An excavator repairs one of the staging/parking areas off the road to Morrell Falls (Forest Road 4353) by scratching the soil surface to reduce compaction and placing large woody debris. While the terms repair and rehab are often used interchangeably, repair refers to mitigating damage created by suppression activities. Rehab is the actions taken to address the environmental damage caused by the fire.
This dozer line (left photo) was put in going north from Cottonwood Lakes Road in early August. It has now been repaired by pulling the berm (seen on the left side of the line in the left photo) back over the bare soil and adding large logs to stabilize the soil.
This dozer line crossed Forest Road 2166. While the repair on the dozer line was complete, the flagging indicated where Rice Ridge Trail 429 needed to be cut out and trail restored before this area could be marked complete.
SEELEY LAKE – Even though the flames and smoke subsided, Diane Hutton's Type 2 Northern Rockies Incident Management Team spent the majority of their time repairing firelines and suppression sites. When they turned the fire management back to the Seeley Lake Range District Oct. 3, 122 miles of lines and 322 sites damaged from suppression activities had been repaired.
Each of the five teams that managed the Rice Ridge Fire were briefed on the Lolo National Forest's suppression and repair preferences. One of the general recommendations is to not build any line that cannot be held. The Lolo also asks that the team minimize impact to the soils, creeks and bodies of water whenever possible through minimum impact suppression tactics (MIST).
A resource specialist is assigned to the fire. He/She helps advise the team on how to best implement MIST while still fighting fire safely and aggressively.
Scott Tomson, Region 1 Wildlife Biologist and Josh Schulze, Region 1 Fisheries Biologist, were the main two resource advisors assigned to the Rice Ridge Fire.
"It turns into a challenging situation," said Tomson. "In this fire, when the community is threatened, they are dropping retardant and hitting streams that we don't want to hit because life and property are threatened. If the fire was somewhere else the actions would not have been so aggressive. Hopefully, most of the time, the fire isn't such an immediate threat that it slows down our ability [to suppress it]. It is just a smart preventative measure to prevent a whole other problem in the future."
Tomson said the Lolo prefers excavator line instead of dozer line because it causes less disturbance and is often just as effective. Typical excavator line is 18-32 inches wide versus a single-blade dozer line which is five to eight feet wide. This displaces less soil and trees, is easier to put in and it takes less to repair.
However, on the Rice Ridge Fire there was not always an excavator available, they did not always have the luxury of time since excavator line takes longer to put in and sometimes they needed a wider line. There were also situations where the district would have preferred handline in the riparian buffer but machinery was used through the creek.
"The fire was making a run and people were going for it," said Tomson. "I think sometimes the perspective is the resource advisor is getting in the way of fighting fire aggressively and a lot of it is 'it depends.' If you have the opportunity where it is not an imminent threat then I think it is appropriate to request an excavator so we don't create some giant line that is going to be more costly to repair. But there are other times when I would say do whatever you need to do."
Shaded fuel breaks were an effective suppression method employed on the Rice Ridge Fire. Unlike excavator and dozer line, the fuel breaks require very little repair work post-fire.
"The shade fuel break is nice because it is something that is going to last into the future where a dozer line we put it in, we repair it and put it back," said Tomson.
The Lolo Forest Policy states that the area is brought back to pre-suppression conditions. If a road was grown in and not drivable prior to the fire, but it is opened up and used for access or as a fireline during the fire, the Forest policy requires it be brought back to pre-fire condition. All suppression lines are repaired to prevent erosion, increase soil productivity and prevent noxious weed establishment.
During the fire, all equipment was washed prior to working on the fire and before leaving to prevent weed introductions from other states. The Lolo policy is that all aircraft are cleaned and washed prior to using local lakes and water resources to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species.
Protecting the waterways is another job of the resource advisor. All pumps used in creeks and lakes must sit on a containment barrier to prevent oil and gas spills into the water.
Tomson said there was at least one incident where he asked firefighters working out of Monture Creek to move their pump to the other side of the creek since it was perched on a rock and held in place by a few strings.
Once the district signs off that an area has been repaired to a satisfactory point, then the work is completed.
Tomson said, "We are trying to leave things so we don't have additional damages that we won't be able to handle or that will be a lot more costly such as weeds, aquatic invasive species, erosion, lack of site productivity, access issues, etc., in the future."
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