TRAGEDY OF TH EMACK LAKE· FI REA small prescribed burn, aimed at helping an endangeredbird, exploded into a ravenous wildfire that raises sometough questions about managing our natural resources

by Louis Borie

ON MONDAY MORNING, May 5,1980, there was scant warningof the disaster that was to hit

the Huron National Forest. The win­ter of 1980, like that of 1981, hadbeen an almost snowless one in theupper Midwest. But steady rains ar­rived in April, and by the end of themonth moisture levels. in the pinebarrens of north-central Michiganwere near normal. On Mondaymorning, May 5, the temperaturewas 74°, higher than usual for thattime of year. According to the fore-

cast, it would reach into the 80s bymidday. Relative humidity was low,24 percent, and winds were light, sixto 10 miles per hour from the south­west; but a cold front predicted tomove through that afternoon wouldbring higher winds and gusts of 25miles per hour out of the northwest.

Louis B orie is completinr workfor a master ofscience degree in natura resources at the Uni­versity of Michigan's environmental­communications program. He has writtennumerous articles on the outdoors.

The front would cool things off andraise the humidity, but little, if any,rain was expected.

At 9:45, District Ranger YenBosman told his fire boss, TomBates, to go ahead with a prescribedburn of the Crane Lake unit, a 210­acre clearcut just west of Highway 33in southern Oscoda County.

At 10:26, after topping off theextra water tanks that would act asbackup for the 1,000-galion tankertruck, Bates and his three-man crewset their drip torches to the sedges,

Mio District Ranger Ven Bosmangave the green light to the burn onthe Huron National Forest. Fireconditions weren't perfect, but theyseemed better than they had been

JULY 1981

"I hope that warbler enjoys his nest-my nest is burned," said Joe Walker, shownexamining the remains of his custom-made rifle while sifting through the ruins of his home.More than 44 homes and summer cottages were destroyed in the fire; Walker never evengot to use a brand-new woodstove he had had installed two days before (background)

TRAGEDY OF THEMACK LAKE FIRE(continued)

bracken fern, and piles of jack-pineslash on the eastern edge of thecutover. The plan was to use a "back­ing fire"-letting the fire back itselfinto the wind until a burned-outzone had been created to act as a firebreak. Then the rest of the CraneLake unit could be burned piece bypiece; the tanker and a tractorcplowwould assist the ground crew if anyspot fires broke out in the jack-pinestands surrounding the clearcut. .

The cutover site, harvested theyear before, would be burned, re­planted to jack pine, and in eight to10 years would provide critical nest­ing habitat for the endangered Kirt­land's warbler, a rare member of thewood warbler family. The yellowand gray, surprisingly tame, tail­wagging bird is named for Ohio nat­uralist Jared P. Kirtland, near whosefarm the first identifiable specimenwas collected in 1851.

The Crane Lake unit is one of sev­eral such areas being managedthrough the use of prescribed fire bythe U.S. Forest Service and theMichigan Department of NaturalResources for Kirtland's-warblerhabitat under the federal Endan­gered Species Act. The goal of theprogram is to create some 3,000acres of habitat each year until 1990,but a scarcity of suitable days forburning the previous several yearshad set the burning program behindschedule. The Crane Lake burn hadalready been cancelled' twice previ­ous to May 5; high winds and lowhumidity had made burning toorisky.

The burning proceeded as plannedfor the first 45 minutes. Then sev­eral small spot fires were noticedalong the eastern edge of the cut­over. The spots were quickly con-

16

tained and extinguished, and theteam continued to ignite blazes. Ashort time later, a fourth spot firebroke out in a ridge of standingtimber that had been left for aesthe­tic purposes to shield the clearcutfrom Highway 33, a heavily travelledroad that bisects Oscoda Countyfrom north to south. The spotproved to be more difficult than theprevious ones to control. Severalplow lines were needed before thefire was suppressed and the crewcould resume the prescribed burn­ing.

Before long several more firessprang up ina portion of the cutoverthat, according to the fire prescrip­tion, was to be left unburned. Thesewere easily controlled, but the inter­ruption of the spot fires had nowput the prescribed burn behindschedule. It was questionable whetherthe enrire 210 acres could be burnedbefore the afternoon change inweather, as Ven Bosman had hoped.With marginal conditiQrts to beginwith, any increase in wind speedwould make it too dangerous to con­tinue burning in an area surroundedby dense stands of young jack pine.

Just after noon, a seventhspot firebroke out in the aesthetics strip tothe north, upslope of the cutover.Again the crew halted the prescrip­tion and. focused its attention on ex~

tinguishing the spot fire. The menqllickly realized that this spot wasgoing to be more troublesome thanthe otners had been. Fueled by gustywinds on the hillside, it had spread toseveral acres in a few minutes andwas moving steadily toward thehighway.

At about 12: 15, the fire leapedinto the crowns of the jack pine onthe western edge of the highway.

Almost immediately windblown em­bers carried across the 100 feet ofopen space and ignited severalblazes in the woods across the road.The tanker and tractor-plow, alertedon the radio by the fire boss, crossedthe highway and contained one ofthe spots, but the fires had' alreadystarted other blazes just to the north."At this point," Ven Bosman recalls,"I thought we had something weweren't going to be able to control."

Within minutes one of the secon­dary spot fires torched skyward andspread into the crowns of dense,pole-size jack pines. At 12:20, TomBates radioed for the Mio-Tri TownVolunteer Fire Department, the firstof what was to be many calls for assis­tance. By late afternoon, firefightersfrom five volunteer fire depart­ments, the Michigan Department ofNatural Resources, and the U.S.ForeSt Service were battling an ex­traordinarily aggressive wildfire,and more help was on the way fromfirefighting teams in Minnesota,Wisconsin, and Missouri. The fire,fartned by the expected gusty winds,had spread eastward across the pinebarrens for more than three hours atan almost unbelievable sustainedpace of two miles per hour, sending50-foot flames and towering cloudsof black smoke into the sky.

.. By 7 p.m. almost 25,000 acres ofjack pine lay smoldering; 44 homesandsummer cottages were partly ortotally destroyed, most of them in asmall community on Mack Lake. I

One Forest Service fire technician,the operator of the tractor-plow onthe origial prescribed burn, had diedfighting the ensuing blaze. TheMack Lake fire, as it came to becalled, was declared under control at

(Turn to page 19)

AMERICAN FORESTS

.These photos were taken by fireboss Tom Bates before and after

the burn got out of hand.Right: technician halding a drip

torch watches blazing piles ofjack-pine slash. Burned-out zone

was to act as a fire break.Below: the burn turns wild and

approaches Mack lake from thewest, threatening several homes.

One house was burned here

... I

ALCONA

,MONTMORENCY

Every nest of the Kirtland's warbler has been foundon Grayling Sand and 90% of them are located inthe watershed of the Au Sable River.

KALKASKA

o 10 20, I !

MILES

.Critical Habitat

Muhigan DNR

Kirtland's Warbler

Jack pine can be found throughout the northern. forests on this continent, from NovaScotia to British Columbia. But the rare Kirtland's warbler, a member of the wood­warbler family, nests only within jack-pine forests that grow out of Grayling sand innorthern lower Michigan. Ninety percent of the nests are located in the watershed of theAu Sable River.

The Kirtland's warbler does not actually nest in.the trees; the pines and ground coverconceal the nests, which are embedded in the sandy soil. Once the trees grow largeenough for the lower branches to die off, anp the ground cover is shaded out, the birdmoves.

Scientists used to believe that the Kirtland's warbler would dwell only among pinesregenerated by forest fire. But experiment proved that the bi'rd didn't mind if the treeswere planted in straight rows on burned-over lands. The warbler may even acceptforests that have been c1earcut and replanted without intermediate fire. But, saysornithologist Harold Mayfield, "Without the intervening agency of fire, there may beunacceptable transformations in the soil quality and ground cover." Mayfield is on theKirtland's Warbler Recovery Team, which is studying the effects of management on thebird. Any changes in forestry work in the Kirtland's warble~ management area will beconducted with cauti(~>n. When you have a species that picky, you can't be too careful.

18 AMERICAN FORESTS

Jim Davisson, Editor-Publisher, Oscoda County News

Charred snowmobile stands as a reminder of the almost-snowless 1980 winter that helped make fire conditions disastrous

(mllfilllll'djl"IJI1I fJog" /6)

noon on VVednesday, May 7, al­though, according to one Forest Ser­vice official, "It was all over by seveno'clock" on Monday night.

How could a 2IO-acre prescribedburn explode so suddenly into aravaging wildfire? What caused thefire to spread at such an incrediblepace? Could the entire incident havebeen avoided by more careful plan­ning and judgment?

Even before the fire was declaredunder control, Huron-Manistee Na­tional Forests Supervisor WayneMann had ordered a full investiga­tion and analysis of the fire, and hadnamed a nine-person study teamheaded by Dale Gorman, DeputyForest Supervisor of the WhiteMountain National Forest in ewHampshi reo The IOO-page MackLake Fire Analysis released by theForest Service in late July was a sys­tematic, thorough, and remarkablyfrank summary of the disaster.

The report points to a number oferrors in judgment and planningthat contributed to the devastatingfire. According to the analysis,adequate personnel and equipmentwere not in place before the pre­scribed burn began. A key burningindex, which would have warned thedistrict ranger that conditions werenot suitable for prescribed burningthat day, was not even calculated.The report also found short­comings in communications in thehours immediately after the fire es­caped, and there was a lack ofadequate coordination between theMichigan DNR, the Forest Service,and local firefighters.

The analysis team made a numberof recommendations in its report. Itcalled for an extensive training pro­gram for Forest Service prescribed­burning personnel, the develop­ment of a program for creating fuelbreaks in the extensive tracts of jackpine that are so abundant through­out the lakes states, and more re­search into Kirtland's-warblet habi­tat needs. The team wanted specifi­cally to see if habitat for the endan­gered songbird can be created in

JULY 1981

sufficient amounts without the useof prescribed fire.

The Mack Lake tire was a tragedy,from both the human and resource­management perspectives. A hu­man life was lost, personal prop­erty destroyed, and thousands ofacres of timber killed (some woodmay be salvaged for fuel, however).Immediately following the fire, localresidents reacted with sorrow overthe death of Forest Service employeeJim Swiderski. Feelings of outragesoon followed.

"People couldn't believe that theForest Service would take a risk likethat when they didn't have to," re­calls Oscoda County ews pUblisherJames Davisson.

Mack Lake resident Joe Walkersummed up the feelings of many. "Ihope that warbler enjoys his nest-my nest is burned," Walker saidas he sifted through the smolderingruins of his home.

The tragedy of the Mack Lake firewas compounded by the fact that itstarted out as a planned fire, set byan agency charged with managingmillions of acres of the country's val­uable forests and grasslands. In theaftermath of the fire and the sub­sequent analysis, lingering questionsremained about whether the ForestService would be the final victim ofits own mistakes. Mack Lake comesat a time when the Forest Service andother land-management agenciesare increasingly using prescribedfire as a management tool. But pub­lic understanding and acceptance ofthe intentional use of fire is stilltentative-understandably so, given35 years of stern cautions fromSmokey Bear.

As a result of the fire, the ForestService has undertaken an extensivereview of its prescribed-burningpolicies and practices at all levels,

(Turn to page 5 I)

19

l

Tragedy of the Mack Lake Fire (From page 19)

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sprouts. The blight has yet to be.identified, and even when it isknown, there is no guarantee a curewill be found immediately.

It is entirely possible. that theFlorida torreya may join the Caro­lina parakeet, the passenger pigeon,and the host of other plants andanimals that have become extinct inthe past century. But public aware­ness is increasing and research tosave endangered species has becomemore intensive. With luck, scientistsmay soon isolate the cause of theblight and save the Florida torreyabefore its time runs out. •

average, according to tree-ring data.A fire history in the area was com­piled just after the Mack Lake fire. Itshowed that some trees had beenscarred by a 16,000-a<;re fire thatcovered much of the same area in1946, and some showed scarringfrom a major fire that occurred in1913.

The jack pine/fire story is evi­dently a time-worn one. But in anine-county area around Mio, in thenortheastern corner of Michigan'slower peninsula, a third player isengaged in the drama. Every spring,the entire known popula~ionof Kirt­land's warblers-less than 500 indi­viduals in I980-arrives in this smallregion from wintering grounds inthe Bahamas. (The birds were still inmigration at the time of the fire.)Research had shed some light onwhy the "jaCk-pine bird" is so par­ticular in its choice of nesting habitat,but all of the questions have not beenanswered.

The colorful warbler, whose songhas been variously described as "liq­uid" and "wild and clear," will notuse just any clump of scrubby jackpine as cover for its ground nest. Itrequires stands at least 80 acres insize with trees from eight to 21 yearsold. As if these requirements weren'tstringent enough, the pines evi­dently must be growing on a particu­lar soil type, called Grayling sand,for the bird to colonize the stands.These factors combine to form arather narrow niche that the Kirt­land's warbler has evolved to fill. Butareas where these environmentalconditions occur together are notvery common. So Kirtland's warblerbreeding habitat is not commoneither.

Organized efforts to increase the

planting at Highlands, North Caro­lina. This torreya is growing at anelevation about 4,000 feet higherthan its native bluffs, but it is appar­ently doing quite well. Seed from thetree has been collected and mayprove valuable in establishing path­ogen-free plants.

Time is slipping away, though.Florida and Georgia already list thetOrreya as an endangered species,and federal registration is likely thisyear if the Administration approvesfunding. No one knows how muchlonger the root systems of the dis­eased torreyas will produce basal

from the ranger districts on up to thedecisionmakers in Washington. Theagency has decided to go ahead withthe use of prescribed fire. But withthe eyes of the public and otherresource-management agenciesfixed upon them, the policymakersin Washington felt it necessary tosend a clear message to the lowerechelons: "Proceed with the use ofprescribed fire, but proceed withcaution."

Michigan Route 72 from Graylingto Mio is a straight and bumpy

highway that cuts through the forestto the distant horizon. A slight rise inthe road offers a view that extendsfor miles across an unbroken ex­panse of pine lands. Clusters ofwell-kept summer cottages andyear-round homes are visible fromthe highway, modest but prouddwellings tucked in the woods as ifthey had simply grown up beneaththe jack pines. It is a somewhat pre­carious existence; jack pine and fireare old and certain friends.

Jack pine is one of several treespecies that depend on fire to com­plete their reproductive cycle. TheI Y2-inch cones, normally sealed shutby a resinous bonding material, open

'only when ambient temperaturesreach 1250 F-as they do, severaltimes over, during a forest fire.Within hours, the winged seeds arereleased from the cones and quicklytake root in the mineral soil exposedby the fire. For thousands of years,fires have swept through the sandyplains of Michigan, Minnesota, andWisconsin, burning crowded, over­mature stands of the short-lived jackpine, making way for new stands.

In the Mack Lake area, major fireshave occurred every 20 years on the

JULY 1981 51

16-3/4"overall

Lake fire had been 30 acres-also onan early May burn, in 1978. How didthe Mack Lake fire get out of control'so quickly? High winds and the lowmoisture content of the "fine fuels"in the fores.! that day were perhapsthe most critical factors, says AlSimard, fire-management researcherat the Forest Service's orth Cen­tral Forest Experiment Station FieldUnit in East Lansing, Michigan,and a member of the team that ana­lyzed the Mack Lake fire. Five daysbefore the fire, .68 inches of rain hadfallen in the area, but there had beenno precipitation since then.

"We measured the fuel moistureof a 'punky' log three inches in diam­eter soon after the fire, and it was400 percent," Simard said. Thatmeans' the log weighed five timeswhat it would if it were dry. "Yet," headded, "the grasses would have beendown to five percent at the time ofthe fire." Simard noted that themoisture content of jack-pine needlesis at its lowest in early. spring, justbefore bud flushing. Add to thesefactors the flammable extractivesexuded by jack pine, and the ten­dency for youngjack pine to developa pattern of "continuous fuels"­branches and needles that extendfrom the crown all the way down tothe ground-and you have a for­mula for the type of explosive flashfire that engulfed the Mack Lakearea.

"The intensity of the fire was tre­mendous, but the residence time [atanyone spot in the forest] was verybrief," Simard said. "Three or fourminutes and it was gone. It onlyburned about a quarter-inch of duffand no twigs bigger than a half-inchin diameter. It was almost as if some­one had painted"the ground black."The fire researcher's characteriza­tion belies the enormous energy ofthe fire, calculated later by the ForestService to have been 2Y2 trillionBTUs, or seven times the force of theHiroshima bomb.

In the light of the analysis, thequestion that comes quickly to mindis whether or not Forest Service offi­cials should have realized that finefuels were so critically dry that Mon­day morning. Yen Bosman says thatthe fire technicians in the MioRanger District had little experiencewith the use of prescribed burninginjack-pine fuel types. Turnover on hisdistrict has been unusually high inthe past several years .

The fact that the program was be-

bird's habitat began in 1957, when itwas recognized that the exclusion offire from the pine barrens,'broughtabout by Smokey Bear and more­effective firefighting techniques,was having a devastating effect onthe warblers' population. With thepassage of the Endangered SpeciesAct in 1973, the Kirtland's warblerwas given protected status. A Kirt­land's Warbler Recovery Plan wasprepared, with the objective of re­establishing "a self-sustaining wildKirtland's. warbler populationthroughout its known former rangeat a minimum level of 1,000 pairs."Guided by the Kirtland's WarblerRecovery Team-which includesrepresentatives from the MichiganDNR, the U.S. Forest Service, theU.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, andsome interested citizens-the ForestService and the Michigan DNRbegan their cooperative program ofcreating habitat for the warbler onsome 135',000 acres of state aQd fed­.eralland.

The beauty of Kirtland's warblermanagement is that it is also soundforest management. Mature standsofjack pine in areas identified as po­tential warbler habitat are whole­tree-logged, wi~h slash left as fuel fora subsequent prescribed burn. Thenthe tracts are hand- or machine­planted to jack pine, which the war­bler, with some luck, will begin toutilize in eight to 10 years.

The reason for the intermediateburning step is twofold: the burn isexcellent site preparation for jack­pine seedlings; and, for reasons notyet fully understood, the Kirtland'swarbler seems to prefer areas thathave a past history of fire. The birdhas been observed in jack-pine standsthat don't have a recent fire history;but according to John Byelich, a re­tired Michigan DNR biologist andhead of the Kirtland's Warbler Re­covery Team, "The best warblerhabitat occurs in areas tqat fire hascreated." Byelich says that naturalregeneration without fire "appar­ently encourages other plant asso­ciations which are detrimental to thewarbler. When you have a fire, iteliminates any competition, sets suc­cession back, and allows only jackpine and blueberry and grasses togrow. This is very conducive towarbler-nesting habitat."

In more than 55 prescribed burnsconducted by the Forest Service andthe Michigan DNR since 1964, thelargest escape prior to the Mack

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Forest Service sign stands in low scrubcharacteristic of much of the area. As tbesign says, the agency still plans to managethe site, but with more careJim Davisson, Editor-Publisher, Oscoda County News

agement effort. Another result ofthe policy review following the MackLake fire: public involvement willnow be required before any pre­scribed burning can take place in theNational Forest System.

To be fair, it should be noted thatthe record of the Forest Service withrespect to prescribed burning is nottypified by Mack Lake. The agencyhas used planned fires to manage itsforest and grassland resources formore than 25 years-particularly inthe South, where more than a mil­lion acres are burned safely eachyear. It is unfortunate that it took amajor fire like Mack Lake to makethe Forest Service aware of the in­adequacies of its prescribed burn­ing program in other parts of thecountry.

It is clear that fire will continueto be an important resource-man­agement tool. But it's a tool as del­icate to manipulate as a surgeon'sscalpel. Fire is also a ruthless andunpredictable teacher, as the lessonsof Mack Lake demonstrate. We canonly hope that future lessons will belearned in less-destructive ways, andwill help us understand better howwe can use a capricious naturalphenomenon to our best advantage-and that of our planet. •

ranger district in the Huron­Manistee National Forests, thisspring. One small burn may be at­tempted this fall, says Yen Bosman,"if we get our people trained andhave all the pieces in place by then."Before that burn, however, severalpublic hearings will be held to hearwhat area residents have to say aboutthe Forest Service's plans to continueusing prescribed bur:ning as a keytool in the Kirtland's-warbler man-

hind schedule "entered a lot" into hisdecision to go ahead with the burn,Bosman says. "There wasn't any di­rect pressure, but our organizationhas become very target- and ac-

, complishment-oriented." The twoprevious cancellations and the possi­bility that the crew wouldn't be ableto burn at all-as was the case theprevious spring-tipped the bal­ance. "Based on all the knowledgeand experience we had at the time,we did what we thought was right,"says Bosman. .

He explains that the reason thecrew ignored Forest Service regula­tions and failed to calculate theBurning Index is simply that "we justdidn't have confidence in the predic­tions of the Burning Index." In fact,the Mio District was in the process ofswitching from the old Fire LoadIndex system to the neW BurningIndex syste'm, both complicatedformulas for predicting whetherconditions on a given day are suit­able for a prescribed burn.

The Forest Service, faced withsuch a disturbing lack of confidenceby its own on-the-ground personnelin established fire procedure, tooksteps to regain that confidence. Lastwinter the- agency required all districtrangers to attend a series of train­ing workshops on prescribed burn-ing; the rangers. in turn held trainingsessions for fire technicians thisspring. The Huron-Manistee Na­tional Forests went a step farther.The Mack Lake study team called fora special prescribed-burning team,made up of Forest Service andMichigan DNR personnel, which willplan and execute all of the pre­s'cribed burns on the forest-a jorthat, until now, has been done on adistrict-by-district basis.

The study team also recom-mended developing better radio­communications procedures forworking with volunteer fire depart­ments. And the new plan calls for asystem of fuel breaks in theHuron-Manistee. The Mack Lakefire'could have been even more dev­astating had it not made its way intoharqwood stands that were muchless flammable than the jack pines.Bands ofhardwoods or open spacesthat break up the large, continuousjack-pine stands could be the mosteffective long-term method ofminimizing the harm of future fires.

There yvill be no burning forKirtland's-warbler habitat on theMio Ranger District, or on any other

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