Burned area emergency response teams assess fires
By BUDDY SMITH Staff Reporter
|
 |
|
As wildfires continue to wane with cooler weather, officials are taking a hard look at burned slopes that might need stabilizing and other efforts aimed at slowing potential erosion caused by western Montana fires.
At the Gold 1 fire northeast of Corvallis, a team of hydrologists, soil scientists, fisheries experts and others are working on an assessment of the burned area, including what effects the now-quiet fire might have on the Burnt Fork drainage, which feeds the Stevensville municipal water supply. When they're done, they'll recommend any necessary treatments to mitigate the impacts of erosion and sedimentation.
The same goes for the Cooney Ridge fire east of Florence and west of Clinton, where another burned area emergency response team is assessing the burn in the Schwartz, Gilbert and Eight Mile creek areas of that blaze and at three other fires in the Missoula area, said Lolo National Forest spokeswoman Sharon Sweeney.
"And they'll be looking at it from a watershed perspective," she said.
Because, Sweeney said, mountains denuded of vegetation by fire often see increased runoff.
The percentage of land burned severely by the Cooney Ridge fire isn't yet known, Sweeney said. She said the team looking at the fire area expects to have a report ready by Sept. 22. Until then, it is unknown what kinds of treatments will be needed, like sowing grass seed, mulching or positioning straw bales to slow fast-moving water. She said personnel will look at factors such as soil composition, what's left in the way of vegetation and when the area might expect to see a major downpour that could cause increased runoff.
"The first thing they'll do is look overall and see where it's heavily burned and where it isn't," she said. "Then they'll look at the composition, if it's intensely burned, is the soil composition such that we're liable to see soil movement, and so a downstream threat?"
A key element the team will look for are any potential threats to life and property through flash-flooding or debris flows, she said, which can be triggered by heavy rain or rapid runoff. Goals are also to protect water quality and rehabilitate ecosystems.
She said the Cooney Ridge team was established Sunday and is also assessing burned area emergency responses at the Fish Creek Complex and Black Mountain fires near Missoula.
"They're just now in the initial stages of looking at three of the nine fires we had on the forest," she said. "Those are the three we suspect may need burned area emergency response work."
A burned-area emergency response team led by Ed Snook of the Forest Service is completing an assessment of burned lands at Gold 1 to determine what efforts might be needed to slow erosion in the watershed and bull trout-bearing streams. He said he'll know better by early next week the findings of a core team of specialists charged with assessing burn conditions and recommending treatments for the burned lands.
Snook said there's a "high probability" some treatments will be needed after the Gold 1 fire, but it's unclear how much. Any work will likely be done before snow flies, he said.
Since most of the Gold 1 fire burned in roadless lands, most of that work would have to be done from the air, he said. That could involve using helicopters to spread weed-free straw mulch or the use of a wood-fiber hydro-mulch aimed at slowing erosion caused by increased runoff.
"We feel pretty confident there's going to be a flush of some ash, but we're really hoping the soils that are going to be eroding are going to be minimal," Snook said. "And if we treat, we'll focus on the key areas."
Key areas would be those most severely burned and most likely to contribute sediments to streams.
Burned-area emergency rehabilitation was critical after the fires of 2000, which left blackened slopes unstable. The burned area at Gold 1 is much smaller than those fire areas and burned less intensely, Snook noted. Also, the area of the Gold 1 burn tends to be more quartzite rock soil composition, he said, not granite-type soils, "and that tends to be more resistant than we saw in Laird Creek and Rye Creek, places where we had those largest movements" of soil after the 2000 fires.
Officials are also awaiting analysis of satellite images taken of the burn area. "Satellite imagery has turned out to be a huge tool in our tool box for determining burn severity," Snook said.
When the Gold 1 fire was burning actively, officials noted a concern was the threat of flames burning in the Stevensville watershed, creating the potential for increased sedimentation after thunderstorms that could cause the town to rely more heavily on a system of wells. Snook said he has spoken with Stevensville town officials about the 43,000-acre watershed and the burned-area response team will look at what might be needed to minimize any impacts from runoff.
Meanwhile, crews are also wrapping up or continuing to rehabilitate lands affected by fire suppression. At the Gold 1 fire, crews have already been at work rehabilitating dozer and other, no-longer-needed contentment lines, an effort separate from the burned-area emergency response assessments and which is mostly finished, officials said. Fire line rehabilitation is underway at the Cooney Ridge fire as well. Both blazes are nearly contained.
Fire crews building containment lines this summer took steps to limit their impacts on the land while still aggressively attacking the fire, a delicate balance, Snook said.
"There was very limited dozer line put in to fight that fire," he said.
Reporter Buddy Smith can be reached at 363-3300 or bsmith@ravallirepublic.com
|
|
|
Reader's Comments >>