Prescribed Burn Image

Jackson Hole News & Guide, Mike Koshmrl– The plastic spheres were bursting into flames, but the hillsides refused to ignite in a way that the wildland firefighters wanted.

Dropped by a machine out of a helicopter high on the south-facing slopes of Munger Mountain, the ping-pong-like balls contained a combustible mix of potassium permanganate and glycol. In clumps of sagebrush and aspen groves they lighted small fires visible from thousands of feet away, but rather than creeping along the flames were quickly dissipating.

Teton Interagency Fire crews had been at it for a while and switched the strategy — a decision made easier by a malfunction of their fireball machine.

“It wasn’t the best tool for the conditions today,” Grand Teton National Park helitack crew leader Garth Wagner said after a run in the helicopter. “The hand-lighting was doing better than the aerial. You never know how it’s going to burn until you get out.”

Lower down, nearer to where Fall Creek cuts the mountainside, the air around the hills was warmer, the vegetation thicker and the combustion more successful. A flaming mix of diesel and gasoline dripped from hand torches flared up impressively with gusts of wind that broadcast heat. In places the fire ran uphill, engulfing small conifers and casting a black, moist smoke into the air.

The flaming hillside was a welcome sight to Bridger-Teton National Forest Fire Prevention Officer Lesley Williams-Gomez.

“In the winter months, that’s where the elk like to hang out,” Williams-Gomez said. “It’s nice and sunny and it’s windblown, so it’ll create a good habitat for them in the winter while making a great habitat for the community down below [by creating] defensible space.”

Williams-Gomez spoke Monday from the scene of the South Fall Creek Prescribed Fire, a burn that had been in the planning stages for years.

Part of the nearly completed Hoback Junction Fuels Reduction Project, the mosaic-pattern burn is intended to give firefighters a better shot at protecting private land and structures that line the Snake River a dozen miles south of Jackson.

Not all of the members of the so-called Hoback Nation, who gathered last week for a public meeting, were keen on seeing Munger Mountain in flames.

“People came in on fire,” Williams-Gomez recalled of the meeting. “They were not happy.”

Residents, she said, raised questions about effects on wildlife and also how effectively the burn could protect homes from wildfire.

Late in the game the Bridger-Teton’s Dale Deiter and Steve Markason changed their plans in response to the comments. The “south unit” of the project, 251 acres directly above Highway 26-89, went from prescribed fire to using chainsaws to thin trees and shrubs. Debbie Phillips, who lives immediately adjacent, was grateful for the switch.

“The Forest Service worked with the neighbors,” Phillips said. “They’re doing the right thing, I believe.”

The Bridger-Teton has had close calls with wildfires south of Jackson before. In the early 2000s the East Table Creek Fire lit from charcoal ash that fell from a grill at a Sands Whitewater River Trips’ camp. The blaze, which swelled to 3,600 acres and commanded 500 firefighters, burned with enough fury that it jumped the Snake River, Williams-Gomez said.

The sagebrush-covered slopes of Munger Mountain pose a real threat as well, she said.

Jackson Hole Fire/EMS Chief Willy Watsabaugh, who four years ago had to scramble to hold back the threatening Horsethief Canyon Fire, appreciated the precautionary approach. The road the chief stood on soon would be bordered by blackened terrain that could someday help wildland firefighters hold the line, he said.

“Projects like this make a big difference in taking a lot of the extreme fire behavior out of the equation,” Watsabaugh said. “It’s 45, 50 degrees with cloud cover. In August, when the [humidity] is 11 percent and it’s 80 degrees, it’s a whole different ballgame.”

 

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