Forest Minister Says Greer Fire Burning For The Most Part On Logged Off Ground
By 250 News
Monday, June 21, 2010 10:16 PM
Prince George – Forest Minister Pat Bell said late Monday night that the Greer Creek fire is burning in an area of 5200 Hectares but the fire is, for the most part, confined to a logged off area .
Bell says there are lots of slash piles where the fire is located, along with other debris left over from logging of the region.
The minister says "we have 54 heavy pieces of equipment working on the fire, 6 helicopters and a crew of 60 top flight fire fighters. A further 100 fire fighters have arrived on the scene to help battle the fire."
Bell says he flew over the fire today and a lot of the areas that are still burning are confined to old slash piles, and bottom leaves left over. "I’m not discounting the fire" he said, "but it is not burning in either standing dead pine or other mature timber other then leave strips."
"We had a good day today" Bell says, "the humidity was very high and that helped us a lot".
Meantime an Incident Management Team arrived today to direct fire suppression operations and structural protection units are in the area assessing homes in the evacuation alert area.
The area under evacuation alert is from the 18.5 km mark of Kenny Dam Road south to Greer Creek, including Corkscrew Road, Edwards Road, York Drive, Surprise Drive and Szanz Drive, Greer Valley Road, Brophy Road, and the Kluskus Forest Service Road.
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Posted by: Denaljo on June 22 2010 4:42 AM
"a lot of the areas that are still burning are confined to old slash piles, and bottom leaves left over"
Hmmmm ... not something that I would have thought. I know the area very heavily logged, but there are still grey stands that are clearly visible in the photos. In fact, from ministry aerial photos, it appears that the fire is in an area that is not as heavily logged as the surrounding area.
But, if this fire can burn that well in a logged area with leaves on the ground and a slash piles on the access road sides, then that should mean a change in practice, I would think, to make the forest safer from such fire breakouts since there is a lot of the forest in this stage of "treatment".
http://bcwildfire.ca/ftp/!Project/WildfireNews/6212010~104133_G40151%20june%2020%201900.pdf
Looks likes a significant amount of standing dead pine to me in the foreground with not a single slash pile visible.
I wonder what they learned from those tests that took place a few years ago with different sized fire breaks and sizes of standing dead timber patches.