Rex Trulove
This image is just to the right of the previous one. The bands of slate can be clearly seen because of the snow. Also evident is the lack of trees in most of the image. All of this hillside looked like the two swaths of trees that can be seen. The forest was dense. The forest service will be unable to replant in this area because it is so steep, so nature will need to eventually erase the fire scars.
It is pretty easy to see why firefighters had difficulty battling the blaze. The issue was amplified because of the narrowness of this area and the altitude of the hills. This creates a natural corridor for winds. Repeatedly, the fire died down, only to be whipped up again by those winds.
How sad to see so much damage, but I’m sure Mother Nature will fill the vacant places with something once again.
Probably true. Fir trees, which these are, take about 45 years to reach maturity. Counting the time for the trees to naturally reseed the area and if there are no more fires in this location, it will probably be hard to tell there was a fire, in only 50-60 years.
Talk about a test of nerves battling these kinds of fires.
Very much so. In a place like this, the best the firefighters can hope to accomplish is to prevent the fire from spreading. It is too steep to do much else and they can’t get to the fire on a slope like this. It is also extremely dangerous. A forest fire can move faster than a person can run. If there is a change in wind directions, the firefighters are in serious trouble.
That is true since firefighters are unsung heroes who deserve our respect for doing their job to the best of their ability.
I totally agree. It is also a very hard and dangerous job.
I am sure the fire fighters had a struggle putting the fires out.
The astounding part is that if there had been roads to get to where the fire began (the Clinton administration nixed putting in more roads and maintaining the ones that were already there) the fire could have been held to a couple of hundred acres in size. There was initially a single fire crew assigned to this fire…23 men and women…and by the time more crews were freed up to fight the fire, it had grown to over 7,000 acres. By the time this fire was contained, it had burned over 49,000 acres and over 100 families were forced to evacuate.
That has to be outrage in the community. It could have been prevented. Politics.
Not just the community, it is the sentiment, state-wide. Six presidential terms and only since late last year has anything been done to reverse some of those terribly damaging presidential policies so the forests can start getting taken care of properly again. That is also primarily because we now finally have a secretary of the interior who came from a forest state (this one, Montana).
Unfortunately, it will take a lot of years to reverse the damage done by bad policies over the last two plus decades. Still, there is now a directive that commits the US Forest Service to once again begin managing the forests.