Abstract
If you are a wildfire fighter or scientist, you know the story of the Hayman fire that burned 138,000 acres (56,000 hectares) of forest in 2002. The fire started on June 2 and burned out of control in and around the counties of Douglas, Jefferson, Park, and Teller for the next six weeks. For a short time, a squall of white ash transformed the city of Denver into an early Christmas scene, albeit one that was filled with acrid smoke instead of fresh mountain air and snow. In a single day, the fire made a 19-mile run. It was an unusually severe fire for a low-elevation ponderosa-dominated forest landscape. Like the Horse River fire that burned fourteen years later in northern Alberta, this fire burned so hot that it created its own weather. Governor Bill Owens famously stated at the time that “it looks as if all of Colorado is burning.” It was not. But that, and rumors suggesting the fires were “bearing down” on the city of Denver, did stop many tourists from coming to the state.
Sullen were we in the sweet air, that is gladdened by the Sun, carrying lazy smoke within our hearts; now lie we sullen here in the black mire.
— Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy
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Notes
- 1.
“Fears May Be Outpacing Reality in Colorado Fires,” New York Times, June 16, 2002.
- 2.
“Fears May Be Outpacing Reality.”
- 3.
P. J. Gerla and J. M. Galloway, “Water Quality of Two Streams Near Yellowstone Park, Wyoming, Following the 1988 Clover-Mist Wildfire,” Environmental Geology 36, no. 1/2 (November 1998): 127–36.
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Richard Hauer et al., “Glacial-Bed River Floodplains Are the Ecological Nexus of Glaciated Landscapes,” Science Advances 2, no. 6 (June 4, 2016), doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1600026.
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Meg A. Krawchuk et al., “Topographic and Fire Weather Controls of Fire Refugia in Forested Ecosystems of Northwestern North America,” Ecosphere 7, no. 12 (December 2016), doi: 10.1002/ecs2.1632.
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© 2017 Edward Struzik
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Struzik, E. (2017). Water on Fire. In: Firestorm. Island Press, Washington, DC. https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-819-0_6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5822/978-1-61091-819-0_6
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