Where I Stand — Mike O’Callaghan: Fighting Mother Nature

Saturday, Sept. 2, 2000 | 3:44 a.m.

Mike O'Callaghan is the Las Vegas Sun executive editor.

THE CEMETERY in St. Maries, Idaho, where my mother and father rest, has a reminder that forest fires leave behind more than scorched land. A large circle of small gravestones mark the place where firefighters, who died in action, are buried. Natives of the Idaho Panhandle and western Montana know the cost of wildfires. They also have learned that long, hot, dry weather spells, followed by lightning without rain, result in deadly fire seasons. This is just the way things have been happening before and since records were kept.

Since coming to the West more than 50 years ago it has been my good fortune to know several men who have earned their bread working in, and protecting, our forests. One old forester told me of loading up the pack horses with equipment and heading into the mountains to fight fires. Many times it would take several days just to reach the blaze. Some fires could only be turned away from more valuable timber stands. This was often done by the use of a backfire. Only the fall of snow in October and November eventually doused some fires that began with lightning strikes in July and August.

During my days at the University of Idaho, many of the students fought fires as smoke jumpers during summer months. Most of them later found their way into the military service or had already served overseas before entering college. One of them, Roger McPike, a retired Marine Corps colonel and Las Vegas attorney, died just a couple of years ago. Roger, a friend in college, earned his way through school as a smoke jumper and Navy ROTC cadet. For him and hundreds of other Idaho and Montana students, fighting fires was a way of life. Fighting fires is hard, sweaty work that requires training and dedication. Fires can't be fought by people picked up off the street.

So forest and range fires have been with this part of the world long before this summer. Also there is good reason to believe that such an extensive burning in northern Idaho and western Montana was long overdue. The last fire of this size happened in August 1910 when more than 3 million acres were burned in two days. Several small towns were destroyed and at least 87 people died, including 78 firefighters.

If the same firestorm took place today there would be many more deaths and the loss of many more structures. During the past 90 years we have increased the building of expensive homes and carved roads deep into our forests. Our actions have invaded and destroyed the habitat of wildlife and made us more vulnerable to wildfires. So we have set ourselves up to become victims of what is a known and expected natural phenomenon.

Some of the dangers can be lessened by the use of controlled burns to eliminate underbrush, some diseased trees and other tinder in the forests. Accomplishing this chore in all of our forests is almost impossible. It also demands much larger numbers of skilled employees than Congress is willing to fund. Yes, there will also be cases where controlled burns escape their bounds as happened in Los Alamos, N.M., a few months ago. Nevertheless, it can be a valuable fire prevention step following a couple of years of wet weather that encourages heavy undergrowth.

Certainly cutting down the forests is not the way to save them. The biggest fires this year aren't in the wilderness areas, but rather in places previously logged and/or developed.

Are there any overall solutions for the forest fire cycles we have learned to expect and live with? We can suppress fires year after year, but eventually they will be touched off and burn even longer and hotter. As long as we continue to build in our forests the cost of fires will zoom upward.

Foresters know that the fuel for fires is made up of small trees and undergrowth. Clearing out this fuel from 570,000 acres yearly costs about $92 million, which only makes a dent in the 39 million acres that are of high risk for fires.

We know what can help reduce forest fires, if we are willing to pay the price of prevention. When all is said and done there's no way that all of our forests can or will be protected from the cycles of Mother Nature. Snow falls in the winter months but lightning, with or without rain, comes during the summer.