Park managers determined that this area of land in southeast Michigan was historically a prairie. They're using fire to return it to that state, and to keep invasive plants and shrubs in check. (Photo by Mark Brush)
Some natural areas need fire. A number of prairie plants and pine trees must have fire for their seeds to pop open or germinate. But burning a natural area can quickly turn into a wildfire without a team to keep it under control. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush spent a day with a burn crew… and brings us this audio postcard:
Transcript
Some natural areas need fire. A number of prairie plants and pine trees
must have fire for their seeds to pop open or germinate. But burning a
natural area can quickly turn into a wildfire without a team to keep it
under control. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush spent a day
with a burn crew… and brings us this audio postcard:
(sound of walking through dry grass and birds)
“Good morning, Hi, How’s it going?”
“Little dry?”
“It’s pretty dry, it’s forecasted, I think to be twenty one percent humidity…”
“My name is David Mindell, and I am the burn boss for this project. I’m a contractor that does ecological restoration. The first step is we’ll take a quick walk through and rake some of the fuel around stuff we don’t want to burn. This is the kind of thing if fire got in here, it’d burn for hours and hours and just put out a lot of smoke…”
“My name is Lee Root, and I just am a burn crew member. I’m filling up what’s known as an ‘Indian tank. It’s a backpack frame that has a water tank and a hand pump. This is our little portable fire engine, is what it is. So, you see where the black top is? If that was our fire, and we didn’t want the fire to come onto the grass, we would just…
(sound of squirting)
“…spray like that, and that would prevent the fire from crossing over.”
“Well, my name is Ross Orr, and I’ve been working with David for a couple of years, and um, we’re wearing these crazy, screaming yellow body suits that are flame-retardant fabric, and also helps keep us cool from the radiant heat of the burn, and big, big cumbersome helmets with visors that flip up and down…
(Sound of visor plastic clacking)
“…we’ll ingite using drip torches, which are these canisters filled with a mixutre of diesel and gas. It’s got a wick on the end, a burning wick, and as you tip the canister, it dribbles gas-diesel mix across the wick, and trails fire as you go.”
(sound of fire crackling and wind)
“Okay, I’m gonna burn it up right next to you Lee. All right, here we go.”
(sound of crackling and walkie-talkies)
“Catherine, keep coming right around.”
“Is this one of the crabapples we wanted to save, or they’re on the other end?”
“I believe they’re on the other end, unless they’re crabapples there?”
“Nope, it’s a hawthorne.”
“My name’s Catherine Marquardt, and I do whatever they tell me to do…
(sound of laughter)
“…whether it’s lighting fires or putting them out. Um, I think it looks like a Dr. Seuss story, actually, sometimes when you burn and it’s all black. You don’t get to see this very often, it’s very cool. And then it greens up so quickly, that’s the other amazing thing, is that if you come back here in a couple of days, it’s already getting green. So, it changes so quickly.”
“You know, I’m guessing it took probably forty-five minutes for the backburn to go a third of the way through the unit, and I think the headburn will run through the other two-thirds in about three minutes.”
(sound of large flames fading out)
(sound of walking, rubber squeaking and metal clanging)
Mindell: “And we’re, basically just walking around looking for things that are still smoking. Got a juniper that’s smoking at the base…
(sound of spraying)
“And just spraying out the smoldering bits.
“Burning is extremely fun, but it’s also a great management tool for improving the ecological quality of natural areas.”
(sound of wind and bird chirping)
HOST TAG: “This audio postcard of a prairie burn was produced by the
GLRC’s Mark Brush. To see photos of the burn and learn more about fire
as a management tool, you can visit glrc dot org.”