Forest fire facts

As I write this on Aug. 7, 2012, twenty-three counties in Montana have been declared “emergency” areas by Gov. Brian Schweitzer, and at his request two counties and the Northern Cheyenne Reservation have been labeled “National Disaster Areas” by President Obama. All this because of raging wild fires. While the worst is going on in eastern parts of the state, western forests are drying out fast in spite of big earlier rains.

As the most “elderly person” in the big Ostrom clan, I am involved with a rare and long overdue family reunion, as well as other distractions. That’s why I’ve chosen to rerun a column written 28 years ago:

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Forest fires rage across our state as I write this week’s column (Aug. 29, 1984). CBS News tonight said “85,000 acres were burning out of control in Montana.” At least four of the bad ones are near Kalispell.

I fought my first forest fire at 16, during World War II, and later spent nine summers as a professional in that line of work, battling blazes of every kind across the West. I’ve lost a few friends to forest fires and have had my own moments of special terror. In the main, serious fire fighting is terribly hard work for the conscientious, and ironically, big fires are sometimes “emergency crewed” by people who don’t want to work there at all.

A few forest fire anecdotes and observations will fit with this week’s report.

It is a known fact that many fires during the Great Depression were fought during the day, and then “helped” over the lines at night. There isn’t much of that nowadays, but it still happens occasionally.

During the 1967 fire on Huckleberry Mountain and Camas Creek in Glacier Park, numerous grizzly bears began patrolling the fire lines at night. They were attracted there by lunches being tossed into the brush by the Eskimo crews who had been flown down from Alaska. There are apparently things an Eskimo will not eat, but there isn’t much a grizzly doesn’t like.

Hot running fires can create their own winds. They can also create a curtain of explosive and deadly gases out ahead of the flame front. Two of the smokejumpers we lost at Mann Gulch had no signs of burns on their bodies.

Big blazes can propel large pieces of burning fuels considerable distances downwind, i.e. ahead of themselves. Under certain conditions, they can also burn through an area twice. This is called a reburn. They may jump wide rivers and highways, and at other times be stopped by a foot wide line of mineral soil.

Other than fire in dense dry grass, the fastest fires I ever saw were ones which “crowned out” in heavy growths, pushed by high winds in dense timber. My crew on the Pony Peak Fire in northern California, about 1951, barely escaped from such a fire by racing laterally to the Klamath River. We just made it, with a good head start. No man or beast can outrun a fire that really takes off.

On the 1953 Helen Creek Fire in the Bob Marshall Wilderness, we stopped the main point with eight smokejumpers and two volunteer civilians. Our relief crew for “mop up” was the contents of Great Falls jails. The home for elderly widows would have produced more help than those guys. Looking back, I wished I’d let that one get away. It was in a good place to produce badly needed winter range for deer and elk. Instead, I got a Forest Service commendation, and Helen Creek remained a dense, unproductive and choked up mess.

The earth was created in fire and is renewed by fire. Man’s homes are heated and cooled by fire. His tools, clothing and food are byproducts of fire. Like the water and ice which sustains life, fire is a fundamental necessity that sometimes goes beyond man’s control.

The only sure end to the fires of ’84 will come from the same natural forces which created them. Thousands of sweating little humans can help, retardant planes offer some control, and dozens of bulldozers can stop lesser blazes, but nothing beats a heavy six-hour rain or snow storm to get things back into balance.

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On a final note: Numerically speaking, the vast majority of wildfires, whether started by lightning or humans, are contained through prompt action by trained people. It is those few which occur under extremely dry and windy conditions that defy such action.

G. George Ostrom is a national award-winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.