- [Announcer] Funding for Georgia Outdoors has been made possible in part by The Imlay Foundation, and from viewers like you.

(soft music) - In 2020, wildfires in California and Oregon burned millions of acres of land.

They took lives and destroyed homes.

They were unlike fires of the past in the way they spread so quickly and were so ferocious.

Firefighters from Georgia traveled to the Northwest to help fight the flames.

I asked them, "Was it really as bad as it looked?

And could it happen here?"

(soft music) There was a combination of factors that made the Northwest fires so hard to contain.

The governors of those states say climate change is making temperatures hotter for longer periods of time.

Mike Wampler is a cattle, rancher and logger in Oregon.

- It's a sad deal.

I mean, it's, never seen anything like this since I've lived here.

But this is the driest this valley has been since I've lived here, and I've lived here all my life, and I'm going to be 68 here in a couple days.

- [Sharon] So with severe drought conditions and wind gusts that spread the flames quickly, it took months to contain the fires.

Georgia firefighter, Carnell Bryant, was stationed in California at Trinity National Forest.

So the 2020 fires were pretty ruthless, weren't they?

They were jumping lines.

- Yes, yes, they was.

And a lot of that is due to dry humidity, strong winds.

I mean, you've got to remember fires can sometimes spot as much as a half mile away.

So that's another added danger to it.

Understanding what your wind is doing, understanding what your fire is doing, and being able to predict what is going to do within the next 30 minutes to an hour, two hours from now.

I mean, it's a constant evaluation process.

- [Sharon] What was so amazing to you about the Pacific Northwest fires?

- It's the fire activity, always.

It is, because you talking about very fast moving fires with extreme flame lengths.

And I mean, the trees are so big.

There's so much fuel on the ground.

And again, when you mix all of this up with all this fuel and these types of winds and dry humidities, you're talking about some humongous fires.

These fires are coming through and raging, I mean, and you're having to pick and choose the best location to be able to turn this into a defensible moment.

And I mean, it's a challenge.

- [Sharon] But what about here?

As an increasing number of people build homes in the mountains, there is concern about whether firefighters could save them.

Look at the steep incline just to get up here.

The winding road to the driveway is barely large enough for a fire truck.

It's beautiful, so it's a risk many homeowners are willing to take.

- Yes, that's a constant challenge because as for myself, living up in Northwest Georgia, up in the mountains, the terrains do become a challenge, but also you have so many different new homeowners that are building homes in these locations up in the mountains and a lot of times we don't know about it, so we rely heavily on our local fire departments, being their coverage areas.

You talk to them and you kind of get out and ride the areas and constantly evaluate the areas and the locations.

- It can happen here, it's happened before.

What's known as the Rough Ridge fire in the Cohutta Wilderness area, burned about 28,000 acres.

So Carnell, a lot of people forget about wildfires in Georgia.

Tell me about 2016 North Georgia.

- 2016 was a real challenge.

I mean, due to the drought, it was fire after fire after fire.

You could be on one fire and your pager's going off with three other fires.

Fires were burning deep, they were burning hot.

I mean, and it was a continual process.

- [Sharon] And we forget about that, don't we?

- Yes, we sometimes forget.

- [Sharon] It can happen here.

- It can definitely happen here.

- [Sharon] Troy Helms was also in California, stationed in LA County.

- I mean, you get high winds every afternoon, 40, 50 mile an hour winds.

And sometimes, you have to back off a little bit and just let it do its thing.

Sometimes, you know, you can get in there and get a little closer, and your initial attack or your attack on the front line can be a little more aggressive.

It just depends on the weather and the wind.

- [Sharon] How hard is it to watch a house go down?

- It's not fun.

It's not cool by any means.

I'm very much a family person.

I'm very much, I want to save it if I can, but I also have to weigh the pros and the cons as far as if I stick it out with this house, am I going to come out?

And if that's not the case, then I've got to, you know, do the prep work that I can and then leave it.

And I hate to see it, but you know, you kind of see what happens.

Sometimes, there are houses that have a defendable space and that you can stay with it and wait for the fire front to blow over and then you kind of see what needs attention.

- [Sharon] This is why he does what he does.

All firefighters hate a scene like this.

Oregon resident, Meredith Smith, sifting through what used to be her home.

- This was our house.

I've lived here for six years and put so much love into it.

Had a huge garden and chickens, and my boyfriend had a huge shop.

His Jeep, like, melted into the ground.

So yeah, this is our home.

- [Interviewer] When did this happen?

- Losing everything you have is like the most horrible thing.

It's kind of scary, too, how many roads do not exist to exit the valley.

- [Woman] Yeah, we're like in such a little gridlock spot.

- Where do you go?

There's fires that way, there's fires that way, there's fires all around us, and it's changing all the time, so how are you supposed to know where to go?

- [Sharon] So imagine being a firefighter from another state.

- When you are in a situation where you're in a different state and you don't know the brush as well, you kind of lean on locals to give you a better understanding of what that brush is capable of doing.

So without knowing 100%, even though everything is hunky-dory, just the fact that you don't know and for that little bit, you're not entirely responsible for yourself because you don't know what that fuel is capable of.

Is it going to blow up worse than I think it is?

Am I going to have 40 foot flames or am I going to have 100 foot flames?

I'm good if I got 40, but if there's 100 foot flames right here, then this is no longer a defendable space.

I need to get my stuff and get out.

So just leaning on other people's knowledge sometimes is enough to make me a little weary, if you know what I mean.

- [Sharon] Troy says Georgia has wildfires every day.

We just don't hear about them unless they get out of hand.

- Yeah, I mean, it's a daily occurrence.

You know, there's somebody on a wildfire today, for sure, without a doubt.

Multiple counties that will have wildfires today.

- [Sharon] This is the worst wildfire Troy dealt with in Georgia.

In 2011, a lightning strike ignited a fire in Okefenokee Wildlife Refuge during an extreme drought.

Firefighters managed the fire but let about 100,000 acres burn.

However, a wildfire that started in April of 2007 is one of the most devastating fires in the Southeast.

It started near Waycross and progressed rapidly.

A deficit of a foot of rain around Okefenokee helped the fire spread uncontrollably.

Georgia called for help, and 44 states responded.

More than 600,000 acres burned, and at least 22 homes were destroyed.

(soft music) Firefighters had to let it burn through Okefenokee since there's no good way to get equipment into the swamp.

Smoke was so bad the state had to close Interstate 75.

By the end of May, over 90% of the swamp was burned.

So like Carnell, Troy worries about an increased development in areas hard to reach.

- A lot of times homes are built right up against the woods, which is awesome, I love it.

I love the woods, I love being on the back porch and looking out and just seeing something beautiful.

It looks like a Georgia state park.

Is that the smartest thing where you live?

Where I'm at, it's not that big of a deal.

The humidity recovery here, and the chance of a catastrophic wildfire is pretty low where I'm at.

If I'm in North Georgia, and I live right beside Lookout Mountain, I might need to have a little bit more defensible space around my home.

Just being able to clear out stuff like that.

What kind of stuff do you have in your flower beds?

Is it rock?

Is it pine straw?

Is it mulch?

Is it something that's going catch an ember and do something, take off from there, so to speak?

Just that kind of stuff.

The bushes that are planted around the house, are they conducive to fire or are they something that would take a pretty good bit to actually get it started?

- So there's a program called Firewise designed to help people who live in more isolated areas better protect their homes in case of a wildfire.

My yard is a perfect example of what not to do.

Let me show you.

I've got pine cones and leaves all over my backyard and this is fuel for a wildfire.

Another bad thing I've done, I have all these shrubs planted right up against my wooden house.

So the bottom line is they want you to keep anything that's highly flammable as far away from your home as possible.

Just in case of a wildfire, it could really make a difference.

Jason Gillis was in Oregon and Rachel Fonvielle was in California.

- I was deployed to Northern California just south of the Klamath in the Red Salmon Complex.

There were two fires burning.

We were on the red fire and it wasn't cranking when we were there.

We were definitely getting some pretty active days when we first arrived, which this calmed down a little bit.

Unfortunately, after we left, it blew up pretty good and a lot of the contingency, the kind of backup lines that we were working on were eventually not great enough to hold in what wind event came later.

- [Sharon] 2019 was Georgia's hottest year on record.

If we had also experienced a severe drought, it could have been a bad year for wildfires.

And we've lucked out with all the rain, right?

I mean, when we have a drought, all bets off?

- Yes, we're always 20 days away from a drought.

At any point in time it stops raining, we're headed towards a drought.

So if we can get rains periodically throughout the year, then, you know, even if it's less than average, we'll be okay.

But if we have periods, short stretches, periods of time where we don't get rain, then we're in a drought, and that could happen at any point in time.

- [Sharon] And that's when all it takes is a lightning strike.

- That's right.

- Yeah, an ignition source and then some other weather conditions to line up, some wind, things to let it get big.

The great thing about Georgia and with working for the Forestry Commission is we have people everywhere throughout the state who can jump on things quickly.

And we're usually able to keep them smaller rather than allowing them to get big.

But if we have those weather conditions line up with the lack of rain, they can become much more of a problem.

- [Sharon] Echoing the concerns of their colleagues, Rachel and Jason acknowledge that fighting fires has become more difficult with increased development spread across the state.

- And so I used to work in Rome before I came down to Central Georgia, and it's definitely, rural sprawl, urban sprawl is a problem throughout the Southeast for firefighters.

It's not just a North Georgia problem whatsoever.

It's a concern everywhere.

The more houses that are located in these idyllic, picturesque where you'd want to put a house, you can be surrounded by some pretty dangerous fuel buildup.

So it's not just North Georgia.

And as populations change and move around, people might be moving to an area who are less comfortable with smelling smoke and who are less comfortable with fire and can put some pressure on local communities, local leaders to kind of reduce the amount of fire that we can put on the ground in a planned way.

So that's the concern everywhere in the Southeast, that we don't lose the gains that we've made throughout the years of reintroducing prescribed fire and really pushing that message that Smokey Bear was right.

Only you can stop a wildfire, but we need to make sure that we're also keeping the natural cycles in place so that we don't end up with catastrophic wildfire.

- [Sharon] This is what Rachel is talking about.

Setting fires on purpose to get rid of the dry, dead material on the forest floor.

It is also used by private landowners and in this case, to clear unwanted trees so that longleaf pines can be planted instead.

It seems counter-intuitive to purposely set fires, but those trained in prescribed burns wait for the right weather, then create parameters so that the fires on all sides, burn into themselves.

Wayne Taylor is burning for conservation group The Orianne Society.

- Prescribed fire is a safe way to apply natural process to ensure ecosystem health and reduce wildfire risk.

- How does it reduce wildfire risk?

- By consuming all of this, all of this dead vegetation.

That's the fuel that drives the fire.

So if we're consuming that in a fire under controlled terms, and there's nothing there for a wildfire to burn.

So as long as we're keeping up and burning this site regularly, we're going to reduce that wildfire risk because we've removed the fuel that drives the fire.

- [Sharon] The Orianne Society has burned tens of thousands of acres on private, state, other nonprofit organizations and land owned by Orianne.

The goal is to bring back forests that looked like this.

Longleaf pine forests are the preferred habitat of this bird, this snake, and the gopher tortoise which digs burrows that provide refuge for about 360 other species.

Land used to burn naturally until we began to suppress fires.

Not everyone is a fan of prescribed burns but the Georgia Forestry Commission believes it is one of the best tools it has to prevent massive wildfires from burning out of control.

That was part of the problem in California where the fires were so large they were popping from tree to tree.

Those flames were jumping from tree top to tree top.

- And that's where fire regimes have been changed so drastically over the history of human influence on our landscapes, that when we talk about natural fire, when we talk about a normal fire moving through the landscape, that's absolutely abnormal.

It's a very complicated issue of how we got to this point, and moving forward is an even more complicated issue when you take 100 plus years of fire suppression, and only fire suppression, and then try to add in fuels management, and add in prescribed burning, and adding wildfire management into the box.

Drawing a box.

Instead of trying to keep every fire tiny, allowing it some room to breathe.

But seeing the tops of trees blow out, in some ecosystems, that's normal.

But the level that we're seeing it today is very, very abnormal, over a longer, more than human history in the country.

- [Sharon] I'm sure you guys get a lot of pushback from doing prescribed burns.

Am I right?

A lot of people don't want you to do it?

- It's more difficult.

The more time goes on, the population increases.

The more people you have on highways and smoke-sensitive areas, it makes it more difficult to perform prescribed burns mainly due to smoke, not necessarily controlling the fire but the smoke becomes a bigger issue.

- And when people are able to wrap their heads around the concept that at least in the Northern hemisphere especially in North America, that fires are not only inevitable, but they've been happening long before humans came to this land.

We can then kind of frame the conversation in a different way.

We know they're going to happen.

We can plan for them and we can manage them rather than being more reactive.

- [Sharon] On that note, California Governor Gavin Newsom and the US Forest Service announced a new joint initiative to reduce wildfire risks, which includes prescribed burning.

It's a big deal since the federal government owns about 58% of California's 33 million acres of forest land.

Now the Forest Service will join California to treat one million acres of forest and wildland each year.

As any of the firefighters with the Georgia Forestry Commission will tell you fire does not respect state or federal boundaries.

Harry MacLean just thinks about getting the fire out.

So Harry, you just got back from California which we've all heard about.

How bad was it?

What was it like?

- It's pretty bad over there.

As soon as you fly in on the plane, there's haze, smoke everywhere.

And you feel bad for the people that have to live in that constantly.

But the fire that I was on was the Red Salmon Complex fire.

And when I left, it was 143,600 acres.

And the last time I checked, it was 144,600 acres.

They had me a couple of miles away from the main fire but it was spotting that far over there.

But then whenever the spots would come, they'd have the helicopters come and do the bucket drops and drop water directly on it and extinguish it as fast as they could so that they didn't have to send a dozer or a hand crew out there on the front line.

So they try to keep you as safe as possible.

But whenever you're, when you're up against the flames, it's hot, but you've got to respect it.

You got to respect fire because if you don't respect fire, it'll botch you.

- [Sharon] What do you mean by that?

Is it kind of like, it could always sneak up behind you and you don't know it?

Or it could jump out of control before you're prepared?

- Yeah, at any point in time, you could have, depending on the weather and the situation, you could have a spot fire that, I mean, you might have the main fire over here, all of a sudden you notice a spot fire over here that you have to go attack.

So there's no telling.

Fire is a creature of very, it's not simplistic at all, it's complicated.

And it's a very complex thing.

And it's very, it's not a dependable thing.

It's going to do sporadic things at any point.

- [Sharon] Harry is part of a large network of people who fight wildfires and provide a wide range of services to private land owners, including those in the timber industry.

Georgia has 22 million acres of commercially available private timberland, more than any other state.

So Harry, we have a huge timber industry in Georgia.

How devastating would a wild fire be that in a drought hit the timber industry?

- It can be extremely devastating.

One of Georgia's top industries is the timber industry and it brings in a lot of revenue year.

It's not only devastating for the economy whenever that happens, because it can roll through.

If it's too hot, it'll kill a tree in a quickness.

And you'll notice by the end of the year it damages the trees and then you can get bugs into the trees and it just completely kills the tree.

And if you wipe out a whole stand, that might be somebody's only livelihood.

That might be one of your neighbors, their main income is bringing that timber sale in.

And if that wipes it out, that puts them, it puts them in a bad spot for up to 15 years.

It can be extremely devastating.

It's scary because they're your neighbors and the why the economy is, you want to continue to succeed in this economy and bring the United States back up as much as we can, but it can be, it can get pretty bad.

- [Sharon] So have we had any wildfires in timber stands?

- Oh yes, ma'am, we constantly do.

That's why we try to knock it down as fast as we can.

It's so that we can reduce the risk of the trees dying.

That way, somebody's timber stand can, they can actually harvest the whole thing instead of just part of it.

Some of the timber, whenever it gets burned, you can salvage some, but some gets burned so badly that you can't.

- [Sharon] Georgia has 24 million acres of forest land, including state and federal properties.

The Forestry Commission has about 300 firefighters ready to go at any time, to protect that land.

Patricia Stockett is one of them.

- [Patricia] When fires break out, it really is all hands on deck.

We use our bulldozers, helicopters, air tankers.

Our jobs are dangerous as well as rewarding.

I love protecting the people, those are my squad, the forest, and the animals.

I really wish everyone could see what I see from a bulldozer seat.

There are some unique challenges being a female on the fire line, but we as women are held to the exact same standards as the men.

It's not just a solo job.

We are a big family.

- [Sharon] That family includes arborists and disease specialists who increasingly battle non-native insects like the hemlock woolly adelgid.

US Forest Service biologist Jim Wentworth explains how one tiny bug is changing the face of the Chattahoochee National Forest.

- It's a little aphid-like insect, and basically, they attach onto the individual needles of the hemlock and suck the fluid out of the hemlock needles, drying them out, and eventually, the needles drop off.

And as a hemlock loses enough needles, it gradually declines.

And after a period of three to five years, eventually, the hemlocks will completely die basically from defoliation.

- [Sharon] There are other destructive insects, diseases, and invasive plants, but wildfires remain one of the most pressing concerns.

Increasing temperatures around the state make drought the most feared condition.

- On an annual basis in my county, the County of Brantley, we have a higher volume of wildfires versus some of the other counties.

So you're dealing with around 60 fires a year sometimes.

And just depends on if it's a busy, busy year, you could have more than that, there's no telling.

When we have a drought, that's when we're on high alert and you've got, at all times, regardless of if you've got rain or not, you've got somebody within five minutes of answering that pager and saying, "Hey, I'm on the way.

I'm in route to go get my tractor."

And you take off.

- [Sharon] In the end, it will be the weather that may determine the future of our forests.

That's why every firefighter is well versed on the subject.

- Weather is huge on fire.

I pick on some of the uppers all the time.

I always say by the time you finish your training in Georgia Forestry, you're dang near a meteorologist.

That's obviously not the real case, but we train on weather stuff quite a bit.

You have to know the winds, the humidity.

All that kind of stuff plays in to how a fire is going to act and what the fire behavior is going to do.

If a thunderstorm comes in, it totally ruins your day sometimes because that fire is just going to go crazy.

The winds are not going to be predictable.

They're not going to be what the forecast said they were going to be.

It's just weather does so much, you have to know, you have to know how this is going to affect my fire and what's it going to do to me and my position on the fire.

- Hopefully, none of us will ever have to experience anything like the 2020 wildfires.

But under the right conditions, it could happen.

I'm Sharon Collins.

We'll see you next time.

(soft music) - [Announcer] Funding for Georgia Outdoors has been made possible in part by The Imlay Foundation, and from viewers like you.

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