A prescription for rejuvenation

Prior to the settlement of Mineral County, the forest would naturally burn every five to ten years – nature’s form of spring cleaning.

When people began inhabiting the area, according to Superior Ranger District Fire Management Officer Bob Derleth “they did a pretty good job at stopping those fires” without knowing the benefit the natural burns gave to the forest.

Today, the employees of the Superior Ranger District begin planning controlled burns during the winter in an effort to prevent wildfires during the summer season as well as to rejuvenate the ecosystem. This year the Forest Service Firefighters are ahead of schedule – already completing a 200-acre stretch of land in Second Creek.

“Having that much done by April 4 is good,” Derleth said. “Usually we don’t even get started until mid-April. We are pretty happy about it.”

On Thursday, Derleth and his crew were at Mayo Gulch to conduct a controlled burn of 20-acres on land close to the town of St. Regis.

According to Derleth the conditions were ideal for a burn since the temperature was cool and rain was expected later in the evening.

“It’s a pretty good day to do this because it’s not going to get hot at all,” Derleth said. “If it was 10 degrees hotter and dryer and sunny we would have to water the perimeter of the burn area. We have it up there in case we need it though. What we are worried about today is the rain coming – we need to get done before it rains obviously. If it rained right after we were done that would be good.”

Derleth said they try to choose days right before a storm to do the prescribed burns close to towns for several reasons.

“It’s safer,” Derleth said. “If it rains tonight it will be a lot easier instead of having to hold it and mop it up. Also, we don’t want to smoke the town out and the stuff tends to settle at night. That would happen here and all the smoke would settle in town but there’s supposed to be a storm coming in and it will get windy and rain so the wind will blow the smoke out and the rain will wash the area.”

As Derleth headed up to the site of the day’s prescribed burn on Mayo Gulch, he first showcased what his crew is attempting to accomplish by showing an area that was burned the year prior.

A prescribed burn is intended to burn low lying slash and what is called “ladder fuels,” medium sized trees that will ignite from a ground fire and allow the fire to jump to the larger trees. In the area cleared out last year, there were only a small amount of pine needles and large trees remaining.

The controlled burns are also essential to the ecosystem as they recycle nitrogen and phosphorus as well as open up the area to sunlight – essential to a forests survival. Derleth added the burn also has shown to reduce the impact of mountain pine beetles on the forest since there are studies that show the beetle is sensitive to hot temperatures. “This is what we want it to look like,” Derleth said as he drove past the cleared land. “For a firefighter this looks good.”

Derleth elaborated by saying that in the event a large fire was coming towards the town, the areas where his crew had conducted prescribed burns would be an ideal location to catch and stop the fire.

“This project we knew we had a lot of thick trees around town and we were worried about fires coming in from further away,” Derleth said. “We want a place to stop them before they get too close and that’s what this project is all about.”

In order to create as controlled of an environment as possible for the burn, Derleth said his crew lights the sides of the area and then works from the top down with teams of two using drip torches to burn.

Since heat rises and fire burns up, Derleth said the technique enables the team to work their way down the area and create natural breaks where the fire will stop burning.

“We do this instead of just lighting it at the bottom and letting it rip,” Derleth said. “That would kill a lot of trees and be hard to control.”

The Mayo Gulch Project was well underway when Derleth returned, teams of two were slowly making their way down the 20-acre stretch of land with their drip torches. A crew member was able to use an ATV, which are rarely used since the prescribed burns are traditionally on much steeper land, to refuel the torches and make sure the fire was burning as intended.

The drip torches utilize a mixture of gasoline and diesel in order to, as the name applies, drip flames on the area the crew is currently burning.

“It’s a bottle with three quarters diesel and one quarter gas,” Derleth said. “The gas gives the flammability a little push and the diesel gives it length.”

Derleth joked that the crew “eats a lot of smoke” on the prescribed burns – and it is not the clean smelling campfire smoke either, it’s thick and lingers well after the day of work is over.

Since there was rain in the forecast, Derleth said his crew would probably wrap up the burn around 5 pm and then watch the area until the rain came. They watch the burn area to ensure a wind does not reignite any embers and they can maintain control.

“But if it starts raining we can go home and that would be good,” Derleth said with a smile.