Living in a Land of Fire
Sunday, June 20, 2010 at 2:29PM
June has arrived, with dry weather and heavy winds. As I sit writing, two large fires are burning on the landscape around me. The Hardy Fire, about a mile or less away from my home, has me on standby for evacuation. The car is packed and ready to go, and as I sit here waiting, I cannot help but think about living in a landscape of fire.
Fire has been a part of the Northern Arizona landscape for millennia. Historical records show that fire moved through the Flagstaff landscape every 2-7 years. For the last 100 years we have altered this historical fire regime by suppressing such smaller fires. As a result, we have a landscape thick with trees and brush. Any fire now has the potential to be catastrophic, due to the presence of heavy fuel loads.
Fire, like water, displays certain patterns as it moves through the landscape. By understanding these patterns, we can begin to learn to live more in harmony with forest fire as a natural event. As it moves across the forest terrain in Northern Arizona, fire mostly:
- Runs uphill (slope)
- Moves with the wind (generally coming from the southwest)
- Moves with the fuel (vegetation)
With these patterns in mind, we can assess the fire risk of our homes and communities.
Fire tends to move uphill, in almost a reverse pattern of the movement of water. It is also swept into the direction of the winds that are blowing at the time. Here in Northern Arizona our winds typically come from the southwest, but hills and other vertical obstacles can cause that pattern to shift as the wind spirals around them. Canyons and valleys like Schultz Pass where a fire is blazing as I write, can cause intense winds. Depressions in the landscapes like this act as wind funnels especially if the orientation of the valley is in a west-southwest location. Fire also needs vegetation to fuel its movement. But without vegetation to burn, the fire will begin to suppress itself. Dry stressed trees and shrubs burn more readily than healthy moist trees. Also, the closer the vegetation is to other vegetation or fuel sources, such as houses, the easier it is to spread.
If we examine these three patterns together, we can much better understand fire risk. For instance, houses on the tops of hills are much more likely to burn than houses in low lying areas, as the fire will naturally move uphill. If that hilltop home also has dense dry vegetation to the southwest, it will be at even greater risk of burning than if the southwest aspect were covered in wet meadows or grassy parks.
My house is located in a low lying meadow surrounded by ridges lined with dense pines. My immediate neighborhood however, has fewer flammable large trees. To the southwest of my home, the direction from which the dominant winds are blowing, is a large grassy park edged by a main road. Both serve as fire breaks. So, even though the Hardy Fire burns within a mile of my home to the south, and the winds are coming from that direction, I feel fairly confident that my home is safe. I think if the fire were to come closer, it would be forced towards the vegetation uphill and away from my house. This is not to say that my home would be completely unharmed: larger fires take on their own rules and wind patterns as the the super hot air rises drastically, and the embers that fall out could land near me. But on the whole, I feel very safe.
Slope, wind, and vegetation are all part of the macro-scale patterns of fire. Google Earth is a great tool for beginning your assessment of fire risk, as one can see both slope and vegetation. Combine that with onsite observation of wind patterns, and you can determine your risk with greater confidence.
If your fire risk is high you might look at ways of decreasing it: Can forests nearby be thinned out to reduce fuel loads? Could the driveway or walkways act as fire breaks? And, what about your landscape? A well watered landscape can resist fire much more than a dry one. This does not mean that you have to waste city or well water on your landscape. It is important to remember that in the desert and water is a precious resource, but you can harvest a lot of water in the landscape through rain gardens or rainwater harvesting tanks, as well as reusing household greywater.
A friend of mine from Prescott told me a story about a few of the homes that survived the huge Rodeo-Chediski fire several years back. Looking over the aerial photos afterwards helped people understand how even amidst the huge blazes, some landscapes remained unburned. They checked out a number of them and found that each house had one thing in common: they each had a greywater system. The assumption is that the greywater irrigation kept the landscapes healthy and moist enough to be able to withstand the heat of the flames. We can all ensure that our landscapes are kept moist and our plants are well watered by reusing greywater and rainwater, and then retaining the moisture even longer by mulching as well. Not only do these techniques serve to conserve water for edible and other plant life, but they serve as natural firebreaks. This is the beauty of what in permaculture is called, "stacking functions."
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