To sell kiln-dried lumber legally, Kevin Sweeney says, it has to test at 12% moisture or lower. "So that's two by fours that have been cut up, sent to the kiln, dried out, and now they're ready to get bought at your favorite lumber store." Some living trees in the Uncompahgre were testing at 9% — drier than the lumber at the yard.
Sweeney is a public information officer (PIO) on the Gold Mountain Fire, and in late July he drove the KVNF news team up Owl Creek Pass and into the burned perimeter. Most of us spent this summer watching smoke roll through the valley's southeast corner worrying for some of our favorite mountain areas.
If you are expecting the worst, you may be surprised, One hillside is black, the next one over is green, and that holds for miles. "Because you see red [on the map] doesn't mean it's black, right?" Sweeney says. "Like the red is just that area within the fire." Inside that line, he points out, there are "perfectly green trees that have no impact to them."
Where the fire did run, it ran hard, driven by wind. So why is anything still standing? That 9% figure came from a fire behavior analyst, and the analyst on this fire, Glen Lewis, made a video for the incident's own YouTube channel explaining how it burned. His answer is the aspen. "our firefighter's friend," Lewis says.
He gives three reasons. Aspens "shed these lower branches as they grow and get taller." That leaves no ladder carrying fire from the ground into the crown. Their fallen leaves form a mat that traps moisture and feeds a green understory, which "holds a lot of moisture in it, and it's very inhibitive to fire spread." And the leaves themselves lack "the volatile oils within the needles or within the leaves that even the oak trees have that makes them want to burn more intensely."
Of those oils, Lewis says: "It's kind of like pouring gasoline on fire." Aspen leaves do the opposite, absorbing heat rather than feeding it. In aerial photographs of the burn, he points at green patches standing inside it: "But the aspen kind of held it."
Sweeney says the burned ground should come back next summer with wildflowers, because fire returns nitrogen to the soil. This "is not a good fire by any means," he says, "but there's patches of good within the fire."
We drove past the draw where my (Brody Wilson's) family cuts a Christmas tree most years. Some of it had burned. Sweeney said: "There's going to be some of that grieving for the what's lost while with you guys and your community." He went on: "You're going to that fishing spot that your grandpa took you to. And now it looks different."
Watch the full fuels video from the Gold Mountain and Elk Fires incident, in which fire behavior analyst Glen Lewis explains the fuel types on this fire and why aspen stands slowed it: https://youtu.be/cmXRtv9F01M
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