Fighting Fire with Fire

BY CATHERINE KOZAK

As fires raged across California last summer, and more recently engulfed wide swaths of Australia, the time-honored art of using fire to prevent fire has suddenly gained more attention. And it turns out that there actually is a right way to start a fire in the woods – but only when there’s a right reason for it.

Prescribed burns, also called controlled burns, have been set for centuries in northeastern North Carolina as a way to clear overgrown understory and dead plants and trees. That forest debris serves as great kindling, or as firefighters call it, “fuel.” By eliminating that fuel with fire, new trees and vegetation can grow freely and the risk of uncontrolled wildfires is greatly reduced.

“Burning keeps a lot knocked back,” explains John Cook, a district forester with the North Carolina Forest Services. “Indigenous people did that, too.”

Native Americans traditionally used controlled fires to clear out undesirable plants and insects. Some forests have even become fire dependent, which means that their healthy growth has evolved around a natural fire cycle.

But with increased development, wildfires often have to be contained in order to protect houses and other infrastructure. That means, however, that too much fuel can build up in certain areas – making carefully controlled burns a necessary and proactive fire control measure.

John, who oversees District 13, which encompasses hundreds of thousands of acres in Washington, Hyde, Tyrrell and Dare counties, including the Dare County Bombing Range, says he’s lit his share of “good” fires over the course of his long career.

“It has two values,” he says of a prescribed burn. “It reduces a fire risk, and it also returns an area to a natural fire occurrence with native plants.”

Always ready for action, John carries a drip torch in the back of his truck in case he needs to set a small fire in front of a wildfire to deprive it of fuel.

A metal canister with a handle that typically holds a mix of diesel and gasoline, the drip torch has a wick at the end of a long, looped spout. After lighting the wick, a forester will typically start on the down-wind side of a site. The torch is then swept back and forth along separate rows of ignition lines. The farther apart the lines, the larger and more intense the fire can be, and small fires also can be placed in unconnected spots to decrease the speed in which the fire spreads and builds.

“It depends on how much fuel you want to take out,” says John, who’s also a fire behavior analyst. “You might not necessarily want it to be so intense.”

Routine prescribed burns are typically scheduled with predictable factors in mind – such as seasons, wind direction and time of day – that give the best odds for a good outcome. Spring or fall are generally the best times of year since they tend to be milder temperature-wise and have more consistent winds. If it’s too wet, dry, hot or windy, a fire may not burn well, or it may simply be too difficult to control.

“It goes back to what you want to happen,” John says. “The key word is a controlled burn.”

Before a fire is set, much also goes into determining the conditions and the right approach to manipulating a fire. Depending on a number of factors, it may need to be set at a precise angle or just upwind of a firebreak, which is an area with no flammable material, such as cleared land, a road or a river.

“I’m literally playing with fire,” John says. “You can get burned if you’re not careful.”

But for all that, there’s always the possibility that something unexpected can happen, such as a wind shift – which makes having a contingency plan vital.

“I just can’t assume everything is going to go perfectly,” he adds.

According to John, the next prescribed burn is set for this spring on 5,000 acres at the Dare County Bombing Range near East Lake. There are also prescribed burns planned in Nags Head Woods and off Bowsertown Road in Manteo.

In addition, the U.S. Forest Service provides funds for mitigation projects that include creating firebreaks in Hyde and Tyrrell counties, as well as more locally in Wanchese, Buxton and on Jockey’s Ridge.

Even with its large number of water bodies and swamps, this area has had its share of unpredictable wildfires, most recently in 2016 in Nags Head Woods. The 2011 Pains Bay fire near Stumpy Point, likely started by lightning, was an especially smoky peat fire that lasted nearly four months.

Besides lightning, John says fires in this humid region are most commonly started from sparks off a boat trailer bumping the road or a tire blowout – which makes sense when you consider the fact that North Carolina has some of the highest density of wildland-urban interface in the country.

“Marsh grass can pick up flames really quickly,” John explains. “And human activity always brings some risk.”