Read previous Plumtaw Fire stories, beginning on May 18, here.
The photo above appears on the San Juan Headwaters Forest Health Partnership website, and I presume it’s showing us a group of high school kids, or maybe college students, getting an introduction to forest health concepts. Educating our young people will no doubt be crucial to the future health of our forests.
Once upon a time, the definition of ‘forest health’ had a lot to do with “how to grow and harvest the maximum number of large diameter trees to supply the U.S. timber industry.”
Nowadays, the definition pertains more to “protecting the forests, and the subdivisions that have been built within and adjacent to the forests, from devastating wildfires”… and “how to best mitigate insect infestations”… in a climate that appears to be trending progressively warmer.
While the Pagosa Springs community wonders how things are going in a certain section of the flammable national forest seven miles north of downtown, the Rocky Mountain Complex Incident Management Team 2 is on the job, and sent out the following summary of the Plumtaw Fire situation yesterday, Sunday, May 22, accompanied by a map:
Fire size today: 721 acres
Containment: 12%
Personnel: 437
Cause: With no recent lightning and no prescribed fire, the fire’s cause is under investigation.
10 20-person crews; 18 engines; 5 water tenders; 3 dozers; 6 helicopters
Plumtaw Fire Objectives:
- To utilize risk management to reduce risks to the public and to firefighters.
- To protect the Lost Valley of the San Juans subdivision and critical infrastructure, including the Fourmile Creek watershed, water intake, private lands, and additional infrastructure.
Fire resources continue to make progress securing the fire perimeter. Crews will mop up to the extent necessary to prevent further fire spread and helicopters remain on stand-by for water drops, crew support, and initial attack as needed. Fire crews, aviation resources, and equipment will remain on scene until containment objectives are met.
Smoke will be visible as fuels and vegetation continue to smolder and burn within the fire perimeter.
Yesterday’s accomplishments:
- Engines and crews continued work and patrols in the Lost Valley of the San Juans subdivision.
- Crews continued constructing line, establishing hose lays, patrolling, and mopping up.
- Helicopters supported crews with cooling active fire.
Today’s plan:
- Engines and crews will continue work and patrols in the Lost Valley of the San Juans subdivision.
- Line construction and mop up will continue on the fire’s perimeter.
- Crews are continuing to extend hose lays to extinguish spots.
Weather: A cool, cloudy, and breezy pattern persists. Mid-day gusts to 25 mph are expected. Winds will be slightly more westerly.
The map, when compared to previous Plumtaw Fire maps, suggests no growth of the fire over the past two days. Further suggesting that — due to a fortunate combination of factors, including overcast weather, prompt and aggressive applications of water and fire retardant by aircraft, effective attack by firefighters on the ground, and ten years of forest health planning and mitigation — the Plumtaw Fire will not become one of the dramatic, catastrophic wildfires that have entered the Colorado record books over the past decade.
The three largest blazes in Colorado history all took place during 2020: the Cameron Peak Fire (208,663 acres), the East Troublesome Fire (192,560 acres) and the Pine Gulch Fire (139,007 acres).
The largest wildfire in southwest Colorado, the so-called West Fork Complex Fire, was the fifth largest wildfire in Colorado history, burning its way across 109,049 acres just a few miles north and west of Wolf Creek Pass and about 14 miles northeast of Pagosa Springs. It was actually a complex of four separate fires, all lightning-caused, starting with the West Fork Fire on June 5, 2013, soon joined by the Papoose Fire and the Windy Pass Fire.
None of these Colorado wildfires can hold a candle — if I can be permitted that metaphor — can hold a candle to the world’s largest wildfires.
In 2003, the Siberian Taiga Fires burned across 47 million Russian acres, about 235 times the acreage affected by Colorado’s record-setting Cameron Peak Fire. Emissions from the Siberian fires equaled the total CO2 emission reductions promised by the European Union under the Kyoto Protocol.
Other massive wildfires included the 2014 fires in Canada’s Northwest Territory (8.4 million acres), the 1989 fires in Manitoba, Canada (8.1 million acres), and the 1939 Black Friday Bushfire in Australia (5 million acres). Not all wildfire is accidental. During 2020, for example, Brazilian farmers, using fire intentionally to clear the Amazon jungle, burned a total of about 3.75 million acres, continuing a practice that’s been going on since about 1984, and still continues today.
The largest wildfire in U.S. history — the Great Fire of 1910 — burned about 3 million acres (4,700 square miles) in northern Idaho and western Montana, with extensions into eastern Washington and southeastern British Columbia, in the summer of 1910. The extensive burned area was approximately the size of the state of Connecticut, and about 15 times the area burned by the Cameron Peak Fire.
In the aftermath of the 1910 fire, the U.S. Forest Service received considerable recognition for its firefighting efforts, including a doubling of its budget from Congress. One outcome was to highlight wildland firefighters as public heroes, while also raising public awareness of conservation efforts. The 1910 fire is often considered a significant impetus in the development of early wildfire prevention and suppression strategies.
We are now dealing with those suppression strategies, 112 years later.
The second largest fire in U.S. history — the Peshtigo Fire of 1871 — took place in northeastern Wisconsin, and burned about 1.2 million acres. From what I can tell, it was the deadliest wildfire in recorded history, with the number of deaths estimated between 1,500 and 2,500. It broke out on October 8, 1871, the same day as the more famous Great Chicago Fire, and as a result, the Peshtigo Fire has been largely forgotten, even though it killed far more people.
From Wikipedia:
“Everybody’s heard about the Chicago fire, and that got all the publicity at the time,” said a volunteer at the Peshtigo Fire Museum, named Ruth Wiltzius, whose great-grandfather perished while trying to escape. “Peshtigo was a backwards lumber town then; who had ever heard of it? Chicago was the big city. Which one was going to get more attention?”
To all appearances, as of Sunday, May 22, the Plumtaw Fire is not destined to enter the record books.