For this post, I’ve chosen three optional videos. The first two followed the story of the 1994 Canyon fire and the third was an instructional video on minimum impacts suppression tactics. These videos give both recounts of events that have led to changes and a guide on actions to use to limit impacts when doing suppression tactics.
Within the Canyon fire videos, smoke jumpers and hotshots relive the fire events that let to the Canyon fire in Colorado. The first section sets the scene with the conditions of a rather mild ground fire event atop Storm King Mountain. The fire was likely started by lightning strike. This ground fire was slow going along steep terrain that made it difficult to traverse and even harder to scout for the fire’s progression. It starts with Blanco’s team, but they quickly need help and call on the smoke jumpers and Oregonian team. Unease begins to kick in. These concerns are not passed on, and knowledge of the far slope is limited. The second video recounts the blowup and escape.
The minimum impact suppression tactics video defines how to safely and responsibly fight fire in wilderness areas without causing damage. These impacts can be in vegetation destruction from campsites or water pollution from improper waste disposal. They follow the leave no trace policy.
The Canyon fire videos demonstrate the importance of everybody having a voice when they retell about the unease many felt long before things went south. This hopefully led to better communication between crews and workers along with increased protection of firefighters. The suppression video, on the other hand, demonstrated the methods used to reduce impact to wilderness areas. These areas are zoned in a way to limit human impact and fires do not remove the need to protect these areas. These ideals for the wilderness are based around the European ideals of the untouched wild and Leopold’s ideas. Guiding these limiting impact regulations is the clean water act. This act was put in place to reduce pollutants in waterways and guides many forest management operations.
All the videos demonstrate the reason why a policy is in place. Whether it is via a chilly retelling of a tragedy or the why’s of the regulations, it is put in place to create a better world for people and the ecosystem.
3 replies on “Canyon Fire and Suppression Tactics”
Hi Emily,
I appreciate how you tied these videos together with the common thread of policy’s function to protect – either people or wilderness. I was very interested in watching The Canyon Fire videos since it was a pivotal fire for developing policies focused on firefighter safety. When I was watching the video on cohesive strategy, an interviewee stated that fire is a complex issue because it presents economic, ecological, and social challenges. The more working policies we have, the better we can address these challenges, which all affect each other in the big picture of wildfire management. Your blog post did a great job of summarizing the policies that improve safety for people and ecosystems. Thanks for the great post!
Hi Emily,
Your post highlights the importance of communication and situational awareness in wildfire, two important behaviors for safety. It is also very important to consider ecological damage caused by firefighting, particularly when it occurs in wilderness areas, as you mentioned. I’d now like to learn more about the connection between the events of the Canyon fire and these MIST strategies. It’d be interesting to look at how the Canyon fire incorporated MIST strategies into their mop-up and rehabilitation. Also, what measures they took while attacking the fire to minimize damage.
Best,
Ann
Hi Emily!
I like your choice in blog post for this week as I think it outlines three very important aspects of wildland fire policy but aspects that also can be overlooked by the public. Fire safety protocols, communication after fire, and reliving the historic events of fire are all part of what creates and grows policy and tactics over the years so that officials have the absolute best ways to fight these fires. Without these, we would be very far behind in development of practices. Other than these, what do you believe would be other important steps to aid in the development of policies? I think these may not be what people think of right away, but still provide crucial insight into development plans.