The Wooden Nutmeg

Photo essay from the Wood River Valley area: http://d90.us/wooden_nutmeg/essays/Arcadia_2010/

A really great write up of managing fire in New England Pine Barrens, archive here.

In addition to those “natural community” issues, few active firefighters have seen truly severe fire conditions in New England.

Although rainfall alone doesn’t dictate fire danger (frequency of rain is likely much more important in New England in keeping fire danger to “high” or below), the following graphs show a very sharp difference between pre-1970 and post-1970 climate. You can get more data for different regions of the New England states here.

I strongly suspect that it is not coincidence that we haven’t had a serious forest fire problem in southern New England since the early 1960s. Before, roughly, 1970 we used to experience a deep drought about every ten years. Nothing since 1970 has matched those 10 year droughts.

Also I’m still researching the frequency rain events. Rain tends to “reset” the fire danger.

Let’s assume a cycle like this; while conjecture it’s not an unreasonable cycle based on my observations over the years:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: High
Day 6: High
Day 7: Very High
Day 8: Very High
Day 9: Very High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Now add in one overnight rain:
Day 1: Rain (Low danger)
Day 2: Moderate
Day 3: High
Day 4: High
Day 5: Rain overnight (moderate)
Day 6: Moderate
Day 7: High
Day 8: High
Day 9: High
Day 10: Rain (Low)

Most people wouldn’t notice a major impact from an extra shower or two in April, but it could be having a very large impact on fire danger.

May, 1930 Fire Outbreak in the Northeast

The articles that follow are from the New London Day documenting a break out of wildfires in Connecticut and Rhode Island (as well as the rest of the northeast).

There were warning signs at the very end of April, with a large fire in Colchester, East Hampton, and Marlborough consuming 3,000 acres. Even by the standards of the day that was a fairly large fire:

A few days later Waterford had a woods fire.

This one only covered 100 acres, but something ominous was occurring:

Foreman Thomas B. Woodworth of the Quaker Hill fire department [said] some of the “new” fires broke out 1,000′ ahead of the firemen. He said that it was possible the blazes may have been started from blazing bits of dried chestnut wood.

Ok, so we’re also in the middle of the Chestnut Blight that put a very large load of dead fuels in the forests. But that aside, since the trees were dead the year before and the year after and we didn’t have these intense fires every year…they were seeing “spotting” 1,000′ ahead of the fire. In Connecticut. (This is the first documentation I’ve seen that gives a distance with what we can expect for spotting in our area in an extreme fire year).

Then all hell broke loose.

From The New London Day on May 5, 1930:

Six homes, thirty other buildings, and 3,000 acres in Westerly and Charlestown, RI that burned essentially to the sea:

250 homes in Nashua, NH are destroyed by a brush fire that turned into an urban conflagaration:

A fire in Glastonbury, later put at around 2,500 acres, would burn five miles in length from it’s origin, and at one point reach four miles wide. Being fought by 1,000 men. “Small” fires burning 60 to 150 acres destroyed buildings in Newtown & Windsor. Another 1,000 acres in Bristol. And a 2,500 more acres in New Britain / Southington / Plainville. So a 1,000 men…that’s what, a request for 40 strike teams today? And oh by the way, we have two more fires of this size within 20 miles of here, too…oh I’d love to be a fly on the wall when that request arrives at the DEMHS.

Meanwhile in Massachusetts, 1,500 acres was burning by Marlborough and 2,000 acres in Russel, two of the “20 bad and 75 minor” fires that day:

Niantic was busy trying to protect their cottages from a brush fire:

I only got the last half of this article on New London County…multiple fires in Waterford with hundreds fighting them, Gungywamp in Groton, 2,500 acres in Preston, Ledyard, and North Stonington:

On the sixth comes an article that would have folks throw a fit today:

Finally, at the risk of pulling a Ron Popeil and going, “But wait, there’s more!”

Connecticut’s first state forester, Austin Hawes, would later place the total acreage in Connecticut that burned in this first week of May, 1930 at around 25,000 acres. And they were actually kind of pleased by that — the last bad year of 1922 had seen 80,000 acres burn.

Washington County, RI would see some 30,000 acres burn. An article up above already mentioned the 3,000 acre fire in Westerly. North of Westerly there were two more fires that burned along the Connecticut and Rhode Island borders, in Rhode Island alone one consumed 10,000 acres and the other 12,000.

The worse of these ignited around Glasgo, CT (Griswold by the Voluntown town line) and burned all the way to Nooseneck Hill Road — today’s R.I. Route 3, or spitting distance from where I-95 crosses the state today. The proximity of the two big fires, along with the spotting that was occurring, it’s quite likely they were a single fire and/or merged along the way.

This same fire is described several times in various histories of the Yawgood Scout Reservation, such as this one:

The plateau was the place where Chief Williams and “Gus” Anthony had a dangerous encounter with the great forest fire, as described in the second edition of The Story of the Yawgoog Trails:

Chief Williams and Gus Anthony stood on this plateau on Sunday afternoon, May 3, 1930 amidst the blinding smoke and falling embers and heard the roar of the great forest fire that came sweeping down from the Beach Pond area six miles [10 kilometers] away. “The fire roared like an express train as the giant white pines exploded into flames like torches.” Chief and Gus ran for their lives back down the trail toward Rathom Lodge (Williams and Tracy).

(There may some exaggeration going on — Beach Pond is 3 miles due north of Yawgoog, maybe 4 to the far northwest corner of the pond. Or the origin was considerably behind Beach Pond, either north or west of it and Beach Pond was used simply as a convenient land mark)

From the August, 14 2005 Providence Journal:

Byline: John Kostrzewa

Aug. 14–HOPKINTON — AFTER 75 YEARS, THE GREAT FIRE’S LESSONS LIVE ON: The Great Fire of 1930 burned a terrible chapter into the history of Camp Yawgoog.

It was a tragedy and a natural disaster.

The fire destroyed all but 50 acres of the Boy Scout camp set deep in the woods of South County. The devastation drove the birds and ground animals from the blackened and desolate landscape.

The sounds of life disappeared.

While the story of the Great Fire is a dark memory from Scouting’s past, it also is a story about hope, turning disaster into triumph and rallying for a common cause.

Mostly, it’s about Scout spirit that today still burns brightly at Yawgoog.

Here’s what happened 75 years ago this summer.

The winter and spring of 1930 were among the driest on record. The lack of snowfall and rain reduced streams to trickles. The water level in Yawgoog Pond dropped several feet.

Back then, Scouting in Rhode Island was still in its infancy. Most people had never heard of Yawgoog.

But two early Scout leaders, J. Harold “Chief” Williams and H. Cushman “Gus” Anthony, envisioned the wooded area as a future summer camp for boys and began to develop the property the new organization acquired.

They cleared some land for tents and erected a mess hall and headquarters.

During the first weekend in May 1930, Williams and Anthony were leading a training session for Scout leaders at Yawgoog when the fire warden came into camp. He warned that a fire had broken out well to the west, in Connecticut, and was spreading. He told them to be on the lookout.

Williams and Anthony smelled the smoke the next morning, as soon as they poked their heads out of their tents. They sent a team of campers and local volunteers with buckets, brooms and rakes to set up firebreaks at the edge of camp.

They walked west through the campground until they saw three huge columns of smoke on the horizon.

The fire, whipped by strong winds, approached with a terrifying roar. The thick smoke overtook them. The heat seared the buttons on their shirts.

They were forced to retreat and decided the only parts of camp they might save were the main buildings.

Anthony climbed to the roof of the lodge at the camp called Three Point and sprayed the roof and walls with water from a garden hose. Other adult leaders pushed their cars into the pond to escape the embers.

The fire swept along Yawgoog Pond and through the campground. Flames surrounded them, but Williams, Anthony and the others saved the lodge.

The next morning, the fire broke out on the far side of Yawgoog Pond, across from the camp. The fire crept along the shore and then leaped to Phillips Island. The Scout leaders watched the giant pines and white birches on the island ignite like torches.

Still, it was not over. The blaze continued the third day along Wincheck Pond at the opposite end of the camp.

When the fire finally died out, Williams and Anthony hiked through what was left of Yawgoog. Tent platforms, several cabins, even the docks had been destroyed. Charred tree trunks and rubble, still-smoldering, were visible for acres.

It was Anthony who first noticed the silence that had settled over the camp. The wildlife had fled, seeking sanctuary from the fire.

Standing in the black ashes, a foot deep in places, Williams and Anthony looked out at what was left of their vision.

“It was heartbreaking,” Williams said.

But he also saw the opportunity. He saw the chance to pull together a fledgling organization of troops scattered throughout the state to work on a common goal.

The fire had been front-page news in the daily papers. With Rhode Islanders focused on the damage, Williams put out the call and began to build a network of Scouting supporters in business, industry, government and the media. They all agreed to pitch in.

“We began at once to think of reforestation,” Williams said.

Two weeks after the fire, on an early Sunday morning, 500 Scouts and leaders from 79 troops from across Rhode Island arrived at the gates to Yawgoog. Each troop was assigned a section of camp and given an initial batch of 50 seedlings purchased from a nursery in Maine.

In a single, long day, the Scouts and volunteers planted 25,000, five-year-old white pine seedlings over 250 acres.

When the Scouts finished, a light rain blessed their work.

“Mother Nature has begun to heal the blackened wounds,” Williams said.

Fourteen months later, in July 1931, judges, politicians, business executives, editors, benefactors, Scouts and adult volunteers gathered at Camp Yawgoog.

They were there to dedicate the Bucklin Memorial, the huge, stone and wood-beamed building that serves as camp headquarters. But the talk was about the trees. The softwood pines planted by the Scouts grew among the hardwoods that had sprung back to life.

Federal forestry agents said it was the single largest reforestation effort in the history of Rhode Island — a model for others to follow.

And walking through camp, they all heard the sounds of life again.

Since the Great Fire, Yawgoog has become a familiar name to Rhode Islanders and one of the premier camps in the country.

Scouting has grown, too. But there also have been more tragedies, especially this summer.

During the national jamboree last month in Virginia that attracted 40,000 Scouts, four leaders were electrocuted setting up camp. Later, 300 Scouts there suffered heat exhaustion. In a separate incident elsewhere, a Scout from Utah was struck by lightning.

And then, Yawgoog itself was closed for 12 days after a contagious stomach virus sickened more than 100 Scouts.

Last Sunday, after a fresh scrubbing, Yawgoog reopened. About 800 Scouts spent a great week earning merit badges, making friends, learning to live as a community and having fun.

On the same trail hiked by William and Anthony to inspect the devastation from the Great Fire, the Scouts may have seen the marker for the reforestation, or heard the story told around the campfire.

It’s a pretty good lesson for Scouts and for that matter, for all of us.

John Kostrzewa, business editor, spent last week as a volunteer at Camp Yawgoog.

To see more of the The Providence Journal, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.projo.com.

Copyright (c) 2005, The Providence Journal, R.I.

Slowly rotting away. The metal looks in good shape, not sure I’d trust the wood anymore!

Rhode Island stopped routinely staffing their fire towers around 1990, although some are occasionally staffed by the DEM on the worse fire danger days. Esocheag seems to get no love. This tower was erected in 1938, is 80′ high, and sits at 560′ above sea level. Photos from 2004 and 1990 can be found here. (In those pictures you’ll see a “candy cane” radio tower, that is no longer there. There is a newer tower which is un-painted and I believe shorter. It may have been erected a little further south then the radio tower in the older pictures, too.)

This tower would’ve looked down at a 30,000 acre fire a few miles to it’s north in 1942, and nine years later it would witness an 8,000 acre fire burning just to it’s south.

I do have mixed feelings on fire towers. From a romantic standpoint, I think they’re cool. From an economic standpoint, you would have to have some sharp pencils to show me that they are cost effective. There are some volunteer staffing programs around the nation (see this post), and it makes me wonder if you compromised with the State maintaining the towers and retired (but in good health) volunteers manning them the few critical weeks each year if it would be a reasonable compromise.

When Connecticut discontinued their fire towers in the 1980s they removed them, so at least we don’t have pathetic sights like watching Esocheag rot away. Massachusetts still staffs a number of their towers, with more in a “reserve” status that sees them manned occasionally. When listening to a fire in Dudley last week when the Charlton tower was closed due to lack of staff, the Patrolman from Douglas State Forest went up the Oxford tower to get a third, more accurate line since the towers in Princeton and Mendon were having difficulty pinpointing it and determining if it was a single and not multiple fires.

Burned 8,000 acres in Exeter and West Greenwich Rhode Island. I drove this area today, man…so many good photos to take of woods ready to explode once again I have to plan a day for the photos I want to take! May need to wait till next spring before “green up” for maximum effect.

Another large fire was burning in the Massachusetts / Connecticut / Rhode Island border region as well.

I never realized how extensive the pitch pine / scrub oak community is along the Connecticut and Rhode Island border, particularly in Coventry and West Greenwich along the state line. This area is probably around 10 square miles. As this was a major portion of the May, 1942 fires one can imagine the fire spread that would have occurred in such an isolated area. An old rail line runs roughly along the northern side of this pitch pine forest; as the arsonist was a railroad section foreman we’re left to wonder at this time how much that played a roll. Also interesting is why this area is still pitch pine — was it always? Why is the Connecticut side more mature? Was it better attention on the Connecticut side towards re-planting with white pines and more active fire suppression post 1942? Is it simply a difference in soils?

From a firefighting perspective, the difficulties posed by acre after acre of this:

Compared to more typical New England mixed forests:

Is fairly dramatic.

In the latter case, it is relatively easy to construct control lines even if occasional obstacles must be bypassed. A crew using a backpack leaf blower could build quite a bit of line quickly, reinforcing it with a burn out to the body of the main fire.

In the former, in the pitch pine with a thick story of underbrush (probably blueberry or huckleberry; I’ll have to re-visit the area this summer when the leaves are out to tell for sure)…building control lines away from the fire will be much, much more difficult. Backpack blowers are out, at best Council fire rakes might help. With the higher flame heights from brush compared to hardwood leaf litter a wider line is probably needed as well as making a burn out a more risky tactic to try.

Except along established control lines such as roads, it would seem the best tactic is the hot and dirty work of directly attacking the fire along the flanks, hopefully with a hoseline! Lacking that, then with indian tanks and hand tools while making slow progress compared to simple leaf litter, despite having a fire that is burning hotter, higher, and faster to deal with.

West Greenwich saw a continuous decline in population from 2,054 in 1790, to only 367 in 1920.

By 1940 the population had increased to 526. Still very small for it’s 51.3 square miles!

The border between West Greenwich and Coventry, west to the Connecticut border, is a large area of pitch pine and scrub oak. One thing I need to research more is why — is there a change in soil by Connecticut, as well as north and south, that favors more mature forests? Or is this purely a function of repeated fires keeping the pitch pine ecosystem dominant?

Some quick and dirty statistics gathered from here (archive).

Major Fires:
1930 — 34,700 acres in R.I.
1942 — 24,500 acres in R.I.
1951 — Acreage not specified

The 1930 and 1942 fires started in Connecticut.  1942 burned about 14,000 acres on the Connecticut side; unsure at this time how many burned in 1930.  From personal recollection of stories heard but not confirmed yet by research the ’51 fire burned generally the area between the 1930 and 1942 fires.

1935 — 63% of R.I. forested
1938 — Hurricane, eventually 80 million board feet of lumber salvaged
1953 — 64% forested; 281 million board feet standing
1998 — 59% forested; 1,316 million board feet standing

On a bit less land, the volume of trees in Rhode Island expand four fold in 45 years.  What that speaks directly to is the lack of “maturity” in the woods of 1953, which relates to forest fires.  Immature woods are brushier and more prone to hot fires and younger trees are more prone to lethal injuries to their bark.  As the forests mature, they become less likely to burn and more resistant to the impact of what does burn.

This is a fire that plays an important part in this blog, which you can read in my welcome post.

This post is not an exhaustive history, but the highlights of some articles I already have in my archives.  Someone mentioned this fire on another forum today, which inspired me to look at my notes again.

By the third day of the fire, some 3,000 men had been put to work on the fire with 400 more soldiers enroute from Niantic and Fort Devens.   It had already destroyed 13 homes.

New York Times article, 1 May 1942

The perils of the fire fighters were undergoing were reflected in countless stories.  One of these was told by Corporal Ralph Walsh of Woonsocket, who had become cut off from his fellow-Guardsmen and was badly hurt before being rescued.

He purposely bogged himself in a swamp when a raging burst of crown fire threatened to bombard him with flaming branches.

“I’ve been a woodsmen for a good many years,” he said, “But I never saw any fire as swift as this one.  The lieutenant sent me for water and I guess I got lost because of the smoke.  The next thing I knew, flames were rushing toward me in the underbrush.  I started running ahead of them.  It was terrible.”

“But you haven’t heard anything yet.  I happened to look up in the air and there above me the flames were leaping from top to top among the pines.  I had to keep going.  Finally I saw an opening in the woods.  I made for it and it was a swamp.  I waded through the mud and that’s the last thing I remember.

New York Times, 3 May 1942

This brief article from the Times said firefighters in Killingly (the town north of Sterling) controlled one fire that had burned one mile wide and three miles long.

Providence, R.I., May 3
With at least three forest fires still burning, although the worst was believed definitely over, Rhode Island State Police recorded today for the first time their convition that the outbeaks, which have spread damage in a sixty-square-mile area since Thursday, were incendiary.

New York Times, 4 May 1942

Hartford, Conn.  May 14 (AP)
The Connecticut and Rhode Island State Police announced jointly tonight the arrest of a man they said admitted starting forest fires which swept a wide area in both States two weeks ago, causing damage estimated as high as three million dollars.
…
Edward Francis LaCasse, 30, of Plainfield…was being held in Kingston, R.I. tonight and a … bench warrant charging arson would be sought in Superior Court at Putnam, Conn., tomorrow.
Arsonist Arrested

Justice moved swiftly in those days — only 8 days later he had been convicted and sent to prison.  He admitted guilt to lighting the Connecticut fire, although it seems he didn’t admit guilt for fires lit in Rhode Island.

I believe (confirmation from two sources now — my father and this post, but no news articles yet that I have seen) that three Rhode Island firefighters died on these fires in a burnover incident when their truck stalled in heavy smoke.  If that is true, it could explain his reluctance to admit guilt specifically to the fire which killed those firefighters.

Putnam, May 22.–(Special..)–Edward F. LaCasse, 30, volunteer fireman, of Plainfield, was taken to State’s Prison in Wethersfield Friday afternoon to begin serving a term of seven to 15 years imposed on arson charges in Windham County Superior Court here earlier…

Many fire ponds were constructed during the Great Depression to provide a ready source of water to fight fires.

Created to ease the financial strains of the Great Depression, the Civilian Conservation Corps, or CCC, employed over 3,000,000 young men* between 1933-1942.  The 21 camps in Connecticut provided barrack-style food and housing along with a small monthly stiped.  The men worked o a variety of conservation projects including forest road construction, recreation area development and fire suppression.

A system of fire ponds, each holding a minimum of 7500 gallons of water, served as the main water source for fire suppression in the state forests.  This particular fire pond was probably built by enrollees from Camp Connor in Stafford Springs circa 1936.   The goal of building one pond per 100 acres on state land and one pond per 200 acres on private land was curtailed by the onset of WWII and the closing of the CCC camps.  By 1941, the CCC had completed 404 water holes in the 80,000 acres of state forest and 269 holes on private land.

This fire pond, restored to the original conditionin 2001, illustrates one of several designs utilized by the CCC.

…

Many unrestored fire ponds can discovered along forest roads throughout Shenipsit and Nipmuck State Forest.

From this sign:

Sign at the Mountain Laurel Sanctuary, Nipmuck State Forest, Union, CT

This is the pond it refers to:

Fire pond at Mountain Laurel Sanctuary, Nipmuck State Forest, Union, CT

This is another style of pond:

Fire Pond in Natchaug State Forest, Hampton, CT

My observation is these ponds would have been most useful during the spring fire season, filled by snow melt and spring rains.  In a normal summer today these are dry by mid-summer, and thus not available in the summer and fall fire seasons during a drought.  I doubt this would have been any different seventy years ago.

They would have been useful for filling Indian tanks, as well as portable pumps and hose.

Today forestry agencies around the U.S. continue to improve rural water supplies, often under the auspices of the U.S. Forest Service’s Rural Community Fire Protection cooperative program they administer.

RI Rural Community Fire Protection Program
RC&D [Resource Conservation & Development] partnered with the DEM- Division of Forest Environment to provide rural communities with fire protection assistance. In 2006 RC&D designed, produced, and
distributed 200 Dry Hydrant Guidance Manuals to local fire departments, held four workshops across the state on the program and received 19 applications for dry hydrants from six rural fire departments. When installed these hydrants will improve fire protection for an estimated 13,000 residents of these communities.

Rhode Island Resource Conservation & Development 2006 Annual Report

These static water supplies are considerably larger then the old hand dug fire ponds of the CCC, designed to support both wildland and structural fire protection.  This is a representative dry hydrant installation:

[Photo of the Hampton hydrant will go here, once I find it...]

There is a couple ways to estimate coverage for the old water holes.

One is we can assume a square grid with perfectly even distribution.  100 acres would be approximately 2,000 feet square.  From the center of that square to a side would be 1,000′ while reaching a corner would take 1,400′.

Another is to use a circle centered on the water hole.  A circle 1,200′ in radius would cover approximately 100 acres, while a circle 1,650′ in radius would cover approximately 200′ acres.

* For perspective, the U.S. population in 1940 was 134 Million, of which 5.6 Million were males between the age of 20 and 24.  A proportionately sized program today would employ some 7 Million men, with about 2 Million in active service at any given time.