Megafires becoming more common
Research ecologist explains costs, benefits and how to live with them
A wildfire in Fort McMurray, Alberta, destroyed 2,400 homes, displaced 100,000 people and burned at least 1.5 million acres last year, according to Paul Hessburg, a research landscape ecologist with the U.S. Forest Service’s Pacific Northwest Research Station.
It was the largest wildfire in Alberta’s history and it was attributed to a warmer, drier and windier climate, Hessburg said.
“The evidence is clear that climate warming is having a huge effect on current megafires,” he said.
Hessburg, whose agency’s headquarters is in Portland, Ore., led a presentation called “Era of Megafires” Wednesday night at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre in Moscow.
Megafires are classified as wildfires that burn more than 100,000 acres and may be destructive to communities, wildlife habitat and natural resources.
Hessburg showed a tragic video of a June 2015 wildfire that came close to destroying the town of Wenatchee, Wash., and did destroy 30 structures.
The issue should concern everyone as taxpayers, Hessburg said. Billions of dollars are spent each year on fire suppression and rebuilding structures after they are destroyed, Hessburg said.
While wildfires can be destructive, Hessburg said there are benefits: Woodpeckers, for example, use burned snags to build their nests and raise their young.
“Nature has this incredible resilience to overcome these disturbance factors, like fires,” said John Marshall, a photographer, in one of the videos Hessburg displayed.
Marshall showed before and after photos of forests recovering from destructive wildfires.
“In a historical system, wildfire not only improves things, it’s the engine that drives the system,” Hessburg said.
Hessburg said fire seasons are commonly 40 to 80 days longer now than just 50 years ago. But he said the good news is people can do a lot to reduce the destruction and severity of them.
“We’ve learned fire suppression all by itself is an incomplete solution,” Hessburg said.
He said a cultural shift is needed. Instead of being reactive to fires, people need to be primarily proactive.
“The evidence is mounting that the role of fire suppression needs to steadily decline while it’s being replaced by other tools,” Hessburg said.
Prescribed burning is one of those tools. More prescribed fires, or hazard reduction burning, results in less severe and more controlled wildfires, according to a man in one of the videos presented.
“In our area we are prescribed burning but at nowhere near the scale of the need,” Hessburg said.
He said the smoke from prescribed burning is a lot less than wildfire smoke.
Mechanical thinning is another option, Hessburg said.
If there are lots of trees in a landscape, workers can cut some down to an appropriate spacing where the forest can handle regular intervals of fire.
Hessburg said people need to make their landscapes, homes, yards and communities fire resilient again.
“There isn’t a future without wildfires and smoke,” Hessburg said. “Instead of us trying to avoid fire, we all need to learn to better live with them.”
Garrett Cabeza can be reached at (208) 883-4631, or by email to gcabeza@dnews.com.
