Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy
Northeast Region
Pagami Creek Fire, Superior NF, Minnesota, September 2011. (Photo: Kari Greer)
Resilient Landscapes - Fire-Adapted Communities - Safe and Effective Wildfire Response
|
The Northeast Regional Strategy Committee (NE RSC) provides executive leadership, coordination, and guidance to carry out the Northeast Regional Action Plan while providing a forum for members to guide strategic direction for fire and land management activities. The NE RSC continues to collaboratively recognize, support, and help with National Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy goals and implementation efforts.
NE RSC Chair: Brad Simpkins, New Hampshire State Forester
|
|
Northeast Region Cohesive Strategy Key Contacts
|
Chair
New Hampshire Division of Forests and Lands 172 Pembroke Road PO Box 1856 Concord, NH 03302-1856 Terry Gallagher Technical Working Group Lead U.S. Forest Service Eastern Region Maureen Brooks Communications Working Group Lead U.S. Forest Service Northeastern Area S&PF Larry Mastic Coordinator, Northeast Region Cohesive Wildland Fire Management Strategy |
|
|
|
June 2015
|
Helicopters Used to Douse Lakes Region Wildfires
|
By John Koziol, Union Leader Correspondent
May 6, 2015
[Editor's Note: Despite a long, hard winter in the Northeast, May was a busy month for wildland firefighters.]
Three helicopters, two from JBI Helicopters of Pembroke and a Black Hawk from the New Hampshire Army National Guard, spent hours Wednesday scooping water from Connor Pond in West Ossipee and carrying it up to nearby Bayle Mountain, where a wildfire that began on Tuesday has burned more than 90 acres and, as of yesterday afternoon [May 5], was still not controlled. (Photo: John Koziol)
OSSIPEE - Wildfires flared throughout the Lakes Region [of New Hampshire] on Wednesday, with one blaze closing Route 140 in Northfield and another, atop Bayle Mountain in Ossipee, entering its second day despite an aerial assault that Wednesday was joined by a Black Hawk helicopter from the Army National Guard.
In addition to those wildfires, another was also reported in Merrimack, making for what Brad Simpkins, State Forester with the NH Department of Resources and Economic Development, Division of Forests and Lands, said was one of the busiest wildfire seasons in his 17 years on the job.
Read the full Lakes Region wildfire story on the Union Leader Web site.
|
Fire Burns Over 2,000 Acres in the Shawangunks
|
By Julia Reischel, Watershed Post
May 6, 2015
A view of the Shawangunk brush fire looking south from the Summitville turn on Route 209 outside the Ulster County town of Ellenville at close to midnight on Tuesday, May 5. (Photo: Michael Wentland)
A massive forest fire that began on Sunday, May 3, has burned through over 2,000 acres of forested lands in Sullivan and Ulster [New York] Counties this week, prompting the evacuation of 30 homes and a statewide emergency response. Forest rangers, firefighters, first responders, police, and State emergency operation officials have fought the blaze, which is concentrated in the Roosa Gap and Shawangunk Ridge State Forests around Route 52 in Ellenville. Volunteer firefighters from as far away as Broome, Schoharie, Delaware, and Greene Counties have travelled to the area to fight the fire. They are based out of a staging area at the Kimble Hose Company in Ellenville. Read the full Shawangunks forest fire story on the Watershed Post Web site.
|
Forest Service Contains Carty Wildfire near Black
|
Posted Thursday, May 14, 2015 10:04 a.m.
The Mark Twain National Forest
(Photo courtesy of http://fox2now.com/)
It took just over a week, more than 100 firefighters, an air tanker, a heavy helicopter, and about an inch of rain to contain the Carty wildfire near Black, MO. This wildfire burned 2,146 acres of national forest land before firefighter efforts and rain stopped the flames on Saturday.
The Carty Wildfire was discovered on Mark Twain National Forest lands in Reynolds County on May 3. The cause of the wildfire is still under investigation.
Read the full Carty wildfire story on the Salem News Online Web site.
|
Wildfire Forced Evacuations near Hammonton, New Jersey
|
By Bill Gabbert
Originally published at 5:45 p.m. EDT, May 7, 2015
A large wildfire 7 miles northeast of Hammonton, NJ, forced evacuations at 2 p.m. EDT in the southern part of the State east of Route 206 between Stokes and Atsion Roads. The State Police closed Route 206 for several hours but expected to open it again around 6 p.m. EDT. The evacuations were lifted at about 5:15 p.m. EDT when extensive burnout operations stopped the spread on one side of the 710-acre fire.
Firefighters conduct burnout operations along roads to stop the spread of a fire northeast of Hammonton, NJ, May 7, 2015. (Photo: Myfoxphilly) This photo clearly shows a burnout as a straight line following roads.
|
Prescribed Fire Video Series: Minimizing Smoke Impacts
|
A U.S. Forest Service Enterprise Team (Adaptive Management Services Enterprise Team) produced a series of short videos to help viewers understand the agency's Air Resource Management Program. The video series, Minimizing Smoke Impacts of Prescribed Fire, is available on YouTube. Six videos explain aspects of the program, including how the agency addresses the air quality impacts of smoke, why the U.S. Forest Service uses fire as a land management tool, ways in which the agency leads in smoke management, and basic smoke management practices.
|
Burn Notice: Even in Vermont, a 'Prescribed' Fire Requires Perfect Timing
|
By Molly Walsh,
Seven Days Vermont
|
(Photo courtesy of Ethan Ready)
|
A fire wheezed and radiated heat shimmers the morning of May 5 near the Robert Frost Interpretative Trail in Ripton. One group of U.S. Forest Service firefighters sprayed water at the edge of the angry orange flames while another, wielding a long-nose drip torch dispensing a mix of gas and diesel, deliberately spread the blaze.
Yes, deliberately. The Forest Service team, outfitted in green and yellow flame-retardant clothing, hard hats, and thick-soled boots, was conducting a prescribed burn on four acres of overgrown wild blueberry bush off Vermont 125 near the Middlebury Gap.
|
Cass Reviews, Signs LLBO's Community Wildfire Protection Plan
|
By Gail DeBoer, Staff writer,
Pilot Independent
The Cass County [Minnesota] Board received and signed the Leech Lake Community Wildfire Protection Plan, presented May 5 by Keith Karnes of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe (LLBO), Forestry Division.
The Wildfire Protection Plan covers the entire reservation and was created after discussions between the LLBO and cities, U.S. Forest Service, State agencies, counties, and other entities with an interest in wildfires, Karnes explained.
|
Starved for Fire, Wisconsin's Pine Barrens Disappear
|
By Chris Barncard,
University of Wisconsin-Madison News
May 26, 2015
[Editor's Note: The NE RSC is dedicated to helping restore and maintain fire-dependent ecosystems like these in Wisconsin.]
|
Daijiang Li tracks biodiversity in Central Wisconsin forests. (Photo courtesy of Daijiang Li)
|
A century spent treating wildfires as emergencies to be stamped out may have cost central Wisconsin a natural setting that was common and thriving before the State was settled.
Pine barrens once stretched like a scarf around the State's neck, from the northeast down across central Wisconsin and up again northwest to Lake Superior. As recently as the 1950s, University of Wisconsin-Madison surveys conducted by botany Professor John Curtis and graduate student James Habeck described the sandy, open spaces dotted with pin oak and jack pine and dashed with the lavender of lupine and the purple of blazing star.
"We know that the pine barrens used to be common in Wisconsin before European settlement, but now only about 1 percent of the original area remains," says Daijiang Li, a current University of Wisconsin-Madison botany graduate student. With botany Professor Donald Waller, Li authored a study in the journal
Ecology outlining the factors driving a deep shift in the increasingly rare plant communities that once inhabited the central Wisconsin pine barrens.
Or, maybe, inhabited what was once pine barrens.
|
Three Organizations Call for More Ambitious Hazardous Fuels Mitigation
|
Posted on May 27, 2015
[Editor's Note: This is an excellent publication that explains the value of the Cohesive Strategy in addressing this topic.]
A burned structure at the Eiler Fire in northern California, August 6, 2014. (Photo: Bill Gabbert)
Three nonprofit organizations involved with wildland fire issued a joint position statement recommending that land managers adopt a more ambitious stance toward hazardous fuels mitigation. The 13-page document was released this week by the Association for Fire Ecology, the International Association of Wildland Fire, and The Nature Conservancy.
The organizations identified costs as one of the main concerns and pointed out that missing from most accounting of wildfire costs are indirect costs--rehabilitation, real estate devaluation, and emergency services--that can be 2 to 30 times more than the actual expenses to fight the fire.
The paper listed four cost-related issues:
- Suppression Costs Increasing. The cost of wildfire suppression has continued to increase over the last decade.
- Fires Are Costing Taxpayers More. Wildfires are costing taxpayers far more than is typically reported by governments and the media.
- Investments Needed. Investment in wildfire hazard mitigation needs to be increased and maintained.
- Fuels Treatments Need to be Treated Right. Fuel treatments are supported by current and developing science.
The organizations recommend reforming Federal wildfire funding, reducing impediments to hazardous fuels mitigation, emphasizing prescribed fire and wildfires managed for resource benefits, and tracking long-term and multisector economic losses caused by wildfire.
|
Conferences, Meetings, and Training
|
---Regional---
Wisconsin Community Wildfire Protection Plans Summit
August 29, 2105
Grand Lodge Waterpark Resort in Wausau, WI
Registration information not yet available
Michigan Prescribed Fire Council Annual Meeting September 10-11, 2015
Camp Grayling, MI Registration information not yet available; will be posted at firecouncil.org
Burning Issues Symposium: How do we integrate competing fire objectives in land management and restoration? A Symposium hosted by the Michigan National Guard, Michigan Prescribed Fire Council, Lake States Fire Science Consortium, and Tallgrass Prairie and Oak Savanna Fire Science Consortium January 26 and 27, 2016 Fort Custer Training Center, Augusta, MI Registration information available after October 2015 $40 registration fee; lodging and meals separate
---National---
|
|
|
The Northeast Regional Strategy Committee (NE RSC) delivers articles and stories each month that demonstrate the collaborative efforts of agencies, organizations and communities supporting and promoting the three goals of the Cohesive Strategy: Restoring Resilient Landscapes, Creating Fire Adapted Communities and Responding to Wildfire.
This news update is our primary communication tool with our partners and the public. Looking for more Northeast Region Cohesive Strategy information or past published news update issues? Visit this Web site.
Does your agency, organization, or community have a project or event you'd like to see featured in the NE RSC News Update?
|
|
|
|
|