Threat from S.C. to New Mexico

JEMEZ SPRINGS , N.M — . – From the floor of a dry lake bed rimmed by dark mountains, it’s easy to understand why people still talk about the historic wildfire that swept through northern New Mexico last summer.

Blackened trees dominate parts of the sloping forest near this small town. In places, the soil beneath the charred woodland is gray and slippery, the earth so lifeless it will take years for native conifers to grow back. Creeks where thousands of fish died flow silently as nature tries to recover.

The intensity of the June 2011 fire contributed to this stark winter scene at the Valles Caldera National Preserve, but the devastation found in New Mexico should be no surprise to other communities across the nation.

In places as far away as South Carolina, where millions of dollars worth of property has been destroyed from unprecedented forest fires in recent years, past forest management practices have increased the threat of dangerous woods fires to people and wildlife, many natural resource managers say.

For a century, state and federal agencies routinely fought fires that erupted in the woods, even if there were no threats to human life or property. When many of those fires were put out, it allowed unnaturally thick vegetation to grow in places where dense underbrush would not have remained otherwise.

Now, a spark and a brisk wind can ignite this underlying mass, spread fire high into the mature tree tops and send flames raging for miles. When wildfires start in these woodlands, they often burn hotter and faster than they would in the past.

While western and eastern woodlands differ in many ways, the amount of flammable material that has built up in the forests is a common concern to resource managers from New Mexico to South Carolina.

The Myrtle Beach area of South Carolina experienced the worst fire in recent state history three years ago, when nearly 20,000 acres burned. The blaze destroyed 76 homes and scarred the landscape for miles. In New Mexico, the Las Conchas fire last summer torched more than 150,000 acres, making it the worst woods blaze in the state’s history.

Dry, windy conditions were major reasons for both fires, but so were the amount of vegetation and dead trees that littered the woods, scientists and forest managers say.

“That is really one of the primary causes of catastrophic wildfires, including this one,’’ said Greg Kaufman, director of natural resources for New Mexico’s Jemez Indian tribe, where more than 4,000 acres of tribal forest burned in last summer’s Las Conchas fire. “The U.S. Forest Service for the last 100 years had a 100 percent fire suppression policy.’’

Kaufman said some of the Jemez reservation lands burned so badly that vegetation may not return to mountain slopes for years. In some places, the soil was fried to the point that important nutrients and buried plant material died, Kaufman said.

Darryl Jones, forest protection chief at the S.C. Forestry Commission, said the amount of “fuel’’ on the woodland floor plays a big role in many fires that grow from small blazes to dangerous conflagrations. The jungly mess would not have been there long ago because wildfires burned regularly as a natural part of the landscape, he said.

“We have a lot of communities at moderate to high risk,’’ Jones said.

Parts of South Carolina, between Florence and Myrtle Beach are among the most susceptible to dangerous fires, according to a risk map by the Forestry Commission. Other parts of the state at greatest risk include sections of Berkeley and Charleston counties, as well as the sand hills from Aiken to Lake Murray, the map shows. Thick, oily vegetation – and growing human populations – contribute to the threat of dangerous wildfires.

Dennis Chastain, an Upstate S.C. hunter and long-time volunteer firefighter, said substantial acreages of the southern Appalachians also are filled with fallen trees that create a major threat.

“Under natural conditions, that fuel would have been burned up many years ago, by natural lightning-caused fires,’’ Chastain said. “This all goes back to the Smoky the Bear campaign. We have this idea to put out any woods fire. The truth is that, over time, you create not only an unnatural situation, but a potentially devastating one.’’

To attack the problem, the Forest Service and many other federal and state agencies advocate mechanically clearing underbrush in some forests or intentionally setting small fires in others to reduce the flammable vegetation.

The latter practice is called prescribed burning. Many states, including South Carolina and New Mexico, have councils to discuss managing forests with small, low-intensity fires. It’s a practice once used in many areas, until forest managers took a more aggressive stance toward fighting fires in the early 20th century.

Dan Olsen, director of fire and aviation management for the U.S. Forest Service’s 13-state southern region, said his agency ignites more than 1 million acres of southern national forests each year to clear out hazardous vegetation. But the agency could easily double the burning.

Intentionally set fires “provide for human safety by reducing the amount of fuel on the preserves, thereby reducing the chance of catastrophic wildfire,’’ said Johnny Stowe, a biologist with the S.C. Department of Natural Resource. “For many of these ecosystems, it’s not a matter of ’if’ they will burn, but rather ’when.’ We like to choose the ‘when.’”

Prescribed fires, while accepted by scientists, still raise concerns among members of the public. Some people worry that the fires could get out of hand, as one did about 10 years ago in New Mexico. Other people are bothered by smoke.

Properly managing an intentionally set fire often depends on when it is started and what the weather conditions are. Prescribed fires, for instance, are often done when winds are strong enough to move fire through a forest, but not so strong the fire will get out of control.

In addition to protecting homes, clearing that results from prescribed burns helps certain plant species, such as long-leaf pines, while also providing openings for wildlife. Rare red-cockaded woodpeckers prefer long-leaf forests.

If more prescribed burning had occurred before the 2009 Myrtle Beach-area blaze, it could have limited the threat to resort homes in the area, Jones said. Recent fires in Charleston and Dorchester counties also might not have been as bad if landowners had cleared out the vegetation with prescribed fire, he said.

In addition to advocating prescribed fire, the U.S. Forest Service now more often bases decisions on how – and whether – to fight wildfires in national forests on the risk to human life or property. In the past, the agency was more likely to fight any fire on federal property.

Jones said it’s easier for the Forest Service to let woods fires burn on federally owned land. Such decisions are far more complicated when fires erupt on private land, which constitutes the bulk of the forest ownership in states like South Carolina. Property owners might view a fire as a threat to timber they are growing for sale.

Last summer’s Las Conchas fire left varying degrees of devastation in New Mexico.

On about 10,000 acres, the fire was so intense that it killed virtually every speck of vegetation and made it hard for some soils to absorb rainfall. Heavy rains after last summer’s fire also sent ash-polluted runoff gushing into rivers and killing thousands of fish.

Chris Toya, a historian and cultural resources specialist for the Jemez people, said the fire was so intense on some mountain slopes that the ground was littered with dead animals.

“The next day when we got up, there were dead cattle, and other animals, such as elk and deer that were killed in the fire,’’ he said. “It was just a slaughter.’’

During a recent tour of the Valles Caldera National Preserve northwest of Santa Fe, federal scientist Craig Allen pointed across the vast plain to fir trees that have grown on the valley floor because fire wasn’t there to keep them in check.

“Those grasslands used to be much bigger,’’ said Allen, a researcher with the U.S. Geological Survey. “In the absence of fire in the last 100 years, trees have been filling in.’’

Allen and Valles Caldera scientist Bob Parmenter said a section of the preserve called “History Grove’’ looks much like the forest of the past. Towering Ponderosa pines were spaced 10 to 20 feet apart in places, in part because of wildfire. Parmenter said he thinks attitudes are changing about the virtues of allowing some burning in the nation’s forests.

“You’ve got this firefighting mindset that you’ve got to put these things out all the time,’’ Parmenter said. “Hopefully, those days are past.’’