Wildfire Burn Scars: How Long Until They Heal?

By: Sean Breslin

Published: August 15,2013

 

 

 

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San Diego Fire 2003

A Los Angeles County firefighter uses a flare to light a backfire to try and save a condominium complex from an out-of-control wildfire, October 27, 2003, in Chatsworth, Calif. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

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When a wildfire is extinguished after days or months of torching trees and plants in the western United States, the scariest moments are often just beginning.
What's left behind is known as a burn scar, a charred, barren strip of land annihilated by the fire. Devoid of vegetation, nothing remains to hold the land in place when rainfall comes.
In the town of Manitou Springs, Colo., near the 2012 Waldo Canyon wildfire that burned thousands of acres of parched land made drier by a drought, the rains have returned. Storms form quickly, and there's very little warning –- minutes, at most – before flash floods come rushing down the mountains northwest of Colorado Springs.
"In the Rockies, summer afternoon thunderstorms are nearly a daily occurrence," said weather.com senior meteorologist Jon Erdman. "If deep atmospheric moisture and light winds aloft are in place, these thunderstorms can dump over an inch of rain in an hour."
(PHOTOS: See How Fire Tornadoes Form)
It's a torture residents must endure, and it isn't likely to improve for years. Colorado Springs fire lieutenant Steve Schopper told the Gazette that they'll have nine more years of mudslides and flash floods sweeping cars off roads and trashing homes before the land returns to its pre-wildfire state.

A Return to Normalcy ... After More Tragedy

The mountains of San Bernardino County in Southern California have been in a healing pattern for 10 years since the Paradise and Cedar wildfires burned hundreds of thousands of acres north and east of San Diego. Fourteen major wildfires burned, according to the San Diego Wildfires Education Project, in a historic event that was known as the California Fire Siege 2003.
Fanned by Santa Ana winds, the fires killed two dozen people. When the rain came, it turned a steep hillside into a large mudslide that became a death trap, said Ivory Small, science and operations officer at the National Weather Service in San Diego.
"The one that was the problem was the one that they had up in the San Bernardino County mountains," he said. "That fire was the one where 14 people were killed in a mudslide."
While the rainfall takes away lives of those caught in the flash flooding and mudslides, it also breathes life back into the remaining landscape, allowing new plants to grown in the scarred area. These plants will eventually grow to be the bushes and trees that'll hold the earth in place.
For Southern California, it was roughly three years before the burn scar stopped sending debris downhill, according to Small – a relatively quick recovery when compared to the disasters in Colorado.

Ash Falls on Denver

The Hayman fire of 2002 was the largest wildfire in Colorado's history, and the scar was left eerily close to the spot where the Waldo Canyon scar sits today.
It burned more than 135,000 acres and was started at a campfire near Lake George, Colo. by an emotionally distressed Forest Service worker, according to the Denver Post. It exploded into a massive blaze that dumped ash on downtown Denver, a two-hour drive away.
(MORE: Rise in Fire Risk Would Accompany Climate Change)
In the years that followed, the fire created immense problems for the land and its residents.
Roads were washed out by flash floods. Debris runoff had to be purged from the reservoirs that supplied drinking water for Denver and Aurora, according to a report from the American Planning Association. Animals were displaced, and a community was put on alert every time it rained.
Like the Waldo Canyon area, the soil burned by the Hayman fire is Pikes Peak granite, which falls apart easily and rolls downhill the same way ball bearings would, said Carol Ekarius, executive director of the Coalition for the Upper South Platte. Ten years after the fire, the floods created by the burn scar are less intense.
"We still had a debris flow last week," said Ekarius. "It's not as bad, but it's still there."

Wrestling With Reality

Residents of Manitou Springs have a new normal. Deadly mudslides and the subsequent cleanup are likely to be a frequent occurrences for the next decade or more. Residents face a crucial decision:  stay and wait out the burn scar's worst years or pack up and head to safer ground.
But most of this deep-rooted community isn't likely to go anywhere, says Andrea Sinclair, reporter for the Gazette.
"It's a constant weather watch," she said. "But I don't think people are moving out ... these are definitely resilient communities."
It was a combination of factors, as well as the location of the fire, that has experts thinking the Waldo Canyon burn scar will be more devastating than Hayman. The inferno burned so hot that it scorched everything all the way down to the soil, which is now incapable of holding moisture, said Sinclair. Part of the burn scar is on a hill so steep -- described as a "cliff" by Ekarius, due to its near-vertical nature -- that it will require more time than other situations to heal.
Meanwhile, the monsoonal pattern will help plants and trees start to grow, but the rain will do as much harm as good if it falls too hard.
Small victories will be celebrated along the way, but in the shadow of a devastating burn scar like Waldo Canyon, the war might not be won for a long time.

MORE: Flash Flooding from a Burn Scar

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Shortly after a flash flood warning came three days after a deadly flash flood struck at the same location, local merchant Angie Findley arranges sand bags in front of her Stick Em Up! store, which was heavily damaged a few days earlier, in Manitou Springs, Colo., Aug. 12, 2013. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)