Summer of Fire (51 page)

Fan Fire:
23,325 acres. Started June 25. No change. The fire was contained on 9/2. One crew is completing mop-up.

Hellroaring Fire:
83,888 acres. Started August 15. The fire is 100% contained. Mop-up and rehabilitation work continue.

Huck/Mink Complex:
225,500 acres (includes Mink Creek Fire acreage in Bridger-Teton NF). Started August 20. Caused the evacuation of Flagg Ranch. The fire was 100% contained on 9/15. No estimated date of control. Mop-up and rehabilitation work continues.

North Fork:
400,100 acres. Started July 22 by human. Split from Wolf Lake Fire at Gibbon Falls. This fire is about 50% contained with 100% containment expected by mid-October. Some increase in fire activity is expected due to dry, windy weather. Mop-up and structure protection is continuing at Old Faithful and West Yellowstone. 1339 firefighters, 8 bulldozers, and 4 helicopters.

Snake River Complex:
224,000 acres. Red Fire started July 1. Shoshone Fire started June 23. Joined August 10. Falls Fire started July 12. Red-Shoshone joined the Mink Fire on August 31. Acreage includes Continental-Ridge and Mink Creek fires. The fire was declared 100% contained on 9/19 at 1700 hours. Mop-up operations and rehabilitation work continues. Fuel modification in Lake area continues as well. 459 firefighters, 1 engine, 1 helicopter.

Storm Creek Fire:
107,847 acres. Started July 3. This fire was declared 100% contained on 9/17. Mop-up operations continue in the Soda Butte and Pebble Ck. areas.

Wolf Lake Fire
(includes Mammoth Complex): 107,460 acres. Fire grew only twenty acres over the weekend despite dry weather and high winds. Most military crews are leaving by 9/28, and they will not be replaced. Estimated date of containment still depends on receiving additional precipitation. 1099 firefighters, 12 engines, 9 helicopters.

Crews on many of the fires continue to demobilize. Unified Area Command operations in West Yellowstone have been shut down. As a result, accurate information on crew sizes and resources for some of the fires was not readily available.

AFTERWORD

Donald Hodel, the real Interior Secretary of the United States under President Ronald Reagn, sent the following letter to newspapers across the country on October 13, 1988. It was also printed in 1989 in
The Fires of ’88, Yellowstone Park and Montana in Flames
by Ross Simpson.

To the Editor:

This summer long will be remembered for the forest fires that raged over much of the public lands in the West. Before the season is behind us, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks for the heroic efforts of the over thirty thousand firefighters from across the country who, over the course of the past several months, risked their lives to try and control a natural disaster of unprecedented proportions. Whether called by a personal sense of duty or summoned by obligation, these men and women — working against insurmountable odds — showed exceptional courage and patriotism.

Many firefighters worked twelve to fourteen hour shifts, with days consisting of hot, exhausting work battling fires, and nights spent in sleeping bags. In addition to facing the danger of intense blazes, falling limbs and oppressive smoke, they coped with everything from rockslides to angry yellow jackets. At the end of a workday, many firefighters carrying heavy gear hiked as much as ten miles before being picked up and returned to their camp.

Modern day forest managers and park rangers never have faced the conditions experienced this year in which millions of acres of aged timberlands were parched by four or five years of severe drought. Substantial portions of these great forests were living on borrowed time. Therefore, despite all efforts, it was impossible to control the course of natural events.

We would be remiss if we did not learn from this experience. Now we begin the painstaking study to determine what, if anything, can be done to insure that we will not face devastating fires of this kind in the future. Work must also be done to help the rehabilitation of Yellowstone National Park and other affected areas.

Fortunately, much of Yellowstone escaped the raging fires—and, surprisingly, many acres of lush forestlands within burned areas were left unscathed. We are anticipating a great influx of tourists interested in seeing the extent of the damage and the progress of regrowth. Recreational opportunities will continue to abound.

Yellowstone will not be the same within our generation, but nature recovers from these events by rebirth of the old growth forests and rejuvenation of forage and wildlife. It would be foolish to say that the Yellowstone National Park forest fires were welcomed - but over the course of the next decade, we may witness some beneficial events.

This fact does not offer much solace for the local economies that have been disrupted, people displaced and painful losses suffered. And those of us who love Yellowstone cannot help but view the events as a natural tragedy. But the losses would have been much greater had it not been for the dedication and perseverance of the brave firefighters - and all who supported them in this difficult time. Again, to them, our thanks for doing an outstanding job.

AUTHORS NOTE

As the twentieth anniversary of the 1988 fire season approaches, it remains one of the milestone events in the history of man’s summer battles against nature. The firefighting effort was, at the time, the most expensive event in fire suppression, over $120,000,000. Estimates suggest that from 25,000 to 32,000 firefighters fought on the lines, with up to 9000 active at one time: career professional fire experts, smokejumpers, pilots, seasonal groundpounders, college students, convicts, and the armed forces. In 1988 in the United States, 68,396 wildfires burned 3,799,550 acres — almost half that was accounted for by the Greater Yellowstone area.

Fire is a natural part of the forest ecosystem. Many plant species rely on fire for regeneration. Lodgepole pines (nearly 80% of the park’s forests,) have cones that are sealed by resin until the fire’s heat dries and explodes them, releasing the seeds. Brushy plants such as sage, aspen and willows, along with grasses will burn, but their root systems usually remain, and the years following a fire can be a very productive time. As the natural order proceeded, every few hundred years flames swept over the mountains and valleys. Research in Yellowstone has indicated that large fires occurred during the 1700’s.

Once the park was established in 1872, and more people came to Yellowstone, they brought a belief that fire was destructive. Thus, in the latter part of the nineteenth century began the Smokey Bear trend, with the military custodians of the park fighting wildfires. From the 1940s through the 1960s, some began to recognize fire’s positive role, and experimentation with controlled burns began. In 1972, it was determined that natural fires caused by lightning in the National Park would not be fought.

Though Yellowstone’s forests were “old growth,” up to 300 years, with abundant deadfall from the ravages of the pine bark beetle, the years leading up to 1988 did not foreshadow the magnitude of the event. Since 1972, in sixteen years, 235 fires had burned only about 34,000 acres. The years 1982–1987 were wetter than normal, and in the winter of 1987–1988, there was adequate snowfall. April and May rainfalls were abundant, leading to a feeling that the fire season might be a nonevent.

But as summer began, the park experienced a drought along with high daytime temperatures, low humidity, and strong, gusty winds. These conditions caused fires to grow and burn so actively that it was impossible to contain such conflagrations. In the time from late June through July, the driest in recorded history, over twice the acreage burned as had in the previous sixteen years under the “let-burn” policy.

In late July, the National Park Service and the U.S. Forest Service formed the Greater Yellowstone Unified Area Command, the special fire organization described in this book. Throughout the summer, it tracked 248 fires in Greater Yellowstone. Within Yellowstone, lightning ignited 51 different fires, while one of the largest and most destructive, the North Fork, was reportedly started by a thrown cigarette. The Unified Area Command, in response to the demand for information, began issuing fire maps and statistics that came out on a daily basis.

The following shows the number of acres consumed in the Greater Yellowstone Area along with key events experienced by the characters in
Summer of Fire
.

July 15 8,500 acres   July 25 75,000 acres Battle for Grant Village August 4 150,000 acres August 20 350,000 acres “Black Saturday” September 7 1,000,000 acres Siege of Old Faithful September 9 1,200,000 acres Defense of Mammoth September 26 1,600,000 acres Final report On July 25, 500 firefighters defended the Grant Village lodge, restaurant and campground. By August 4, large back-country fires spread in the northwest and northeast quadrants of the park. Fire behavior scientists made a prediction, considered dire at the time, that the 150,000 thousand acres burned might double before season’s end.

But August 20, or “Black Saturday” saw a record burning of another 150,000 acres in a single twenty-four hour period, while firefighters sought shelter and aircraft were grounded. The day hosted a dry front, a wind event that caused the fires to crown and run at unprecedented speeds. The report from fire command at 8:00 a.m. on August 22 revealed that fire trucks and crews were protecting Yellowstone’s northeastern gateway towns of Silver Gate and Cooke City.

In early September, the town of West Yellowstone struggled with the decision whether or not to evacuate. By now, Park Service and Forest Service officials were under attack by angry residents who in some cases believed the government would be happy if they were burned out of their homes. Tempers ran high, and one of the local motel marquees invited folks to a “Bar-bee-que,” referring to Bob Barbee, the Superintendent of Yellowstone. Locals set up the sprinkler barrier along the abandoned Union Pacific railroad right of way in case the North Fork fire came to town.

The September 7, 8:00 a.m. fire command report told of “fire spotting to within 3/4 mile of Old Faithful Inn,” and the evacuation. The sprinklers were moved in from West Yellowstone and installed under power lines at Old Faithful. Then 1608 firefighters, 39 engines, 22 bulldozers, and 6 helicopters defended the complex. All non-essential fire personnel and area residents also evacuated from Silver Gate and Cooke City.

On September 9, resources were reported as being “moved to deal with the anticipated advance of the fires into the area of Mammoth.” Residents who had made it back into Silver Gate and Cooke City were forced to evacuate again.

The first snow fell on September 11, easing the powder keg atmosphere and letting a number of personnel stand down. On September 26, the Unified Area Command issued their final report, though the fires smouldered until November.

In the aftermath, park scientists and naturalists are still studying the results of the historic event, while the predicted destruction of the tourist trade did not happen. People came in 1989, and in the twenty-first century, they continue to flock from all over the world to enjoy the wonders of Yellowstone and monitor the forest’s rebirth.