention. Sure, maybe different forest management can help too, but if people take 10 minutes and put out their fires, that 80% of the fires taken care of before they even start!
My proposal would be no fires in 2021 from May through October. From November through April, fires are allowed because it's probably going to be raining. So chances are that if people don't put it out their fires properly, then the rain will probably take care of it. Then, if human caused fires stay below 5% of the total fires for the year (or some other low percentage or a specific number of fires), then fires are allowed in May for 2022. Another good year, fires in June. Another good year, add another month to the "Fires Allowed" list. A bad year (more than 5%), a month gets removed the "Fires Allowed" list.
If summer fires are banned forever, no one is going to follow the rules. People want to have fires in the summer, and if they are told "never again", people will just ignore the rules. But if you give people a chance to earn back summer fires if they show they are responsible enough to put their fire out, then most people will probably cooperate.
Forest management can help too. In the summer, the forests turn into a tinder box. And with endless miles of forests across the hills of the Cascades, things are set up for a big burn. I've heard that thinning can help prevent big fires, but I'm curious how much. I'll be honest, I wouldn't be too pumped to see logging roads popping up everywhere, but a road here and there is certainly better than this past summer's destruction.
What I'd really like to see is an analysis of how the fires in Oregon burned differently on different land. The fires burned through old growth forests, Wilderness, National Forests, and timber land. Timber land would be most similar to thinning forest so it would be interesting to see if the fires burned differently on that land. I have no clue if the fires burned differently or not, but I'd be interested to find out. And I think that finding out would be a worthwhile exercise that we could learn a lot from.
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| Unlikely, but hopefully it won't look too different from this.... |