Permanent Spring Fire Ban

[Jim]

http://azdailysun.com/news/local/articl ... 66d02.html

I mentioned this last year, though I suggested a Tuesday after Memorial Day start given that it usually isn't bad in May and it allows campers to get their fire in over the holiday weekend. Wonder what will come of it?

[chumley]

I am not a proponent of an outright ban. But setting the bar lower for when restrictions begin, or banning fires in certain areas closer to town may be a wise decision.

The Tonto NF regularly bans fires in the Pine/Strawberry area well ahead of other parts of the forest due to the difficulty of fighting a fire in that topography and the amount of private property in the area.

A complete ban is stupid. But it's also the way things have been going lately. If current fire restrictions were enforced vigorously that would help. I guarantee you that if people had to pay $5,000 and spend 30 days in jail for their unattended fire or building one during a restriction period, word would get around pretty quickly and people would think twice.

Tragically, children drown in swimming pools every year. Maybe we should just ban swimming pools too? :roll:

[Jim]

I advocate for a fire ban going into affect annually, from 6AM on the Tuesday following Memorial Day, for areas outside of designated camping grounds with metal fire rings, unless rescinded by the forest supervisor when fire danger is low, such as in years such as 2008 and 2009, when sufficient moisture occurred in late May which greatly lowered the fire danger. The ban would be in affect until sufficient monsoon moisture lowers fire danger. It need not be forest wide, just on the Peaks/ Mormon Lakes and Red Rocks districts. People who absolutely have to have a fire while dispersed camping could go to the Mogollon Rim or Kaibab NF.

We might not ban swimming pools, but we do require fencing around them. We don't ban cars, but we do regulate speeds and enforce seat belts. There is nothing wrong with regulating the forest. If the location of the fire had been different, or winds had been different, or the Eagle Rock and Hardy Fires had not been during the week before the Schultz and the large numbers of resources and personnel had not already been nearby, the Schultz Fire would have been far worse. Around the Peaks, south and west of Flagstaff, and in places where prevalent winds are upwind of sensitive or important thing, a yearly spring fire ban outside of campgrounds is just good sense.

[joebartels]

banning seems like failure to manage

[Jim]

banning seems like failure to manage

Banning, being regulation, is management.

In case you don't want to read the article:

pressing the Forest Service to ban campfires annually from May 1 to the beginning of monsoon rains.

Not too different from what I suggest. Even in the best ponderosa pine forest you could find, a wind driven fire during the height of the spring dry season, weeks before lightning caused fire that precede the monsoon rains, is both "unnatural" and hard to suppress. If the Coco was a really great forest of open pondos, as it was more or less before 1880, a fire like that could be allowed to run as it pleased in parts of the forest, but near town that simply will never be a possibility.

[joebartels]

I read the article

[Jim]

I didn't mean you, I meant in general to someone who might glance at the thread. I didn't want folks to think that a permanent year round ban was being proposed.

[chumley]

I also read the article and know that a permanent ban isn't what it was suggesting. But I still think that a decision based on actual conditions on the ground is a better idea than a decision based on a calendar. If there's one thing we (especially you!) know about this state it is that weather conditions here are incredibly varied from one year to the next. When does the monsoon start again? :roll:

One of the major factors that go into deciding when fire restrictions are enacted is related to the availability of fire resources. If there are active fires in NM, CO or CA, restrictions may be enacted in AZ even if it's abnormally moist. Because in the less-likely event of a fire during those conditions, the resources to fight it would be more difficult to attain.

Decisions like that require thought and evaluation, not something that a random day on a calendar can provide.

[chumley]

Basically, the proposal is trying to placate the folks who live nearby by placing blame for the Shultz Fire on the CNF. While there's a valid discussion to be had about how the CNF enforcement (or lack thereof) allows a fire like that to occur, it overlooks where the actual blame should go: To the pumpkin toolbox dbag idiot(s) who actually started the fire! Let's not forget about them. People like that would probably have a fire even if there was a ban. April 30th or May 2nd be damned.

[Jim]

75 MPH is allowable, and 76 is technically in violation of the law, even though most cops will overlook it. However, 85 is far more than the allowable speed limit and 100 is dangerous to just about everyone else out there. I maintain that May 1st is probably excessive, and they may have chosen that early date as a bargaining tool to set a later realistic date. So what though? Fire ban starts are always arbitrary by calendar date. Why is a fire at 9pm on the night before a ban goes into affect OK, but 610 Am the morning the ban goes into affect not? Shouldn't it be that a ban will go into effect when live fuel moisture reaches a certain minimum, wind speeds are at a certain level, and dew points are low enough? Most can't wrap their brains around those criteria, so a date is used instead. I guess the projects to mitigate the mud slides, the flooding and that multi-million dollar price tag are all things that just placate the people who live nearby as well. The argument of people start these fires, so don't forget them, is like the people and guns argument. We don't allow guns in Federal Courthouses due to the dangers posed by them to people inside, and we should be more proactive in regulating discretionary fire in the forest during the dry time of year when fire danger is high. A meeting to implement fire restrictions had been scheduled for the day after the Schultz began, but clearly that was too late. If a ban went into place every year, automatically, we would be hedging on safety, on not burning the forest to the ground, and on not having to waste millions of dollars when one does break out like the Schultz. It isn't a replacement for management, it is a part of it. The ban can be easily rescinded when not needed, just as easily as a ban can be put into place. By having a yearly automatic ban, it forces a manger to justify rescinding it and consider the consequences of rescintion and the possibility of what would happen if it was rescinded and a fire broke out, versus the current situation of the unpopular consequences of people not being able to dispersed camp with out a fire.

I don't know how you chose to enjoy the forest in the spring dry season, but it's a shame that there are people who can't enjoy the forest off of their ATVs, or by not destroying archeological sites, or not dumping trash in the forest, just as it is sad that there are those who can't enjoy the forest without a dispersed campground campfire. There is a wider picture than just a person's enjoyment of a fire while dispersed camping. This is not 1900. Even though the local community is largely in favor of thinning and burning, the Schultz burned an area were a national environmental group sued to stop the thinning because it was going to cut too many big trees. It would have been nice if the fire burned next to the homes of the environmental group, instead it burned here. Why should everyone in the area have to deal with the needs of the few who can't get past having a fire.

[hippiepunkpirate]

I tend to agree with Jim about having a set date every year to start the ban. The fact of the matter is that by the time the national forest decides the ban needs to go into effect, the logistics won't allow it to happen for a week or so. I think it would help eliminate the possibility of a fire breaking out before the national forest can initiate a ban. I also agree with Todd's comment about higher fines and stricter enforcement to make sure the bans are obeyed, but I think setting up a specific date will help eliminate the lag of government bureaucracy coming into plan. It doesn't have to be a solid date, say if we have a good wet May and it may be fine to push back the ban date a couple weeks, but in typical years when May is dry and June is drier, it always seems like the forest service drags their feet getting the ban into effect. I would rather have the ban in place in June in hopes that most folks will obey it and we can lessen the chance of another disastrous early summer wildfire.

[azbackpackr]

I just have to say, that having lived in the White Mtns. during the really bad drought years there, 2001, 2002, 2003, etc., residents were glad for a yahoo-from Phoenix fire ban BEFORE the big Memorial Day weekend. Probably saved a lot of homes, firefighting resources, etc. They used to impose the ban right before Memorial Day. However, when we have had wetter Mays, they didn't impose the ban and there were no problems.

[chumley]

This is a classic case of "punishing the many for the transgressions of the few". A principle of which I'm wholehearted opposed.

To use Jim's example of speed limits (which isn't really a good analogy) it would be like closing I-17 between FLG and the Sedona exit from November 1st to March 30th every year just because there's a higher probability that it could snow during that time. What?!! Some yahoo from California drove off the road because he was driving too fast for conditions? Close the road!

I'm not for allowing fires to burn wild all year. Arizona is a dry state and there are definitely times that having campfires is extremely unwise, and enacting an official prohibition during those times makes sense.

But people need to realize that this is an emotional reaction that addresses only one small piece of the issue. It's a feel-good thing that isn't really going to solve anything. There are lots of causes of fires, some natural, some man-caused. Banning campfires would address a small fraction of those possibilities. Are you going to ban all other human activity on the forest for specific calendar days too? Smoking? Fireworks? Chain saws? Welding equipment? Hunting? BBQ briquettes? Old ladies with magnifying spectacles? Where do you draw the line?

The problem really lies in the desire for people to live in the WUI. In general they live there because there's a forest nearby. There are inherent risks of living adjacent to wild lands, from animals to fire and more. Fires will happen with or without campers. Rabid foxes will attack your pets. Elk will eat your plants. It's part of living there. There are better ways to manage the risks than to simply give up and trap all the foxes, kill all the elk, or ban all the fires.

It's just like people who buy a house near the airport and then complain about the noise. FLG residents live in a WUI. Fire is part of life. Work on making them less severe and easier to control, and protect private property with proper vegetation and spacing of trees, etc. These things need to be done anyway. Because if campfires are banned, then people get more complacent and their house in a thicket of ponderosa burns down when lightning strikes anyway.

[Jim]

This is a classic case of "punishing the many for the transgressions of the few". A principle of which I'm wholehearted opposed.

And yet, one person's fire last year has had an enormous punishing affect on thousands of times more people, an enormous financial cost, caused an enormous amount of erosion, and had an extremely negative consequence for everyone who comes to the forest in that area. In fact, the only person who doesn't seem to have any negative affects from the fire, is the person who started it. I feel really, really sorry for people who can't camp without a fire. I feel about as sorry for them as I do people who can't relax without a case of beer or a line of cocaine.

To use Jim's example of speed limits (which isn't really a good analogy) it would be like closing I-17 between FLG and the Sedona exit from November 1st to March 30th every year just because there's a higher probability that it could snow during that time. What?!! Some yahoo from California drove off the road because he was driving too fast for conditions? Close the road!

I'm not for allowing fires to burn wild all year. Arizona is a dry state and there are definitely times that having campfires is extremely unwise, and enacting an official prohibition during those times makes sense.

No, your analogy is completely off, and mine is perfectly apt. Last time I checked, if a person drove off the highway, it didn't cause the road to buckle and crumble beyond repair for 50 years, and release tons of sediment and boulders down a mountain. A one car accident doesn't cost 15 million dollars. The analogy is perfectly apt, and you missed the point of the it entirely. It was with respect to the timing of starting a ban. You mentioned May 1 as a start date and saw no reason for that as May 2nd would be illegal and April 30 just fine for having a fire. I was stating that just as a few miles over the limit is seen as acceptable, and many miles over the limit not, though both illegal, so too it is seen as not important to have a fire ban at the start of a ban when a day before a fire was fine, but considerably worse to have one 3 weeks in when continued dry conditions have allowed fire hazard to increase.

It's just awful that some poor people won't be able to recreate, for pleasure, but the national forest is not the domain of those who use it purely for pleasure. Can't stand not being able to have a fire while dispersed camping? Go to a developed campground and burn with all the others in the metal fire rings. Can't stand the mere notion of government regulation gettin' all up yer business and tell ya'll how to live? go elsewhere. The Apache-Sitgreaves isn't too far away. Find it so morally reprehensible that a yearly fire ban would ever come to fruition? Go back to the east where it's so wet all the time that you can burn pallets soaked in gasoline virtually year round with little chance of it burning 15,000 acres in a little over 24 hours.

But people need to realize that this is an emotional reaction that addresses only one small piece of the issue. It's a feel-good thing that isn't really going to solve anything. There are lots of causes of fires, some natural, some man-caused. Banning campfires would address a small fraction of those possibilities. Are you going to ban all other human activity on the forest for specific calendar days too? Smoking? Fireworks? Chain saws? Welding equipment? Hunting? BBQ briquettes? Old ladies with magnifying spectacles? Where do you draw the line?

I can think of two really big things that would have been solved if people had not been allowed to have a fire: The Schultz Fire and the Radio Fire. Two big problems: solved! But, this "emotional reaction" would solve nothing, right? Fireworks are already banned from the forest, and year round. Smoking is banned under the higher level of fire restrictions, stage 2, I think. Hunting is banned outside of season, and humans get banned during closures when fire danger is excessively high and people continue to have illegal fires which escape when abandoned. 2006 was our last forest wide closure. Chainsaws, and welding equipment are banned under higher level restrictions as well. Arson is banned all the time, by anyone and for any reason. Old, female, or whatever, so why even mention it? So, you see, we already do those things as needed as part of increased restrictions and year round normalized regulation. You forget that the spring ban can be rescinded, it just requires managers to answer for why they chose to rescind it if a fire does occur from dispersed camping fires. You also ignore that you could have a fire in developed campgrounds. The normal natural cause of forest fire is lightning , which is uncontrollable. Dry lightning is a big problem, but why complicate the fire season by already having fire personnel on an incident that could have been prevented by inconveniencing a few during and prior to the start of the dry lightning season?

Sure, fire start from lots of things. Lighting as mentioned is common, arson is another, and so too are accidents. People die from all sorts of thing, too. Heart attack, stroke, gun shots wounds. But when you can reduce the levels of people dying from car because of seat belts, most people agree and hedge on safety and wear one, even if they have never been in an accident. Hedging on prevention from discretionary fire for pleasure and recreation is the same thing. A) Why should anyone wear a safety belt? I'm a good driver, so I don't have to. Whatever, but you can't control other drivers, do what you want and it won't affect me if you die are or mangled. B) Why should I not be able to have a fire in the spring dry season when the majority of Arizona's forest fires happen? I'll never start a fire, I'm careful. Tough, live with it. Don't come up, we don't need you. Grow up and stop behaving as though your pleasures and recreational concerns triumph over all others. There are plenty of people who are stupid and can't be controlled who have escaped fires in the spring. Most are small and not brought to the Phoenix Media attention. The Schultz and the Radio Fire of 1977 are two campfire caused wild fires caused by people who probably thought they knew what they were doing, too. You might consider a ban an emotional reaction, I guess you consider traffic stops "emotional reactions". Police are just, slaves to their emotions, aren't they.

The problem really lies in the desire for people to live in the WUI. In general they live there because there's a forest nearby. There are inherent risks of living adjacent to wild lands, from animals to fire and more. Fires will happen with or without campers. Rabid foxes will attack your pets. Elk will eat your plants. It's part of living there. There are better ways to manage the risks than to simply give up and trap all the foxes, kill all the elk, or ban all the fires.

It's just like people who buy a house near the airport and then complain about the noise. FLG residents live in a WUI. Fire is part of life. Work on making them less severe and easier to control, and protect private property with proper vegetation and spacing of trees, etc. These things need to be done anyway. Because if campfires are banned, then people get more complacent and their house in a thicket of ponderosa burns down when lightning strikes anyway.

No, the problem is that years of a lack of fire and overstocked forests have resulted in unnaturally stocked forests which burn more intensely than they originally did. The other "risks" you mention are completely irrelevant and only emotionally distract towards uncontrollable circumstances. Doney Park is only partially WUI, and most of Flagstaff is not WUI. Foxes and Elfk don't cause the same sort of consequences that a Schultz or Radio fire already have. It's absurd to mention them as even being remotely analogous to a forest fire. I agree about people who complain about the things that were there when they got there, but most residents of Flag and Doney support forest thinning and burning. It was an outside, and national environmental group that stopped the thinning in the area of the Schultz Burn, and the Wilderness area of the Peaks will never have thinning done to it, so any fire that got up there would have had similar consequences. In all honesty, I don't care if you build next to a forest and the home burns down. That is part of the potential of living near a fores that can burn. It would be nice if forest only existed near homes, but there are millions of acres with potential to burn and nowhere near homes. I know I mentioned a fire burning in the Mogollon district, but that was to illustrate the point that district being vastly different from the Peaks and Mormon Lakes, both in terms of civilization, but also in term of the forest ability to accept fire. The Mogollon RD burns way more, and more frequently than the other 3 RD on the Coco and fire can run easier over much of that district because of that.

Acting like a ban is going to be done in place of other forest management, again, only distracts from reality and places blame on undeserving parties. You continue to paint this as a punishment, a shifting of blame, a failure to accept responsibility, or an emotional knee-jerk reaction. All so you can have a fire, and anyone else can have a fire, in a dispersed camping setting, in the driest and most fire prone time of year, purely for recreation and pleasure. Arizona has had a large number of fires, and the 2003 human caused fires led to the Rodeo-Chedeski. We've had lighting fires, like the Pumpkin and the Taylor. We have also had two very large fires that were 100% preventable and had their origins in dispersed camping fires. When 15,000 acres in 2010 and the ~5,000? acres in 1977 can burn in only a couple of days due to carelessness and irresponsibility, then I welcome the "punishment" of a seasonal ban automatically going into affect, unless electively rescinded by forest managers in times of low fire danger. If you see that as punishment, tough, grow up, part of life is learning to live with the problems we all face and accept the solutions to those problems even if they infringe upon the right of an individual to do as they please, without regard for other concerns. I see it as a policy long over due, by about 34 years, or 1 at the very least.

[VVebb]

banning seems like failure to manage

Banning, being regulation, is management.

I think Joe might be suggesting something like this: Banning alcohol didn't work. Banning pot didn't work. Banning those things in college dorms certainly doesn't work. Banning immigration w/o proper documents didn't work. Banning texting while driving isn't working (One study actually shows that it causes INCREASED car accidents, because drivers try to text more discreetly). etc. etc. etc. Anecdotally, it seems like you see better results from better education, better parenting, better rehabilitation, better enforcement, etc.

[Jim]

banning seems like failure to manage

Banning, being regulation, is management.

I think Joe might be suggesting something like this: Banning alcohol didn't work. Banning pot didn't work. Banning those things in college dorms certainly doesn't work. Banning immigration w/o proper documents didn't work. Banning texting while driving isn't working (One study actually shows that it causes INCREASED car accidents, because drivers try to text more discreetly). etc. etc. etc. Anecdotally, it seems like you see better results from better education, better parenting, better rehabilitation, better enforcement, etc.

We regulate alcohol, with mixed success, though sales to children are way down these days (over the 19th century).

[JimmyLyding]

The forest service doesn't have the manpower to regulate all of the dispersed camping as it is. Anyone who wants rangers actively patrolling all areas should not complain about resources being re-directed from other areas, increased NFS budgets, or more user fees.

Not wanting to restrict everyone because of the potential destructive acts of a few seems great until it's applied to reality. Trusting every outdoor user to behave responsibly goes hand-in-hand with agreeing to live with the consequences of the destructive actions of a few idiots. There's no other way to put it.

As a society we have chosen over and over again to restrict the actions of everyone in order to minimize the risk posed by the few number of irresponsible citizens. A lot of people can drive down the interstate at 100 MPH without issue, but there are people who are too irresponsible/risky/stupid to do so. Thus, we ban such activity in order to protect everyone. The key idea is that the greater good must carry more weight than everyone's self-perceived right to do as they please.

[hippiepunkpirate]

The key idea is that the greater good must carry more weight than everyone's self-perceived right to do as they please.

Exactly, and in my opinion, the greater good of preventing a super-devastating wildfire during the peak of the dry season greatly outweighs the right to have a campfire. And I'm not one for taking away liberties, but I don't want to generalize that in every case taking away liberties that "punishes" the masses because of the few idiots that can't do the right thing. I look at it in a case by case basis, and I think that in this certain case we can all suck it up and not have a campfire for a couple months with goal of avoiding to best of our abilities NOT to have another Schultz Fire.

[azbackpackr]

I meet so many backpackers these days who never have fires and prefer to not have them. I personally don't care about a fire unless it is actually cold at night. Winter backpacking, even in the desert, means quite chilly and LONG nights, so a fire is nice to have.

By the time we get to May, it is still darned cold (in the teens) in the White Mtns. at night. By June, when it can be really brutally scary dry out in the woods there, it's warm enough at night and the daylight lasts long enough that you shouldn't even feel the need for a fire.

[chumley]

So with the announcement of restrictions beginning on the Coconino today, I think it's safe to say that they're implementing this the unofficial way. It's the first time that I can recall restrictions taking place at the higher elevations of Coconino BEFORE Tonto. Tonto doesn't even have restrictions around Pine/Strawberry yet, which tend to be some of the earliest implemented.

It will be interesting to see how long A-S goes. There's been a couple of small fires on their side of things already.