BLEWETT PASS — Wisps of smoke stretch upwards from the forest floor about a mile or so off the north side of Blewett Pass after a recent prescribed burn by the U.S. Forest Service.
Further up a narrow dirt road, firefighters on Monday burned away parts of the forest floor, part of an attempt to improve their wildfire firefighting efforts, as well as improve forest health.
“What we’re trying to do out here is basically reduce the fuels that under certain circumstances would be very hazardous,” said Benton Merritt, Forest Service fuels technician.
A prescribed burn lessens the amount of fuel that could catch fire during the summer when when conditions are hotter and drier, which then in turn would result in more intense wildfires and a lot more smoke.
They can also create footholds for firefighters if a wildfire spreads into the treated area.
“When a wildfire will come into an area, it’ll come down from the trees and then hit the ground because the fuel there the loading has been reduced,” Merritt said. “We have a better opportunity of catching a fire in an area where we’ve done these burns because the intensity of it is diminished as it goes back to the ground.”
Over the weekend, more than 100 acres were treated to a prescribed fire in several spots near the base of Tronsen Ridge. The latest burn on Monday included 56 acres.
The Monday crews consisted of 37 firefighters from several agencies, including the state Department of Natural Resources, Fort Simcoe Job Corps Center, Columbia Basin Job Corps Center and the Forest Service. Seventeen were part of the Wenatchee River Initial Attack crew based out of the Leavenworth Ranger Station.
Around the perimeter of the burn, pinecones rested along the road emitting long trails of smoke skyward.
The ignition crews responsible for starting the controlled fire — done via a drip torch, which dispenses a mixture of gasoline and diesel like a watering can — walked with the contours of a slope and dropped strips of fire near the fire line where they were monitored by a holding crew. This method is called a strip head fire.
“That’s kind of how we moderate our fire behavior,” Merritt said. “If (a firefighter) was to go down to the bottom of the slope and light the bottom of it, then we can’t control what the what the fire behavior is going to be like coming up to this line.”
A holding crew would stand above the fire line and face upward to the slope to ensure that no ember made it past their line.
Much planning needs to be taken into account long before an ignition crew ever gets to begin a prescribed burn.
As opposed to a wildfire where extreme conditions are prevalent, in a prescribed burn, many unknowns are taken into account — from the weather to the size of vegetation littering the forest floor and its moisture content.
There’s only a small window of time before the fire season begins when prescribed burns can happen, Merritt said. And if the weather or any other factor is uncooperative, then the burn won’t happen.
“(Last Wednesday), we tried to burn,” Merritt said. “Environmental conditions were right, but when we put fire down on the ground we weren’t getting the fire behavior that we wanted. So I ended up calling it off then we tried again on Friday had a lot better results.”
On Monday, an hour past noon or so, the firefighters could hear thunder and would occasionally catch a glimpse of lightning as the ground darkened and clouds loomed overhead.
The firing boss — a person who leads both holding and ignition operations — would also take the thunderstorm into account, Merritt said.
One major concern, especially for local residents, is the amount smoke produced by these fires, but the Forest Service says these burns will result in an overall reduction in smoke during the fire season.
“We do put a little bit in the air during the spring and in the fall and that is it,” said Robin DeMario, Forest Service public affairs specialist. “It’s very beneficial for us to be able to get these prescribed burns done those times a year because we have that window of opportunity to do it.
“Here we’ll have smoke two days for maybe three at the most. So the impact on local communities is not as intense as it is during a wildfire.”
