Maggie's Farm

Fire suppression magnifies fires. This is well-known.

Beware of the things we don't know that we don't know (with apologies to Donald Rumsfeld)


Suppression CAN magnify fires depending on the circumstances and management plans for the subsequent forest conditions.

Nature typically works in ways and at scales that are incompatible with human societies, and forest fires are a good example. In the period from about 1910 to about 1935, the Northern Rockies experienced some huge forest fires as a result of large expanses of decadent forests and a long term drought. There was no fire suppression prior to those fires (in fact many of the current methods of fighting large fires and fighting small ones to prevent the large ones were developed by the end of and after that period). You can picture the problem of large fires if you understand that, as forests age, they go through stages of susceptibility to large scale disturbance, gradually becoming more and more prone to fire age they achieve old age and through wind, senescence, insects and disease fuels build. At the same time, both weather and climate fluctuate at varying scales and intensities (picture waves of occurrences through time), periods of high rainfall and cooler temperatures alternating with warmer, drier stages. Weather varies at smaller timeframes than climate. Now imagine that all three conditions, an old forest with heavy buildup of fuels occurring during a long term drought is hit with a series of dry violent thunderstorms. That’s what happened in Fort McMurray and has happened throughout North America since the last glacier. The process doesn’t need human influence.

Suppression along with fuel management (light controlled burning, logging, etc.) can keep fires at a manageable level and at more human scales and these are necessary near large concentrations of human habitation. Suppression alone is not the answer, but under conditions like those at Fort McMurray suppression has to be part of the mix, at least until manageable conditions are met.

I note that the forests around Fort McMurray are described as old growth boreal forests. One wonders if misguided environmentalist activity has kept them that way. Forest management is more complex than what can fit on a bumper sticker.