Slash Pile

Buckrail- Teton Interagency Fire personnel will be burning piles of slash created from fuels reduction projects within Grand Teton National Park and Bridger-Teton National Forest.  Firefighters will burn these piles under low fire behavior conditions as colder temperatures and wet conditions exist.

Slash piles are created by thinning and removing lower limbs from trees, as well as removing dead wood and brush from the forest floor. Firefighters place the slash in tepee-shaped piles and leave them to cure before burning them. Creating this defensible space is essential to public safety and improving a neighborhood’s chance of surviving a wildfire. Fuels reduction work also increases firefighter safety in the event of a wildfire.

Firefighters have been working on a fuels reduction project along the Signal Mountain Summit Road in the park to reduce vegetation along the road corridor and around the communications tower at the summit. Approximately 11 chords of the large diameter wood have been removed from the site and will be offered to the public at a later date through a Federal Government auction at https://gsaauctions.gov.

A fuels-reduction project is also being conducted along the Pacific Creek Road leading to the Pacific Creek Subdivision, in the northeast area of the park. The project was designed to lower the risk of losing structures to a wildfire and create more open areas that will help moderate fire behavior during a wildfire. This area was previously treated in 2002 and 2005. The fuel loading along the road corridor has not been addressed in previous treatments and will also remove many dangerous hazard trees resulting from a mountain pine beetle epidemic. Crews started work this summer and generated approximately 100 slash piles to be burned and approximately 18 chords of firewood will be sold through a Federal Government auction at https://gsaauctions.gov.

 

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