Refuge to adopt new burn guidelines
By Steve EstesThe National Key Deer Refuge prescribed fire program will be instituting new pre-burn standards in the coming months after a planned 21-acre burn in September flamed out of control and scorched 100 acres on Big Pine Key.
The September 15 fire was supposed to burn a 21-acre unit south of Port Pine Heights on Key Deer Blvd. and north of Pine Heights Subdivision, never coming near either.
But the fire flamed out of control about 90 minutes after it was lit, running south along Key Deer Blvd. and nearly jumping into Pine Heights Subdivision.
The US Fish and Wildlife Service conducted in intra-agency review just days after the fire. That review said that weather anomalies and human error were to blame for the fire getting out of control and threatening the 42 homes in Pine Heights.
The report stated that relative humidity dropped precipitously from about 50 percent to less than 40 percent during the burn, and the wind increased from less than five miles per hour to over 12 miles per hour, pushing the fire southward beyond the original fire break line.
The report also stated that while personnel on the ground were certified to the proper levels, they lacked a great deal of experience in prescribed burns in pine rocklands, and few had ever worked together on any type of burn.
“I have no argument with any of the findings of the review,” said Dana Cohen, fire specialist for the refuge. “And we’re going to adopt all of the review’s recommendations.”
The report recommended that burns be canceled without relative humidity greater than 50 percent, a half-inch of rain within 24 hours of the burn and a wind speed, in the proper direction to exhaust smoke away from residential units, of no more than six miles per hour.
The report also recommended that more experienced personnel be put in places of importance and that communication issues be worked out prior to the burn.
“We will do our best to adhere to the new criteria,” said Cohen.
The refuge has no plans for more burns this year, and won’t put together its burn plan for next year until winter, said Refuge Manager Anne Morkill.
“We intend to build buffers into the decision criteria that will far exceed the minimums that have been in play,” said Morkill. “If the recommendation is for 50 percent relative humidity, we’ll use 60 percent.”
She said that the September 15 burn had “no margin for error, and we needed that margin.”
The initial review did not cite ground cover fuel load as a contributing factor to the fire’s escape from containment, but there were issues there as well, said Morkill.
“We were focused too much on the wet fuels in the actual burn unit, and we didn’t pay enough attention to the fuel loads in the surrounding areas, which were significantly drier,” she said. “The original burn unit had a large wetlands patch, but when the fire jumped the unit, we had to contend with dry fuel load.”
Refuge officials and other agencies involved in containing the wildfire met recently to discuss an after action report on the fire.
From that will come more detailed recommendations on how to handle prescribed burns in the future, said Cohen.
“We expect to develop a longer action item list for burns and a more detailed plan on who will handle the responsibilities of those actions,” said Cohen.
Local residents, particularly those who live in Pine Heights, were quite upset with refuge management in the days following the burn. Most who spoke out against the burns simply asked the refuge to stop the practice because of the proximity of the burn units to residential neighborhoods.
But Morkill said fire will continue to be part of the habitat management plan for the refuge in the future.
The refuge’s fire management plan calls for a burn cycle of eight to 12 years for pine rockland habitat. Big Pine Key is one of the last areas in the country that supports pine rockland habitat, a major habitat for the endangered Key Deer.
“We will adjust that through monitoring of post-fire recovery in the burn units,” said Cohen. “That may lead to more or less frequent burns depending on the monitoring results.”
“We have a fire dependent habitat, pine rocklands, that requires periodic burning to maintain the quality of the habitat,” said Morkill. “In addition, we have a responsibility, because of our proximity to residential areas, to manage the fuel load on refuge lands to prevent catastrophe from a natural wildfire. I don’t think we can’t not burn in this landscape and meet those goals.”
Morkill did say that burning is a tool officials use more often when there is less issue with residential areas near the burn zone.
“For areas inside the urban interface, mechanical and manual clearing is one of the things we have in the tool box to use, and we will rely more heavily on that in those areas,” she said.
Cohen said the refuge hopes to step up its mechanical and manual clearing programs.
“We will be using some Road Prison labor, we have AmeriCorps kids coming back, and we’re looking into state grant opportunities to fund more manual clearing initiatives,” Cohen said.
Another of the issues residents had with the September burn was the lack of notification of nearby residents that the burn was taking place.
That is something that burn managers will focus more heavily on for all burns in the future, says Morkill.
“We may have relied too heavily on electronic and social media in this one. We need to expand our outreach to include all media, with a longer notification window, even going house-to-house if we have to and expect any impact on those neighborhoods,” Morkill said during a meeting with Pine Heights residents the day after the burn.
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[...] the News Barometer’s November 25, 2011, follow-up article to the September 15 fire. The National Key Deer Refuge prescribed fire program will be instituting [...]