Abstract
The recent mountain pine beetle outbreak affecting lodgepole pine forests in the Rocky Mountains has created a novel fire environment for wildland firefighters. This paper presents results from an examination of firefighters’ observations of fire behavior in post-outbreak lodgepole pine forests, with a focus on what they considered surprising from a fire behavior standpoint and how this in turn affected their suppression tactics. The surprises in fire behavior experienced by firefighters during the red phase of post-outbreak forests included an elevated level of fire spread and intensity under moderate weather and fuel moisture conditions, increased spotting, and faster surface-to-crown fire transitions with limited or no ladder fuels. Unexpectedly, during the gray phase in mountain pine beetle-attacked stands, crown ignition and crown fire propagation was observed for short periods of time. Firefighters are now more likely to expect to see active fire behavior in nearly all fire weather and fuel moisture conditions, not just under critically dry and windy situations, and across all mountain pine beetle attack phases, not just the red phase. Firefighters changed their suppression tactics by adopting indirect methods due to the potential fire behavior and tree-fall hazards associated with mountain pine beetle-attacked lodgepole pine forests.
Highlights
The mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreak between the mid-1990s and 2009 affected approximately 17.6 million hectares of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) forests of Western Northern America [1]
We present and discuss results from a qualitative social science research examination of “surprising” fire behavior observed by wildland firefighters in post-outbreak MPB lodgepole pine forest fires in Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming, and the subsequent changes in their decisions and actions resulting from these so-called surprises
The MPB outbreak in Northern Colorado and Southern Wyoming has generated a high degree of concern over wildfire risks and hazards, and interest in crafting effective fire management strategies and operational tactics
Summary
The mountain pine beetle (MPB; Dendroctonus ponderosae) outbreak between the mid-1990s and 2009 affected approximately 17.6 million hectares (ha) of lodgepole pine (Pinus contorta var. latifolia) forests of Western Northern America [1]. Post-outbreak MPB forests represent novel fire environments in terms of their current scale and severity that may impact the effectiveness of fire suppression operations and compromise firefighter safety and for decades to come. Fire 2019, 2, 34 outbreak forests has primarily focused on crowning potential e.g., [4,5,6,7,8,9], scant attention has been paid to the broader range of fire behavior and effects characteristics such as rate of fire spread, surface fire intensity, spotting, fire size, and fire severity [10,11,12,13,14]. A free-burning fire that has a high resistance-to-control has the potential to grow to a very large size and impact socially and economically important values and assets (e.g., homes, water supplies, electricity transmission systems), thereby requiring large commitments of human, financial, and technological resources [16]
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