Fireworks to continue in summer – Daily Leader

BUDE — Conditions from late June to September are generally not conducive to prescribed burning. Temperatures are high, humidity is often high, fuel is green, and the calm makes it difficult for fire to spread.

Homochitto National Forest Fire Management Officer Trey Bolt said they spend the hottest days of summer doing other work. Sometimes the fire protection team is called out west to help fight fires in California, New Mexico, Arizona, Oregon and Washington. Often they help with responses in Texas and Louisiana.

“Right now we’re trying to fit training sessions in. Last week we did a week-long sawing course,” Bolt said. “We’re supporting the western fire season as it warms up. We’re going out there and supporting where needed. Our engines and helicopter crews are being sent where they need us to go.”

Once they get home to the Homochitto National Forest, they’ll start planning for next year’s fires. The prep work of brushing will happen later in the summer. Crews will cut down dead pine trees lost to drought and beetle infestation.

“The more we cut now, the less we have to deal with it,” Bolt said.

Post-combustion inspections

Summer is also a good time to do post-burn inspections on blocks. The fuel technician for National Forests in Mississippi was in Bude last week to look at plots in the units. Data is being recorded on the quality of the vegetation and the species composition in those post-burn inspection plots.

Post burns follow up a year later and two years later. Bolt said they burn often enough in the Homochitto National Forest that they haven’t had any inspections in the past two years. The data collected is a critical part of the fire regimen because it measures how successful the fires are in creating desired habitat and reducing fuel loads.

The national forest is beginning to use lidar scans to map vegetation responses to burning and fuel loading.

“It will be the way we measure fuel load in the future,” Bolt said. “We are starting to scan.”

Forest fire

Last year was a different year for Southwest Mississippi. Normally, Mississippi’s fire season runs from October through April, but drought conditions increased in August for wildfires. Bolt said they noticed it was starting to dry out last July, and fuel moisture conditions are better at this point this year.

It was a wildfire season like no other. Bolt began his career with the Forest Service in May 2002. He started as a student and worked in the forest during an internship. Bolt said he went to school for marine engineering after high school, but when Lake Okhissa suffered a setback in opening, he returned to work for the Forest Service.

“I went into firefighting full-time and have been in it ever since,” Bolt said. “I’ve always been in firefighting with the Forest Service. You never do the same thing twice. It’s the same but different, always something different.”

Last year was a great year for the crew to stay sharp, especially with a younger and new crew. Bolt said the fire shop was stable for years, but several guys retired. The drought and the new guys coming in made for a potentially catastrophic fire season.

“We’ve had some big fires and some could have been worse,” Bolt said. “We don’t just work in the forest. We work with the Mississippi Forestry Commission because we’re pretty interdependent. We’ve gotten some resources out west. We’ve probably responded to over 50 fires that were larger than our normal average wildfire size. Last year was a different year.”

Bolt said the largest wildfire in the forest was 400 acres. The outlook for this year is not as bleak as last year.

Southwest Mississippi is a landscape that has historically been shaped by lightning strikes. The difference between wildfires in Mississippi and other parts of the country is the amount of green fuel present.

With the exception of last year, Bolt said most years there is a brief window of low humidity and wind that is conducive to wildfire spread. Fortunately, most homes in the South have some sort of yard with green grass that won’t burn or slow the fire.

“Maintaining defensible space is the single most important thing you can do around your home,” Bolt said. “Keep your yard manicured, trim your brush, clear the area around your home. All of these things help remove the fuel that the fire needs to burn.”

Last year, wildfires were contained and a week later the heavy fuels would ignite again or pine needles would fall down and the fire would flare up again. Bolt said one wildfire raged seven times in one area.

Prescribed fire helps reduce the intensity of wildfires and the constructed firebreaks in blocks help fight fires.