BY PAUL M. ROSS JR. 

For the second year in a row, fire activity in the Great Basin, Rocky Mountain and Southwest areas was moderate, although New Mexico and Arizona experienced some intense fires. Wildland firefighters in these areas kept busy with lightning-caused fires, controlled burns, wildland fire use (WFU) incidents, and of course, hurricane-recovery efforts.

Great Basin Area
According to Great Basin Intelligence Coordinator Deb Bowen, fire activity in Idaho, Utah, Wyoming and Arizona was moderate, with 2,026 fires, slightly below the five-year average of 2,823 fires. Acreage totals stood at 909,015 acres burned, compared with the fire-year average of 523,534 acres. “The acreage increase is due to large fire events in the grass/shrub fuel types,” Bowen says. “Fuel loadings in these particular fuel types were extremely high this year, due to a wet spring and melt-off from significant snowpacks throughout the region.” The Eastern Great Basin experienced 106 large fires; the Clover Fire in south-central Idaho ranked largest, at 192,846 acres.  

Just when firefighters thought they had heard the season’s swan song, the Valley Road Fire raced into heavy timber in early September on Idaho’s Sawtooth National Forest outside Stanley, eventually burning more than 40,000 acres. September lightning storms and human carelessness also sparked several fires over 1,000 acres in Utah and southern Idaho’s rangelands, including a 17,000-acre blaze in Bingham County, Idaho.

The Eastern Great Basin increased its WFU activity in 2005, with 100 fires covering 85,197 acres. “Prescribed fire activity is ongoing with the continuing favorable fall weather conditions. So far this year there have been 147 incidents for 45,207 acres,” Bowen says. The area’s personnel also supported hurricane-recovery efforts with three incident management teams (IMT), 621 overhead personnel, 13 hand crews, 50 different pieces of equipment and three helicopters.

The fire season in Nevada proved more active than last year, with more than 1 million acres burned by wildfires, as well as 13,000 acres treated in prescribed fire operations. Lightning across the Silver State sparked the majority of the incidents, with fires growing rapidly due to the heavy amount of cured grasses. Crews fought 536 lightning fires on more than 988,000 acres and snuffed 258 human-caused blazes that scorched nearly 44,000 acres.

Rocky Mountain Area
Firefighters in Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, South Dakota and Wyoming saw consistent initial-attack responses, but large fire activity was minimal for the second year in a row. The Rocky Mountain Area (RMA) had an average fire season, according to Rocky Mountain Coordination Center Manager Jim Fletcher. The normal pace of fire activity did not require large-scale mobilization of resources to area incidents, but the RMA actively supported fires and incidents in the Southwest and Western United States and carried out hurricane-response operations.

Fire Information Officer Larry Helmerick said weather conditions were ripe at times for fire activity. “In July and part of August, there was above-average potential for large fires based on fuel dryness,” he says. “But ignitions, for the most part, were minimized, and the late-arriving southwest monsoon mitigated fire danger.”

The largest blaze in the RMA began on July 7, when the Mason Fire burned 11,357 acres west of Pueblo, Colo. A Type 1 and Type 2 IMT responded to the fire. The RMA’s only other Type 1 team deployment occurred two days later for the Ricco Fire outside Rapid City, S.D. The blaze, which burned a total of 3,939 acres, resulted from a lightning storm on July 9; firefighters contained it nine days later.

Photo AP/Ed Andrieski The Mason Fire, the largest blaze in the Rocky Mountain Area in 2005, burned 11,357 acres west of Pueblo, Colo.

Helmerick reported 770 human-caused fires in the region, a significant drop from prior reporting periods; the RMA’s five-year average is 8,660 human-caused fires. “All organizations within the RMA have placed a great deal of emphasis on fire-prevention messages,” Helmerick says. “There is no way of knowing what this dramatic reduction of human-caused fires can be attributed to, or whether the final figures for 2005 will still show a tenfold decrease in human-caused fire, but we will be happy with any reduction.”

With the fire season less active than usual, RMA agencies concentrated on WFU and controlled burns. Agency fire management plans allowed 50 fires to be managed for ecological restoration on 7,163 acres, or about 10 percent of the total burned acreage, through mid-October. Moderate weather also allowed firefighters to drag torches across wildlands in controlled burn ops. “Better burning windows this year have allowed agencies within the RMA to [conduct] 357 prescribed fires to date, burning 101,075 acres,” Helmerick says. A breakdown of prescribed burns shows the U.S. Forest Service with 36,861 acres; the Bureau of Land Management with 23,035; the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with 20,400; the National Park Service with 12,451; and the Bureau of Indian Affairs with 3,871. State and county burns have also occurred in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, Kansas and Nebraska.

Along with wildland fire personnel across the country, the RMA continues to support hurricane-recovery efforts. Many RMA firefighters, along with the RMA Type 1 and one of the Type 2 teams, were deployed to recovery efforts. At one point, three Rocky Mountain Type 2 initial-attack hand crews and 220 other personnel performed recovery operations.

Southwest Area
Officials anticipated a busy fire season in the Southwestern United States, given heavy fine-fuel loads from winter rain and snow. Mid-spring storm systems, however, brought more moisture and delayed fire activity until late May in most areas. High-elevation timber stands retained enough moisture to restrict heavy-fire activity in southern Colorado, New Mexico and western Texas. April’s Gladstone Fire, which burned more than 12,000 acres in northeast New Mexico, seemed the harbinger to a major fire outbreak, but proved to be the only fire that grew to more than 10,000 acres in that state.

Aggressive initial attacks helped New Mexico firefighters prevent several fires with high potential for growth from becoming major incidents. Season statistics show more than 842,000 acres affected by wildfire, prescribed fire or WFU in the Southwest this year, with the majority of acreage in Arizona.

New Mexico boasted the largest WFU incident in the Southwest this season. Firefighters working the Gila National Forest managed the Black Range WFU Complex in August, which reintroduced fire to more than 80,000 acres of wildlands.

In Arizona, however, the amount of red dye from aerial fire retardant painting the state’s wildlands was a good indicator of a record fire season on private and state lands. Firefighting pilots in single-engine airtankers (SEATs) set a record for retardant dropped on wildfires in 2005, dropping 2 million gallons while operating on contract with the Arizona State Land Department’s Forestry Division (see “Fire Aviation News,” p. 13, for more on the Arizona SEAT operations).

Beginning in May, desert heat rapidly dried grass and brush in the Phoenix and Tucson metroplexes. The Bart Fire proved one of the early large fires, scorching more than 14,000 acres near Bartlett Reservoir on the Tonto National Forest north of Scottsdale, Ariz. Fires on state and private lands broke out frequently as well, spreading rapidly, with many growing to more than 1,000 acres as spring waned and summer began. Lightning, arson and careless burning sparked more than 1,000 fires on these non-federal lands, charring a staggering 117,000 acres. In an average year, the Arizona State Lands Forestry Division responds to about 750 fires with an average of 15,000 acres.

For the second year in a row, Arizona experienced a near record-breaking large fire. A late-June dry lightning storm sparked a fire in north suburban Phoenix that eventually burned more than 248,000 acres. Flames fed by overabundant fine fuels—many of them invasive red brome and cheatgrass species—and triple-digit heat allowed the Cave Creek Complex to race out of control north of Scottsdale on the Tonto National Forest. Ranking as the second largest fire in Arizona’s history behind 2002’s devastating Rodeo-Chediski Fire (which burned more than 400,000 acres), the Cave Creek blaze easily eclipsed last year’s 119,000-acre Willow Fire, which burned a nearby portion of the Tonto.

Officials evacuated homes in several Cave Creek subdivisions in the initial days as the fire burned in heavy brush, but the flames later headed north, away from the urban interface, and threatened a key Federal Aviation Administration radar site on Humboldt Peak. Firefighters conducted aggressive burnout operations on the northern flank of the fire and east of Interstate 17, which, combined with moderate weather conditions, kept the fire from burning into areas south of Pine, Ariz. The complexity of the fire eventually required the involvement of two Type 1 and one Type 2 IMTs.

Photo AP/Matt York The Cave Creek Complex ranked as the second largest fire in Arizona history, burning more than 248,000 acres north of Scottsdale on the Tonto National Forest.

Officials with Arizona’s Forestry Division are now concerned about next season, given the remaining presence of cured fine fuels in desert and lowland response areas.

Paul M. Ross, Jr. is a firefighter/EMT/helitack squad leader and professional writer with 14 years of experience in both Western U.S. wildland firefighting and urban fire-rescue. He lives in St. Louis, Mo., where he is a firefighter/EMT for the Eureka Fire Protection District. Contact him at prossjr@yahoo.com.