-Caveat Lector- http://www.fire-ecology.org/research/casualties_of_war.htm
Casualties of War: The Environmental Impacts of Firefighting by Timothy Ingalsbee, Ph.D. Director, Western Fire Ecology Center Published in "Wildfire!: An Endangered Ecosystem Process." Cascadia Fire Ecology Education Project, Vol. 2, 1997 The war on wildfire remains widely popular with the public under the illusion that fighting fires "saves" forests from destruction. In reality, the Forest Service fights forest under the smokescreen of wildfires, and does so in order to log trees, not to save them. Firefighting represents a militaristic assault on Nature that results in numerous direct, indirect, and cumulative environmental impacts that are more significant and enduring than the effects of the fire itself. The following essay briefly describes some the "collatoral damage" inflicted upon the forest ecosystem by the agency's ongoing war on wildfire. TRENCH-WARFARE TACTICS To those few people who ever hike through a freshly-burned forest, the most noticeable evidence of combat you will discover are the firelines left along the burn perimeter. Firelines come in two basic varieties: handlines and dozerlines, and and their associated stumps. Ideally, handlines could be as narrow as a shallow trench two feet wide bordered by a six foot wide area cleared of underbrush. In most places, however, handlines are much wider. Indeed, handlines tend to get wider AFTER the flame front has died down, during "mop-up," when incident commanders get cranky and firefighters get bored. During this stage handlines often get "improved." This means that additional soil is churned, more brush and trees are cut, more forest is fragmented for several hundred feet inside the burn perimeter. Handlines can be as narrow as a two-foot wide cup trench bordered by a fifteen-foot wide zone cleared of all underbrush and downed limbs. The initial quantity of soil disturbance caused by handlines may not be very much, but over the long-term, handlines are very damaging to the slope and soil. Firefighters cut handlines in areas too rugged or steep for bulldozers. Depending on the pattern and direction a fire burns, trenches are often dug straight up and down steep slopes, forming instant artificial gulleys. On the Warner Creek fire, for example, the perimeter fireline plunges from the ridgetop 1.5 miles straight downhill, dropping 3,000 feet in elevation to the valley bottom. The fireline crosses several pallisades of rock cliffs, and only a footsure crew of Hotshots could have cut this trench over that terrain. Granted, their heroic efforts contained the fire on that section of line, but at a terrible ecological cost. Now and for many years to come, this mountainside is eroding in ugly, unnatural ways along the remains of the old fireline, shedding soil and dumping silt into the streams. ROADLESS AREA INVASIONS Undoubtedly the most brutal method of firefighting involves the use of bulldozers. Encountering a dozerline gives one the unmistakable sensation of a scarred battlefield. On dozerlines, the groundcover has been torn up wholesale. In addition to the wide barren surface, large trees may be toppled over and huge boulders heaved aside. Impacts to the soil come directly from the steel blade ripping up the ground, followed by the huge tank treads that alternately chew and crush the exposed soil. This causes compaction that chokes vital air and water spaces out of the soil, and creates an impermeable "hardpan" surface layer that causes sheetwash erosion. Working on moderately steep gradients, dozers destabilize slopes which causes landslides. Some dozerlines can be as wide as an interstate freeway, and in a very real sense, constitute new roads established by and for motorized vehicular traffic. These new roads--never before planned or presented before the public in an EIS--are the ultimate travesty of Roadless Areas and other unprotected wildlands. On Warner Creek Fire, bulldozers cut over eleven miles of new road into the Cornpatch Roadless Area. In one section, a mile-long dozerline was carved into the hillside a mere 50 feet away from a hiking trail that could have easily served as an excellent minimal-impact fireline. Even more outrageous, this bulldozer was allowed to plow into an area known to be rich in archaeological sites. How many rock cairns and other artifacts marking the vision-quest sites of young Calapuyas were destroyed in this deliberate act of militaristic aggression? Perhaps the most heinous example of a Roadless Area invasion occurred on a wildfire in the French Creek/Patrick Buttes Inventoried Roadless Area. For several years concerned citizens had successfully fought the Forest Service over its plans to build roads and clearcut timber in this remote wildland. When a forest fire ignited, the Forest Service punched a dozerline straight up into the Roadless Area, and then let U.S. military personnel drive "humvees" and "deuce-and-a-half" trucks on it to transport firefighters to their combat zones. Later, the Forest Service used the dozerline to help access salvage logging units. As horrible as these examples may seem, the public must realize that it is not all that uncommon; indeed, bulldozers are tearing up mountainsides, fragmenting forests, and desecrating Roadless Areas on wildfires all over the West, causing immediate and ongoing environmental impacts. LOGGING WITH FIRE Backcountry hikers are often stunned to see giant blackened stumps deep in the interior of wilderness and roadless areas. These stumps mark the presence of former battlefields of the war on wildfire. The agency may fool the public into believing that "firefighting saves trees," but firefighters know that a lot of big old trees are cut down during wildfires. Indeed, in Cascadia's dense forests, the first workers in a fire crew lineup are the sawyers. Commonly, teams of professional fallers working as private contractors--in essence loggers working as mercenaries--sweep through the forest on "search and destroy" missions to drop all burning dead or decadent trees in areas where firefighters are working. These are the most hazardous kind of trees to firefighters: they could fall across firelines and thus enable the fire to escape containment, and worse, they could fall onto a firefighter, with deadly consequences. But these snags and broken-tops are also the most valuable trees to certain rare or endangered wildlife species. Indeed, if Mother Nature could choose which of the trees were most precious to Her and in need of protection from wildfire, it would likely be these so-called "dead and dying" trees. Perversely, these are the very trees most likely to be cut on sight by firefighters, or systematically by "salvage" loggers. Stumps are more than visual blights impacting so-called "scenic resources," they are evidence of a time and place of combat where humans made war on Nature. Like a minefield, stumbling upon giant stumps in the middle of forested Roadless Areas sets off an explosion in one's psyche, impacting the spirit of the person and the wildness of the place. SCORCHED EARTH TACTICS The old adage, "fight fire with fire," is the standard practice of the Forest Service, and occurs in two ways: burnout and backfires. Burnout involves burning a narrow strip of ground vegetation along the fireline. It is normal if not necessary procedure, and thus, nearly every inch of perimeter fireline represents a section of human-caused fire. On the other hand, "backfiring," is a technique to suppress large, fast-moving wildfires by deliberately starting another fire ahead of the main flame front, and thereby starve it of fuel. Backfiring used to be a rare event, and was viewed as a desperate tactic used in a "last ditch" effort. For the last ten years, however, backfiring has become a common, almost routine action on every large fire incident. On some incidents, such as the 1987 Silver Fire Complex in Oregon or the 1988 White Mountain Complex in Washington, backfires were ignited so hot and so far away from the main fire that they became new wildfires, never joining up with the main fire until additional backfiring was done! Indeed, firefighters would more accurately be named fire-lighters. Surprisingly, the newsmedia has increasingly been showing pictures of firefighters doing burn operations; yet, in each day's dramatic account of firefighting, the media does not reveal how much of wildfire's growth was/is human-caused. On the Warner Creek Fire, firefighters were ordered to burn incredible amounts of ancient forest, most of it known to be inhabitted with spotted owls. Over 3,000 acres were ignited by firefighers, amounting to a shocking 35% of the total burned acreage on the second largest wildfire in the history of the Willamette National Forest. This extraordinary amount is probably an average figure for the "typical" large wildfire incident (350 acres or greater). Several hundred gallons of burning slash fuel were dumped with driptorches on the forest floor at Warner Creek--firefighters were even ordered to burn the Black Creek bog! Finally, the Forest Service sent in a helitorch--the modern-day mechanized version of a fire-breathing dragon. The last five days of the Warner Creek Fire the weather was foggy and drizzling; nevertheless, firefighters went on burning and burning until it finally snowed. This aggressive use of backfiring and burnout on Warner Creek may have had an ulterior purpose: given the knee-jerk response of the agency to "salvage" log scorched timber, the larger the wildfire, the larger the salvage sale. Indeed, fire records revealed that salvage units were located in the same area burned by a helitorch. Was this mere coincidence or conspiracy? Regardless of the intentions of fire managers, the effects were clear: human-caused fires provided the agency with its own excuse to log an area that otherwise specifically prohibited further commercial logging. Magistrate Thomas Coffin ruled in the Warner Creek lawsuit (Sierra Club v. Forest Service) that arson was an environmental impact that should have been analyzed in the EIS. Arguments about the institutional arson committed by firefighters working under the command of Forest Service timber managers were never raised in court. Logically and realistically, though, it too should considered an environmental impact worthy of documentation and public disclosure. The amount and kind of deliberate burning that occurred on the Warner Creek Fire is not unique; on the contrary, it has become fairly routine procedure. Given the connection between wildfires and salvage logging, the real question to be raised is: are firefighters being used as marking crews for timber sales, using fuzees and driptorches instead of yellow plastic ribbons? CHEMICAL WARFARE Some of the most dramatic photos of firefighting incidents are the World War II bombers swooping down over the forest canopy to drop red-colored chemical retardants on the blaze below. The Forest Service makes much effort to inform the public that the chemical includes fertilizer to help new plants grow. This fertilizer is relatively benign in the ground, but it is deadly to wildlife when it runs into streams. The chemical creates a toxic plume of nitrogen that kill fish and insects in streams, and feeds algae blooms in lakes. On the Warner Creek Fire, chemical retardants were repeatedly dropped into Class III and IV streams, some of which eventually fed into the municipal water supply for the city of Oakridge. An even more grotesque example occurred on a 1996 wildfire a few miles away from Warner Creek. The Forest Service ordered a tanker to drop retardant on a campground on the shore of Waldo Lake in order to save some wooden picnic tables and outhouses from burning. On the crest of Oregon's Middle Cascades and entirely fed by springs and snowmelt, Waldo Lake is one of the purest lakes of its size in the world. Scientists have been studying its purity for nearly 30 years to use as a baseline for measuring turbidity changes in lakes throughout the state. Predictably, the chemical retardant dumped directly into the lake. Now, scientists claim that nitrogen levels have risen at least 21,000 times above normal, the lake's purity and clarity have been forever compromised, and decades of scientific research has been ruined. To their credit, the Forest Service did save those picnic tables and outhouses from burning, though. In addition to the chemical retardants dropped from airplanes, there are other chemicals that routinely spill into streams and soils. Chainsaws are a source of minor gasoline and oil spills every time they are refueled. Gas-powered water pumps are another source of fuel spills, and these are located inside or adjacent to fragile riparian areas. Helicopters are source of major fuel spills; indeed, wherever helicopters are refueled several gallons of fuel get spilled into the soil. Finally, chemicals are mixed with water in portable "fold-a-tanks" in order to change the consistency of water, making it either penetrate deeper into the soil or keep it pooled longer on the ground surface. Lastly, firefighters dump a considerable amount of food and other litter in the forest. It is hard to blame firefighters, for the "food" they are served in sack lunches is almost inedible, and much of it gets thrown away as a safety precaution. Likewise, things such as dead batteries, burned hose, empty fuel cans, and other nasty stuff often gets left in the woods either deliberately or by accident. All of these chemicals and hazardous wastes have immediate, indirect, and cumulative impacts, none of which have ever been properly analyzed to determine if they are appropriate additions to wild ecosystems. THE WAR AGAINST WARNER CREEK On the Warner Creek Fire there were dozens of firelines hand-dug or bulldozed into the spotted owl sanctuary inhabiting the Cornpatch Roadless Area. Given the weather and fuel conditions at the time of the fire, these lines represented valient but futile efforts to contain the blaze. Accordingly, the wildfire repeatedly surged across firelines and they were promptly abandoned. Yet, the Forest Service never looked back at the damage their firefighters inflicted upon the landscape. They never questioned if running chainsaws, driptorches, helicopters, and dozers was the "appropriate suppression response" in as sensitive an area as a spotted owl sanctuary. Only the perimeter firelines were ever "rehabbed" with a few token waterbars; the rest of the firelines located in the interior of the burn were abandoned, ignored, and left to erode. The showcase million dollar EIS that the agency prepared in order to promote the Warner Salvage Sale never discussed the immediate and ongoing environmental impacts caused by firefighters. Moreover, the agency's rationale for clearcutting in this spotted owl HCA (now a LSR) was to reduce fuel loading and construct fuelbreaks to "lower the Resistance to Control" for future firefighting. Moreover, the agency refused to analyze or disclose foreseeable future environmental impacts that would be caused by firefighting actions along these fuelbreaks. Currently, the Forest Service is proposing several similar kinds of salvage and thinning schemes in Roadless Areas, Late-Successional and Riparian Reserves allegedly to reduce potential for "catastrophic" fire and prepare the area for catastrophic firefighting. In effect, beginning with the Warner Fire Recovery Project and continuing into this new regime of "Ecosystems Management," the Forest Service has done an about-face in its ideology for logging native and ancient forests. Whereas the agency formerly fought fires in order to log, nowadays it is logging in order to fight fires. TOWARDS A NEPA ANALYSIS OF FIREFIGHTING It is time for the American people to force the agency to obide by the National Environmental Policy Act and subject fire suppression--an annually budgeted, programmed management activity--to NEPA analysis. The direct, indirect, and cumulative environmental effects of firefighting are inflicting a serious toll of damage and destruction to some of America's most precious wildlands. Every environmental law and conservation strategy essentially becomes moot whenever a wildfire ignites. It is time that land management agencies tell the truth about the ecological, economic, and social costs of its war on wildfire. The time to do NEPA analysis is not after a fire ignites, of course, but long before. Given the extreme number of environmental variables that naturally affect fire behavior, no single analysis will fit all forest areas. Indeed, EAs and EISs should be produced in every Region, Forest, District, and watershed. Agencies will need to come up with a range of alternatives, including No Action and an alternative dedicated to Minimum Impact Suppression Techniques, in which to compare with the current standard destructive strategies and tactics. These NEPA analyses will have to justify to the American people, if they can, the logic behind waging a neverending, unwinnable war against Nature. It is doubtful that the government will voluntarily take the lead in doing these studies; thus, it is up to environmentalists to begin a ntaional campaign to force the agencies to comply with NEPA under threat of legal action, if necessary. Environmentalists must begin to educate themselves and their fellow citizens about Forest Service fire management policies and practices in order to build the educational and political foundations for such a campaign. This campaign is most opportune now that federal fire management policies are undergoing major changes. In the meantime, environmentalist must do everything they can not only to stop the assault of logging, but to stop the war on wildfire. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send FREE video emails in Yahoo! Mail! http://promo.yahoo.com/videomail/ <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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