Refuge Notebook
Article
Dated April 12,
2002
Part II: Fighting the blaze in the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge's
Mystery Hills
by Doug Newbould
Editor's note: This is the
second part of the Refuge Notebook article that appeared in the Outdoors section
last Friday.
In last week's column, I wrote about the events of June 28,
2001, when two lightning strikes ignited separate wildfires on the western slope
of the Kenai Mountains, in the area of the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge known
as the Mystery Hills.
As I pick up the story again, the time was about 6:15
p.m., I had just arrived at the Kenai-Kodiak Area Office of the Alaska Division
of Forestry in Soldotna, and the initial size-up reports from the helicopter reconnaissance
mission were just coming in over the radio.
As I walked into the fire management
office I could feel the excitement as firefighters moved briskly about, gathering
equipment and making final preparations as they waited for the order to respond
to the wildfires on the refuge. But before orders could be given, I needed to
meet with Ric Plate, the fire management officer for the Division of Forestry.
For
the next 10 or 15 minutes, we assembled all of the available information about
the two fires and their respective environments. We assessed the life safety hazards
and the values at risk. We considered the fire weather, the fuel types in and
adjacent to the fires, and the fire behavior. We discussed the availability of
local wildland firefighting resources, considering the close proximity of the
Kenai Lake Fire on the Chugach National Forest, about 30 miles east of our fires.
Finally,
after consulting with our superiors, we made the decision to initially attack
the Mystery Hills Fire with helicopters and retardant ships during this first
burning period. Concurrently, we decided not to suppress the Thurman Creek Fire,
but to monitor its progress from the air and reassess the situation in the morning.
Some
of the factors we considered in making our decision to suppress the Mystery Hills
Fire included: the fire's proximity to powerlines, to the Sterling Highway, to
the Skilak Lake recreation area and to an unknown number of recreationists in
the vicinity; the large tracts of continuous black spruce forests to the south
and west of the fire; and considering the extreme fire danger resulting from the
drought conditions in the region, the potential for the fire to get very large
in a short period of time if no suppression actions were taken.
Once the
decision was made to suppress the fire, additional air attack resources were immediately
ordered, including a second helicopter with a water bucket and a state air tanker.
We also agreed that no ground forces would be sent into the fire until we could
provide adequate escape routes and safety zones. That evening we would have to
settle for an air attack, and the next day we would reassess the situation and
develop a new plan of attack.
Friday morning, because of our decision to
suppress the Mystery Hills Fire and because of the fire's potential to exceed
the capabilities of our local resources, Ric and I completed what's known in fire
circles as a "woofsah," or WFSA, an acronym for Wildland Fire Situation
Analysis.
A WFSA is a standardized tool used by fire managers nationwide
to document critical information about a wildfire incident and to help fire managers
develop a management plan for the incident. A WFSA is a "living document"
that is adjusted as new information is collected or to meet any new challenges
as the incident changes. In hindsight, this was an important exercise for me and
Ric, since it was our first "project fire" working together as fire
management officers.
While Ric and I completed the WFSA, the aerial fire-suppression
efforts continued on the Mystery Hills Fire. The Thurman Creek Fire continued
to be monitored from the air; but its position, the surrounding fuels and its
behavior were such that no suppression efforts were deemed necessary at the time.
An Extended Attack Incident Commander (ICT3) from state Forestry in Palmer supervised
the suppression efforts that day. By the end of the day, Mystery Hills had grown
to about 600 acres and Thurman Creek covered about 10 acres. Because Mystery Hills
continued to grow, and the weather forecasts gave us little hope for a change,
we decided to order a Type 2 Incident Management Team to help us manage the Mystery
Hills fires.
Fortunately for us, the Division of Forestry had already ordered
a Type 2 team to be pre-positioned or staged in Anchorage. This saved us at least
a couple of days in getting the incident management team to the Kenai Peninsula.
As it turned out, this was the second of three fortuitous circumstances that allowed
us to bring the Mystery Hills Fire under control. The first was the aerial retardant
lines that were laid down on Thursday and Friday -- in front of the advancing
fire fronts on the south and west flanks. Ultimately, these lines were what kept
the fire from reaching the Sterling Highway and Mystery Creek Road.
Forestry
fire managers deserve a lot of credit for pre-positioning a retardant ship in
Homer these last two years and developing a retardant-loading site at the Kenai
Airport.
The third fortunate circumstance was the favorable weather change
that occurred on July 4. By the time the incident management team from Oregon/California
(also known as the ORCA team) was set up and fully functional at the Sterling
Elementary ICP (incident command post), the cooler/wetter weather that is typical
of mid- to late July finally arrived.
This allowed us to change our fire-suppression
tactics from a defensive indirect attack to an offensive direct attack. In other
words, we were able to safely send firefighters into the fire to construct handlines
and direct attack the fire's edge. By Saturday, Hotshot crews from Alaska and
the Northwest had the fire contained and well under control.
Having flown
over the fire a couple of times, after walking completely around its perimeter,
and after studying the satellite imagery provided by the borough's Spruce Bark
Beetle Office, I noticed a very interesting pattern -- one that I think deserves
our attention in the years ahead. The Mystery Hills Fire burned the same fuels
and followed the same pattern as the 1947 Fire, which burned more than 300,000
acres.
The Mystery Hills Fire burned most actively in the black spruce woodlands
that regenerated after the '47 Fire. This fuel type dominates the drier upland
ridges in the Mystery Hills and throughout the western foothills of the Kenai
Mountains.
When the fire burned into the decadent remnant stands or stringers
of beetle-killed white spruce, it tended to go out on its own. These white spruce
stands exist in the wetter sites found in the valley bottoms and at higher elevations
(about 1,200 feet). In fact, at several locations within the fire perimeter, the
fire clearly jumped across these wet stringers of white spruce even with all that
large dead woody material lying around, and burned the adjacent dry ridges of
50-year-old black spruce.
There are at least two inferences we can derive
from this information: that the black spruce woodlands regenerated by the 1947
Fire are once again capable of sustaining wildland fire, and that wetlands --
even those dominated by old or beetle-killed white spruce, can withstand the effects
of an intense wildfire in some situations.
I thought it would be useful
to tell you my story about last year's Mystery Hills fires now, because another
wildfire season is almost upon us. Have you taken the steps necessary to be FireWise
and protect your family and home from the devastating effects of a wildfire?
For
more information about the FireWise Community Action Program and how to be prepared,
contact me at the refuge, 262-7021, or call the Division of Forestry at 262-4124.
Doug
Newbould is the fire management officer at the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge.
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For more information about the refuge, visit headquarters on Ski Hill
Road in Soldotna, call (907) 262-7021, or visit the refuge Web site at http://kenai.fws.gov
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