Nifty article in the Boston Globe brought to our attention via WildfireToday.
On April 30, 1844, Thoreau started a blaze in the Concord Woods, scorching a 300-acre swath of earth between Fair Haven Bay and Concord.
This is a story I’ll have to dig into some more in the future.
Found this interesting 1927 Fire Weather Study (archive) recently, which included a couple interesting observations:
The fire records are for the following counties: Worcester County, the western half of Middlesex County, and the eastern half of Franklin, Hampshire, and Hampden Counties. The total area of the region is approximately 1,750,000 acres, the greater part of which is included in the so-called white pine region.
This is before the 1938 Hurricane, and it would be interesting to research further if it was still considered “white pine region” after that storm.
Of all the major forest types in the Northeast, the white pine type is inherently the most hazardous. Its leaf litter is highly inflammable because of the resin content. The size and form of pine needles produce a duff with practically no matting but with a great deal of porosity, so that the run-off after rainfall is extremely rapid. … White pine in New England is confined generally to the poorer soil types — those composed chiefly of sand. … Daily rainfalls of one-tenth of an inch or less do not keep the duff above the danger zone. Even with greater amounts of precipitation, the duff moisture content does not remain above 10 per cent for long unless the rains occur at short intervals.
That’s an interesting point about how quickly pine needles dry, and makes sense compared to broad hardwood leaves which would slow the drainage of water.
There is a table that shows the distribution of forest fires between April 11 and July 10, 1927 by relative humidity. The size of fires are surprising my modern standards:
11-15% 45 fires, 7,643 acres = 170 acres average 16-20% 140 fires, 4,059 acres = 29 acres average 21-25% 90 fires, 2,123 acres = 24 acres average 26-30% 94 fires, 1,395 acres = 15 acres average (Fires drop off dramatically above 30%)
100+ acre fires are now quite rare, perhaps three in a bad fire season now.
113 years ago tomorrow…
Big Forest Fire in Massachusetts Sandwich, Mass. April 15 [1896] -- A forest fire started in Cataumet this morning. It has raged all day over a tract of land between that place and Sandwich fifteen miles long and from one to four miles wide, and is not under control. ... Over 100 workmen from Sandwich are fighting the fire, but they have made little headway. ... [The fire] is moving in a northeasterly direction, and is within about two miles of the town. Backfires are being built all along the main thoroughfares between Cataumet and Coutuit... New York Times (archive)
It is interesting sometimes trying to interpret these old news clippings. Best I can figure the fire was burning northeasterly through the area now largely occupied by the Massachusetts Military Reservation. Cataumet is southwest, Coutuit southeast, and the “town” — the village named Sandwich — is northeast of MMR*. It’s unclear to me whether the backfires were being lit to the south to secure the heel of the fire on a line between Cataumet and Coutuit, or was they represent anchor points for backires being lit along the east and west flanks.
A couple other observations:
It was moving northeasterly, so it was being driven by a southwest wind. Southwest winds are the predominant wind direction in New England in springtime, and are the warmest, driest winds we experience.
Also interesting is the “100 workmen” — a fire today would be measured in thousands of firefighters for an incident that size in that location. Brett Crosby’s outstanding Capecodfd.com site has a special section that provides a lot of insight into the history of firefighting on the Cape and the peculiar fire problem they face.
But back then you didn’t have automobiles to rapidly assemble and move workers, and you didn’t have the organizations of trained firefighters ready to be called out. Hiring laborers was a standard practice to deal with fires, something that also appears in this article from Connecticut:
Forest Fire in Connecticut Middletown, Conn. Nov. 1. [1897] -- A forest fire is raging on South Mountains, adjacent to the Air Line Railroad tracks... Four hundred acres of woodland have been burned over. A gang of forty Italians have been at work fighting the fire since Sunday afternoon... New York Times (archive)
While it would be amusing if “gang of Italians” was an old term for a Type II hand crew, the more likely explanation is Italians at the time were frequently employed as laborers and construction workers.
* Since MMR was founded in 1911, covering 34 sq. miles, the population of the Cape has grown over 700%.(1). MMR will factor into later historical posts, as it’s the largest piece of primarily open space left on the Cape and over the years some major fires have started in the reservation.
We’re almost leaving New England for this post to talk about the Federal Fire Policy — something that applies directly only to Cape Cod National Seashore within the southern New England area I normally focus on. Western and Southern organization, strategy, and tactics are outside of my experience so I try not to go write often on them.
However policy is high level enough I feel comfortable commenting on, and it’s brought to us by the folks at FUSEE (Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology). While I do think they’re a bit obsessed over their dislike for Bush administration — clearly the Obama administration didn’t just change the fire policy in nine weeks. The new guidance was under development for about a year under Bush. But overall I tend to agree with their opinions more then I disagree.
Here is a key section out of the old policy (archive):
1. Only one management objective will be applied to a wildland fire. Wildland fires will either be managed for resource benefits or suppressed. A wildland fire cannot be managed for both objectives concurrently. If two wildland fires converge, they will be managed as a single wildland fire. 2. Human caused wildland fires will be suppressed in every instance and will not be managed for resource benefits. 3. Once a wildland fire has been managed for suppression objectives, i it may never be managed for resource benefit objectives.
When I read that, one word comes to mind: Pussies.
That was written by people who lack confidence, and in their fear huddle like helpless sheep holding up a sign, “Don’t blame me, I did this on advice of counsel.” Zero tolerance policies have no place in society — in our schools, or in our forests, or in our unforgiving attitude to persons who straightened themselves out after earlier felonies.
What we need are confident persons who are willing to make and defend reasonable, rational decisions. A boss at a R&D Center I worked at years ago once told me, “I don’t want to see you never fail, if you never fail it means you’re not taking risks to make things better. Now, I don’t want to see you fail all the time either!”
The folks who wrote and approved that policy were afraid to fail, to ever get criticized for the rare fire that was wrongly allowed to get out of control despite an admirable overall record.
Yes, I believe in John Wayne.
Olivia Dandridge: [after the massacre at Sudrow's Wells] You don't have to say it, Captain. I know all this is because of me; because I wanted to see the West; because I wasn't - I wasn't "Army" enough to stay the winter. Captain Nathan Brittles: You're not quite "Army" yet, miss... or you'd know never to apologize... it's a sign of weakness. Olivia Dandridge: Yes, but this was your last patrol and I'm to blame for it. Captain Nathan Brittles: Only the man who commands can be blamed. It rests on me... mission failure!
Better yet, a real life hero like Audie Murphy…but that’s a post for another day and maybe another day.
The new guidance represents, at least partially, re-adopting policies established back in the 1990s. You can find the 2009 Guidance here (archive) .
6. A wildland fire may be concurrently managed for one or more objectives and objectives can change as the fire spreads across the landscape. Objectives are affected by changes in fuels, weather, topography; varying social understanding and tolerance; and involvement of other governmental jurisdictions having different missions and objectives. ... 8. Initial action on human-caused wildfire will be to suppress the fire at the lowest cost with the fewest negative consequences with respect to firefighter and public safety.
That’s a balanced approach that should let a manager take risks in order to gain the benefits of the beneficial use of fire and lowest control costs. It remains to be seen how it is actually implemented in the field.
That is not, by any means, a new concept as this quote from 1912 indicates:
The cost of a fire line of this kind would vary according to the topography the nature of the forest and the thoroughness with which it is made, from $25 to $100 a mile. The maximum expenditure could hardly be justified except in the case of very valuable forests in extremely exposed situations but there are few forest areas that it would not pay to protect with some such kind of fire line.
Forestry in New England a handbook of eastern forest management
While the understanding of the science has changed a bit, even back then the literature was full of the pioneers of forest fire control balancing concerns over fire, costs, timber, and the environment. I can’t speak for the other sections of the country, but on balance the aggressive suppression of wildfires have made a dramatic improvement in our woodlands in New England. In 1915 Connecticut had one of it’s worse fire years — 115,000 acres out of perhaps 900,000 acres that was then forested. An average year saw 3% burn — and much of this 3% was the same brush lands every few years, preventing the growth of an actual forest. Remember many of the early forestry pioneers came from Yale Forestry School and other east-coast establishments, and I wonder how much of fire policy was an extension of their experiences around their own schools.
Warned from Connecticut Woods
NEW HAVEN, Conn., Oct. 14 [1930] (AP) –
State officials today requested everyone to stay out of the woods until the hazard of forest fire has been eliminated by heavy rains. Brush fires daily are presenting a menace. Patrick Brennan, a member of the Norwich Fire Department, died of monoxide poisoning while fighting a blaze near that city.
Hartford and New Britain water supplies are low, but in no danger of exhaustion, officials say, but New Haven sees limited service in the near future unless rains fill the reservoirs.
This is the first in a long series of me documenting some of the interesting fires I found in my research. It’s pretty neat to read the older style of journalism. My archived copy of this article is here. I also cross-posted this to ctfire-ems to see if anyone knows more information about FF Brennan.
