From The Sunday Oregonian, March 23, 2003, p E10 (Oregon & The West)

Forest officials find getting to the root of wildfires no easy task
After decades of fighting blazes, experts say there's still much to
learn about how best to control them

By MICHAEL MILSTEIN, The Oregonian
CORVALLIS - When the Biscuit fire swept across nearly 500,000 acres
of southeastern Oregon last summer, forcing the evauation of thousands
of Illinois Valley residents, it proved how little fire managers know.
Wildfire experts gathered at Oregon State University last week agreed
that even after decades of battling fires, they still do not
understand basic points such as how big fires like the Biscuit behave,
how to thin forests so blazes remain more subdued and what to do after
the flames pass.
Although Congress and the Bush administration have dedicated millions
of dollars to reduce overgrown Western forests, so many millions of
acres need attention it's not clear how best to tackle them.
"All the historic investment has gone into how you fight fires," said
Hal Salwasser, dean of OSU's School of Forestry. "We know 10 times as
much about fighting fires as we do about how to treat the landscape in
a way that reduces their intensity and gives us the best return on our
invements."
He was one of about 100 fire scientists and managers, including many
who battled the Biscuit, at the first of three federal conferences
focused on the huge wildfires that scorched the West last year. Others
are scheduled in Arizona and Colorado, states that also endured major
blazes.
Natural fires once cleared forests of tinder, but past firefighting
has left them choked with it. Drought has rapidly stoked wildfires
with that fuel since the late 1980s, leading to a fire season last
year that cost more than $1 billion. Fire managers say they
desperately need to decide where to direct limited research funds to
best help firefighters on the front lines each summer.
"In the last 15 years, we've had a situation of such extremes where
we're saying to ourselves, ‘What the heck are we doing? How do we get
a handle on this?'" said Bob Clark, manager of the federal Joint Fire
Science Program at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. "It
has exposed fundamental questions about how we aproach wildfire."
Among the leading questions identified at the conference:
- What policy changes can agencies make to more quickly address fire
risk, at less expense?
- Is mechanical thinning or controlled burning more effective at
reducing forest fire risk with minimal environmental impact?
- Does logging after fires reduce or increase risk of future fires in
the remaining tinder?
- How can federal agencies fight fires at less cost?
- If fires are a natural element in Western forests, does the public
want to pay the high price of supressing them?
The priority is on answering the questions quickly, said Laurie
Perrett, regional head of fire and aviation for the U.S. Forest
Service and Bureau of Land Management.
"The whole scientific process, with peer review and everything, is
very long," she said. "We see a more immediate need not only for good
science, but science we can clearly communicate to people in the
field."
There are hard realities to the West's fire dilemma, many agreed. For
at least the next decade or more, severe fires will almost undoubtedly
continue. It's likely to take at least that long for costly thinning
and other measures to make a dent in the 100 million acres or more at
high risk of wildfire.
"Our problem is massive - it's in the tens of millions of acres,"
Salwasser said. "Our treatment at best is measured in the tens of
thousands of acres a year. It's off by an order of magnitude."
The problem is so overwhelming - and getting so much worse each year
- that more money alone isn't enough, he said. "You can't just throw
10 times as many dollars at it. We have to do it in a very straegic
way so we learn as much as we can from everything we do."
Letting fires burn may also have unintended consequences, such as
paving the way for flammable weeds that compound fire hazards in later
years.
"We still don't really know what will have the most effect on fires,
but the least effect on the resources," said John Szymoniak,
technology transfer specialist at the Forest Service's Riverside Fire
Laboratory.
After last year's blazes, Congress and the Bush administration have
pushed agencies such as the Forest Service to aggressively reduce
forest fuels. But only in the past few years have researchers begun to
look at ways of recovering burned logs or thinning forests in a way
that reduces fire risk, protests the environment and produces economic
return.
"The science is almost nonexistent on that point," Salwasser said.

Posted by
Daniel B. Wheeler
www.oregonwhitetruffles.com