Grip 1

We Didnt Start the Fire Or Did We?

1.

Just before Julia Angevine started her freshman year of high school in the fall of 2012,

the Waldo Canyon Fire threatened to ravage her home in Colorado. During the first few weeks of

the fire, she paid little attention to the news broadcasts, but as the fire ate up more and more land,

she and her family prayed for rain. Because of particularly fierce winds one day, the fire reached

the summit of the mountain range behind her familys house.

The atmosphere was similar to a zombie movie; the entire sky was red and dark and ash

was falling like a light snow, she told me. Charred pieces of newspaper would fall from the

sky miles from the actual fire.

As Julia watched the fire crawl over the mountains from a friends house, her parents

scrambled to rescue important papers from their home. Fire crews halted the fires progress just a

quarter mile from Julias house. Julia and her family visited the burn scar after the smoke had

finally cleared from the air. She described the sight as creepy; there were cars still in the

driveways, charred, and all the houses were burnt to the ground with only fragments of the

foundation left standing.

Every year since the fire, Julia visits the burn scar when the weather gets nice. She has

noticed that the animals definitely repopulated the area soon after the fire, but the plant life

still hasnt managed to recover to its pre-fire state. Julia also lamented the economic challenges

that Colorado Springs faced after the fire. Small businesses suffered, and the famous tourist

attraction, Flying W Ranch, burned to the ground.

2.
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Since the 2012 Waldo Canyon Fire, several other dramatic wildfires have devastated the

West. Natasha Geiling exposes her readers to some of these widespread and far-reaching

consequences of fires in her article, The West Is Literally On Fire, And The Impacts Could Be

Widespread. She explains that climate change and fire suppression tactics have provided the

perfect conditions for fires to destroy forests and invade our towns and cities. As the earth gets

hotter, forests become drier and the fire season becomes longer. Like Julia, Geiling cites the

economic impact of wildfires. Each year, wildfire suppression efforts in the United States cost an

average of $1.3 billion, and projections climb as high as $62.5 billion per year by 2050. We

spend this money on fire suppression without having a complete understanding or discussion of

how it upsets the natural balance and patterns of our forest ecosystems.

The United States has not always practiced fire suppression. Before the epic Peshtigo Fire

of 1871 ate up 1.5 million acres of northern Wisconsin and killed an estimated 1,200 people, the

United States did not have widespread suppression efforts (The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871).

After the fire, Franklin Hough, Bernard Fernow, and other early conservationists argued that

fires damaged commercial timber supplies and that the government ought to protect this industry

by controlling fires. Environmentally minded individuals today might see these economic

motivations as secondary, but these concerns guided some of the earliest forest preservation

efforts in the United States. Hough and Fernows argument took hold, and the U. S. Forest

Service, established in 1905, adopted new fire suppression techniques, since creating national

forests seemed to be an exercise in futility if they were to keep burning down. The Forest

Services motivations were not purely economic, but they resembled those of the timber industry

in that both groups saw forests as a resourceeither as a material and economic resource or as a

provider of beauty and enjoyment for humans. The Forest Service instituted a number of
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measures to ensure quick fire suppression, including an infrastructure network, systems of

communication, lookout towers, and stations for forest rangers. Later, airplanes, smokejumpers,

and chemical advances bolstered existing suppression techniques. However, scientific studies in

the 1960s demonstrated the important benefits that wildfires have on forest ecosystems. Now, the

let-burn policy largely guides fire management, but expanding cities and decades of damage

caused by suppression techniques complicate the matter (U. S. Forest Service Fire

Suppression).

Phillip Swart, a University of Oklahoma student and conservation activist, sat down with

me for an interview. I asked him if wildfire management practices have exacerbated the problem

of fires in the American West. With precision and in terms I could understand, he painted a

picture of this process. Most natural forests require fires for ecosystem maintenance about every

fifteen years, he explained. Fires sweep through forests and clean up debris in the forest. When

policies mandate that we extinguish fires with great speed, and we suppress fires for twenty,

thirty, forty years, this spring cleaning of sorts cannot happen. So, in the case of a fire that

exceeds our capacity for control, the fire quickly and fiercely ignites the matter that litters the

forest floor. Because of this extensive fuel reservoir, the fire climbs higher and higher and

destroys the valuable upper reaches of trees.

Not only do suppression techniques disrupt the natural benefits of fires on forest

ecosystems, but they also hurt wildlife. Installing infrastructure in the middle of natural habitats

introduces non-native species that compete with native species for food and shelter.

Infrastructure also creates opportunities for fuel and chemical spills and catalyzes soil erosion.

While many worship the scientific advancements of chemical fire retardants, these substances

and fertilizers used in forest rehabilitation often pollute nearby water ecosystems (Backer 939).
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Phillip recently stumbled upon a photograph of a tree still coated in flame retardant two months

after a fire ravaged the area. He said that surely these chemicals cannot be good for water.

Images of planes spraying red trails across the sky and onto forests for fire suppression recall

apocalyptic descriptions of poisonous rains of pesticides in Rachel Carsons Silent Spring that

became an appalling deluge of chemical pollutionpoured into the nations waterways[that]

combine to produce deposits that the sanitary engineers can only despairingly refer to as gunk

(45).

The issues of water health and soil erosion after fires are closely linked. Soil scientist,

Artemi Cerda explores this issue at length in his book, Fire Effects on Soils and Restoration

Strategies. He explains that wildfires increase the erodibility of a site. After a fire consumes the

vegetation and organic matter on the forest floor, the soil has little protection from rain and wind

that cause erosion. Changes in the physical and chemical structures of soil particles also increase

erodibility by making the soil more water repellant. When soil cannot absorb water, rains and

floods sweep away the soil (Cerda 178-181). Phillip says we have to worry about soil erosion

because weve dammed up a lot of the rivers in California and out West, Colorado included,

and all that soil will put a high amount of pressure on the dams themselves and that creates a

dangerous situation where they could possibly break. Our efforts to control the natural world

through fire suppression and river dams have created the ever-present threat of disaster.

A study published on the water quality after the 2011 Las Conchas Fire in New Mexico

reveals just how seriously increased erosion affects nearby water sources. The scientists

observed large quantities of ash and debris in the river. In addition to ash and debris, they

show the downstream movement of large quantities of black carbon (Dahm). Geiling warns

that changes in water quality can have dangerous consequences for fish: [A]sh from fire, for
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instance, can cause a streams pH levels to increase, or clog a fishs gills. In our interview,

Phillip explained that soil naturally contains arsenic and that this chemical along with nitrogen

and phosphorous from farming areas pours into rivers, lakes, and streams along with the soil that

erodes. Phosphorous especially poses a threat because it creates the algae blooms which are

deadly to water life.

Julia witnessed the flight and eventual return of animals from the Waldo Canyon burn

scar. Similarly, some fish flee from affected water areas in favor of places with lower toxicity but

later return to their native location. Not all fish fare so well, though. Forest Service water

researcher Charles Luce and his team advocate for the fish and explore the various responses fish

populations have to fires in Climate Change, Forests, Fire, Water, and Fish: Building Resilient

Landscapes, Streams and Managers. They write, Direct heating of water by fire and dissolution

of ammonia and other chemicals from smoke has resulted in fish kills (Luce 76). When debris

from fires obstructs river flow, fish either move elsewhere or perish. In some cases, fires destroy

the tree canopies that cover rivers and indirectly raise the temperature of river water. This

temperature increase can disrupt the fishs growth and maturation, leading to fish that are unable

to compete for food and to reproduce successfully (Luce 76).

Writing about a fire blazing in the Sierra Nevada in August 2013 in the Washington Post,

reporter Jim Carlton emphasizes other challenges posed by fires for water and the public health

implications that result. He writes, The blaze had come within a few miles of the Hetch Hetchy

Reservoirwhich provides drinking water to 2.6 million customers in San Francisco and 28

suburban areas, nearly 200 miles to the west. Michael Carlin, of San Franciscos Public Utilities

Commission, told Carlton that the ash that clouds water is itself not dangerous, but it makes it
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harder to detect bacteria. When I asked Phillip about the public health issues that accompany

wildfires, he said with an uncomfortable chuckle, Well, arsenic is not good to breathe.

3.

A talking gorilla tells a man, Everyone in your culture knows that the world wasnt

created for jellyfish or salmon or iguanas or gorillas. It was created for man in Daniel Quinns

Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit (57). This assumption of anthropocentrism informs

the decisions that we make as humans about how we ought to interact with the natural world.

When we believe that geological processes and natural selection have been working together

with the intention of creating humans and a hospitable environment for humans, we begin to see

the earth as a large resource mine to be used for our material benefit and economic development.

As we saw earlier, fire suppression techniques developed as a way to protect the resources that

forests hold, including wood and even the natural beauty that humans take pleasure and comfort

in.

Every attempt to further our own civilization has met with resistance from the natural

world. Blizzards, earthquakes, floods, droughts, and hurricanes level the earth and raze our

buildings, and there is little that man can do to stop these natural disasters. In the case of fires,

that is not that case thoughhuman ingenuity has allowed for the development of chemical

control of fires. At the root of fire suppression lies this compulsion to conquer the natural world.

When lightning hits a tree and sparks a fire that eats acres and acres of what man sees as his

resources, this desire to conquer drives him to put out the fire at whatever cost to ecology. We

kill the fires that eat our land and our trees and mar the beauty of our nature.
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The primary goal of all fire departments is to protect humans and their homes, and

understandably so. But our constant move westward in the United States makes this goal

dangerous to nature. Ishmael, our talking gorilla, asks his human pupil, What do the people of

your culture do if they get tired of living in the crowded Northeast? (Quinn 140). The student

answers, Thats easy. They move to Arizona. New Mexico. Colorado. The wide open spaces.

(Quinn 141). The U. S. Census Bureau estimates that between the 2010 census and July 2015,

Colorados population has increased by 8.5%, and Californias has increased by 5.1%. Both of

these states have traditionally had large expanses of uninhabited land, and both have climates

that promote wildfires. Meanwhile, states in the eastern part of the country have had much

slower growth. Ohio, for example, has experienced a population growth of only 0.7%, and

Michigan of 0.4%. And its not only smaller, more depressed states in the east that have

displayed this pattern; in the same period, New Yorks population has increased by a mere 2.2%.

4.

Ill admit itmy family holds part of the responsibility for this phenomenon. On

December 26, 2014, we packed up our home in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. We loaded

ourselves and our belongings into a caravan. And we made the twenty-some hour trek across the

country to Colorado Springs, Colorado. Since then, my family has moved into a smaller

mountain town about a half hour into the Rockies. My dad often talks with hope on his face

about one day building a cabin in an even more remote region. On some level, I ascribe to the

same ideal of manifest destiny, of the right of every man, woman, and child to a piece of natural

paradise. Part of me dreams of living on a mountain side miles away from the nearest neighbor.

But when we consider the ramifications of our actions, the goal of conquering our own piece of

the wilderness has some problematic consequences. If we think back to Julias story, well
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remember that the firefighters put out the blaze just a quarter of a mile away from her home. But

they did extinguish the fire. When we move into even more remote areas, we obstruct the natural

pattern of forest rehabilitation that wildfires facilitate.

We still suffer from the consequences of years and years of disrupting the natural cycle of

forest maintenance, and our children will likely pay for our choices to spread out into the

smallest and most traditionally natural niches. We must tread carefully through the

Anthropocene era.
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Works Cited

Angevine, Julia. Personal interview. 5 March 2016.

Backer, Dana M., Jensen, Sarah E., McPherson, Guy R. Impacts of Fire Suppression Activities

on Natural Communities. Conservation Biology 18.4 (2004): 937-946. Web.

Carlton, Jim. U.S. News: Fire Threatens San Franciscos Water. Wall Street Journal [New

York, N.Y.] 26 Aug. 2013: A.3. Web.

Carson, Rachel. Silent Spring. Fawcett Publications Inc., 1962.

Cerda, A. Fire Effects on Soils and Restoration Strategies. Hoboken: Science, 2010. Web.

"Colorado QuickFacts." United States Census Bureau. U. S. Department of Commerce, n.d.

Web. 24 Apr. 2016.

Dahm, Clifford N., CandelariaLey, Roxanne I., Reale, Chelsea S., Reale, Justin K., and Van

Horn, David J. Extreme Water Quality Degradation following a Catastrophic Forest

Fire. Freshwater Biology 60.12 (2015): 2584-599. Web.

Geiling, Natasha. "The West Is Literally On Fire, And Impacts Could Be Widespread." Climate

Progress. Center For American Progress Fund, 1 July 2015. Web. 6 Mar. 2016.

Hipke, Deanna C. The Great Peshtigo Fire of 1871. N.d. Web. 6 May 2017.

Kolbert, Elizabeth. Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change. New

York: Bloomsbury, 2006. Print.

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Luce, Charles, and Rocky Mountain Research Station , Issuing Body. Climate Change, Forests,

Fire, Water, and Fish : Building Resilient Landscapes, Streams, and Managers. 2012.

General Technical Report RMRS ; GTR-290. Web.

Quinn, David. Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit. New York: Bantam, 1992. Print.

Swart, Phillip. Personal interview. 8 March 2016.

"U.S. Forest Service Fire Suppression." Fire Suppression. The Forest History Society, 17 Mar.

2015. Web. 08 Mar. 2016.