Helping on a prescribed fire as a volunteer firefighter sometime in September, I felt the anticipation that had been building in our team dissipate as we learned that we would not be able to proceed with the day’s planned ignitions. We gathered our tools and snacks and slouched back toward the briefing area. I imagined others who had been assigned to work on the burn cordoning off the day as a lost cause. Folks who were working for local companies and non-profits would only be able to bill for the couple of hours we spent standing around waiting for orders, and there would certainly be no overtime. The Lomatium, Whitebeam, Kincaid’s lupine, and other species the land managers hoped would benefit from habitat restoration because of the burn would have to wait, maybe until the next week, maybe until the next season, as would their goals to reduce the likelihood of a high severity fire on the preserve. Such was the reality of attempting a planned burn, or a prescribed burn, in the suburbs of the densely populated pockets of the Willamette Valley. (read more...)