|
|
|
|
NOVA News Minutes Wildfire Warning (running time 01:58) Transcript May 3, 2002 NARRATOR: With reports of near-record droughts all across the country, officials are warning that conditions are ripe for another bad fire season. And as this installment of NOVA News Minutes reports, unless the way we manage fire changes, conditions will be ripe for bad fires for many years to come. Steve Mirsky reports. Almost 400,000 acres have already burned across the U.S. this year, and the dangerous part of the fire season has barely begun. The upcoming NOVA on PBS shows that today's wildfires tend to be bigger and stronger because we've done too good of a job putting fires out. CRAIG D. ALLEN (U.S. Geological Survey): This is a ponderosa pine forest that has been protected from fire for a hundred years and is now in a very unnatural condition because of that. It used to have about 40 mature stems per acre in an open-grown stand condition. It's now got over 2,000 stems per acre here, and it's because it has been without fire for a century. NARRATOR: These thick forests are the result of the fire policy called "100 Percent Suppression" that was adopted in the early 1900s. Firefighters tried to put out all fires all the time. But certainly we can't prevent all fires from starting. WILLIAM TWEED (Sequoia National Park): People expect natural landscapes to be enduring and unchanging, and that's almost never true. Sooner or later this is all going to burn. NARRATOR: So the wildfire community chooses areas in which to do prescribed burns with the hope it will reduce the excess growth. But prescribed burns can get away - like this fire in 2000 near Los Alamos, New Mexico that destroyed more than 47,000 acres and 235 homes. Other scientists suggest prescribed burns alone are not enough. This section of the forest near the Los Alamos fire survived, because an earlier prescribed burn was combined with hand removal of underbrush. WILLIAM ARMSTRONG (USDA Forest Service): As you can see, none of these trees suffered any dire effects. They're all still green. In fact, they're probably better off with the fire coming through this area than if they hadn't been. NARRATOR: It's a solution that could cost billions of dollars. But that might be a small price to pay, given the alternative. I'm Steve Mirsky.
The Producer's Story | The World on Fire | Outfitting Wildland Firefighters How Plants Use Fire | Glossary of Fire Terms | Wildfire Simulator | On Fire Resources | Transcript | Site Map | Fire Wars Home Search | Site Map | Previously Featured | Schedule | Feedback | Teachers | Shop Join Us/E-Mail | About NOVA | Editor's Picks | Watch NOVAs Online | To Print PBS Online | NOVA Online | WGBH © | Updated June 2002 |
