Tonto burns again
I spent the day monitoring flightradar24.com watching the air attack on the Wildcat fire. It's quite an impressive effort. There were almost 50 slurry runs today.
The area burning is one I know well. I've been up many of those canyons and ridges south of Bartlett Dam Road and know the area north of it pretty well, too. Much of it has burned in recent fires, but the core area has no recorded fires in USFS records since 1970. All of the slurry runs fell within the formerly unburned area.
Two years of favorable growth for Bromus rubens (late germinating rains, good following rains) have produced what's technically called a shitload of tinder. It's thigh-deep in some locations. Here at the house I've chopped about an acre of it with a string trimmer.
The Wildcat fire has burned 12,100 acres as of today.
The only good news is that the fire hasn't hit Bootleg Canyon (also called Indian Spring Wash on some maps), at least not yet. I have my eye on a little ash grove in a branch of that canyon; it's a special place for me and I would miss it should it burn.
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OH! NO! Just a hop and a skip from Sears Kay where we had the big fire in 2020. Yes, the grasses are excessive.
So sorry about that fire. It is being covered by Tucson news stations. It could make it to national TV today. Devastating. It is unbelievable watching that kind of fire behavior in the Sonoran Desert. I'd been wincing at some of the photos on iNat from that area, which captured the red brome as just an omnipresent part of the background/foreground. Sadly, just needed some human to touch it off, and there it goes. Another big chunk of Sonoran Desert erased forever.
Luckily, not a lot of big fires elsewhere in the country, so not a lot of competition for air tankers. Thanks for the link. I'll look.
Scott Wood, retired archaeologist with Tonto NF, gave a tour of Sears Kay recently and mentioned how useful the wildfire was in exposing previously-hidden treasures in the area. Interesting perspective, and I was glad to hear it.
Well, not forever, Perry. One line I use on hikes is, "in 150 years you'll never know it had burned". However that's not entirely true. In 150 years there will likely be as much red brome, and more stinknet, buffelgrass, fountain grass and who knows what else as those invasives become naturalized. This transition will happen more rapidly in burn areas. But will the resulting vegetation still be "Sonoran desert"? You may be right.
Good news for the firefighters this morning: cooler and overcast.
Here too. I wonder how windy it is though. Near red-flag conditions. No aircraft flying on the fire at the moment.
Yes, we had that wind come through here just a bit ago. Luckily there was a bit of drizzle with it. Calming down now.
Fingers crossed.
I say "forever" because native plants will come back, unless it burns again. With all the ignition sources running around up there, it's almost certain that it will burn in the next 150 years. More like in the next 15 years. I am pretty gloomy about the future. At least given recent history. It seems like small areas are being protected from development of hazardous fuels, but not on the landscape scale. If way more people can be motivated to get out there and do something, and pressure their elected leaders enough, it doesn't have to be on that trajectory.
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