Opinion

Guest Column: Wildfire is meaner these days

By STEPHEN PYNE | Writers on the Range

As I look out my window, the smoke from the Bush fire is belching upward behind the fabled profile of the Superstition Mountains. The fire has closed Highway 87 that joins the Phoenix metro area to Payson, one of its exurbs. Some small communities are evacuating. 

Otherwise the fire is foraging widely across Tonto National Forest and the Mazatzal Mountains, through wilderness and scattered inholdings alike. At the moment it’s 90,000 acres and 5% contained. If it can’t be stopped at Highway 188 and Lake Roosevelt, it will burn until the monsoon rains arrive. But this is not what I find interesting.

What is interesting is that a year ago I watched, through the same window, the 126,000-acre Woodbury fire boil out of the Superstitions. In 2004 I watched the 119,000-acre Willow fire shut down Highway 87. Meanwhile, the smoke from the Bighorn fire is lighting up the Santa Catalina Mountains north of Tucson. This is beginning to look like a pattern.

Which it is. What people had taken as a normal for fire in the West is in truth a historical anomaly. 

What we are seeing is an old normal, like seasonal flu, that has mutated into a meaner variant. Most of the West is built to burn. But for a few decades after the Second World War, climate was mild, landscapes were still recovering from the havoc of axe, pick, and plow during settlement, fire agencies aggressively suppressed any starts, and an industrial economy stripped away open fire from homes and cities. Fire had become increasingly missing from agriculture, and astonishingly, even from wildlands. 

Fifty years after the Big Blowup of 1910 burned 3 million acres to announce an American way of fire, the United States, led by the Forest Service, had effectively contained landscape fire. The largest category of wild fire (Class G) applied to fires that exceeded 5,000 acres. Fire control accounted for 13% of the Forest Service’s budget. The militarization of suppression through war-surplus equipment managed to sustain a cold war on fire. 

But by then the folly of this strategy, both economic and ecologic, was becoming more apparent. Between 1968 and 1978 new policies were promulgated to restore good fire and shrink the prospects for bad fire. Results have been mixed. 

Florida burns 2.5 million acres a year while the entire western United States burns only about 3 million. In the West, it has proved a lot easier to take fire out than to put it back. Still, most of the fire community appreciated that we were facing a fire crisis and that, when the weather veered into less benevolent forms, big fires would return.

By the time the fires of Yellowstone (1988) and Oakland (1991) burned, the contours of the new old normal were apparent. A long drought foreshadowed outright climate change. Fuels stockpiled. Landscapes degraded. Exurbs recolonized formerly rural lands with urbanites. Megafires blasted unchecked. 

Fifty years after the federal agencies thought fire a menace of the past, like polio or smallpox, monsters romped over the mountains like a returned plague. A few killed crews. Some burned into and through towns. Fire suppression consumed over 50% of the Forest Service’s budget. 

A fire crisis was evolving into a fire epoch as the sum of humanity’s combustion practices, including fossil fuels, were creating the fire equivalent of an ice age.

What we can say about fire in the West has been said, over and again, notching every contributing cause, every rerun of tragedy, until it seems a white-noise hum like cicadas in the summer.

But covid-19, now complicating the maturing fire season, suggests an analogy because fire is also a contagion phenomenon. We protect communities by hardening against embers — wearing masks to protect against aerial droplets — and by social distancing — aka defensible space. We rely on herd immunity — the good fires help check the spread of bad ones. We flatten the curve. We prepare to live with coronavirus until a vaccine can be created.

Here, the analogy cracks. There is no vaccine for fire. It’s not only omnipresent; it’s necessary. We have some say over what kinds of fire happen and what damages they might inflict. But we will have to live with fire and air filled with its smoke. Forever.

Stephen Pyne is a contributor to Writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to lively discussion about the West. His most recent books on fire include Between Two Fires: A Fire History of Contemporary America, and To the Last Smoke, a series of nine regional fire surveys.  He lives in Queen Creek, Arizona.

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  • Results are not guaranteed, unfortunately! Read all the Rio Happenings in this week’s edition and online at ht1885.com.
  • Pictured with awards from the Triple Crown Series (#3 and #4) from bottom left Hudson Hummel (4th and 2nd), Lee Kirkpatrick (3rd and 4th), Heath Bennet (2nd and 2nd), Sawyer Hummel (1st and 3rd), Eli Bennet (1st), David Murray (Coach), Auri Murray (2nd and 1st), Taylor Bain, and Dawn Arnold (2nd). Story online at ht1885.com.
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“For 50 years I’ve waited to see Meeker’s greens come out this nice,” said Jim Cook, who is returning to help at the course.” Hats off to Hunter and Matt Fellows who did an excellent job applying the snow mold preventative last fall which has made all the difference this year.”
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Results are not guaranteed, unfortunately! Read all the Rio Happenings in this week’s edition and online at ht1885.com.
Results are not guaranteed, unfortunately! Read all the Rio Happenings in this week’s edition and online at ht1885.com.
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Pictured with awards from the Triple Crown Series (#3 and #4) from bottom left Hudson Hummel (4th and 2nd), Lee Kirkpatrick (3rd and 4th), Heath Bennet (2nd and 2nd), Sawyer Hummel (1st and 3rd), Eli Bennet (1st), David Murray (Coach), Auri Murray (2nd and 1st), Taylor Bain, and Dawn Arnold (2nd). Story online at ht1885.com.
Pictured with awards from the Triple Crown Series (#3 and #4) from bottom left Hudson Hummel (4th and 2nd), Lee Kirkpatrick (3rd and 4th), Heath Bennet (2nd and 2nd), Sawyer Hummel (1st and 3rd), Eli Bennet (1st), David Murray (Coach), Auri Murray (2nd and 1st), Taylor Bain, and Dawn Arnold (2nd). Story online at ht1885.com.
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@bailey_waldref_rew 

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Marketing Mixology is a FREE promotion where we spotlight one lucky local business across print, digital, and social channels each month! 

#locallove #locallovespotlight #lovemeeker #marketingmixology #shoplocal #superchargeyourmarketing
Bailey is our first Marketing Mixology partner and we are excited to help her promote this fun event along with the Meeker Colorado Chamber of Commerce! Bailey and Real Estate West will host the second annual Easter Egg Hunt March 25th-29th. Go follow her page so you don't miss any clues! @bailey_waldref_rew 💚💚💚 Marketing Mixology is a FREE promotion where we spotlight one lucky local business across print, digital, and social channels each month! #locallove #locallovespotlight #lovemeeker #marketingmixology #shoplocal #superchargeyourmarketing
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🍀 Happy St. Patrick's Day from the Herald Times! 🍀 According to the Census Bureau, over 31 million people - or 9.5%! - in America claim Irish ancestry! Everyone have a safe and fun Patty's Day celebrating your Irishness, real or honorary!
🍀 Happy St. Patrick's Day from the Herald Times! 🍀 According to the Census Bureau, over 31 million people - or 9.5%! - in America claim Irish ancestry! Everyone have a safe and fun Patty's Day celebrating your Irishness, real or honorary!
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The Cowboys played in their first golf tournament in the spring at Chipeta, “it was a bit of a cloudy and windy day but it was awesome to see some grass and a golf course,” commented head coach Amanda Back. Vivian Brown, pictured on the left, broke 100 and shot a 94 and Jayda May second from right shot a 99. From the far right, excluding those that have been mentioned, Averee Woodward, Joelle Soler, Mia Pinzon, Aurora Stalling, and Kailynn Watson all played scramble. This was Pinzon’s, Stalling’s and Watson’s first tournament as Meeker High School girl golfers. “It’s going to be a great season,” ended Back.
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Mountain Sage Therapeutics held a grand opening and ribbon cutting for their new business at 640 Main St. in Meeker. Owners Teresa Wilde and Justin Noller offer movement, energy, and massage therapy for animals and their human companions. They are pictured here with the Chamber of Commerce and local citizens who attended. View their service on their website at www.mountainsagetherapeutics.abmp.com and contact them for an appointment 970-706-8445.
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“For 50 years I’ve waited to see Meeker’s greens come out this nice,” said Jim Cook, who is returning to help at the course.” Hats off to Hunter and Matt Fellows who did an excellent job applying the snow mold preventative last fall which has made all the difference this year.”
Board members and volunteers are very hopeful that this will be a turnaround year for the local 9-hole course which plans an early April opening, weather permitting.
Members of the Rio Blanco Golf Association got a jump on spring this past week as volunteers shoveled and blew the snow off the greens. The winter’s snow and ice layers suffocate the fragile bent grass putting surfaces and getting the snow off allows Mother Nature to start her healing process earlier. “For 50 years I’ve waited to see Meeker’s greens come out this nice,” said Jim Cook, who is returning to help at the course.” Hats off to Hunter and Matt Fellows who did an excellent job applying the snow mold preventative last fall which has made all the difference this year.” Board members and volunteers are very hopeful that this will be a turnaround year for the local 9-hole course which plans an early April opening, weather permitting.
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