Officials wait for chance to burn: weather conditions delay
monitored procedures
Mail Tribune
Medford, Oregon
October 16, 1999
By PAUL FATTIG
Fire crews at Crater Lake National Park are scanning the horizon
for signs of coming wet weather to end the continued high fire
danger.
So are their counterparts at the Oregon Caves National Monument,
some 20 miles east of Cave Junction.
But they aren't worried about the danger. Rather, they fear the
window of opportunity for a prescribed burn this year is quickly
closing.
Crater Lake officials hope to burn a 415-acre site in the
northeast corner of the 183,224-acre park; Oregon Caves
officials want to burn an eight-acre parcel near the main cave
entrance.
The
goal in both instances is to reduce a potentially hazardous
brush buildup while reintroducing what has been a natural part
of the ecological cycle since time began, officials said.
Each burn would be carefully monitored.
"We're literally looking at the situation day-to-day," said
Chris Chiverton, assistant fire staff officer at the park.
"We're monitoring the weather on the site very closely.
"But we really can't do anything while we're still in high fire
danger," he added.
The problem is that weather in the higher elevations, like
Crater Lake, can turn from summer to snow overnight, officials
said. Early Friday morning, the mercury dropped to 26 degrees at
park headquarters, located 6,500 feet above sea level.
At the lower-level Oregon Caves, a Pacific storm can blow in,
slamming the prescribed-burn window closed for the season,
officials said.
Although the National Weather Service office at the Medford
airport forecasts clear skies through Wednesday, the long-range
forecast calls for higher than normal precipitation this fall
and winter.
Intense fire suppression, which began at the park in the 1930s,
caused a dangerous buildup of flammable materials.
That changed in 1977 when park officials periodically
experimented with planned burning. With the fire plan fine-tuned
by revisions and a supplemental environmental assessment this
year, the prescribed burns have become a matter of policy,
albeit one that will be used infrequently.
The point is to reintroduce fire as a part of the natural
environment, Chiverton said.
"People are realizing the positive benefits of fire over time,"
he said, referring to prescribed burns in a controlled
situation.
Those benefits can be seen in changes in plant life, observed
John Roth, resource manager at the Oregon Caves. As evidence, he
noted a prescribed burn at the monument in 1997.
"Since we've introduced fires, we have at least two species of
plants (lilies) come back that have been gone from the monument
for 40 years."
"Those fires have allowed more light into the forest," he added.
"We really haven't had any fires here except for prescribed
burns this century."
Low-intensity fires clear away brush which consumes sunlight,
water and nutrients, he explained.
The periodic low-intensity fires also remove the potential of
catastrophic fires raging through heavy forests, he said.
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