Firefighters must cope with nature's rules

by SIGRUN MARIA KRISTINSDOTTIR  Star Reporter

When Elton John sang about the circle of life in The Lion King, he was singing about forest fires, says Al Beaver, the Yukon's Fire Management Planning supervisor.

"Fire isn't the great evil that it's been made out to be over the years; it's a very natural process," he said in an interview late last week, on the eve of the raging fires near Burwash Landing and in the Klondike.

In fact, he says, if humans could somehow eliminate fires from the boreal forest ecosystem, it would collapse and die.

"It's actually what they call a fire-dependent ecosystem. All the vegetation, all the animals, everything has adapted to fire. Fire is actually an important process within the ecosystem."

The trouble people have with fire is when they have placed permanent subdivisions in the middle of a boreal forest ecosystem - the largest, most northerly forest ecosystem in the world.

The boreal forest ecosystem burns periodically, and has done so for the last 10,000 years. The average cycle for forest fires in the territory is about 50 years, Beaver says.

Last year was possibly the most extreme forest fire year on record.. Notwithstanding the current infernos, it's difficult to say how this summer will be.

"It doesn't have to get as bad as last year (for us) to have an extreme season," says Beaver.

There are about 80 firefighters in the Yukon, with two air tanker groups. When needed, helicopters are hired and extra firefighters are brought in, such as the ones borrowed from British Columbia this week.

The Yukon's fire crews maintain on average a 90 percent success rate in dealing with our forest fires - an exceptionally good rate, says Beaver. Even with last year's extreme conditions, 86 percent of the blazes were contained, he said.

When Fire Management workers are determining the fire danger level in certain places, they look at the age of the forests.

Since the boreal forest is dependent on fire, it becomes more flammable with age. The different types of forest will burn with different intensities under the same weather conditions, and Fire Management looks at that as well.

When a fire has gone through, the fuel in that place has been reduced. Therefore, it usually takes several years before another fire starts in that place, as there is nothing left to burn, Beaver explains.

The weather also plays a big part in forest fires, says Beaver, with wind and rain being key factors. So far, the weather patterns this year haven't been the same as last year.

"Through some very complicated equations, we can chart on a day-to-day basis what our fire danger is," says Beaver. To do this, officials use the Canadian Fire Danger Rating System, which takes several weather parameters: temperature, relative humidity, wind and precipitation.

The climate in the Yukon is dry, and while the recent rains have certainly helped, it doesn't take long for it to dry out again, Beaver explains.

He took as an example the fact that a couple of weeks ago, it was cool and rainy in the territory, and fire had trouble starting. Within a few days, however, the conditions went up to high or extreme.

"It's difficult to say exactly what's going to happen. Right now we're in high to extreme conditions. If it continues like that and we get some ignition, we're going to have an interesting year... But if it starts raining and rains every second day, it'll be a quiet season," says Beaver.

"We're really at the mercy of nature in a lot of ways. You prepare as best you can for conditions that you can actually have some control over."

The amount of snowfall has some influence on forest fires, and it's one of the things measured, says Beaver. However, it's not as crucial as it might be if the spring rains come at the right time.

"The important thing is the timeliness of the spring and summer rains," says Beaver. Rain sometimes kills big fires the crews can't manage.

"There is virtually nothing…that 40 or 50 millimetres of rain couldn't solve," says Beaver.

Firefighters have good control over most things that happen while the fire danger conditions are low to moderate.

"We can pretty much handle anything under those conditions: the cards are stacked in our favour. In high and extreme levels, they are stacked in nature's favour," he explains.

About half the fires in the territory are caused by people such as the Burwash-area blaze. The other half are sparked by lightning; about one in every 200 lightning strikes ignite, says Beaver.

Most of the human-caused fires occur in places where the firefighters have reasonably good access to the fire.

"We do very, very well at controlling and extinguishing people-caused fires. But even then (with) some conditions on certain days the fire can ignite and accelerate beyond control very, very quickly," says Beaver.

He took last summer's Fox Lake-area inferno as an example. Everything was done properly and on time, but when the crews got there, there was nothing they could do, he says. They did manage to save some cabins in the area by hosing them down.

Lightning-caused fires, on the other hand, can break out anywhere where there is a flammable forest fuel type, and those can be harder to control. Many in remote areas burn until nature has extinguished them, says Beaver.

"It gives the people the impression that we have a choice sometimes. A lot of times we don't have a choice. It's not a case of 'let burn', it's a case of 'there is nothing you can do about it'," he stresses.

A newer way of renewable resources management is to follow the principles of ecosystem management, he says.

"So you manage within the rules of nature," says Beaver. Humans can make all sorts of policies, procedures, and legislation, he adds.

"But nature makes its own rules and it doesn't consult with anybody. And it literally doesn't care what our rules are. In many cases, nature will have its way."