A6 Sunday, March 18, 2012
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Drought conditions at the turn of the century spurred a string of fires
FAST MOVING: For much of the first day, the Jasper
Fire burned 7 football fields per minute.
By Kevin Woster
Journal staff
Twelve years after it scorched
more than 83,000 acres in the
southern Black Hills, the Jasper
Fire still simmers in the memory
of firefighter Todd Pechota and
others who battled the blaze.
It was a wildfire like none
known previously in the Black
Hills — a searing example of how
bad things can get, and how
quickly they can get there.
“It was a career-defining inci-
dent,” said the 46-year-old Pe-
chota, a 25-year veteran of fire
suppression now working as a
fire-management officer for the
Black Hills National Forest. “Up to
that point, a person had seen a lot
of fires, but Jasper was different. It
did things that many people had
never seen or experienced.”
The fire, which was started by
an arsonist on Aug. 24, 2000, blew
up in a perfect-storm mixture of
dry, hot, windy conditions that
erupted in a pine forest laden with
thick-growth fuel that was ready
to explode.
When it did, it did big.
“I was sitting by my office win-
dow in Custer about 15 miles from
where the fire started when the
call came in,” Pechota said. “I
looked out and you could already
see the column. It had gone
FIRE: Thinning the forest
is essential for the
survival of rural town.
From Page A1
catastrophic fire,” said Jeff Sugrue,
a Silver City resident and chief of
the volunteer fire department.
“And this gives us a fighting
chance.”
The “this” is a 100-yard-wide
safety zone that loggers for Cus-
tom Timber of Beulah, Wyo., are
carving out of the dense forest on
the south and west sides of town.
There’s plenty to carve, too. It’s a
mess in there.
Years of fire suppression and
the weed-like propagation ability
of the ponderosa pine have turned
the forest bordering the town of
80 homes and 35 year-round resi-
dents into a crowded tangle of
combustible vegetation, or dan-
gerous fuel loads in the firefight-
ing parlance.
Sugrue knows that parlance
and understands the threats posed
by too-thick stands of timber
growing near homes and towns,
especially when other dangerous
conditions come into play.
They’re in play now.
The fire danger has risen far
beyond normal for March, as a
winter of scattered snow and
warm temperatures combined
with heavy fuel loads to create a
potentially explosive situation.
Thinning the forest is essential
for Silver City, and not just to fight
the bugs that leave their mark in
brown patches of dead trees to the
south and west. It is especially es-
sential to the long-term safety of
the town, Sugrue said.
“We couldn’t have timed this any
better,” he said. “The fuel load out in
that forest is just tremendous.”
That’s a problem throughout
much of the Black Hills, but espe-
cially this spring in the central and
southern Hills where snow was
particularly scarce this winter.
Previous wet years encouraged
vegetation growth, which has
dried to alarming degrees so early
in the season.
Then came the warm weather,
in some cases setting record daily
highs. Add some wind, which
western South Dakota always
seems to do, and the red-flag
warnings for high-fire danger —
very unusual this time of year —
had county commissions impos-
ing burn bans.
It also had state and federal
crews on high alert for fires, with
extra crews stationed here and
there across the forest ready to re-
act to a fire that could come at any
time.
One came March 9 to Cowboy
Hill in Rapid City, burning 147
acres and threatening a number of
homes. There could be more and
bigger fires to come, if dry, warm
conditions continue.
Chris Stover, assistant fire
management officer for the Mys-
tic Ranger District of the Black
Hills National Forest, has been
tracking the fuel load in the forest
and its combustibility. And that
picture isn’t pretty.
On a recent day at Baker Park
south of Rapid City, where the
Forest Service has a monitoring
station, the temperature was 73
with a relative humidity of 3 per-
cent. That’s Arizona dry, not
something to expect in South
Dakota in March, Stover said.
SUNDAY SPECIAL: SOUTH DAKOTA WILDFIRES
vertical shortly after detection.”
Fire crews began arriving on
the scene west of Custer near Jew-
el Cave National Monument with-
in a half hour of the report. But by
then the fire was already spreading
in the crowns of trees. It was also
“spotting,” ahead of itself, as em-
bers carried by the wind or blown
out ahead of the fire ignited in
other trees.
The fire burned through al-
most 64,000 acres in seven
hours, traveling at speeds that
astonished crews dispatched for
containment and making dan-
gerous shifts in direction as the
unpredictable wind changed. For
much of the first day, it was
burning the equivalent of seven
football fields of forest per
minute, federal officials estimat-
ed.
There was no stopping it then,
Pechota said.
“It was gone from the time it
started,” he said. “It had such
speed and intensity; it was just an
angry fire for the first four or five
days. Only after that did it simmer
down enough so that people and
equipment were effective.”
Jewel Cave National Monu-
ment had been evacuated the first
day of the fire, and didn’t reopen
until Sept. 2. The buildings were
saved, however. And the overall
damage of the fire, in human
John Clark peers to the southwest of his home as he looks at the tree thinning and clearing going on near Silver City. Work is being done to create a fire protection
area for the town.
Engine captain Dave Ruhl, left, and assistant engine captain Adam Von Eye, both with the Mystic Ranger District of the
Black Hills National Forest, put out a smoldering tree root as they check on the Beretta I Fire. The fire, which started
Wednesday, will be checked on many times for hot spots before it is called out.
And it raises the danger level
for fires to levels that are “pretty
much unheard of for this time of
year,” he said.
On top of the dry, warm condi-
tions, there is the fuel. There’s lots
of it, after years of rain and good
vegetation growth. It’s not just the
trees. It’s also the grass.
“At this time of year, the grass-
es are fully cured. There’s no live
component there, no green. And
without a decent snowpack, the
grasses are still really fluffy. It’s
very reactive,” Stover said.
That’s why state and federal
crews are on the alert. It’s also why
the state keeps a Black Hawk heli-
copter and state airplane at Rapid
LOCAL
Savage fires of the past have helped prepare firefighters for future incidents
Jasper Fire
Year: 2000
Acres burned: 83,510
Started by an arsonist who was
caught and sentenced to prison.
terms, was limited by the fact that
it hit in such a lightly populated
area.
Only a few outbuildings were
lost. No one died, and no homes
were burned.
There were some close calls,
however, including an incident
where fire overwhelmed an engine
crew and members had to deploy
their fire-resistant shelters to sur-
vive.
The Jasper Fire, however, was
just the beginning of a string of
dangerous fires that would hit
during the coming years, as
drought conditions plagued the
region.
City Regional Airport, as well as a
single-engine air tanker ready in
Hot Springs to attack fires from
the air.
Similar conditions in Wind
Cave National Park have led to ad-
ditional fire restrictions there. Dan
Swanson, a federal fire ecologist
stationed at Wind Cave, said cool-
er temperatures with the possibili-
ty of moisture early this week will
help. But forecasts call for a return
to above normal temperatures, too.
“If it just jumps back up into
the 60s, we’ll be back in high fire
danger,” he said. “We need a pat-
tern change, essentially, in the
weather, to put us back in better
moisture regime.”
Grizzly Gulch Fire
Year: 2002
Acres: 11,589
Required the evacuation of Dead-
wood and cost $17 million to con-
trol.
In 2002, the Grizzly Gulch Fire
near Deadwood forced the evacu-
ation of the town, burned seven
homes and 15 outbuildings and
caused $17 million in firefighting
costs plus millions more in lost
business for the town.
That same summer, the Battle
Creek Fire south of Rapid City
burned three homes and cost
about $18 million to fight.
Four years later, in 2006, the
Eastridge Fire near Piedmont
burned seven homes. And a year
after that, in July of 2007, the
10,000-acre Alabaugh Fire south
of Hot Springs killed one home-
owner and injured two firefighters
Because weather can and does
change quickly, it’s premature to
judge the severity of the coming
2012 fire season based on condi-
tions now, Stover said.
“I don’t like to be an alarmist.
It’s really going to depend on what
happens in May and June more
than anything else,” he said. “But
if you look at the conditions we’ve
had, it’s definitely odd.”
It is worrisome, too. That’s true
throughout much of the Black
Hills. It’s true in Silver City, al-
though not as true as it was before
the trees started to fall.
The project, most of which will
be paid for by the Silver City Vol-
unteer Fire Department, has
rapidcityjournal.
Eastridge Fire
Year: 2006
Acres: 3,200
Started by lightning. Burned seven
homes, threatened hundreds more.
who were forced to deploy their
emergency shelters.
Pechota and other fire-
suppression experts never forget
those savage fires of the past as
they prepare for what could hap-
pen in the future. Unusually dan-
gerous fire conditions already this
year make them particularly alert,
he said.
“We’ll just do everything we
can to make sure the public and
our firefighters are safe,” he said.
“There’s nothing more important
than that.”
Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or
kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com.
Photos by Ryan Soderlin/Journal staff
“I don’t like to be an
alarmist. It’s really going
to depend on what
happens in May and June
more than anything else.”
Chris Stover
assistant fire management officer for
the Mystic Ranger District of the
Black Hills National Forest
opened up the forest in the safety
zone to what much of the Black
Hills looked like before settlement
and fire suppression efforts, Sug-
rue said.
It’s probably more like much of
the forest should look like today,
Sugrue said.
“In the next couple of years
we’ll probably come in and there
will be raspberries growing all
over,” he said, walking through
part of the buffer zone. “We’ll
have to come back in here and get
after the new pines as they start to
grow. But this looks good. It’ll give
us a chance to defend the town.”
The north side of Silver City
has always been easier to protect,
because of a road, meadow, wet
low ground and Rapid Creek. But
the south side has always wor-
ried residents, including John
Clark. His modest home is just
yards from the edge of the buffer
zone.
With the forest opened up
nearby, the afternoon sun was
reaching Clark’s back step as he
stood squinting at the progress of
the logging crew.
“Normally, that sun doesn’t
even get through the trees here,”
he said. “I sure appreciate the fact
that they’re doing this. It’s been a
concern for a good many years.”
Contact Kevin Woster at 394-8413 or
kevin.woster@rapidcityjournal.com.