The Wooden Nutmeg

Halifax, Nova Scotia experienced a major wildfire yesterday.  Wildfiretoday.com had this good post that alerted me to it.

Halifax, NS 30 April 2009

The statistics, per this CBC article, are:

2,000 acres
8 Homes destroyed;
7 Homes damaged:
450 Homes evacuated;
58 Firefighters(1)
5 Helicopters

Fires like this are not unprecedented in the northeast, however they are much less common then the western or southern U.S. and less common regionally then they were prior to 1955 (2).

In 1947 Maine burned.  The Portland Press Herald has this good remembrance (archive) of the fires.  As part of the reaction to that, the first interstate forest fire compact was established in 1949 — the Northeast Forest Fire Protection Commission.  This Commission expanded to an international agreement in 1969 when Quebec joined New York and the New England states as members, and later expanded to include New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.

While today the states in the northeast can call for national assistance through the National Interagency Fire Center, through NFFPC manpower familiar and equipment appropriate for the typical terrain, fuels, and fire conditions in the northeast are directly available.  For example, member states and provinces have access to Quebec’s fleet of CL-215 and CL-415 water bombers, which are better suited to the regional fire situation then western style aerial tankers.

In 1951 the Commission held a major drill at Great Mountain, Norfolk, Conn., that you can read about here.

While much has changed over the last 60 years to reduce the frequency and size of typical fires, we still have woodlands that will burn ferociously in the right circumstances.

Those circumstances may not even be an extended drought; an ordinary dry periods combined with a major (or series of) forest disturbances can create serious problems.  As mentioned in a number of posts including this one yesterday, much of north-central Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire are under the gun starting next year due to the ice storm this past December.  It seems a similar disturbance played a role in Halifax according to a CTV report:

The fire flared up yesterday but was thought to be under control, until winds picked up Thursday afternoon, sparking 15 metre flames that jumped from treetop to treetop.

Officials have yet to pinpoint an exact cause of the fire, but some said an abundance of brush and remnants of downed trees from Hurricane Juan in 2003 gave fuel to the fire.

5-1/2 year old dead fuels!  Hurricane Juan had made landfall at Halifax, with winds clocked at 100mph and estimates upwards of 145mph.  While downed trees in direct contact with the ground I presume would have been well on the way to rotting by now, tree tops and others that where hung up against tree trunks or stacked on top of other fallen trees and thus unable to wick up moisture from the soil would still be in decent shape to burn.

This report from the local newspaper, the Chronicle and Herald,  filed this afternoon provides some more details from the authorities:

Mr. Currie [Halifax Fire & EMS] said “the leftovers from hurricane Juan have been an issue. They’ve been an issue from the start and they still are an issue. It’s very difficult moving in and around this area with all the blow-down.”

Paul Schnurr, a forestry technician with the Department of Natural Resources, said Friday’s “wind conditions are somewhat the same (as the Porters Lake fire).”

“It’s a wind-driven fire, very fast moving, very hard to contain. It certainly moves faster than a lot of people can walk and that makes it very, very difficult.”

Fires can burn big and hot here.  Just this past Wednesday I walked a fire that was of stand killing intensity over about 60 acres back in 2006, something I will write up soon.  While I’ve seen such areas as a tourist in California, I’ve never seen an extended area in New England that had seen such intensity.  It gave me a new appreciation of how bad of shape our forests were in before modern fire suppression was well established and became effective in reducing what had been a common occurrence.  Earlier this month there was the 40 cottages lost at Alton, N.H., and now the Halifax fire.  Southern New England will experience the right circumstances again, and the level of fire activity will shock many people.

Halifax, NS 30 April 2009

(1) I assume this is probably just forestry agency personnel, and more municipal firefighters would’ve been involved.

(2) For reasons left to a future post to explain, 1955 seems to be a good demarcation point to mark when “modern” forest fire protection all came together and gelled into an effective system in New England and it was clear that frequent, major fires were on the decline.  A pioneering fire warden from 1915 would be amazed to see how things had changed by 1955; a fire warden from 1955 would recognize today as essentially the same as his time in organization, strategy, tactics, and tools — albeit tweaked and improved.