By: Andrew Avitt, Jan. 17, 2023-
Claire Price (left), and Kyle Hitchcock permanent seasonal firefighters on the Shasta Lake Ranger District, during a pile burn to remove hazardous fuels on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest December 6, 2022. (USDA Forest Service photo)
Editor’s note: For the full story in pictures, visit Pile Burn: Shasta-Trinity National Forest Lake Shore East Campground and Weaver Bally Fire Lookout photo albums on Flickr.
Wildfire is driven by three main factors — weather, terrain, and fuels. When fighting wildfires, firefighters work to reduce the fuel feeding the fire, either by removing it with heavy equipment, handlines or by making it hard to burn by soaking the fuel with water or retardant.
When reducing fire risk to communities, land managers take the same approach across landscapes to reduce vegetation or fuels, including brush and dead and down trees.
Fuels reduction projects are a critical step in helping protect homes, businesses, and recreation sites from destructive wildfires.
On the Shasta-Trinity National Forest, fire personnel have been busy conducting pile burns across the landscape. Pile burning is usually a one-to-two-year process from beginning to end. First brush, called slash, is collected and placed in piles. Then the pile will sit for a year, drying out, to be burned in wetter, colder months.
Justin Regelin, a Fuels Battalion Chief with Shasta Lake National Recreation Area, coordinates fuels treatments across his district. Land managers are focusing work on areas with greatest outcomes to protect the forest, communities, and infrastructure.
“A good example is the work we’ve done on three of the highest-use campgrounds on the district — Lake Shore East, Antler and Hirz Campgrounds,” said Regelin. “Not only are these campgrounds important to visitors, they are critical to reducing wildfire risk to communities like the nearby town of Lakehead.”
Lakehead, California, approximate population of 500, is representative of communities found in the Wildland Urban Interface, or developed areas adjacent to wildland landscapes.
“Treated areas are important to reducing wildfire risk to these communities,” said Regelin. “If a wildfire were to start at one of these campgrounds or to move through it, there would be less material for the fire to consume, which would decrease it’s rate of spread and give firefighters an opportunity to respond and suppress the fire.”
Kenrick Frank, a Wildland Fire Apprentice on the Shasta Lake Ranger District, during a pile burn to remove hazardous fuels on the Shasta-Trinity National Forest December 6, 2022. (USDA Forest Service Photo)
There are other strategic locations that land managers will identify and treat to protect communities. Geographic features such as ridgelines and boundaries between land ownerships are often selected. Treating these areas can reinforce this natural barrier. One of these ridgelines was recently treated near Weaver Bally Fire Lookout, north of Weaverville, California, on Dec. 7, 2022.
The area, on the southern edge of the Trinity Alps Wilderness, was treated because of its strategic importance to reducing wildfire threat to the nearby communities of Weaverville, Junction City, and Rush Creek.
Tim Ritchey, the Fuels Battalion Chief on the Trinity River Management Unit in Weaverville, has worked with the Forest Service for 22 years and implements a variety of fuels reduction projects on the west side of the Shasta-Trinity National Forest.
“This strategic fuel break, north of Weaverville is right on the wilderness boundary,” said Ritchey. “This will be important in the event that wildfires start within the wilderness and burn towards communities by providing firefighters another point of control.”
This isn’t a new concept or new strategy, said Ritchey — producing an old topographic map from 1968 that identified the ridge as a good location to implement a fuel break.
“Our work has always been focused primarily around protecting values at risk,” said Ritchey. “So that’s our communities, roads, phone and power lines, campgrounds, but we’re also focused on protecting the forest and supporting forest health.”
Flickr Album: Pile burn operations were conducted on the Shasta–Trinity National Forest near Weaver Bally Fire Lookout, north of Weaverville, California, on Dec. 7, 2022. The area, on the southern edge of the Trinity Alps Wilderness, was selected for treatment because of its strategic importance in protecting nearby communities from wildfire… more pictures.
Before and after pile burning to reduce brush at Lake Shore East Campground on Shasta-Trinity NF (USDA Forest Service Photo)
Esteban Avitia, firefighter type 2 with Big Bar Ranger District, tests his propane torch December 7, 2022.(USDA Forest Service photo)
Adam Dummer, fire engine operator on the Big Bar Ranger District, during pile burning operations on the Shasta –Trinity National Forest near Weaver Bally Fire Lookout, north of Weaverville, California, December 7, 2022. (USDA Forest Service photo)