By Mike Gervais
Register Staff

11-24-2007

Putting an old cliché to practical use is so far paying off for the U.S. Forest Service and local public lands.
Over the past 10 years, the Forest Service has been literally “fighting fire with fire,” utilizing natural and controlled fires to help protect Eastern Sierra communities from wildfires.

In essence, land managers are starting their own burns or letting natural fires purge the wilderness of dead and rotting brush that could lead to potentially devastating blazes.
According to Robert Bertolina, battalion chief for the Mt. Whitney fire district, it was to clean up public lands that the Inyo National Forest began utilizing controlled burns.
Fire is a naturally occurring element in this area, Bertolina explained. Due to successful fire repression on the Inyo National Forest for the past 100 years, many areas are overgrown with weak, dead and dying trees, shrubs and brush that would have otherwise burned naturally during lightning-started fires.
“These are fire-adapted ecosystems,” Bertolina said, “fire is natural.”
The U.S. Forest Service tries to burn 5,000-6,000 acres a year on the Inyo using prescribed burns to rid fire-prone areas of dangerous flammable materials.
“We don’t just go out and put fire on the ground,” he said. “Everything we do we put a lot of thought into.”
Bertolina and his firefighter crews work for weeks planning prescribed burns before they head out with the torches. When choosing a burn area, crews attempt to use roads as natural fire breaks to help control the fire, limb trees and other “ladder fuels”that can fuel a small fire enough for it to “take off” and become a wild fire and construct a game plan of sorts, placing firefighters with hoses around the planned burn area.

U.S. Forest Service Mt. Whitney Fire District Battalion Chief Robert Bertolina points out an area where a prescribed burn proved effective, saving Seven Pines above Independence from the Inyo Complex Fire earlier this year. Photo by Mike Gervais

“When we burn we think of everything,” including wind speed, humidity, temperature, the types of fuel that will be burned, wildlife and anything else, Bertolina said.
“All the units we burn are broken off by roads,” Bertolina said. “A road is a great way to stop a fire.”
When the Forest Service has designated an area for a prescribed burn, it will place portable weather stations around the site for as much as a month in advance, and check hourly, daily and weekly weather patterns before the burns.
When they determine what times of day will be safest to conduct the burn, they then go out and prepare the site.
We’re trying to break fuel continuity,” Bertolina explained. “We’re not trying to get 100 percent of the area burned, it’s like a mosaic, some areas are treated hotter,” to burn the brush almost completely, “and others we burn light,” leaving the vegetation intact.
Aside from the obvious benefit of less fuels for wildfires, the prescribed burns provide a more natural environment for local wildlife, which naturally benefit from fires.
“Now you have all this young feed growing from the burned areas and the deer just love it,” Bertolina said.
When the Forest Service burns an area, it tries to leave trees and shrubs near water, where animals can take refuge while drinking, but will burn dead brush in such areas, making watering holes more accessible for the wildlife.
“The air quality aspect is really important” for prescribed burns too, Bertolina said. Whenever the Forest Service plans a prescribed burn, it must first check with the Air Quality District. Also, firefighters are restricted from burning more than 100 acres a day to be sure local residents and travelers are not negatively affected by smoke.
Another aspect of prescribed burns that Bertolina and his crew take very seriously is wind factor. Obviously, the Forest Service won’t conduct a burn on a windy day, because wind-driven flames can reach 50-60 feet high in three- to four-foot brush, making them difficult for crews to contain.
Also, the Forest Service will not conduct a prescribed burn if wind will blow smoke from the blaze into nearby communities.
The Forest Service burns in the southern end of the Inyo National Forest from January or February through March. In the northern end of the forest, the burn season can last until mid-May.    
The Forest Service doesn’t always rely on prescribed burns to remove all of the dead and decaying foliage. The Forest Service holds its annual timber sale each fall, having employees cut or “drop” weak, dead and dying trees. The public is then allowed to purchase fuelwood permits and cut the timber and haul it away. When an area is cleared of the downed timber, Bertolina said, there is still a supply of “slash,” which are the remnants of twigs, branches and bark, left by fire-wood seekers.
The Forest Service will gather this slash, pile it up and burn the piles in the winter when there is snow on the ground, making it virtually impossible for the blaze to get out of hand.
The final, and possibly most inexpensive, way the Forest Service utilizes fire to prevent wildfires is by using naturally occurring blazes to scour dead brush.
“We try to use Mother Nature, and it saves the taxpayers money,” said Bertolina.
A fire-use fire is a lightning-started blaze that the Forest Service will allow to run its course.
With a six- to eight-man crew, the Forest Service will monitor a fire-use fire, being sure not to let it grow too big, or begin moving towards any structures.
Most fire-use fires only burn a couple acres, and occur most often in the backcountry.
“For it to be a fire-use fire it has to be a lightning-started” blaze in an ideal location, said Forest Service Firefighter Andrew Pattison.
Again, a fire-use fire can only occur in perfect conditions, away from towns and homes, with ideal weather conditions and at the right time of year.
“We’re already seeing the benefits of fire-use fires,” Pattison said. Wildfires stop dead in their tracks when they come to an area that has recently been burned, because it lacks the fuel necessary to continue raging.
“What we’re doing really works,” said Bertolina.