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Long Jim fire discussed at community meeting<br>

several years but from which fire has been excluded since the area was settled.

“We wanted to achieve a level of mortality for smaller trees that compete with the larger, old growth,” he said. “Otherwise the bigger trees are less healthy and the area is more prone to wildland fire. (After treatment) it’s harder for a fire to come up off the ground and up into the canopy.”

The objective was to kill at least 30 percent of the smaller trees without harming most of the larger trees. The target for large tree mortality was below between 10 and 15 percent he said.

Whether the fire met that objective remains to be seen, he said.

“We have sophisticated monitoring techniques to see if we’ve reached our objective,” he said. “My intuition is that we did fairly well.”

May 5 provided conditions that they were looking for, Oltrogge said, offering enough wind blowing in the right direction to vent the smoke column away from populated areas, and enough humidity to lower the risk of losing control.

“We thought we had a window,” said Oltrogge. He said they knew it was a small one, so the goal was to get the fire ignited as early in the day as possible.

But, he said, “Murphy’s Law kicked in. There was not enough margin for Murphy’s Law.” Among the things that went wrong – the helicopter could only drop ignition balls one way instead of two, the ignition machine malfunctioned and the hand-ignition crew ran out of fuel. All served to delay completion until 11 a.m., about two hours past target.

Shortly after, the fire went out of prescription on two counts – humidity, which dropped below 8 percent, and the winds, which exceeded 20 mph.

About 45 minutes after ignition was completed, he said he began to receive reports of spot fires over the northern border of the burn. With the help of an air tanker and a bulldozer, it took the crew about three or four hours to stem the fire’s northward advance and bring it under control.

Like all escaped prescription fires, this one must undergo a review by the Park Service’s regional headquarters. That was expected to be under way this week, Oltrogge said.

“We want to know what led us to escape,” he said.

He said he’s been involved in burns here for many years but this fire’s behavior still caught him by surprise.

“It hit an old burn scar and went through with a lot of enthusiasm into the canopy,” he said. “There was more fire behind it than I’d anticipate in these conditions.”

Residents at the meeting voiced concerns that reliable information was hard to come by during the fire.

“People were scared,” said one resident. “They saw helicopters and the air tanker but when you tuned into the park radio, there was no information on the fire. It seems to me that if you want to get information to the public, the park radio station is the best way to do it.”

Ranger Keith Green, who works at Canyon View Information Plaza, added that he didn’t feel his location received enough information during and after the fire.

“We’re the visitor information center and we weren’t told what was going on,” he said. “We couldn’t get ahold of anyone and couldn’t answer questions like if they could get to the Kaibab Trail. It’s bad when the park’s information section doesn’t know what’s going on.”

Park fire information officer Donna Nemeth said procedures for contacting residents include sending e-mails to park employees and concessionaires, and having fire officials visit businesses between Cameron and Tusayan two or three times during an incident.

Information was also available on other radio stations, both before and during the burn she said, and four information officers were helping with three phone lines dedicated to incoming calls seeking fire information.

Resident Pat Sampier wanted to know if there were other tools available besides fire to manage forest fuels.

“Why don’t they cut trees and do thinning?” he asked. “I wish there was some way to get it out rather than burning it.”

Oltrogge responded that the park service is doing this at an accelerated rate and residents will see more as part of the revised fire management plan that is in the works.

Another resident asked why fire officials don’t burn in February or March. Oltrogge said conditions are too cool and damp for optimal burning at that time of the year.

“We wouldn’t be able to meet our objectives,” he said. “We would lose the ecosystem and fire restoration benefits. The hard part is finding the balance where the weather is conducive to fuel consumption.”

Oltrogge also commented on a question about the cancellation of government contracts with air tankers. The Long Jim blaze happened about a week before the government’s decision.

“Air tankers are our initial attack,” he said. “It makes this community more vulnerable.”

As an alternative, he said, the park has C-130 military planes available to it, as well as heavy helicopters.

While Oltrogge says the fire team learned lessons from the fire, “WEe can’t guarantee that it will never happen again. When you use fire, you’re incapable of mitigating all the risk.”

Paul Ostapuk, a meteorologist from Page, traveled to the Canyon especially for the hearing.

“I drove two and a half hours to hear what you’ll do next time that’s different,” he said. “You always burn areas from southwest to northeast. We don’t understand why you don’t wait for a northwest flow and burn to the southeast. I’m puzzled by the logic and I don’t understand the process.”

Tusayan Fire Chief Robbie Evans said that the fire served as a “wake up call” for residents.

“We hand out the (evacuation) plan,” he said. “You should be making some provisions. We live in an area that’s at high risk for wildland fire. More people have asked me about evacuation procedures for Tusayan in this past week than at any time I’ve tried to present it.”


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