The 2002 fire season was one of the biggest of the past half-century. By the end of the year, fires had burned across 7.2 million acres, costing over $1 billion to fight. Almost uniformly, the fires of 2002 were characterized as catastrophic, but in fact, each fire was unique in character, offering individual lessons for the future. The following fact sheet is one of five analyses prepared by The Wilderness Society to better understand the causes and consequences of major 2002 wildfires.
Quick Facts
Location: Fort Apache Indian Reservation, Apache-Sitgreaves and Tonto National Forests.
Cause: Human, possibly arson.
Area: 462,614 acres.
Structures lost: 426 structures.
Ownership: 38% of burn boundary within National Forests; 60% on Fort Apache Reservation.
Landscape: Chaparral, ponderosa pine, juniper and brush.
Suppression Cost: $153 million approximately. |
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In the afternoon of June 18th, 2002, a fire northeast of Cibeque near the Rodeo Fairgrounds on the Fort Apache Reservation was spotted, burning between 100 and 300 acres by nightfall. By mid-morning on the 20th, the Rodeo fire had expanded to 30,000 acres, sending a smoke plume skyward that prompted some commercial pilots to radio into towers about possible thunderstorms. Meanwhile, a second blaze began burning near Chediski Peak northwest of Cibeque when a lost hiker ignited a signal fire. Crews from the Rodeo fire were sent to build a line around the smaller fire. The two fires were about 15 miles apart. Two days later, the fires merged to encompass more than 235,000 acres -- nearly the size of Mesa, Chandler, Tempe and Scottsdale combined. Over the next two weeks, the fire would burn another 200,000 acres in the largest, most severe fire in Arizona history.
Nevertheless, much of the land within the Rodeo-Chediski Fire boundary did not burn severely
According to the Rodeo-Chediski Fire Burned Area Emergency Rehabilitation (BAER) Plan,1 about half (49.1 percent) of the area within subwatersheds affected by the Rodeo-Chediski Fire either did not burn or burned with low severity, creating an extensive mosaic of burned and unburned forest.
The Rodeo-Chediski Fire burned through heavily managed forest
In the weeks following the blaze, several politicians sought to blame the fire on a lack of management caused by environmentalist appeals of Forest Service projects. To test the validity of the claim, the Pacific Biodiversity Institute (PBI) conducted a GIS analysis of the area, examining data, aerial photographs, and satellite images from 1972 and 1997 to determine how national forest management may have affected the fire1. According to a summary of this report,1 PBI found the following:
Federal Management could not have impacted the scope of the fire.
The fire started in and burned through hundreds of thousands of acres of the Fort Apache Indian Reservation before reaching the Sitgreaves National Forest. Only 38% of the total fire area was on the national forest. National forest management, whether good or bad, could not have prevented the fire or slowed it prior to becoming a catastrophic blaze. The exclusive concern with national forest management, therefore, is misplaced.
The landscape through which the fire burned was heavily roaded
Over 2,145 miles of roads, most of them logging roads, weaved through the burn area, making it one of the most heavily roaded forests in the country. The national forest portion of the fire contained no wilderness or roadless areas. Only a very small portion of the Reservation lands within the fire area are roadless.
Logging operations likely contributed to forest conditions favoring large wildfires
The forest on both the national forest and Reservation was heavily logged over the past fifty years. Very few old growth or unlogged areas existed prior to the fires as logging operations targeted the largest trees. This heavy logging continued into recent years. Dense stands of young trees were evident in both 1972 and 1997 and heavy logging operations did not result in decreased densities of small trees, but instead, small tree densities increased between 1972 and 1999. Analysis of fire "hot spots" shows that some logged areas burned intensely, but data were not available to conduct a systematic analysis of the entire burn area.
Conservation activities did not influence fire spread or severity
Intense historical and recent logging and roadbuilding, the complete absence of wilderness areas, the small number of roadless areas, and the tiny amount of old growth remaining indicate that environmentalists have done little to control logging levels on the national forest. Since nearly two-thirds of the fire (62%) occurred on private and Reservation lands, environmentalists had no possibility of influencing most of the fire area. U.S. Forest Service records of timber sales and grazing allotments confirm the conclusions of the Pacific Biodiversity Institute. They show that the Forest Service was aware that current grazing practices within the fire area were causing increased densities of small, highly flammable trees, and that the Forest Service conducted ten timber sales within the fire area since 1990. Unsustainable levels of logging on the Sitgreaves National Forest have been opposed not only by environmentalists, but also by high-level Forest Service managers and the Arizona Game and Fish Department.
For More Information
Footnotes
- Rodeo-Chediski BAER report and fire severity map (http://www.fs.fed.us/r3/asnf/). BAER plans are developed following major fires to guide rehabilitation efforts.
- The full PBI report can be viewed at http://www.pacificbio.org/wildfire2002.html.
- Prelude to Catastrophe can be viewed at http://www.sw-center.org/swcbd/Programs/fire/r-c_report.pdf.
