Yellowstone National Park fires in 1988

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Fires near the Old Faithful Complex on September 7, 1988

The individual fires in Yellowstone National Park in 1988 resulted in the largest forest fire in Yellowstone National Park since records began. The fires began as numerous smaller individual fires, quickly got out of control with increasing wind and increasing drought, and finally combined to form a large conflagration that raged for several months. The fire damaged two major tourist destinations and on September 8, 1988, the entire park closed for the first time in its history for everyone - except for the rescue workers. Only the change to cool and damp weather in late autumn brought the fires to a standstill. A total of 3,213 km² (793,880Acres ), around 36% of the park, was affected by this forest fire.

Thousands of firefighters fought the flames, assisted by dozens of helicopters and fire-fighting planes that dropped water and extinguishing agent . At the height of the effort, over 9,000 firefighters were deployed in the park. With the fires raging throughout the “greater Yellowstone ecosystem” and in other regions of the western United States , the National Park Service and other agencies were unable to cope with the situation. More than 4,000 US soldiers soon supported the fire fighting measures. The extinguishing work caused costs of 120 million US dollars . No firefighter was killed during the fire fighting, however there were two deaths outside the park related to the fires.

Before the end of the 1960s, fires were considered to be fundamentally damaging to parks and forests, so dealing with them was aimed at suppressing them as quickly as possible. In the decades before 1988, the positive ecological importance of fire was increasingly recognized , which is why natural fires were allowed under controlled conditions and thus the area destroyed annually by fires was very successfully reduced. In 1988, however, a large fire in Yellowstone was long overdue and the many smaller "controlled" fires combined especially in the dry summer. The fires raged in a mosaic pattern, jumping from one region to another while leaving other regions completely untouched. In turn, large firestorms swept through some regions , burning everything in their path. Trees in the tens of millions and countless plants were wiped out by the fires, leaving some regions charred and looking dead. However, only ground fires burned in more than half of the affected areas, causing little damage to the harder tree species. Shortly after the fire went out, plants and tree species settled again on their own, so that the regeneration of the vegetation was very successful.

The 1988 Yellowstone fires were unprecedented in the history of the National Park Service and challenged many rules of fire management. Media reports about the mismanagement were often sensational and imprecise, sometimes it was even falsely reported that most of the park had been destroyed. At times the air quality deteriorated during the fires, but no long-term negative effects on the ecosystem were found. Contrary to initial reports, only a small number of large mammals were killed by the fires, although there was a reduction in the number of moose . Losses to buildings were minimized as fire-fighting measures were concentrated in the key visitor areas, keeping property damage below $ 3 million.

Since the summer of 1990 there has been a special exhibition on the backgrounds and consequences of the 1988 fires at the visitor center in West Thumb / Grant Village on Yellowstone Lake in the south of the park.

Development of forest fire management

1953: A firefighter wanders towards a distant fire

In the heavily rainfall-populated eastern United States, forest fires are small and seldom a major threat to life and property. As the settlements of white immigrants penetrated the drier areas of the west, they encountered the first major fires. Corridor fires in the Great Plains and forest fires in the Rocky Mountains were significantly larger ( wildfire ) and destructive of what they had seen so far in the east of the country than anything. A series of catastrophic fire incidents over the years had a massive impact on the rules for dealing with fire.

The forest fire that caused the most deaths in US history was the Peshtigo Fire , which swept Wisconsin in 1871 , killing over 1,500 people. The fire in Santiago Canyon in California in 1889 , and especially the Great Fire of 1910 in Idaho and Montana, led to the philosophy that fires are a danger that needs to be suppressed. The “Great Fire” of 1910 devastated 12,000 km² of land, destroyed a number of communities and killed 86 people. This event led many land management agencies to call for forest fire suppression. The U.S. governorate's land management offices , including the National Park Service, followed fire management rules introduced by the American Forest Service , which oversees most of the United States' forests.

Until the mid-20th century, most foresters believed that fires should be fought at all times. Starting in 1939, the National Park Service's labor regulations stipulated that all forest fires should be extinguished by 10 a.m. the morning after they were first discovered. Fire-fighting teams were set up nationwide and were usually manned by young men during the fire season. From 1940 the fire fighters known as smoke jumpers were supposed to jump out of airplanes with parachutes in order to extinguish fires even in remote areas. By the beginning of World War II, over 8,000 fire watch towers were built in the USA . Many of them were later torn down as aircraft were increasingly used to locate forest fires; today, only three towers are in operation annually in all of Yellowstone Park. The fire protection measures were very successful: while in the 1930s an average of 30,000,000 acres (120,000 km²) fell victim to the flames, in the 1960s this area had increased to 2,000,000 (8,100 km²) to 5,000,000 acres ( 20,000 km²) reduced. The demand for wood during World War II was high and any fire that destroyed forest areas was found to be unacceptable. In 1944 the US Forest Service ran a public awareness campaign emphasizing the harmfulness of all fires. This campaign used a cartoon of a black bear called the " Smokey Bear ". This iconic fire brigade bear can still be seen on signs with the slogan “Only you can prevent forest fires”. The first posters with "Smokey Bear" led the population to believe that the wildfire is mainly caused by humans. In Yellowstone, the average annual human fire rate averages between 6 and 10, while 35 fires are caused by lightning. Some scientists, as well as some lumberjack companies and private citizens, learned that fire is a natural part of many ecosystems: Fire helps to thin out the under and dead wood and thus allows economically important tree species to grow with less nutrient competition. Native Americans often burned wooded areas to curb overgrowth and increase the area of ​​grassland for large game such as bison and elk.

As early as 1924, the environmentalist Aldo Leopold wrote that the natural fires are beneficial for the ecosystem and the natural reproduction of various tree and plant species. Over the next 40 years, more and more foresters and ecologists agreed that occasional fires were beneficial to the ecosystem. In 1963, ecologists recommended the National Park Service in a report, the Leopold Report , that natural fires should be allowed on a regular basis in order to restore the natural balance to the parks. The Wilderness Act of 1964 helped cement the role of fires as a natural part of the ecosystem. In 1968 the National Park Service adjusted its fire guidelines to reflect the changing perception. The administration stipulated that natural fires caused by lightning should continue to burn as long as they pose a low risk to people or their property. The administration also determined that controlled fires can be deliberately started under prescribed conditions in order to restore the ecological balance. The ecological sense of fire was better understood as many forests aged and became overdue for a large-scale fire.

Since 1972, the National Park Service has allowed natural fires in Yellowstone to continue burning under controlled conditions. Fires of this type are known as prescribed natural fires . Between 1972 and 1987, a total of 235 of these “prescribed natural fires” burned down a relatively small area of ​​137 km² due to this instruction. Only 15 of these fires reached a size of more than 0.4 km². The five years up to 1988 were significantly more humid than normal, which meant that the burned areas were less during this time. The enacted natural fire policy appeared to be an effective way of dealing with fires, especially for the Yellowstone area.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Schullery (1989), pp. 44-54
  2. ↑ a b Young [o. J.]
  3. ^ National Park Service: Yellowstone National Park - Visitor Centers
  4. ^ Boise State University J.]
  5. ↑ a b Aplet (2006), pp. 9-13
  6. ↑ a b Natural Resources Defense Council (2003)
  7. ↑ a b National Park Service, US Forest Service (2001)
  8. ^ US Forest Service (2006)
  9. ↑ a b National Park Service (2007)
  10. ^ The Story of Smokey Bear. US Forest Service, July 13, 2005, accessed July 27, 2007 .
  11. ↑ Doug MacCleery: The Role of American Indians in Shaping The North American Landscape. Forest History Society, archived from the original on March 20, 2007 ; Retrieved July 28, 2007 .
  12. ↑ Fire Management InDepth. National Park Service, June 11, 2007; accessed January 22, 2016 .

Web links

Commons : Fires in Yellowstone National Park 1988  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 44 ° 37 ′ 18.3 "  N , 110 ° 37 ′ 46.5"  W.