Center for Forestry staff recently attended a tour of the Rim Fire hosted by the NorCal/Socal Society of American Foresters State Society. The Rim Fire was (and still is) the largest fire Sierra Nevada history (over 250,000 acres). The tour featured discussions about salvage operations, reforestation, and forest policy.
On August 17, 2013, an illegal campfire at the bottom of a valley in the dry Sierra Nevada summer sparked the largest wildfire in Sierra Nevada recorded history, the Rim Fire. In just days, the fire grew to over 100,000 acres. By the time it was contained two months later, the fire had burned an area twice the size of Lake Tahoe (257,314 acres, approximately 402 sq mi).
The Rim Fire was unique in many ways in addition to its size. Over 35% of the burned area was categorized as high severity, and 60% of the high severity burned in just two days. Though fire weather conditions the day of Rim Fire were not particularly unusual for the area, atmospheric instability was very high. The collapse of the fire's massive smoke plume, which was visible from space, contributed to the fire's extreme severity, pushing 100+ mph winds (high enough to break mature trees in half) out in all directions.
The fire affected a broad range of stakeholders, who are now uniting in efforts to rehabilitate and recover the area. The fire burned across boundaries into private land (both industrial and family forests), National Forests, and National Parks, including Yosemite National Park and the nearby Hetch Hetchy valley, home to San Francisco's water supply (though impacts to water quality were minimal).
The Northern California & Southern California Society of American Foresters (NorCal/SoCal SAF) joint summer meeting, held August 22-23rd 2014, brought over 120 people from diverse professions and interests to visit the Rim Fire. Experts from industry, academia, federal and state government, and non-profits spoke to the effects this fire has had on the landscape and community, and next steps.
The effect of fuel treatments and previous fires on fire behavior and severity was a major topic of discussion on the tour. Though the extreme nature of the fire meant that many areas burned at high severity regardless of past fuels reduction, areas that had been fuel reduced gave firefighters an advantage when fighting the fire (especially fuel-reduced areas along roads). On days with less extreme fire weather, many areas with reduced fuel loads burned at lower severity. Overall, it is estimated that treated areas experienced 20% high severity fire, while non-treated areas had 38% high severity. Treatment type, age, land location all had an impact on effectiveness, with a greater reduction in treatment viability after about 10 years.
Restoration and rehabilitation is now the greatest concern for the area. Salvage logging on private lands is winding down, and replanting is likely to take place next spring (drought depending). The US Forest Service (USFS) is finalizing their Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for salvage operations, which will make it one of the fastest EISs ever accomplished. Replanting is not a given on public land, and there is much debate as to the best way to plant a resilient forest under USFS's political and budgetary constraints. Sections of the Rim Fire that overlapped with areas replanted from fires in the last two decades burned severely. Planting was done under the assumption that a pre-commercial thin would take place, but when budgetary limitations prevented thinning, high fuel loads quickly returned.
Currently, federal wildfire budgeting does not effectively allocate funds. USFS and Department of Interior (DOI) budgets for non-suppression programs are raided year after year to pay for rising wildfire costs. As a result, planning and implementation of critical landscape management programs are delayed and canceled—leading to a backlog of projects that may help to reduce wildfire impacts. While wildfires are an inevitable and essential part of the California ecosystem, changes to policy may help prevent and mitigate catastrophic mega-fires like the Rim Fire.
The final stop on the tour included a policy update from The Society of American Foresters (parent organization of NorCal and SoCal SAF). SAF is one of over 230 diverse organizations supporting the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act (S. 1875 & HR 3992), which would end the cycle of fire borrowing. The bill would treat the largest fires as disasters and allow USFS and DOI to reinvest in programs that increase forest health and resilience.
The road to recovery will be long, but there is much to be learned from the Rim Fire. Our knowledge of these ecosystems is finite, and climate change will continue to bring unpredictable and unique challenges to an already difficult and uncertain process. We are left with the understanding that all we can do is bring together a broad range of stakeholders and interest groups to use our collective knowledge to bring this area back to life. One speaker said it best: “if we unite, we can do better.”
