Where there’s smoke, there’s fire — and a balancing act

(Update: Comments from more officials on balancing act)

The balance of fire in the woods – both as a friend to clear brush and make forests healthy, and the enemy we battle every summer – was the focus of a tour Tuesday by Oregon Department of Forestry and other officials of several prescribed burn areas on the Deschutes National Forest.

Doug Grafe, chief of fire protection for ODF, said understanding prescribed burns is extremely important for Oregonians

“This is a critical conversation for all Oregonians to have,” Grafe said Tuesday during the tour.

“We need to be on the ground and see what a prescribed burn, what it looks like before the prescribed burn, what it looks like after the prescribed burn,” he added.

Most in Central Oregon have heard how the past century spent putting out fires began altering their natural resilience to both fire and insects, and now fires burn hotter and cover greater areas, with all the impacts one would expect.

The question before forest managers is how to use fire to recreate the natural characteristics that made them so resilient before man intervened — without unduly bothering or hurting the health of nearby residents.

Fire, for example, helps Ponderosa pines with natural resistance to the bark beetle, so prescribed burns are considered an essential treatment in the restoration process, helping reduce the risk of wildfires, officials said.

But despite all the modern forecasting tools, keeping the resulting smoke from burning the eyes, noses and throats of city residents is a big challenge.

David Collier, air quality planning manger with the Department of Environmental Quality, said, “Trying to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfire, there’s so much good that can come from that work.”

But he added, “Smoke is smoke, and when the community is impacted by that smoke and you have an asthmatic child, or someone who has heart disease, they don’t know the difference between fire smoke and prescribed burn smoke.”.

Tom Kuhn from Deschutes County Public Health advised that anyone who struggles with smoke to stay inside and avoid the smoke as much as possible.

Kuth also said there is research that says smoke pollution from wildfire is much more hazardous to our health than smoke from prescribed burns.

People often ask why prescribed burns are held in the fall, rather than the spring, Alex Enna, an assistant fire management officer with the Deschutes National Forest, explained, “We burn in the spring and the fall, but out here we’re usually limited to the spring.”.

” During the fall, the days are so short, the air settles in real quickly and we usually have more smoke issues in the fall, so most of our burning is in the spring,” Enna added.

The officials on hand said Oregon actually has an estimated 8.1 million acres in need of prescribed burns as part of forest restoration work, including 200,000 acres on the Deschutes National Forest.

But with smoke intruding into populated areas from those burns, the challenge is to do so in a way that sustains a healthy forest without upsetting the citizens they are designed to benefit.

Bend-Fort Rock District Ranger Kevin Larkin stated another obvious change in recent decades: that Central Oregonians’ lifestyle is linked to the forest, not so much as the loggers of past decades but outdoor recreation of every kind.

That means a large wildfire hitting close to urban areas can have a huge impact on the community’s lifestyle, visitor and resident alike, and thus its economy as well.

“When we’re able to use prescribed fire the way that we intend to, it continues to build a healthier forest,” Larkin said.

Bend Fire Department Fire Inspector Doug Green said prescribed burns make firefighters’ jobs safer and easier, but new residents need to be informed and others need to be reminded about what that means.

“But people are starting to understand,” he said.

West of Bend, about 200 acres are being ignited each year, but officials said that number needs to grow by tenfold to meet the need for forest health restoration.