Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Live Today

Look at Arizona Mountain Barren 25 Years After Blaze

Aired July 15, 2002 - 13:51   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: It is often said that forest fires can be beneficial, generating new growth and invigorating the ecosystem. But not always.

CNN's Carol Lin shows us an Arizona mountain that is still barren 25 years after a horrific blaze.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CAROL LIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Imagine a wildfire burning so hot, it not only kills the trees, but the entire forest ecosystem -- plants, animals, even bacteria and other microorganisms. That's what happened outside Flagstaff, Arizona on Mount Eldon, where a 4,500 acre wildfire tore through the mountainside June, 1977.

This is what's left, 25 years later. Skeletons of ponderosa pines standing in an ecological graveyard. The fire, started by a teenager's campfire, burned so fast and at temperatures hot enough to melt steel, hot enough to kill the nutrients in the topsoil of an entire mountain.

And in perhaps the ultimate irony, later that year, Arizona's wildfire season was followed by monsoon rains that swept away Mount Eldon's scorched earth, leaving only bedrock.

STEVE OVERBY, SOIL SCIENTIST, ROCKY MTN. RESEARCH STATION: We are basically starting over as if there was a landslide on this area. We lose not only all of our microorganisms, but also the seed source that was originally here to develop the whole vegetative community.

LIN: Gone are the ponderosa pines, the oaks, the wild flowers, and wildlife that was a living, breathing forest. Scientist estimate it will take thousands, thousands of years for Mount Eldon to recover and return to the healthy ponderosa pines forest, like this one, that once covered its slopes.

Fire ecologists from Northern Arizona University warn there will be more Mount Eldons. The U.S. Forest Service says 73 million acres in the west are vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires like the one we've seen in June alone. Why? Fire researchers say over the last hundred years, the forests themselves have been mutating.

Too understand what's been happening, take a look at this controlled burn set by Northern Arizona University. This is how fires used to act, burning slowly and low to the ground. That's because a hundred years ago the forest were not thick with trees and shrubs. But these researches say we have gotten so good at fire fighting that forests have gone from wide, grassy areas to thickets of trees, where fire has no place to go but up, crowning in the trees and out of control.

Northern Arizona University's Ecological Restoration Project is researchers thousand rebuild and restore entire forest ecosystems using plants and insects, working in the shadow of Mount Eldon where wildfire changed the landscape for the next thousand years.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PHILLIPS: That report, once again, from CNN's Carol Lin.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com