 |
|
|
||||||||
|
||||||||||
 |
||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
|||||||||||||
|
A Perfect Storm (Perfect Fire Storm) By Pat Wentworth I have been following the devastating fires around Texas anxiously for all of 2011. Everyday, I receive fire reports from the Texas Forest Service as to the location and extent of the fires. I worry with each passing day of no rain of where the next fire will be as I try to kep my own home safe from wildfire.
I was first aware of the problem when I went out my back door here in Central Texas and could smell and see smoke. A quick walk through my neighborhood didn’t locate any illegal fires, so I called 911. The operator said that there were eight fires burning in Hays County at that time and the smoke was everywhere. This was on Saturday, September 4,2011.
Sunday started bright and clear, the temperatures were down in the upper 60’s with a pleasant breeze out of the north. It wasn’t very long before the fire trucks started with their sirens. Fires had begun to break out in Central Texas.
In Bastrop County, it began with two fires. Starting near Highway 290 on the north side of Bastrop County, the fire quickly spread into very dry brush and trees. The relative humidity was in the 20’s and the wind began gusting to 35 to 40 miles per hour out of the north. All of the state of Texas at this time is in what has been termed “Exceptional Drought.” Bastrop County for the most part has received less than 6 inches of rain in the previous 11 months. And the culprit? As I’m writing this today (September 6), power lines hitting trees are the most likely suspected cause of the fire. A second fire a little to the south and east quickly merged and the firestorm was on.
This morning, the fire is 100% out of control with no containment at an estimated 35,000 acres. It has jumped eight lanes of Highway 71 moving south now towards the communities of Hills Prairie and Rosanky with nothing to stop it. It has successfully jumped the Colorado River.
Over 500 hundred homes are destroyed with many more damaged. The propane tanks and cars left behind to the fire are exploding helping to spread the fire further and faster.
In Western Travis County, a sub division near the Mansfield Dam at Lake Travis called Steiner Ranch has seen 30 homes destroyed and another 25 damaged. The cause once again is thought to be power lines encountering trees.
Further west near Spicewood Texas along Highway 71 West of Austin, more fires have spread over several thousand acres destroying homes, closing roads, and little containment is possible. The caused has yet to be determined.
Texas is in one the worse droughts in its history. Of that there can be no question. Today, it is the third worst drought but may soon become the second. The worst was 1916 to 1918 with the second being 1954 to 1956. Today, over 3.5 million acres have burned and the Texas Forest Service reports that that there were 63 new fires yesterday alone and 179 fires reported in the last 7 days.
As a visitor from the University of California at Berkeley commented to me several years back when traveling around Austin (we were on Loop 360 in Western Travis County) “This is Oakland before the fire.” While that part of Western Travis County has not burned yet, his words were well spoken.
We have a problem in Texas. Everyone wants to keep the most flammable trees on their property. In some parts of Texas, it is even illegal to cut down trees reserved for bird habitat. The tall dry grass and the understory vegetation are all part of the mix that has lead to the conflagrations, but the flammable species of trees, which may have contributed the most to the fires, are Juniperus species.
In Bastrop County, the lost pines – both slash pine and loblolly pines were part of the equation. However, in western Travis, Hays, Blanco, and Burnet – as in many other parts of the state, a large contributor to the fuel load in the forest is the juniper tree. East of IH-35, Juniperus virginiana (colloquially called the eastern red cedar) and west of IH-35, it is the Juniperus asheii (AKA “cedar” tree.) Further north and west, one finds the Juniperus coahuilensis (red berry juniper.)
For too long, these trees have been “protected” as wildfires were quickly put out when and where possible. Historically, these species would have been controlled by large prairie fires. Today, they are left to proliferate through out Texas. They are not the sole reason for the fires but in many instances, they are a large part of the fuel load. The debris that collects beneath the trees burns as well as the trees themselves. When tall grasses feed the flames in the lower dead limbs of the junipers, the fire quickly erupts from a ground fire to a canopy fire. For those who have never seen a juniper forest fire, the ball of flame for a juniper is typically 3 times as tall as the tree. Fireballs 90 to 100 feet high are common. In a pine forest, the ratio is about the same only the trees are much taller to begin with so the resulting fireballs are from 100 to 150 feet (or more) into the air.
At Fort Hood near Killen Texas, several fires have been burning in their golden cheek warbler habitat with over 10,000 acres burned so far. Several of their sites cannot be fought from the ground due to unexploded ordinance.
This year with so much of Texas burning, we should look at the most flammable trees involved and think about how to minimize future fire risk. First, under story plants should be carefully looked at. If they can’t be irrigated frequently, elimination of such fuels as yaupon (Ilex vomitoria) and agarita (Mahonia trifoliolata) along with any tall grasses or weeds should be kept out from under flammable trees such as pines or junipers. Low limbs – especially dead limbs should be pruned from trees, as these are the “ladders” which fire uses to create canopy fires.
Forests should be thinned to put 30 feet or more between trees. In many areas, all of the juniper species should be eradicated. Where the juniper was eradicated and grasses kept mowed and limbs pruned high, the fires swept around the houses leaving them intact.
We can make Texas more “fire safe,” but it will take some work – both physical and political. We need to think first about endangered human habitat before we start worrying about endangered bugs, birds, or lizards. If the junipers are continued to be “saved” for the bugs and birds, we do so at our own peril. |
|||||||||||||
|
Patrick Wentworth |
|||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||
