Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Saturday Morning News
Fires Rage Across the West
Aired August 18, 2001 - 08:06 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: Turning now to the explosive fire conditions across much of the westerns United States, tens of thousands of firefighters in eight states are facing another grueling and exhausting day on the fire line.
More than 30 major blazes have consumed nearly 600,000 acres with the biggest fires now burning in Washington and Oregon.
The situation is so desperate in some places, the Army is sending about 800 reinforcements. They are to undergo emergency fire training and could be on the front lines by mid-week.
Nancy Lull of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho joins us now on the phone with an update. Good morning, Nancy.
NANCY LULL, NATIONAL INTERAGENCY FIRE CENTER: Good morning.
PHILLIPS: Tell us about this emergency fire training. What are the firefighters, or, I guess, the military personnel, going through?
LULL: Well, they'll start with a one-day in-class training at their military installation. From there, they'll deploy to the fire, probably Wednesday, and on Thursday and Friday do some on-the-job training at the fire.
PHILLIPS: So, what, explain the training? Get a little technical for us and tell us some of the details.
LULL: The in-classroom training will cover fire behavior, some of the tools that they'll be using, their personal protective equipment, and it will also talk about weather behavior on fires.
When they get to the site, they'll actually start using their tools. They'll learn now to maintain their tools. They'll learn some of the techniques that they use, such as cutting line or tearing apart stumps and drowning them with water. That kind of thing.
PHILLIPS: Is this the same type of training that the inmates go through? I understand inmates have been brought to the front lines also to help battle the fires.
LULL: Yes, that would be the same kind of training that the inmates would use.
PHILLIPS: Nancy, is this fire activity typical for this time of year?
LULL: Actually, it is throughout the West. This is the peak season for the Western United States, so the activity is not unusual, although it is pretty severe in Washington right now.
PHILLIPS: Now, the two worst areas, Washington and Oregon, can you tell us the latest there and how much of the fires have been contained, and where it stands?
LULL: Our situation report this morning will show that we've contained three large fires, but we also have three new ones, so we're kind of maintaining there.
We did have about 133 new starts, but our initial attack was really highly successful, so that's good news. We're going to release some of the resources that are on those Oregon fires and put them on the Washington fires today, which will help that state and their situation.
PHILLIPS: You mentioned 133 new fires. Is that all across the different states or just in Oregon and Washington?
LULL: Well, those would be across the west. They could be in Washington, Oregon, and there are probably a few there. But, they, again, those were caught while they were small and they are not problem fires.
PHILLIPS: What about evacuations? What's the situation with evacuations and shelters?
LULL: There are several evacuations in place and I do know that on the trough fire in California 20 buildings were lost overnight. Our information is that ten were primary, probably residences, and there were ten outbuildings.
PHILLIPS: All right. Nancy Lull of the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. Thanks so much for the update this morning. Martin.
MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN ANCHOR: When wildfire consumed parts of Yellowstone Park a number of years ago, the government came under severe criticism for letting it burn unchecked.
But there is a school of thought that fires are beneficial to the ecosystem and should not be suppressed or stopped. CNN's Mike Boettcher explains.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MIKE BOETTCHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Spencer Leonard has spent much of his life trying to protect southern Oregon's threatened forest and endangered species, like spotted owls. A straight-off-the-granola-box tree-hugging environmentalist.
So, why is he cutting tiny trees? And stripping bigger trees of their low hanging branches? SPENCER LEONARD, ENVIRONMENTALIST: I believe in the heart of the forest, the roadless area, the wilderness areas, we really need to get back to a let-burn policy because Mother Nature knows best how to deal with that ecosystem.
BOETTCHER: Call it "green fire," an emerging concept in the nation's environmentalist movement, letting fires burn through wild land areas and culling built up underbrush in other forests that have been protected from fire. That way, according to the theory, the fire will burn low to the ground and now engulf entire stands of mature trees; the way nature used to do it before man started managing forests.
LEONARD: By removing these branches going vertically up the tree, we can prevent the fire from actually getting into a canopy and traveling along through the forest.
BOETTCHER: For example, even though the huge fire in Leonard's backyard, along the Oregon/California border threatens scarce spotted owl habitat, he believes in the long run the forest will be healthier and the owls more plentiful, if the fire is allowed to burn through the wild land area, cleansing the forest, as he sees it, and letting nature take over as forest manager.
LEONARD: We, as a society, have made fire a villain. We've created a bad niche for fire and it really is our friend. It's because of our silly management practices, because we thought that we needed to remove fire from the forests completely, now it's coming back to bite us.
BOETTCHER: Biting us, according to the firefighters themselves, because a century of success suppressing fires has left the forest floor full of fuel. Because of that, modern fires are burning hotter than the one that passed through this Oregon forest 70 years ago. Now the area has a healthy stand of trees.
U.S. Forest Service biologist Fred Way (ph) says he sees merit to the let-it-burn policy in some instances.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, one to one, most of them will agree, too, that somehow we've got to get the fuel loading down so we can get it back on so it isn't a disaster.
BOETTCHER: World Wildlife Fund ecologist Dominic Della Salla, who also supports green fire, is an environmentalist who sees the irony of this position.
BOETTCHER: People in the public out there would find it ironic that the people who have been fighting to protect the forest and certain species are the ones who are saying, "let it burn."
DOMINIC DELLA SALLA, WWF: I think that, you know, the let-it- burn philosophy works in the wild lands that have not had fire suppression, like roadless areas, old growth forests. Those forests were designed to burn.
BOETTCHER: Let it burn. A back to the future philosophy that is slowly gaining acceptance.
Mike Boettcher, CNN, Brush, Oregon.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
