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45 Degrees North: Prescribed Fire [1]
['Donna Kallner', 'The Daily Yonder', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow', 'Class', 'Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus', 'Display Inline', '.Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar', 'Where Img', 'Height Auto Max-Width', 'Vertical-Align Bottom .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Coauthors.Is-Layout-Flow .Wp-Block-Co-Authors-Plus-Avatar']
Date: 2025-03-14
In January, my husband and I flew to Las Vegas en route to our godson’s wedding near Parker, Arizona. We had daylight for most of the time we were driving through the desert country in Nevada and California, and saw enough of Arizona to appreciate the changing terrain as we traveled south along the east side of the Colorado River. But it was fully dark as we approached our destination on Lake Havasu, just south of the Bill Williams River.
The distinctive smell of burned cattails was the last thing we expected to encounter in a landscape so different from our home in rural northern Wisconsin. But it was strong well before we saw the lighted mobile sign that cautioned motorists to be alert for reduced visibility on the roadway during prescribed burn operations. The air had cleared by the time we arrived. But we could well imagine ourselves trying to navigate through the thick smoke of a wildland fire fueled by cattails.
Cattails are considered flashy fuels. Like dry grasses and other dry, fine fuels, they can burn very hot and very fast and may produce thick, black smoke that makes you think of burning tires. Visitors traveling through my neck of the woods at 45 degrees north should appreciate the beauty, importance as a habitat, and reputation cattails have as the “supermarket of the swamp.”
But you wouldn’t see much of anything driving through the smoke of a cattail-fueled wildland fire. Imagine being a rural fire department volunteer working where motorists traveling at highway speeds encounter that kind of smoke.
That’s one reason why, in Wisconsin, the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) conducts prescribed burns of cattail marshes.
“These burns mimic the benefits historic fire once provided but occur under a safer ‘prescription’ range of weather and fuel conditions (compared to most wildfires). Throughout history, many ecosystems in Wisconsin experienced either periodic natural fire and/or were managed with cultural fire by First Nation people….,” states Wisconsin’s DNR. “The dead vegetation is reduced to ash, transferring this natural fertilizer back into the soil. Following the burn, hazardous fuels are reduced, foraging and nesting improve in the revitalized vegetation, and the stimulated growth of their root systems enhances their ability to store more carbon. Other benefits of prescribed burns include reducing non-native or invasive plant species and increasing regeneration of important native trees like oak and pine.”
The planning and preparation that go into prescribed burns won’t be the first thing you think about when you’re creeping along in smoke hoping the driver behind you is paying attention. But here are some things you should know about prescribed fire.
Prescribed burns help rural fire department volunteers learn ways to keep small fires from becoming a big ones before additional fire suppression resources can arrive. (Photo by Donna Kallner)
Prescribed vs. Wild Fire. Prescribed fire is intentional. It’s applied to a specific area under specific conditions to accomplish specific objectives. A great deal of planning and preparation go into prescribed fires, which can be canceled or rescheduled if achieving those goals is unlikely given current conditions and resource availability. A prescribed fire event only starts when all the pieces for maintaining control are in place. Wildfires, on the other hand, are unplanned. They start when they start.
The initial response to a wildland fire might come from a volunteer fire department with limited personnel available to assess the situation, work to contain the fire, address potential threats to structures, and control traffic to prevent additional impacts – all while relaying situation reports and requests for equipment and personal to other agencies and mutual aid partners that will get there as soon as they can. Wildfires often occur when weather and other conditions favor growing a small fire into a large fire that’s difficult to control before additional resources can arrive
Controlled Burn vs. Prescribed Fire. A controlled burn is a fire that someone starts with the intention to control it. That may be anything from a campfire to burning off plant debris from a garden to burning fields, pasture, or prairie on private lands. A farmer who tills a firebreak around a pasture and gets a permit to burn on a day when conditions are suitable would be conducting a controlled burn. A forester whose management plan calls for burning an area to reduce the fuel load, create a fire break, or produce conditions conducive to the release and germination of fire-dependent tree seeds would be planning a prescribed fire. A prescribed fire calls for specific documentation and adherence to specific weather conditions, labor and equipment availability, ignition procedures, contingency plans, and more – including stated goals to be met via prescribed fire and clearly stated go/no-go conditions.
The Fire Plan. The Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council outlines burn plan elements here and provides a template here. It may seem like it’s all just common sense until you have personnel unfamiliar with the intended burn area trying to find the right tote road through a potato farm. A written plan would include maps, emergency contacts, communications channels, a smoke management plan, contingency plans, a safety plan that identifies concerns about topography and specific hazards, and burn effectiveness criteria that influence the go/no-go decision based on conditions at the date and time of ignition. Having a written plan at the briefing helps keep everyone on the same page from start to finish.
Training. Last year members of my volunteer fire department assisted with a prescribed burn conducted by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. It was a bit of extra manpower for them, but more importantly, it was a valuable training opportunity for us. This fire department covers 155 square miles that include federal, state, county, and private forests and agricultural lands. Plus private property where people ignite leaves and debris with the intent of a controlled burn but without really understanding fire behavior in changing weather, fire suppression techniques where water is limited, and how long everything takes when their intentions get out of hand.
Support. On that prescribed burn, my role was training to provide support to the most likely initial response to an unplanned wildland fire call here — a small crew of volunteer firefighters — and to better understand what might come next. In an expanding incident, the number of personnel and the scope of needs can multiply exponentially. Until we are relieved by another incident command team’s planning and logistics sections, it’s up to people like us to figure out how to make do with what’s available.
I do enough as an unpaid volunteer to have strong feelings about “cutting waste” in the federal budget by cutting personnel, contracts, and funding for “non-essential” elements of wildland firefighting. If you want wildland firefighter crews to be able to do their jobs, they need support from other people who can help keep them fed, manage their camps including sanitation needs, ensure that fuel is available for vehicles and equipment where and when it’s needed, and much more.
Unlike actual wildland fires, prescribed burns don’t start until all the pieces for maintaining control are in place. (Photo by Donna Kallner)
Volunteers. Last year our department had a request for firefighters to go downstate to protect structures outside a federal military installation, where a 3,000-acre wildland fire was burning. They were part of a small army of volunteers who responded. Unpaid volunteers are a heck of a good deal. (So are paid professional wildland fire crew members who could probably make more slinging fast food.) In the five states with the highest percentage of registered fire departments served all or mostly by volunteers (Delaware, South Dakota, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and North Dakota), volunteer departments add up to more than 96%. Know where it’s zero percent? The District of Columbia.
So I’m thinking it’s time for the millionaire members of Congress to form a volunteer fire department. Bear with me, please, because this notion isn’t any crazier than some of the solutions we’re seeing proposed or applied to meeting increasing needs with reduced resources.
A new kind of hotshots. The legislative branch of the federal government holds the power of the purse. I think it would be helpful for more of them to have the kind of firsthand experience you get on an all-hazards volunteer fire department. Undoubtedly, the more you understand a topic the easier it should be to identify waste that can be trimmed. Serving in this capacity shouldn’t interfere too much with their caucuses and cocktail parties (other volunteers seem to manage). And it’s not like they’re busy holding pancake breakfasts to raise funds to pay for Congratulational salaries and benefits: Taxpayers cover those.
But LVFs (Legislative Volunteer Firefighters) probably wouldn’t get much experience on wildland fire in D.C. So that makes training at things like prescribed burns even more important. Because surely they would step up to fight fires in the Wildland Urban Interface in their home districts and volunteer to sweep and clean forest floors to help reduce the fuels that feed wildfires. Voters aware that their own communities are at risk of becoming the next Eaton or Palisades could share their concerns with elected officials not at town hall listening sessions but over rakes and shovels. Maybe our LVFs will bring along members of the executive and judicial branches and get sweaty alongside their big donors and others who normalize oversimplified “solutions” to complex problems.
Personally, I think the better choice for fuel reduction would be protecting programs and personnel with the experience and expertise to plan and implement effective prescribed burns.
What do you think?
Donna Kallner writes from Langlade County in rural northern Wisconsin.
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