Murphey complex 10 years later by Alison Smith

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THE BIG BLAZE

Car still in canyon after fatal crash NATHAN BROWN

nbrown@magicvalley.com

TWIN FALLS — Friday afternoon, someone visiting from out of town called to report a car in the Snake River Canyon, near the BASE jumpers’ landing site just east of the Perrine Bridge. The car, or rather what’s left of it, has been there since November 2015, when Timothy Ray Marlow drove into the canyon and died in the resulting crash. “We ended up recovering the body and the vehicle’s been down there ever since,” Fire Battalion Chief Mitchell Brooks said. And this isn’t the first time someone has called to report it, apparently thinking it a new wreck. “We get calls on that every once in a while,” Brooks said. “Today it sounded like it might have been a different vehicle that was down there but it ended up being the same one.” So why’s it still there? “All I know is, it’s still down there and we keep getting calls on it,” Brooks said.

ELKO DAILY FREE PRESS FILE PHOTO

A wildfire burns July 19, 2007, a couple of days before this and seven other smaller fires would merge into the Murphy Complex Fire, Idaho’s biggest since 1910.

Ten years ago this month, the Murphy Complex Fire burned more than 650,000 acres in remote Twin Falls and Owyhee counties and northern Nevada. The July 2007 fire, Idaho's biggest since 1910, provided the impetus for the creation of Rangeland Fire Protection Associations that help fight fires over millions of acres in rural southwestern Idaho. See the story on E1.

Please see CANYON, Page A6

Paul woman names animal shelter, senior center in will EVAN VUCCI, ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAURIE WELCH

First lady Melania Trump waves as she and President Donald Trump board Air Force One on Saturday in Hamburg, Germany.

lwelch@magicvalley.com

PAUL — Upon her death, a Paul woman with a fierce love of animals and an independent spirit left a sizable portion of her estate, valued at $200,000, to the Minidoka animal shelter and a van worth $18,000 to the county’s senior center. Diane Marie Gellings, 64, died at her home on June 8. A single woman with no children, police found a seven-page hand-written will outlining how she wanted her property and belongings to be distributed, which included giving a home and more than 7-acres of property with outbuildings to the animal shelter in Minidoka County. She also gave a 2004 Ford van with handicap lifts and equipment to the Minidoka County Senior Center. “She was a paraplegic but she lived an active lifestyle,” said Don Chisholm, the attorney who is handling her will. Diane adored her two horses, Blackie and Cowboy, and her three dogs, Bob, Sheila and Buck went everywhere with her. Kindred spirit Blackie, who she rescued from slaughter, is a bit lame. “She used to get on her golf cart and use the end of a garden hoe to push the accelerator pedal and she would take off down the road on it to run her dogs,” said Gina Wagner, Diane’s friend and neighbor. Wade Short, who lived down the road from Diane and had grown up with her,

Trump, Asian allies seek counter to NKorean ‘menace’ KEN THOMAS AND DARLENE SUPERVILLE

Associated Press

said she would often stop and talk with him when he was out tending the garden. “I don’t know how many times I rescued her when she slid her golf cart off a canal bank,” Wade said. Tom Wagner, Gina’s husband, said he would scold Diane after she got stuck somewhere because she often forgot to carry her cellphone. “She was a character,” Tom said. Diane also loved to trap shoot and she had many targets set up on her property.

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LAURIE WELCH, TIMES-NEWS

Guy Tannehill, with the Minidoka County animal shelter, removes a litter of puppies to clean a kennel Thursday. The four-week-old puppies will be available for adoption.

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“She was a really good shot,” Wade said. “Let’s just say I wouldn’t have wanted her chasing me with a gun.” Diane mowed her own lawn on a riding lawn mower and was often out in her yard and garden tending her plants. She had a 2006 red Ford Mustang with a sporty white stripe, and occasionally she would pile into it with her dogs. “You could hear her tearing off down

HAMBURG, Germany — Wrapping up his second European tour, President Donald Trump searched for consensus with Asian allies Saturday on how to counter the “menace” of North Korea after its test-launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. “Something has to be done about it,” Trump said as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping. In a separate meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Trump said the two were tackling “the problem and menace of North Korea.” The White House said after the meeting with Abe that the U.S. was “prepared to use the full range of capabilities” in defense of Japan. Trump and Abe committed, the White House said, “to redoubling their efforts to bring all nations together to show North Korea that there are consequences for its threatening and unlawful actions.”

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THE BIG STORY

SUNDAY, JULY 9, 2017 |

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SECTION E

TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO

Bert Brackett pauses on July 24, 2007, while describing how the Murphy Complex Fire trapped and killed several of his cattle about 40 miles west of Rogerson.

10 YEARS LATER The legacy of Idaho’s huge Murphy Complex Fire NATHAN BROWN

nbrown@magicvalley.com

A rancher’s perspective

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Murphy Complex Fire area

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Castleford Clo

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Murphy Hot Springs

Three Creek IDAHO NEVADA

Jarbidge

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Please see FIRE, Page E2

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Brackett, whose family has ranched in the Three Creek area since the late 1800s, rattled off other old cabins and homesteads — by the names of the families who built them — that burned in those two weeks 10 years ago. The loss of that history, he said, is one of the fire’s lasting tragedies. Brackett stopped the truck, near a spot where about a dozen of his cattle burned to death. The fire consumed about 60 percent of the land on which Brackett’s cattle graze, and some were trapped here. “It burned over the top of them,” he said. As Brackett drove — and the road dwindled to just a couple of ruts — he pointed out areas that had burned next to ones that hadn’t. Or areas burned badly next to others just lightly scorched. Or areas burned multiple times in recent years. He pointed out differences in the vegetation — green rabbitbrush in the badly burnt areas, and more grayish-blue sagebrush, a key plant in this desert ecosystem, in some areas that escaped the flames. “If you lose the sagebrush, you lose your seed source, you’ve lost your sage grouse habitwat,” he said. Whether more grazing could have reduced the fire’s intensity was hotly debated in its aftermath. Then and today, Brackett believes it

Rogerson Cedar Creek

Salmon Falls Creek Reservoir

Jackpot 93

Source: Bureau of Land Management

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By the numbers

Ronda Macaw: ‘You don’t get over that’

1870

TETONA DUNLAP

The last time there was a hotter July in Idaho before 2007.

1910

The last time there was a bigger fire in Idaho — the “Big Burn” or the “Great Fire of 1910,” which consumed 3 million acres in northeastern Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana, killed 87 people and is believed to have been the biggest wildfire in U.S. history.

96 and higher

Daily temperatures in south-central Idaho the week before the Murphy Complex Fire.

8,000

Lightning strikes in the area covered by the Bureau of Land Management’s Twin Falls-based Jarbidge Field Office the day the fire started.

The number of fires that started July 16-18 in the territory covered by the BLM’s Jarbidge Field Office.

M 1

In July 2007, a little more than 650,000 acres in southwestern Idaho and northern Nevada burned in Idaho's biggest fire since 1910.

eau R i ver Br u n

HREE CREEK — Bert Brackett drove his dusty ranch truck, a Ford Super Duty with more than 150,000 miles on the odometer, down the rough dirt road that leads to his grazing allotment, passing a dirt fork off to the left and a “Post Office” sign. Built in the late 1800s, with Elk Mountain timber hauled over 18 miles of rangeland, the log cabin wasn’t a formally designated post office but decades ago served as a place where cowboys could pick up messages. It burned in the Murphy Complex Fire, 10 years ago this month. So did more than 650,000 acres in remote Twin Falls and Owyhee counties and northern Nevada, an area almost as big as Rhode Island. The July 2007 fire, Idaho’s biggest since 1910, provided the impetus for the creation of Rangeland Fire Protection Associations that help fight fires over millions of acres in rural southwestern Idaho. This year about 330 ranchers and farmers are RFPA members, and they’re often able to spot and reach a fire before Bureau of Land Management firefighters could. The federal government and Idaho spent millions of dollars after the Murphy Complex Fire on reseeding efforts, and in many areas the sagebrush is coming back. But opinions differ on whether the land was restored as it should have been, whether there are problems with the BLM’s current grazing management policies and, if so, what those problems are.

Murphy Complex Fire

And for some, the legacy of the Murphy Complex Fire is much more personal.

tdunlap@magicvalley.com

ROGERSON — Ronda Macaw remembers the fire starting with the sizzle of a lightning strike and a bit of smoke. Then the fire exploded, and Macaw’s life changed forever. Ten years later, Macaw still gets choked up about the Murphy Complex Fire that burned her family’s ranch, Devil Creek, in three days. Fire came within 500 feet of the family home. “We watched it and waited for BLM to arrive, but no one arrived,” Macaw said. “It was 98 degrees and the wind began to blow.” Ranch workers gathered 50 head of cattle with four-wheelers and barely got them out of the fire’s path. The family’s horses weren’t so lucky. Five mares, seven colts and a stallion died. “There were deer trying to run away from the fire,” Macaw said, crying. “Cattle burned up against fence

lines. Colts had their front legs broke off trying to run in the dark. They broke them on the rocks. You don’t get over that. You just don’t.” All of the family’s fences burned, and it cost $46,000 to replace them all. The ranch lost a cabin and corrals. Neighbors helped save its haystacks. The family put out small fires to try to save some of its grazing land. Macaw’s parents, Rolland “Rolly” Karl Patrick and Beth Patrick, purchased Devil Creek Ranch in 1946 from her grandparents, Karl and Carolyn Patrick, but the ranch had been in the family since 1935. Rolly and Beth had three children: Macaw, Dee Conrad and Bethene Brewer. Beth died in 2001. “She never had to witness this terrible fire,” Macaw said. Despite the material losses, Macaw worried most about her father during the 2007 fire. Rolly died in 2009 at 93.

“I was trying to keep my dad safe, and he wanted to always go look,” Macaw said. “I told him, ‘We got to stay right here.’ We put towels over the windows to keep smoke out.” They were without power and phone service. Macaw said she never left her father’s side during the ordeal. “You couldn’t sleep at night,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep at night.” Macaw doesn’t live full time on the ranch anymore. She and sister Dee Conrad manage the ranch, spending a third of their time there. But that doesn’t mean Macaw isn’t worried every time a lightening storm hits or the the air carries the faint smell of smoke. The other day her hired foreman smelled smoke and drove around looking for it. It turned out to be from a fire miles away, but it still alarmed Macaw. “I’m always worried the fire will return.”

MORE INSIDE: Timeline, E2 | Justin Miller: ‘Everything you tried was not working,’ E2 | Mike Guerry: ‘Overwhelmed every day,’ E2 | Ted Howard: ‘A hot, hot time,’ E3 | Scott Uhrig: ‘Nothing but ash and dirt,’ E3

BIG STORY

E2 | Sunday, July 9, 2017

TIMELINE: MURPHY COMPLEX FIRE

2007‌

July 26: The fire is 37 percent contained.

July 16: After thousands of lightning strikes, fire starts near the Twin Falls-Owyhee county line.

July 30: The fire is 98 percent contained.

J‌ uly 18: Murphy Hot Springs is ordered evacuated due to the Rowland Fire, one of the larger fires that will later merge into the Murphy Complex.

Aug. 9: U.S. Interior Secretary and former Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne visits Three Creek.

Aug. 2: The fire is contained.

Aug. 18: Jarbidge holds its summer history festival, which was planned for July but postponed due to the fire.

July 19: Jarbidge, Nev., is ordered evacuated. The Duck Valley Indian Reservation loses power when util- Sept. 13: Idaho Department of ity poles burn. Fish and Game announces a shorter-than-usual sage grouse season, July 21-22: Eight large wildfires partially due to the fire’s destrucnear the Idaho-Nevada border tion. merge over the weekend, forming After the fire: Restoration efforts the larger fire that will be called start. By 2009, Bureau of Land Murphy Complex. Management teams will have drillJuly 23: Twin Falls County comseeded 82,779 acres and seeded missioners pass an emergency or- 294,098 acres aerially. In the first dinance prohibiting open burning. year after the fire, 80,000 sagebrush, 20,000 bitterbrush and Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter declares a state of disaster emergency in five 1,600 willows are planted. Idaho counties being ravaged by wildfires, including Twin Falls, Cassia and Owyhee. September 2008: Bureau of Land Management, University of Idaho July 24: The Jarbidge evacuation and other researchers release a order is the last such order to be report saying extreme temperalifted. tures and weather were a far bigJuly 25: After growing by almost ger factor in the fire than grazing 100,000 acres in the previous two or lack thereof. However, the study days, largely in Nevada, the fire also suggests looking into targeted appears to have halted about 10 grazing as a fire management opmiles east of Mountain City, Nev. tion under less extreme conditions.

Later

By the numbers 8 Fires converged to form the Murphy Complex — the Elk Mountain, Rowland, Smith’s Crossing, Inside Desert, Buck Flat, Jim Lee, Juniper #1 and Scott Creek fires.

1,200 Approximate number of firefighters who fought the Murphy Complex Fire at its peak.

488 BLM personnel involved in fighting the fire.

28 BLM engines that fought the fire. 12 BLM hand crews. 11 BLM dozers. 4 BLM helicopters. 653,000 Approximate acreage

February 2009: U.S. District Judge Lynn B. Winmill rules that, due to the fire, grazing in the area cannot be allowed to continue at previous levels, while stopping short of a total ban and rejecting most of the other requests in Western Watersheds Project’s lawsuit. March 2011: Winmill reasserts a 2005 ruling which stemmed from a lawsuit brought by Western Watersheds and banned grazing on 17 allotments southwest of Twin Falls. The cattle producers appeal. July 2011: Winmill overturns the ban on grazing on those 17 allotments. 2012: Mountain Home ranchers create the state’s first Rangeland Fire Protection Association. Before this, the BLM didn’t allow ranchers to help fight fires due to safety and liability concerns. 2013: The Idaho Legislature passes a bill authorizing creation of nonprofit RFPAs and appropriates $400,000 to help with startup costs. 2017: About 330 ranchers, farmers and their employees are members of nine RFPAs. Sources: Times-News archives; Bureau of Land Management, Idaho Department of Lands, Idaho legislative reports.

Times-News

Justin Miller: ‘Everything you tried was not working’ TETONA DUNLAP

tdunlap@magicvalley.com‌

TWIN FALLS — For Justin ‌ Miller, the Murphy Complex Fire was just another day on the job. Certainly it was one of the biggest and fastest fires he’d fought, but he was a nine-year veteran when it erupted in 2007. Miller, a Bureau of Land Management engine Miller captain, was initially assigned to the Smith’s Crossing Fire when that blaze eventually converged with the bigger Murphy Complex Fire. In the beginning, the Smith’s fire was only about 200 acres. Then his crew joined up with another engine crew for a total of eight firefighters. “We both started flanking the fire and we were getting breakouts behind us,” he said. “I drove the transport out, and I remember doing 35 mph on a dirt road and the fire was progressing faster than us.” Miller and his crew fought the fire for about 12 days.

“It was so stretched out,” he said. “We basically slept on the fire line for four or five days.” For a few days, he remembered, no new supplies came in; Miller called these times “black holes.” Luckily, they were well prepared with prepackaged meals. While it wasn’t his first fire, it was one of the trickier ones. The firefighters would make progress and fires would break out behind them. “It was frustrating,” Miller said. “You’d come up with certain tactics, but everything you tried was not working.” Though it’s hard to recall where they were exactly, Miller remembers being near Devils Creek Ranch and close to Balanced Rock Road. He interacted briefly with some ranchers and tractor operators. “Obviously, they want to protect their pasture for their animals and our focus was on a bigger scale,” he said. Shortly after the fire, Miller was hired as a member of the rehabilitation crew planting new seeds and sagebrush in the areas burned by the Murphy Complex Fire.

Mike Guerry: ‘Overwhelmed every day’ TETONA DUNLAP

tdunlap@magicvalley.com‌

THREE CREEK — Mike ‌ Guerry has always respected Mother Nature. Now, 10 years after the Murphy Complex Fire, he respects her even more. G u e r ry wasn’t too worried when he saw a smoldering fire in a rough area Guerry miles from his ranch in 2007. He thought it would burn itself out. When they’re manageable, he said, fires are an important component of the ecosystem. Then the wind picked up. That small fire exploded and made a run in his direction. “We were all a little concerned, but maybe less concerned than what we needed to be,” Guerry said. “We had big fires but never saw anything like the Murphy Complex Fire.” Guerry Inc., a sheep and cattle ranch near Three Creek,

has been in the Guerry family since 1926. Guerry’s grandfather, Mauricio, acquired the property after working for the owner for 13 years. His father, Maurice, took over the ranch in 1954, and Guerry became owner in 1980. The Murphy Complex Fire’s winds stick out most in his memory. “It was insane because of the winds that were behind it and the fuels that were out there,” he said. “We had huge fuel loads out there. Then big winds and the fire making its own winds. That’s when it became difficult to get out in front of it.” Guerry didn’t lose any livestock because his was in the higher country, but there were a few close calls. He had some cattle caught between the Murphy Complex Fire and the Scott Fire. He and other ranchers were able to get their cattle out and help keep the Scott Fire at bay while they did. “For a long time they couldn’t send us any resources

because their resources had to protect Jackpot,” Guerry said. “It was life over range and cattle.” As the ranchers used a grader and Caterpillar to build a fire line, sometimes the fire was three or four miles away; other times it was as close as 300 or 400 feet. During the fire, Guerry got minimal sleep, sleeping some nights in the seat of his pickup. He went to his house for supplies occasionally but was out near the fire most of the time. “You felt overwhelmed every day because of lack of ability to get control of it,” said Guerry, whose livestock grazed on land managed by the Bureau of Land Management. “We lost so much country. It was BLM, but it was key to our operation. It crippled our operation because of the amount of feed we had to go out and find. I called it ‘making a living on street corners’ for three years after that.” Ranchers had to find any kind of feed and ground avail-

able, Guerry said, to get them through the winter. “A lot of people scaled back their operations,” he said. “You did what you kind of had to do.” But from fire come change and renewal. Now ranchers can assist in fighting range fires on state and federal lands. Rangeland Fire Protection Associations allow professionally trained ranchers to engage in initial wildfire suppression and use interagency resources. Guerry chairs the Three Creek Rangeland Fire Protection Association, comprised of 48 people in its fifth season. Land that was once sagebrush steppe is now mostly grassland, Guerry said, and fires run faster and burn hotter. “We are going to be whipped one day,” Guerry said. “Hopefully we won’t get whipped as bad as we did, but this year could be the year. It could be a long, tough season. It all depends on Mother Nature. I have a lot of respect for her. She is in charge.”

burned.

1,000 Approximate square miles burned, or about 200 square miles smaller than Rhode Island.

Grazing allotments affected by the fire.

71 Known sage grouse mating areas, or leks, the fire destroyed.

273,600 Acres of key sage grouse habitat burned in the fire.

80,000 Sagebrush planted in the year after the fire.

$17 million BLM spending on emergency stabilization and rehabilitation as of 2009.

82,779 Acres the BLM and Idaho Department of Lands had drill-seeded as of 2009.

294,098 Acres the BLM and Department of Lands had aerially seeded as of 2009.

463 Miles of fencing the BLM repaired. 35 Miles of new fencing the BLM put in. 1.12 million Acres protected by the Three Creek

Rangeland Fire Protection Association today.

48 Members of the Three Creek RFPA in 2016.

Sources: Times-News archives; Bureau of Land Management; National Interagency Fire Center; Idaho Department of Lands.

Fire

Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter. Shoshone-Paiute Tribe members From E1 — who live on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation that straddles the Nevada-Idaho would have helped by reducborder and went without ing the amount of flammable power or water for more than grasses on the land. At his a week due to the fire — sold home he still has a sun-faded more than 10,000 sagebrush poster of a picture he took of seedlings to the BLM and Mud Flat Hill, showing the helped plant willows. Otter contrast between the side of helped organize a replanting a fence line that burned and effort with 1,000 volunteers the side that didn’t. Brackett, and showed up to plant sagewho is a state senator now brush himself. and was in the state House 10 When the BLM employyears ago, used to hang the DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌ ees get out of the SUV on picture in his Boise office, and Bert Brackett on June 7 looks over images shot 10 years ago on this visit 10 years later, they he took it with him when he his ranch. immediately find a broken gave talks about the fire. sage grouse egg, the nest “Properly doing it removes concealed under the branches some fuel,” Brackett said. of a nearby sagebrush. A “You don’t graze it down to predator, perhaps a raven or bare ground.” a coyote, probably got to the Brackett drove past some egg, says Jarbidge Field Office of his cattle grazing in front assistant field manager Jeff of a barbed wire fence. He Ross, who spent decades as pointed to the spot where, the staff archaeologist for the 10 years ago, he cut the fence Twin Falls-based Jarbidge so his cattle could escape Field Office. If it had hatched, the flames with the fire just a he notes, it would probably quarter-mile away. still be in the nest. With the exception of the Then they focus on the sagebrush, Brackett said, the COURTESY OF OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR‌ plant life around them. This land has made “just a remarkable recovery.” However, he Idaho Gov. C.L. ‘Butch’ Otter, right, helps harvest sagebrush seed area was aerially reseeded in strips a decade ago. wants to see more work done to be planted in areas burned by the Murphy Complex Fire. “They’re slowly spreading,” on pre-fire planning, and says Patty Courtney, BLM more flexibility for cattlemen which has led to some of the the unpaved roads that take same sparring — ranchers to graze, to move their herds you through much of the area natural resources specialist, who say more grazing could more based on conditions burned in the Murphy Com- pointing to a tiny new brush have mitigated the fire’s imand not the calendar and to plex Fire, starting at Balanced sprouting. She contrasts this with how blackened and desrun more livestock if forage is pact, BLM officials who say Rock and getting back onto olate the area looked after the abundant. Of the three major weather was the major facpavement at Three Creek. fire. tor, environmentalists who contributors to fire — high The BLM undertook a “It’s doing what it’s supsay grazing makes wildfires temperatures, low humidity major replanting effort afposed to, which is filling in and fuel — the last is the only worse. ter the fire and by 2009 had “If there were any lessons, one humans can control, he drill-seeded 82,779 acres and between the strips to we kind of forgot them,” said. seeded 294,098 acres aeri“If the managers had more Brackett said. “The instially in collaboration with the Please see FIRE, Page E3 tutional memory just is not discretion, more flexibility,” Idaho Department of Lands. there.” he said, “they could manage The BLM — at the time More online: A new the fuel a little bit better.” headed by Idahoan James gallery on Magicvalley.com Brackett doesn’t feel like Caswell, answering to Intoday revisits the Murphy Plant life, people have learned the lesterior Secretary and former Complex Fire with more 10 years later‌ sons of the Murphy Complex Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne firefighting photos from 2007 Fire. He pointed to the 2015 — helped with obtaining the and images of the land’s A BLM SUV stops, about Soda Fire southwest of Boise, halfway through a loop on needed drills and seed, said recovery from this spring.

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BIG STORY

Times-News

Sunday, July 9, 2017 | E3

Ted Howard: ‘A hot, hot time’ Scott Uhrig: ‘Nothing but ash and dirt’ TETONA DUNLAP

tdunlap@magicvalley.com‌

OWYHEE — Surrounded by ‌ a sea of sagebrush, Duck Valley Indian Reservation was without power for nearly two weeks during the Murphy Complex Fire. But wildfires and power loss are not uncommon here. “I recall it was a hot, hot time,” said tribal chairman Theodore “Ted” Howard, who was the Shoshone-Paiute Tribe’s cultural resources director back in 2007. “It was in the summer, and we were without power for about 12 days. It was just one of those times when we had to make the best of the situation. There was water donated, but other kind of things were brought in, and we got through it.” The fire burned more than 200 poles that delivered power to the reservation on the Idaho-Nevada border. “Everybody that lived here

was affected,” Howard said. “The tribal office, if I recall, continued because we had a large generator that provided power to the tribal office. The hospital had its own power source, and some tribal members have their own generators.” That’s because electricity often goes off in the remote town of Owyhee. “It doesn’t bother people here that much to be without power,” Howard said. “It’s something we are used to.” The tribal fire station was the headquarters for volunteers and supplies. EMTs helped distribute bottled water and check on tribal members. Though the Murphy Complex Fire was the biggest, wildfires are just part of living in Duck Valley. Since the Murphy Complex Fire, power line routes have changed and no longer come through the area that burned.

TETONA DUNLAP

tdunlap@magicvalley.com‌

‌TWIN FALLS — Scott Uhrig had 20 years of experience when the Murphy Complex Fire broke out. But he had never seen a fire burn with such intensity. As the Bureau of Land Management’s emergency stabilization and rehabilitation manager, he’s one of the people responsible for making Uhrig sure scorched land returns to its original state — or as close as it can get. He has worked for the BLM for 33 years. “We knew it was a big fire, and every minute is so critical when it comes to seeing how hot it burns and where,” he said. “I was there early mornings and late evenings. During the day I’d

be out looking at the burn patterns. The fire was just burning in so many different directions.” During the fire, Uhrig helped run the fire camp and ordered supplies for fire crews. After the fire, he was part of the crew that reseeded the burned areas by dragging a rangeland drill. About 75,000 acres were drillseeded in the Murphy Complex Fire area. “The fire intensity was like no other fire,” he said. “It was like moon dust — nothing was out there. It was as slick as this table. There was nothing but ash and dirt.” If you don’t rehabilitate the ground, Uhrig said, native vegetation doesn’t return but invasive weeds do. “It’s such a critical wildlife area, and we are just trying to restore it,” Uhrig said. “We are still out there 10 years later restoring wildlife habitat.”

In 2007, the BLM used 99 rangeland drills and more than 2 million pounds of seeds on all Idaho fires including the Murphy Complex Fire, but it used 1.7 million seedlings on the Murphy Complex Fire alone. The work that remains includes adding fuel breaks, and the BLM aims to complete it in the next seven or eight years. What Uhrig remembers most about the Murphy Complex Fire: The district had some of the agency’s best firefighters, but even they were frustrated. “The one thing we always forget is we didn’t lose any lives out there,” he said. “With a fire that size that was a success. They did something right.” If the Murphy Complex Fire happened today, Uhrig said, they’d be ready. “I’m planning for fires a year from now,” he said. “We are so ahead of the game.”

TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO‌

Then: Rangeland near Three Creek, photographed July 24, 2007. Bert Brackett, who ranches in the area, believed the Murphy Complex Fire’s impact would have been lessened if more grazing had been allowed. He used this spot as an example — the land left of the fence was not grazed, the land to the right was.

Fire From E2

eventually cover the ground the way it would normally be, with sagebrush cover,” Ross says. “It’s really working really well here.” “I’m seeing a lot of little squirts all over the place,” BLM spokeswoman Heather Tiel-Nelson says.

Rusty metal in the grass‌

The BLM group makes a right at the sign for the old post office. The road quickly changes from a fairly smooth and passable dirt and gravel track into one much rougher and rockier. Cattle bearing the Bracketts’ brand stare at the SUV as it passes — it probably isn’t every day they see someone new here. According to Ross, the building seems to have been in use until about the middle of the last century. “It had a bed in it at one time,” he says. “People did stay there when they were in the area.” The SUV eventually stops, by a field of mostly cheatgrass in front of a small canyon. There are no signs of a building from the road; the spot seems indistinguishable from so many around it. Ross and the others comb through tall grass and soon come across a piece of the old tin roof and other heavily rusted pieces of metal. The frame of a cot is in one spot; about 10 feet away, grass practically tying it to the ground, is what’s left of the box spring. The site is littered with rusted cans, the remains of anonymous cowboys’ early- and mid-20th century suppers. They’re all that remain after the flames of a decade ago.

‘A hell of a fire’‌

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The summer of 2007 saw a “perfect storm” of conditions to cause a large fire, as a 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report put it. “Things were extremely dry that year,” Brackett said. “Low humidity, high temperatures.” It had rained less than usual that spring and summer, and the daily temperatures the week before the fire exceeded 96 degrees every day; it was hotter than 100 degrees two of those days. “These hot, dry conditions in the days before the fire resulted in conditions for fire fuels that were more extreme than any observed in the past decade,” the USGS report says. The Murphy Complex was the first major fire of Otter’s tenure; he had been elected the November before. “The Murphy Complex was a huge fire, not only for Idaho but also for quite some time, and it was a hell of a fire to cut your

teeth on,” he said. From July 16 to July 18, 2007, more than 8,000 ground lightning strikes started 34 fires in the area covered by the Jarbidge Field Office, Tiel-Nelson said. Eight of the fires would converge over the ensuing days into what would be named the Murphy Complex Fire. The name was borrowed from Murphy Hot Springs, an unincorporated community of campers, trailers and log cabins on a dirt road at the bottom of a canyon a couple of miles north of the Nevada border. The BLM set up camp at the small airport there during the fire. “It started as a real small fire down in Duck Valley and grew into … almost 700,000 acres,” Otter said. “We lost a lot of habitat for bull trout, pygmy rabbit, slickspot peppergrass. We lost a lot of habitat for species that either had been a candidate or had been looked at to be on the endangered species list.” Mike Guerry, who ranches near Three Creek, wasn’t too worried when it started. Then the winds picked up. “We were all a little concerned, but maybe less concerned than what we needed to be,” Guerry said. “We had big fires but never saw anything like the Murphy Complex Fire.” Flames came within 500 feet of the door of Ronda Macaw, whose family owns the Devil Creek ranch. “We watched it and waited for BLM to arrive, but no one arrived,” Macaw said. “It was 98 degrees and the wind began to blow.” The day the fire started, Brackett was on his way back from Twin Falls. “I could see smoke everywhere,” he remembered. The fire spread, jumping the Jarbidge River canyon. It took about a week to reach the Bracketts’ grazing land. All he could do, he said, was watch. “At the time the BLM prohibited ranchers from fighting fire,” he said. This policy, meant to protect life and also the BLM from liability, dated back to 1995, when two volunteer firefighters were killed — trapped by the flames after their tanker truck died near Kuna — and their families successfully sued the agency. The BLM responded by enforcing the ban on non-firefighters fighting wildfires, occasionally ticketing ranchers who refused to comply. It was a policy unpopular with ranchers, who were often able to get to a fire before the BLM firefighters could but felt they were being told to do nothing as their livelihoods burned. At the time of the Murphy Complex Fire, Justin Miller was

DREW NASH, TIMES-NEWS‌

Now: Much of the land has recovered well since the Murphy Complex Fire, rancher Bert Brackett says. Photographed June 7.

COURTESY OF BERT BRACKETT‌

Cattle and pronghorn find a patch to graze after the Murphy Complex Fire in 2007. a BLM engine captain. First assigned to the Smith’s Crossing Fire, west of Castleford, he remembers a fast-moving fire in those early days when the Smith’s fire and others converged into the larger Murphy Complex. “I was driving 35 mph on the gravel road and the fire’s flames were passing me,” he said. Miller and his crew slept on the fire line for the first four or five days, eating prepackaged Meals, Ready-to-Eat. He remembers it as a difficult fire to fight — they would try burnouts and other techniques, only to see them not work. “I would say stressful,” he said. “It was frustrating.” Tiel-Nelson said she spoke to firefighters who had been on the job for decades and never seen a fire with flames like the Murphy Complex’s, so high they reached the tops of power poles. Scott Uhrig, supervisor of the BLM’s Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation program, also remembers being amazed by the frustration he saw on the faces of people who had been firefighters their entire lives but had never seen one that behaved like the Murphy Complex. Uhrig spent the fire at the BLM’s Murphy Hot Springs camp, supporting firefighters in the early mornings and late evenings and spending the rest of the day looking for patterns in how the fire had burned. “Every day, every hour, every minute is so critical when it comes to the restoration program,” he said. The fire quickly became the BLM’s national priority, with one of the factors being the threat it posed to the Juniper Butte Air Force Range, a training range southeast of Saylor Creek. Once the Type I management team arrived, there were 12 hand crews, 28 engines, four helicopters, two water tenders, 11 dozers, two

camp crews and 70 overhead personnel involved in fighting the fire, Tiel-Nelson said. More than 1,100 firefighters were battling the blaze at its peak, including hotshot crews from the Idaho State Correctional Institution. “Rather than setting around in prison they would rather fight fire, and I’m grateful for that,” Otter said. The supporting cast back at the office also had plenty to do those two weeks. Tiel-Nelson, relatively new at the BLM at the time of the fire, described long days at the Twin Falls office, people unwilling to leave because they felt they had to be there in case they were needed. People cried the day the old post office was consumed. “A lot of questions were coming up that needed answers,” said Kate Crane, BLM wildlife fisheries biologist. “It took people to run those to the ground and help us understand what we needed to know.” While nobody was killed, the fire affected many people. The flames consumed power poles, leaving 1,500 people on the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, and others, without electricity. Most of the area’s oldest wooden buildings, erected by the late19th-century pioneers who first established ranches here, were engulfed. “We lost a lot of animals,” Otter said. “We lost wild horses; some of them we had to put down because their hooves got burnt. It was pretty tragic. We lost some domestic livestock.” Macaw and her family lost more than a dozen horses. The flames also consumed a cabin and corrals on their property, and all of their fences burned. They spent the fire without power and phone service, putting towels over windows to keep out the smoke. Macaw stayed by the side

of her father, who kept trying to go out to look at the fire. “You couldn’t sleep at night,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep at night.” Most of the Duck Valley reservation lost power. The people pulled together, setting up a command center and ensuring every home had food, water and ice. Yvonne Powers, editor of Sho-Pai News, credited tribal leaders and volunteers with helping to avert disaster. “It’s cultural: People taking care of people, neighbors helping neighbors, families helping families,” she said at the time. Otter and U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Larry Craig visited Duck Valley that July 30 to view the damage. Otter still remembers what he saw from the helicopter. “Horizon to horizon,” he said, “it was black.”

The blame argument‌

Even before the flames were extinguished, the argument over who to blame had started. Republican politicians such as Brackett, Otter, Crapo and Craig blamed federal grazing Please see FIRE, Page E4

Nathan Brown, right, covers state and local politics and government. He enjoys any excuse to get out of the office and spend the day driving around on dirt roads.

BIG STORY

E4 | Sunday, July 9, 2017

Times-News

Fire From E3

restrictions for making the fire worse. The Western Watersheds Project, an environmental group which had successfully sued for more grazing restrictions in the area to protect sage grouse habitat not long before the fire, blamed the year’s extreme weather, climate change and BLM policies of planting grasses favored by cattle. “They are going to blow this up for lawless grazing,” Western Watersheds spokeswoman Katie Fite said at the time. “They’re trying to create antagonism between ‘nasty environmentalists’ who keep us constrained by ‘nasty environmental laws.’ The reaction to this is calling for pretty much unregulated grazing.” Ten years later Ken Cole, Western Watersheds’ Idaho director, said grazing has led to more wildfires in south-central Idaho by destroying the biological soil crusts that keep cheatgrass out, letting the highly flammable grass get a foothold. In his view, the BLM’s management decisions have catered too much to ranchers. “That’s what we’ve seen especially in the northern part of the Jarbidge (Field Office), where the landscape has burned several times and it’s never coming back,” he said. “So essentially, it’s being managed the same way. Livestock grazing is still the use that they’re managing for, and sage grouse and other species are still in decline and not going to benefit from that kind of management.” Some said the BLM shouldn’t have cut the number of fire engines in its Twin Falls district from 38 to 22 the spring before the fire; the BLM said this wasn’t a factor. When the Castle Rock Fire broke out near Ketchum a couple of weeks after the Murphy Complex was put out, some wondered whether the response to that blaze showed more official concern for wealthy homeowners there than for the ranchers a couple of hours south. At the time, Idaho BLM Director Thomas Dyer strongly contested the idea that anything had been done differently. “What wasn’t different, contrary to what was reported, was one fire receiving more attention because it threatened ‘million-dollar homes’ or one agency having firefighters that were better trained and performed better than another’s,” Dyer wrote in response to a Times-News editorial that questioned whether the BLM didn’t respond as well to the Murphy Complex as the U.S. Forest Service did to Castle Rock. “In fact, many of the same firefighters battled both fires. All wildfire agencies operate under an interagency umbrella.” A decade later, Brackett said he understands why the responses might have differed — more lives and property were threatened by the Castle Rock Fire. “It’s what you’d expect,” he said. “It’s understandable.” The 2008 U.S. Geological Survey report, prepared with the help of other government agencies and the University of Idaho, concluded grazing or lack thereof didn’t affect the fire much due to how extreme the weather was that year, although it also said grazing can help reduce the intensity of wildfires under less extreme circumstances than were present in July 2007.

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

Southwest of Castleford, sagebrush grows abundantly June 21 on the right Bureau of Land Management employees Jeff Ross, left, and Patty Courtney inspect plants June 21 in an area southwest of Castleford burned side of the road where the Murphy Complex Fire did not reach 10 years ago; the road acted as a fire break. The left side shows strips of sagebrush by the Murphy Complex Fire 10 years ago. planted in an aerial seeding.

TIMES-NEWS FILE PHOTO‌

While the aircraft’s engine runs, members of Phos-Check crew finish loading 750 gallons of fire retardant onto a plane on July 23, 2007, before taking off from the Twin Falls airport to combat the Murphy Complex Fire.

PAT SUTPHIN, TIMES-NEWS‌

Bureau of Land Management spokeswoman Heather Tiel-Nelson looks at COURTESY OF OFFICE OF THE GOVERNOR‌ a young sagebrush June 21 southwest of Castleford. The area was burned During the 2007 Murphy Complex Fire, Idaho Gov. C.L. ‘Butch’ Otter meets during the Murphy Complex Fire 10 years ago, but sagebrush is starting to grow back thanks to aerial seeding. with ranchers in the one-room schoolhouse in Three Creek.

which controlled growth of invasive cheatgrass. “It’s like everything kind of worked in our favor,” Tiel-Nelson said. Otter issued an executive order committing $2 million in state money to rehabilitate and reseed the state-owned lands that burned. Just in that first season, the BLM drill-seeded 132,000 acres in the Twin Falls district — 75,000 of it land burned in the Murphy fire, the rest in other fires. Aerial sagebrush seeding was done that winter; because the seeds just need to touch the ground to take root, this can be done even when the ground is frozen or snow-covered. The first year after the fire saw the planting of 80,000 sagebrush, 20,000 bitterbrush and 1,600 willows. The restoration‌ Uhrig, who was so busy he Even as people argued over slept at the office or at his cabin what had happened, they got to “more nights than I probably work almost immediately to restore the hundreds of thousands wanted to,” said seed availability of acres of burnt-out high desert was the main limitation. Ross said the goal is to get the to some semblance of what it land back to its native state as had been. much as possible, but sometimes The BLM started out a bit other, non-native grasses need ahead of the game in knowing to be planted to stabilize the what had been on the ground. landscape and hold off animals As part of the settlement of and invasive species until the a 2005 lawsuit from Western native plants can return. Watersheds, the land manageBy 2009, the BLM had spent ment agency had been collecting about $17 million on land stabilivegetation data to update the zation and rehabilitation efforts. Jarbidge Field Office’s resource While it reseeded the ground, management plan when the fire the BLM also put up 35 miles of struck. new fencing and replaced anUhrig was in charge of the other 463 miles of older-style efforts, and Miller was hired fences with newer ones, swapas a member of the rehabilitaping out charred wooden posts tion crew shortly after the fire. for metal replacements and reAlmost as if compensating for stringing barbed wire so the botdoing everything to make the fire intense, nature worked after tom wire wasn’t barbed, allowthe fire to make reseeding efforts ing pronghorn and other animals to pass under them safely. successful. Usually, Uhrig said, The fire destroyed 71 sage most reseeding efforts have to stop at Thanksgiving because the grouse leks, or mating areas — no ground freezes, but in 2007 they small matter given the debate over whether the birds, whose kept going into the first week numbers have declined for years, of December. That winter and need protection as an endanspring were wetter than usual, gered species. and the spring was also cool,

“It consumed a lot of sagebrush out there,” said BLM Twin Falls District Manager Mike Courtney. “Consequently, there’s been a dip in the number of males we’ve seen doing lek route surveys, but they appear to be coming back.” Cole was critical of the recovery efforts, saying they should have planted more sagebrush and the types of grasses that would have grown in the desert historically. “I think that one of the problems we see with the Jarbidge Field Office is really nothing has changed with grazing management,” he said. “One of the big problems with the recovery of the burned areas was they planted … grasses that were bred for livestock forage. And they planted too much of it, so now it’s competing with … sagebrush recovery.” One bright spot was the fish, not as affected by the fire as BLM scientists had feared. Crane said they were concerned about how the fire could impact bull trout, a threatened species that lives in the Jarbidge River, as well as redband trout. The bull trout, she said, were mostly in a cooler part of the river away from the fire when it started. The redbands, though, range more widely in the streams coming out of the Jarbidge Mountains. “There was definitely some higher fire intensity in those riparian areas,” she said. Fortunately, not many entire drainages burned out, so the trout were able to return. The fall and winter after the fire, about 1,000 volunteers, including Boy Scouts and 4-H clubs, gathered sagebrush seed. Otter said they collected so much they had to have ISCI prisoners make more baskets for it. “We called on every agency that could play the least little bit of part in that and every citizen that could want to participate in

it,” Otter said. “It really turned into quite the project and quite a nice project.” Otter recalled seeing the results of some of this work in 2009, when he and other politicians took a trail ride through the area to discuss wildland issues. “The habitat was back,” he said. “The grass was belly-high to the horse. The slickspot peppergrass had been coming back and was restored.”

the BLM to work together to fight fires in an organized way, by forming Rangeland Fire Protection Associations that would train ranchers how to respond to fires. The first in the state, covering the Mountain Home area, was founded in 2012. The next year, Otter asked the Legislature for seed money to get the RFPAs started. The Legislature approved $400,000 and passed a bill setting up a process for how RFPAs could be created. Rangeland fire protection‌ The Saylor Creek, Owyhee and The Murphy Complex has led Three Creek RFPAs were created to lasting changes in preventing that year. Today there are nine in the state, including the Shoshone and fighting fires on the range. Basin RFPA, which covers the Brandon Brown is a supervisory fire management specialist area east of Three Creek’s, and the Notch Butte RFPA, which at the BLM, and in that job he is covers part of the Magic Valley involved in longer-term efforts to restore the land and help pre- north of the Snake River. Guerry vent wildfires. Part of that means chairs the Three Creek one. “It’s been a tremendous sucoverseeing continuing efforts to cess story with helping to keep plant sagebrush and get rid of cheatgrass and juniper. Another our fires small over the past few years,” Tiel-Nelson said. part has been putting in a sigOtter said the idea came to frunificant network of fuel breaks where numerous large fires have ition with the support of former Colorado Sen. Ken Salazar, Presburned in recent years. BLM employees have been ident Barack Obama’s first Inteworking on a network of more rior secretary, who had “a lot of than 100 miles of fuel breaks — experience with grazing on public areas where vegetation is reduced lands and knew what wildfire to slow or stop a fire’s spread — could do and what the aftermath throughout the BLM’s Twin Falls was like.” district, many of them following “It changed the way we atroads. tack a fire, and those (RFPAs) are “They’re strategically placed doing a terrific job,” Otter said. where our higher fire frequen“They’ll see a lightning strike cies” occur and “where our fireand they’ll watch, and if there’s fighters (think) are good places to a little bit of smoke … (they) will catch fires,” Brown said. go check, and go out to make sure More typically, Brown said, (it’s) not something that becomes many areas of the range burn ev- a major disaster like the Murphy ery 50, 80 or 100 years. But fires Complex.” have been getting more frequent. Working with ranchers to fight Much of the land scorched in the wildfires, Brackett said, was a Murphy Complex had burned common-sense change of attitwice in the prior half-century, tude. and some parcels — especially ar“We’re out here,” he said. “We eas west of Castleford or north of live here. We know the country. Three Creek — had burned three When there’s a fire, we can get or four times. right on it.” “It’s way out of whack with what it should be,” he said. Times-News reporter The fire also led ranchers and Tetona Dunlap contributed.

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