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Quartz blaze reignites fire-control debate Mail Tribune / Bob Pennell Former smokejumper Bob Wilken of Rogue River, one of many contract firefighters on the Quartz Fire, checks out a Forest Service signpost in an area of dense trees torched by the wildfire. Experts are expected to begin evaluating the fire as soon as it is contained. Is logging best way to deal with buildup of fuel? By PAUL FATTIG While the acrid smell of smoke still lingers in the Rogue River National Forest scorched by the Quartz Fire, teams of specialists will fan out over the smoldering area. The mission of the Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation squads will be to study the immediate aftermath of a fire. "We'll get out there as soon as it's safe," said Jack Williams, Rogue River forest supervisor. "Anytime you get a major event like this, you want to learn everything you can from it." Those burning lessons include everything from erosion hazards to why one area burned more thoroughly than another. Specialists also will inspect adjacent portions of the Bureau of Land Management's Medford District burned by the fire. "We want to evaluate suppression tactics," Williams said. "We want to learn more about how we can protect rural homes, and what we and private landowners need to do to reduce the threat. "This fire confirms that areas like the Ashland watershed has to be a high priority," he added. The Quartz Fire, at one point posing a threat to the Ashland watershed a half-dozen air miles to the east, has rekindled the debate over how to best manage public lands to reduce the wildfire hazards in the urban interface and beyond. Sparked by lightning Aug. 9, the blaze torched two remote homes in the heavily forested upper reaches of the Little Applegate River drainage a week ago today. The homes in the Dog Fork area of Yale Creek, beyond power and telephone lines, were on islands of private parcels dotting the public forestland. But the fire, while turning some portions of the forest to ash, crept through other sections, sweeping the forest floor of debris while leaving mature trees untouched. The subject of fuel loading in the West - a buildup of forest vegetation - ignited a heated discussion during the annual conference of Western governors in Idaho this past week, albeit the governors eventually agreed to a 10-year plan to prevent and suppress wildfires on public lands. Interior Secretary Gale Norton and Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman promised to provide a road map to implement the plan on federal lands by spring of next year. Many in both the timber industry and environmental camps agree that forest density is a concern. But they part company when it comes to steps needed to reduce the fire hazard. Commercial logging could help reduce the threat while providing jobs for local residents, said Dave Hill, executive vice president of the Southern Oregon Timber Industries Association. "We're in favor of thinning projects in forest to reduce fire hazards," he said. "That would make forests healthier, create stronger stands, improve wildlife habitat. "But I don't think you can afford this type of massive forest management without paying for a good portion through commercial logging of small-diameter material," he added. "You have to make the project pay. If you don't make it pay, then I don't think Congress will allocate enough funds to do the job." He suggested that management to reduce fire hazards be placed on a priority basis, beginning with sites such as the Ashland watershed, where the argument has simmered for years. Forest officials finally agreed in May to begin reducing hazardous fuels on 1,549 of the watershed's 15,000 acres, a plan that includes limited logging. However, that plan, although supported by many within the environmental community, has been stalled by two appeals. "I really hope that after this fire season, we will come away with the recognition that we need to proceed with forest management," Hill said. "That has to include thinning. And we have to make those operations pay for themselves." But Williams resident Spencer Lennard, an environmental activist with the Cascade-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, disagreed. "They want to rationalize more logging under the pretense it might reduce fuel loading," Lennard said. "There is actually a huge body of science indicating that logging and past fire suppression is what is causing a lot of fuel loading on public lands. "But it is important to defend your home," he added. "We support treatment in the interface, creating barriers to protect places where people live." Rural homeowners would be wise to heed the Oregon Department of Forestry's recommendations for making defensible spaces between their homes and woodlands, Lennard said. "They should remove ladder fuels, remove small-diameter trees in an area to get it closer to what a mature forest structure is like," he said. "But you should also try to keep the canopy intact." Beyond the urban interface, Lennard figures that wildfires are beneficial to many areas, such as removing brush and grasses competing with larger trees. Old-growth stands tend to be the most fire-resistant areas in forests, he said. "A fire can be a good thing, as long as it doesn't burn homes," he said. In fact, American Indians used wildfire as a tool, routinely torching grass and lower elevation forestlands in what is now Southern Oregon, observed George Fence, a Native American living in Selma. "Early accounts of the valley showed prescription fires attributed to native management," he said. "There is clear evidence of that." Those fires were used to improve hunting areas in the long term as well as drive game to areas to be trapped in the short term, he said. The practice also eliminated the problem of what present-day residents call fuel loading, according to Jeff LaLande, archaeologist for the Rogue River forest. Historical accounts tell of most of the lower elevation forests being dominated by large ponderosa and sugar pine and California black oak, he said. "Native people were quite active in maintaining open areas in those forests and the oak grasslands," he said. "They wanted to keep grassy areas from being forested, to provide grass and tarweed seeds." Oak groves were maintained to provide acorns, an important food for the Takelma Indians who lived in the region, he said. "Those big old oaks Indians once relied on for acorns for food are either dead or dying," he said. "The forest composition has changed. Many of those open areas maintained by native people have been replaced by dense thickets of Douglas fir and white fir." While it would be impractical for today's inhabitants to periodically torch urban interface areas, they can learn from what happened at the Quartz Fire and apply those lessons elsewhere, said forest ecologist Richard Hart. He is a member of the Ashland Watershed Stewardship Alliance, which worked with Rogue River forest officials in coming up with the plan to reduce hazardous fuels in that watershed. "Some of the Little Applegate forest types are very similar to those in the Ashland watershed," he said. "How they burned will give us a lot of insights. The decision makers and the city need to go over there and look for themselves. "We've got the whole palette out there: We've got heavily managed, lightly managed and unmanaged lands on this fire," he added. "We can learn a lot from this fire." Reach reporter Paul Fattig at 776-4496 or e-mail him at [email protected] Containment of wildfire expected by Monday LITTLE APPLEGATE - Containment on the Quartz Fire is coming soon, fire officials said. Firefighters kept the Quartz Fire at 5,800 acres Saturday and expect to have the blaze contained by Monday at a maximum of 7,000 acres. The lightning-caused fire, which has been burning since Aug. 9, was 40 percent contained Saturday with the perimeter completely lined. High winds forecast through the end of the week could hinder containment efforts, fire officials said. But winds come with higher humidity and lower temperatures that make firefighters' working conditions more comfortable. Nearly 300 Oregon National Guard troops from Medford, Roseburg, Portland and Coos Bay joined the approximately 2,000 fire personnel in the containment effort Saturday morning. The troops concentrated their mop-up effort on the northernmost section of the fire near Quartz Gulch. Ten helicopters, 66 fire engines, 16 bulldozers and air tankers are also working the fire. The Quartz blaze consumed two homes last week, and just under a dozen households were evacuated in the Dog Fork area of Yale Creek. In other fires locally, containment on the Border Fire in the northwest corner of Crater Lake National Park was expected around 7 p.m. today, fire officials said. Firefighters from Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado and North and South Dakota had contained 80 percent of the 60-acre blaze Saturday afternoon. Two helicopters and one water tender were also working the lines. In Medford, firefighters quickly extinguished a small structure fire Saturday afternoon in the middle of a field off Vilas Road. Embers from the abandoned scale station, once used to weigh log trucks, ignited small spot fires in nearby dry grass that burned up to a quarter-acre before being put out, said Rod Edwards, Jackson County Fire District 3 battalion chief. Firefighters had to dismantle the scale station's wood decking to put out the fire. No other structures were damaged and no one was injured. The cause of the fire is under investigation but has suspicious origins, Edwards said. Transient activity is evident in the area, he added. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.