Prefire Effectiveness in Fire Management -- A Summary of State-of-Knowledge
Sections: Introduction |Fire prevention | Fuel Management | Silviculture |Land Use | Summary
This paper explores the current state-of-knowledge regarding the role of prefire programs in helping the Department implement its mandate of protecting and enhancing forest, range, and brushland resources. Prefire management is any treatment put in place prior to a fire that reduces risk, hazard, or exposure of a value to loss. The expected result of prefire programs is a reduction in costs and damages associated with wildland fires.
Current fire management successfully eliminates most low intensity, slow moving fires. Fires that escape initial attack therefore are frequently high intensity, high rate-of-spread fires, capable of doing significant resource damage (Dodge 1972, Wilson and Ferguson 1986, Strauss et al. 1989, Sapsis and Martin 1994). Many fire researchers and managers now view prefire management to reduce ignitions (risk), potential fire behavior (hazard) and exposure of high-valued resources, as a sound means to better allocate limited resources for managing fire in California (Weatherspoon and Skinner 1996).
Fire prevention aims to reduce the incidence and extent of fires by preventing them from occurring. Federal, state, and local agencies have implemented a variety of fire prevention programs, including such activities as education, patrol, code enforcement, and signs. In general, these programs have been shown to be highly effective at reducing incidence of fire.
A large volume of quantitative assessment supports the effectiveness of prevention. Reductions in fire losses arising from human fires have been reported to range from 50% to in some cases 80%. Cole and Kaufman (1966) found fire occurrence rates declined in counties where the forest fire protection program included prevention elements. Doolittle and Welch (1974) indicate reductions in man-caused wildfires by 55% over a five year period following an intensive personal contact fire prevention strategy. Folkman (1973, 1975) showed a reduction in fire numbers in Butte County. California when compared to pre-program levels, but no difference with fire numbers for other similar areas. Using benefit-cost analysis, Moak (1976) showed that prevention programs costing up to $236 per average fire prevented were economically justified.
Clear identification of fire causes forms the basis of an effective prevention program. Surveys, controlled experiments and statistical analyses have all been used to assess prevention programs effects on numbers, causes, and effects of fires (Wilson 1962). In general, surveys are very effective at identifying sources of high risk, and are thus important in identifying and targeting groups to be addressed (Folkman 1963 & 1972, Wilson 1966, Schroeder 1968). For instance, careless debris-burners responsible for significant number of fires in Oregon could not be identified using any classical socio-economic indicators such as age, sex, and occupation. Similarly, in California, Ferguson (1969) reports that 62% of children-caused fires were from children 3 to 8 years old, indicating the need for early fire prevention training. Numerous studies indicate that prevention education of youth is an extremely effective tool at reducing risk from this key ignition source group (Folkman 1972, Gladen et al. 1978, Ryan et al 1978). Like education, signs are effective prevention tools when properly targeted, presented, and followed up with personal communication (Colvert 1978, Chandler et al. 1983).
In summary, fire prevention is a simple and well understood program that has demonstrated success when ignition sources and solutions have been clearly identified. However, like suppression, it does not address issues associated with fire exclusion from systems capable of supporting fires of high intensity and high potential damage, and therefore is not sufficient to guarantee success in the long-term.
Fuels management alters fuel characteristics (amount, continuity, etc.) such that hazard is reduced. Most fuels treatments are designed to reduce fire behavior (spread, intensity) such that the fire is easier to contain, or the damage from the fire is reduced due to lower intensities.
The benefits derived from fuels treatments are manifold, some expressed immediately through reduced costs and losses, while others such as ecosystem stability appear over time. Alteration of fuels may directly influence ecosystem structure and composition, or indirectly through its influence on potential fire behavior. Fuel management activities can be assessed in terms of:
Effects on Fire Behavior
Fuel management practices clearly reduce fire behavior, particularly for area treatments such as broadcast prescribed fire (Biswell 1963,Truesdell 1969, Van Wagner 1968, Helms 1979, Rawson 1983). Fuel treatments removing ladder fuels on forested systems can significantly affect potential for crown fires, which are extremely difficult to control and often devastating (Dodge 1972, Rothermel 1991, Sapsis and Martin 1994). Fuels management also significantly reduces wildfire occurrence and acreage burned (Weaver 1955 & 1957, Davis and Cooper 1963, Wood 1978,1979). In southern California, fuelbreaks, areas previously burned by wildfires, and areas that had been prescribe burned, all contributed to limiting the final size of the 1985 Wheeler Fire (Salazar and Gonzalez-Caban 1987). Walker (1995) reports that the 1995 Warner Fire and the 1993 Geujito Fire similarly lost intensity when they ran into recent prescribed burn areas. Fuels management may have little impact on spread during periods of extreme weather (Rawson 1983). However, recent wildfires burning under severe conditions in California have shown significantly reduced fire behavior when they burned into prescribed fire treated areas. Both the Pierce Fire in Sequoia National Park (Stephenson et al. 1991) and the A-Rock fire in Yosemite (Clark 1990) resulted in lower fire intensity and associated reduced fire size due to interaction with recently treated areas.
Area restricted treatments such as firebreaks and fuelbreaks have shown mixed levels of success (Davis 1965, Omi 1977, Pyne 1984, Salazar and Gonzalez-Caban 1987). Fuelbreaks are strategically placed strips of low volume fuels designed to provide attack points, safe access, and reduced fire behavior. Their spatial placement and maintenance frequency influence their effectiveness. In general, surface fire intensity is reduced in as much as fuel volume has been regulated in the treatment areas, allowing suppression to act on portions of the fire that may otherwise have been uncontrollable. Extreme fire behavior on the heading front of wildfires, including crowning and spotting can quickly make fuelbreaks ineffective. Flanking and backing fires are often controlled using fuelbreaks as lines for indirect attack (Omi 1977, Salazar and Gonzalez-Caban 1978). In addition, fuelbreaks form ideal perimeter boundaries for establishing other area-based fuel management units (Omi 1977). In summary, fuels treatment programs reduce, but do not eliminate threats from wildfire attributable to fire behavior.
Physical Effects on Resources
Fire effects on physical and biological elements in the landscape generally correlate with fire behavior . Thus, as much as fuels management affects fire behavior, it so too affects resource impacts. In ecosystems adapted to frequent low intensity fire (e.g., ponderosa pine/mixed conifer forests), high intensity fires are frequently catastrophic, while low intensity fires are beneficial. The relationship between fuel treatments and fuel characteristics themselves (e.g., amount, arrangement) are well understood (Muraro 1968, Biswell 1989, Andrews and Bradshaw 1990, Walstad et al. 1990, Brown et al. 1991) . These changes in fuel structure bear directly on wildfire behavior, which should show considerable correspondence with fire occurrence, resistance to control, and associated costs and damages.
Reductions in damages to natural resources have been demonstrated, particularly relating to reduced timber damage from wildfire. Many studies in pine forest types show that prescribed fire mitigates timber loss from wildfire (Moore et al. 1955, Weaver 1955, Biswell et al. 1973, Davis and Cooper 1963, Cumming 1964, Truesdell 1969, Buckley 1992, Weatherspoon and Skinner 1995). Wagle and Eakle (1979) found mortality of 100% compared to 17% for untreated and treated stands, respectively, when burned by a wildfire on the Fort Apache Indian Reservation, AZ. Vihnanek and Ottmar (1994) show similar positive benefits for prescribed fire regarding changes in smoke production and soil effects. In all cases, the treated areas burned, albeit at a lower intensity, and therefore cannot be attributed to wildfire skirting the treated area. Areas with natural fire cycles of short interval, low-intensity surface fires , which include many forest and woodland types in California, are likely to show considerable ecosystem benefits to prescribed fire treatments designed to emulate natural fire effects (Biswell 1989, USDA Forest Service 1993, Weatherspoon and Skinner 1995).
Forest Health
Prescribed fire can benefit forest health in many forest type (Williams et al. 1994, Mutch 1994, Sapsis and Martin 1994). These benefits provide additional incentives for fuels management. Federal policies espousing ecosystem management will likely lead to greater use of prescribed fire (Anonymous 1995). Many California forests have localized areas of poor forest health due to lack of fire (Kilgore 1973, Parsons and DeBenedetti 1979, Christensen 1991, Williams et al. 1994, Sapsis and Martin 1994). With fire exclusion, succession otherwise regulated by frequent low intensity fires produces higher stocking rates and other shifts in structure that increases mortality from competition, insects, pathogens, and potential stand replacing wildfire (Gruell 1983). Shifts in fire regimes due to suppression and prevention have also been implicated in reducing biodiversity. Restoration of appropriate fire cycles by judicious use of prescribed fire has been suggested to reverse this trend (Martin and Sapsis 1992).
Effects on Costs and Losses
In general, we lack quantitative analysis on the economic benefits of fuels treatments. Most attempts to derive economic measures for evaluating fuel management benefits have been plagued by poor data (Omi 1982). Specifying the costs and losses from a fire, that by its very nature does not occur, is particularly difficult. Many managers speculate on damages and costs averted; however, models for simulating treatment/no treatment outcome of individual fires are only being developed (Finney 1994, Finney et al. 1997). Analyses attempting to develop economic evaluation of the cost side of the equation reveal that effectiveness is difficult to assess, and that model validation presents a significant obstacle ( Davis 1965, North et al. 1975, Wood 1978, Omi 1981 & 1982, Saveland 1987).
North et al. (1975) found significant economic benefit from prefire measures designed to reduce hazard and improve structural survival in southern California. They estimated that annual costs and losses were reduced by 30% when both roof materials and brush clearance were implemented. Similarly, Minton et al. (1991) found that prescribed burning reduced costs and losses by 26% when used in a decision analysis framework based on expected fire frequencies derived from expert knowledge. In contrast, Davis et al. (1965) showed that most fuelbreak projects did not realize economic benefits to justify their use.
Portions of the landscape where high risk, high hazard, and high resource values tend to co-occur provides a means for stratifying and prioritizing treatment areas most likely to yield efficient results ( Gonzales-Caban and McKetta 1986, Deeming 1990). Saveland (1987) characterizes the decision process by answering the question of whether the interval between large costly fires can be significantly increased.
Many fire managers have observed wildfires running into fuel treatment areas, with suppositions of reduced losses. These anecdotal cases provide a compelling case that fuels treatments (fuel breaks, prescribed fire zones, silviculture operations with slash disposal, etc.) markedly reduce fire size, intensity, and damage. The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CDF) has compiled reports of 26 cases documenting the interaction of Vegetation Management Program (VMP) prescribed fire projects and wildfire, showing benefits associated with reduced size, costs/losses, and increased resource protection (e.g., wildlife habitat, water yield, etc.). Additional cases have documented reduced hazard from lower fuel loads, where no wildfires have occurred to date, thus only generating potential benefits. An account of two of these incidents highlights the field officers’ perception of the effectiveness of fuel projects in the face of wildfires.
In 1994, the Highway 41 Fire was burning toward the southwest edge of the city of Atascadero. This front of the fire was impeded by a 200 acre VMP on the Eagle Ranch conducted in 1988, where a 20+ ton/acre brush fuel complex was reduced to a grass/light brush mix estimated at 3-7 t/a. Although the wildfire was intense enough to cross Highway 101 (4 lanes wide) on portions of this front, the area treated by the VMP reduced fire intensity and spread such that those portions of the perimeter were contained. The fire officer believes that had the area not been treated, the front would have marched into an adjacent set of developed parcels, and likely destroyed a number of structures.
In October 1995, the Guntley Fire incident occurred under extreme fire weather in mixed brush, chaparral, and hardwoods in Mendocino County. This fire burned with high intensity over the course of an afternoon/evening, with indirect attack along the flanks being the means of containment. Over the course of the evening, fire weather remained critical, and as fire crested a ridge line, planning was made to take advantage of a set of VMP burns conducted in the late 1980's that lay in the direction of spread. As the wildfire encountered these treated areas, flame length was reduced significantly, and the burn pattern was patchy and sporadic. Hand crews and hose-lays were then able to be contain this front. Had the heading front not encountered these projects, primary lines would almost certainly have been employed for indirect attack, causing a minimum of 2000-3000 additional burned acres. These additional lands were mature tall chamise capable of very high intensity fire.
Firefighter Training and Safety
Fuel management offers increased safety to firefighters, particularly when related to fires burning in high hazardous fuel complexes and under severe conditions (Williams 1995). Treated areas provide refugia from dangerous burning conditions resulting from unbroken tracks of high volume fuel complexes. Additional reports indicate that fuel projects provide significant firefighter training during the implementation of prescribed fire programs. Burning under controlled conditions without the impending need for suppression action avails the individual the time and circumstance to view complex relationships driving fire behavior in real world situations, and to thus gain valuable insight.
Silviculture as a Prefire Measure
Standard silvicultural practices do not automatically result in less severe fires. To date, silvicultural practices have focused on mature stands, and have generally augmented fuels due to harvesting debris (i.e., slash or activity fuels). Such activity fuels increase hazard and create problems for planting new trees (Howard 1971, Carlton 1980, Johansen and Wade 1987). As stands are thinned, silviculture is likely to result in decreasing crown bulk density below critical levels required for active (i.e., dependent) crown fire (Van Wagner 1977, Alexander and Yancik 1977, Alexander 1988, Agee 1993). However, opening a stand increases microclimate factors (wind, solar radiation) conducive to increased fire intensities (Countryman 1955). In addition, partial cutting of forests has historically favored removal of larger trees, leaving behind smaller trees more easily damaged by crown scorch.
Weatherspoon and Skinner (1995) showed that fire damage from the 1987 Northern California fires was related to management practices -- site prep method, degree of thinning, etc. Particularly relevant factors deal with surface fuel loads and crown fuel bulk density and continuity (Alexander 1988). For young plantations, site preparation reducing activity fuels showed a dramatic effect on wildfire damage -- untreated plantations burned completely and severely (Weatherspoon and Skinner 1995). Where damage to mature stands was examined, untreated, uncut stands showed the least damage, followed by partially cut, slash-treated stands, with cut untreated stands showing the highest degree of damage. As silvicultural treatments begin to emphasize pre-harvest manipulations of growing stands, manipulations such as thinning and removal of ladder fuels may reduce hazard.
If silvicultural operations are to reduce fire occurrence and damage, they must not only affect the determinants of fire behavior, but also the resilience of the stand to fire-induced damage. This likely requires adequate treatment of surface and ladder fuels, and that thinning should not selectively remove only larger diameter trees. The relationship between both surface and crown fuels relative to fire spread and damage have not been fully explained (Van Wagner 1977 & 1993, Rothermel 1991). However, the transition from a surface fire to some form of crown fire are dependent on both surface intensity and crown characteristics. Although crown factors such as fuel density may be limited by thinning, both spread by torching and spotting and high levels of stand damage may still result due to high surface intensity. Both fire size and resource damage are not reduced de facto by thinning alone. Shaded fuel breaks are one such means where surface, ladder, and crown fuels all receive attention, thus limiting fire behavior to insure ease of control and low levels of stand damage.
Expansion of the wildland-urban mixed interface has increased ignitions, altered hazards, but most importantly it has dramatically increased the values that can be damaged by fires. Most of these new values arise from structures and other human developments (Davis 1990, Scott 1995). The net result of this increase in value exposure has been significant increases in very high loss fires associated with large structure loss, even from some very small fires (Sapsis and Martin 1994). Land use planning can reduce loss of structures (Rice and Davis 1991). There appear two clear tracks offering opportunity for prefire activity within interface areas. On the one hand, fuels must be adequately treated to avoid direct fire spread to adjacent structures (Minnich 1995). Secondly, strategic planning for development locations and construction/landscaping must adequately address fire threats to limit losses from wildfires. The spatial pattern of developments are an important consideration, as enclaves and edge have a strong impact of potential damage (Scott 1995).
Areas of high fire incidence and high fuel hazards present the areas of greatest potential losses (Slaughter 1996). The two best predictors of structure survival are clearance around the structure (i.e., defensible space) , and the composition of the roof material (Foote 1994). Additional factors are siding materials and glass window types (Cohen 1991, Joshi and Pagni 1990). Vegetation clearance dramatically affects structure survival (Wilson and Ferguson 1986, Manning 1990, Ramsey and Dawkins 1993). Additionally, within this framework, it is extremely important to recognize the influence of structural fuel characteristics themselves to loss potential (Cohen 1991, Foote 1994). As long ago as the Bel Air Fire in 1962, the problem of wood shake roof construction has been implicated in large damaging interface fires (Wilson 1962). This relationship has been validated in a number of more recent fires in both North America and Australia (Rice and Martin 1986, Wilson 1988, Foote 1994), which has led to the adoption of a new model code that specifically addresses the nature of the wildland fire problem in newly developed areas (International Fire Code Institute 1996).
Prefire programs span the spectrum from trying to limit fire starts, lowering of potential adverse impacts and increasing positive effects on resources, all the way to land use planning and code development and enforcement. A diverse set of programs, targeted at areas of high risk, high hazard, high exposure will work to serve the people of the State by limiting costs and damages, favoring appropriate fire regimes based on the characteristics of the area, and generate means of cooperation amongst various governmental and private stakeholders.
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FOR MORE INFORMATION
Contact David Sapsis via e-mail at dave.sapsis@fire.ca.gov or by phone at (916) 445-5369
Last edited on October 23, 2006 by Lauren McNees