What if the very fires ravaging our state hold the key to its ecological balance? Join us on "Let's Talk Wyoming" as we uncover the multifaceted impact of the ongoing fires between Buffalo, Gillette, and Casper, amid relentless heat and high winds. We'll share the heroic efforts of our firefighters and the challenging conditions they face. Shifting gears, we analyze the latest primary election results and the Freedom Caucus's growing influence within the Republican Party, offering insights into how these political dynamics might shape Wyoming's legislative future.
As we switch to sports and history, get the latest scoop on the Wyoming Cowboys football team—new players, coaching changes, and a thrilling preview of their upcoming face-off against BYU. Dive into the storied rivalry that has fans buzzing with anticipation. Finally, we explore Yellowstone National Park's fire management history, focusing on the lessons learned from the catastrophic 1988 fires. Hear about the vital role fire plays in the park's ecosystem and the incredible efforts of those who battled the blazes, all while challenging some of the media's most sensationalized reports. Don't miss this episode packed with vital updates and compelling stories!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming.
I'm Mark Hamilton, your host,and today we'll be talking about
our weather and our fires inthe state.
We'll have a quick recap on theelections, our primary
elections.
We'll talk about our WyomingCowboys and, on the hook, a fish
truck.
And finally we'll talk aboutthe Yellowstone fires of 1988.
(00:46):
Thanks for joining us and Ihope you enjoy the show.
Taking a look at Wyoming weather, it's been definitely hot here
at the tail end of August.
Yesterday here in Hot SpringsCounty we were up at 98 degrees
(01:11):
with 20 mile an hour winds justbrutal.
It has definitely not been verygood for our areas.
We have fires going on aroundthe state, a couple big ones.
There's a big one over east ofBuffalo, between Buffalo and
Gillette, wyoming, that has hadthe interstate closed down.
A lot of ground is being burnedup in that area.
(01:36):
It's a very sparsely populatedarea between the two communities
but it's one of those that itkind of changes direction every
time the wind changes and itcould be a hazard for the town
of Gillette or back to Buffalo,depending on what happens, and
the last I saw it was zerocontained.
Those type of grass.
Fires are hard to get in frontof now we're looking at maybe
(01:59):
some moderation in the weathercoming up and if we can get
these winds to die down and wemight be able to have some luck.
The firefighters I just feelfor these people out there.
They're just working so hard onthis stuff.
It's been a tough year takingcare of all these fires staying
in front of them.
Then at the same time there wasa fire down east of Casper
(02:21):
between Casper and Glenrock.
It had the interstate, thesouth lane of I-25, closed.
Then I saw later this morningthat there was a fire on I-25
north of Casper between thereand KC.
So they're popping up all overthe place.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
But again, as we always say,with these wet springs there's a
(02:44):
big chance of having these typeof conditions in the summer,
especially where the wind andthe heat have been so bad.
It's got so many red flag days,I should say it seems on our
weather map every day there's ared flag warning for a majority
of the state.
So thoughts and prayers for allthose people that could be in
the line of fire on these.
(03:05):
Hope everyone stays safe, butkeep an eye out and listen for
warnings in your area.
In other news around the statethe primaries are over.
It's rather interesting thathere in our state there was a
lot of talk about the primariesfor the legislature.
A lot of different groups werebringing money into the state.
(03:28):
The biggest battle between theRepublicans, the Freedom Caucus
and the RINOs I should sayprobably somewhere in between
that, but as it turned out theFreedom Caucus candidates ended
up with a controlling majority,it looks like in the House, and
(03:50):
so that will make a bigdifference on a lot of these
bills that have been overpassed.
I know the governor here hadstarted his own PAC.
We talked about it a week ortwo ago.
It was called PAC-PAC.
They were donating money toeverybody that wasn't a Freedom
Caucus member.
So a lot of partisan activitiesgoing on within the state of
(04:12):
Wyoming with our legislaturethat is predominantly Republican
.
But we've got to put a kind ofa question mark, I guess,
depending on which side of theRepublican fence you are.
Don't have that problem withthe Democrats, but the
Republicans always seem to havethat problem.
So pretty much most of our racesare decided coming up into
(04:33):
November.
The biggest one, of course,would be our presidential
election here in Wyoming.
That'll be the only thing I didsee some inklings of maybe some
hurt feelings and such here inthe state, did see some inklings
of maybe some hurt feelings andsuch here in the state, and
I've seen it before and theytried to do that back in 2022
(04:54):
with Harriet Hageman and LizCheney on the Secretary of State
.
There was a lot of pushback onChuck Gray being the winner in
the primary.
So I think, if I remembercorrectly, they did try to have
a write-in candidate.
Write-in candidates are reallyhard to get in place, especially
(05:15):
if that person's already beendefeated.
So are losers and they justhave to continue just to cause
problem and just muddy thewaters.
National elections will causeus enough issues to go around
for everybody.
Other news yes, cowboy footballis back here in the state of
(05:35):
Wyoming.
Cowboys have been in their fallcamp and they've started
preparation for next Saturday'sgame in Tempe, arizona, against
Arizona State.
Boy, it's going to be hard forthose players to adjust to that
heat.
It is going to be hot and hotand hot down in the Valley of
the Sun.
(05:55):
The Cowboys are coming in witha lot of new players, a new
quarterback with a lot ofpotential, a pretty good group
of running backs.
Harrison Whaley had a kneeprocedure but it sounds like
he'll be back here in the nextfew games.
But the Cowboys have somepotential but we've heard that
before, so kind of excited.
(06:17):
We've got a new head coach,some new coaches, we have a new
offensive coordinator, so we arelooking forward here in the
state of Wyoming for CowboyFootball.
They'll be back home thefollowing week in September as
they take on Idaho at WarMemorial Stadium.
So we've got a full slate thisyear and a game that everybody's
(06:41):
talking about is BYU will be intown.
I don't know if there's anytickets left, but that's a night
game.
If I'm not mistaken, that willbe the last meeting between the
two schools.
Wyoming had played at Provolast year and part of that was
them coming back here for onegame.
So now the BYU Cougars are inthe Big 12.
(07:03):
They had been independent for awhile after they dropped out of
the Mountain West or the WAC inMountain West.
A lot of really unbelievablegames between Wyoming and BYU, a
lot of history between BYU andthe Wyoming Cowboys.
So that's another game we'relooking forward to.
So football's in the air.
(07:23):
Also just wanted to report somegood news Cowboys.
So that's another game we'relooking forward to, so
football's in the air also.
Just wanted to report some goodnews.
This week I was up in Cody.
I had to do some shopping atdifferent places and going down
the street and guess what?
I saw the on the hook fishtruck was parked at Tractor
Supply.
Got my shopping done and wentto stand in line, got my fish
(07:48):
and chips and definitely it wasworth the wait.
They were in Worland a fewweeks back but there was road
construction that day and I justdidn't want to have to go
through the long delays bothways.
So it was not a plan.
I didn't know anything aboutthem being in Cody, but
(08:09):
definitely thanks to the guysfrom the on-the-hook fish truck
for another outstanding meal.
It's just one of those mealsthat you enjoy every bit of it.
It's something we don't havearound here and something that
is just very enjoyable Today inour history section with the
(08:32):
amount of fires that we have inthe region right now.
I want to go back to a storyfrom Yellowstone Ablaze, the
fires of 1988.
And this is by Dan Whipple fromWyomingHistoryorg.
On June 30, 1988, lightningstruck a tree in the Crown Butte
region of Yellowstone NationalPark, in the park's far
(08:54):
northwest corner, near where theborders of Idaho, montana and
Wyoming meet, the lightning boltstarted a small forest fire,
which became known as the FanFire.
The Fan Fire ballooned over1,800 acres by July 2nd, but
then slowed.
The Fan Fire was the first fireof that summer to erupt within
(09:15):
Yellowstone National Park,though the Storm Creek Fire had
ignited about a week earliernorth of the park boundary and
would eventually make its wayinto the park proper.
Park fire experts noted thatfan fires ignition and did
nothing.
Then, in rapid succession, overa period of about two weeks, a
(09:35):
series of fires broke out acrossYellowstone National Park.
The largest were named Fan,north Fork, clover, mist, hell,
roaring, storm Creek, mink,snake and Huck.
They grew so large that theywere no longer fires but
complexes, according to a 1994report issued by the US
(09:57):
Department of the Interior.
During that overheated summerof 1988, they burned about
683,000 acres of the park's 2.2million acres and about 1.2
million acres total within thegreater Yellowstone area, which
included several nationalforests adjoining the park as
(10:17):
well as Grand Teton NationalPark.
Fire experts originally didnothing to combat the blaze
because of their park policy, apolicy that surprised a lot of
reporters and politicians,including the President of the
United States, president RonaldReagan, roused to comment on the
policy, admitted that he didnot know about it until
(10:39):
September 14th, after the fireshad long been underway.
The understanding of fire innatural ecosystems has been
growing for years and one of thelegislative mandates of the
Yellowstone National Park is tomaintain as nearly as possible
primitive ecological conditions.
Fire is one of the most basicnatural processes.
(11:00):
In fact, many plant specieswithin the park are fire adapted
.
In fact, many plant specieswithin the park are fire adapted
.
Some lodgepole pines, which canmake up about 80% of the park's
forest, have cones that aresealed by resin until the
intense heat of a fire cracksthem open and releases the seeds
.
Fire also stimulatesregeneration of sagebrush, aspen
(11:23):
and willows.
Since the mid-1970s, park firepolicy has been to allow natural
fires started by lightning orother natural causes to burn.
Human-caused fires wereextinguished.
The park also had an active,prescribed burn program to try
to reduce fuel loads, fallentrees and dried vegetation that
(11:44):
could contribute to catastrophicburns.
In 1975, an environmentalassessment was prepared which
allowed natural burning on 1.7million of the park's 2.2
million acres.
In the years between thisassessment and the 1988 fires
the policy was a quiet,uncontroversial success.
(12:05):
Tens of thousands of lightningstrikes simply fizzled.
There were 140 fires, but mostburned themselves out after
swallowing a few acres.
The average burn size was 250acres.
The largest fire during thattime was 7,400 acres.
In 1988, as in past years, eachfire was evaluated individually
(12:29):
to determine how it related tothe fire plan.
The fan fire, for instance.
A natural fire was permitted toburn at first In the early
summer.
Before the fan fire struck, 20lightning-caused fires had hit
the park.
Eleven burned themselves out,just like fires in previous
seasons.
So park scientists and managersseemed justified in sticking to
(12:52):
their fire plan.
But the weather conditions of 88in Yellowstone were taking on a
dimension not seen since thepark was established in 1872.
After a wet spring, the summermonths were the driest ever
recorded.
Still, by July 15th, only 8,500acres had burned in the entire
(13:13):
Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
But a week later visitors werenoticing the smoke and the
national news media was startingto pay attention to the
situation.
Dry conditions and high windswere creating perfect conditions
for massive fires.
On July 21st things werespiraling out of control.
Park officials decided to tryto suppress all new and existing
(13:37):
fires as resources allowed.
At the time, all the fires inthe park covered a total of
17,000 acres, about 2.5% of thearea that eventually burned.
In a paper prepared shortlyafter the fires for the journal
Northwest Science, yellowstoneNational Park technical writer
(13:57):
Paul Scolari writes Extreme firebehavior became nearly the
order of the day as fires ran asmuch as 10 miles in a day,
sending embers as much as a mileand a half ahead of the main
fire to create dozens of spotfires.
The presence of so many spotfires, along with rapid and wide
(14:17):
advances of the main fires,made it impossible to fight the
fires head-on without riskingmany lives.
Hundreds of miles of fire lineswere constructed, but with the
spotting behavior, firesroutinely jumped usual barriers
such as rivers and roads.
Standard hand or bulldozerbuilt lines were no barrier at
(14:37):
all.
Among the examples of blackhumor, an appropriate term, if
ever there was one with fires,was what's black on both sides
and brown in the middle?
The answer a bulldozer line.
In Yellowstone, at the peak offirefighting efforts, 9,500
military and civilianfirefighters were engaged, using
(14:58):
dozens of helicopters and morethan 100 fire trucks to try to
stop the blazes.
Costs passed $120 million.
Remarkably, no firefightersdied during the firefighting in
Yellowstone, though there weretwo fire-related deaths.
Outside the park, students froman elementary school sent trees
(15:18):
to firefighters to replace thelost ones.
Women of Broadus, montana, sentthem homemade cookies.
Chief Ranger Dan Scholey wrotethe women a thank you note.
From the speed with which theydisappeared I know they were
appreciated by all of us in thecamp and on the fire line.
Despite the manpower, the firescontinued to grow.
(15:41):
A total of 248 fires ignitedthat summer, but the seven
largest caused 95% of the damage.
On July 5th the lava firesstarted, july 11th the mink and
clover fires.
July 22nd the North Fork fire.
July 23rd the clover and mistfires joined, and so on.
(16:03):
There were eventually a totalof eight fire complexes,
depending on who's counting withevery section of the park
aflame.
Media reporting was often poorlyinformed and contradictory.
The word disaster, devastatingand catastrophic appeared often.
The New York Times report notedstretches of charred, lifeless
landscape left by the months offires.
(16:25):
Newspapers began covering thestory in early July, almost as
soon as the fires ignited, whilethe national broadcasting
television coverage came weekslater.
The ABC and NBC televisionnetworks broadcast their first
stories on July 25.
Cbs broadcast its first storyon August 22nd.
Ohio State Universityjournalism professor Conrad
(16:49):
Smith writes in a 1991 paper.
Yellowstone fires were morenewsworthy in the West than in
the East.
They made the front page of theLos Angeles Times 39 times,
starting on July 18th with abrief news brief about wildfires
in the West, the front page ofthe Washington Post three times,
(17:10):
starting on September 8th afterthe fire visit to the Old
Faithful Geyser Complex, and onthe front page of the New York
Times three times, starting onSeptember 11th when the
Secretaries of the Interior andAgriculture arrived in
Yellowstone for an inspection.
Both print and broadcast mediamade some serious mistakes in
(17:30):
their coverage.
For instance, on July 21st of1988, the park abandoned its
let's Burn policy and begansuppressing all fires.
But as late as September 1stthe New York Times was still
reporting that some fires werebeing allowed to burn.
And on September 10th the paperreported on criticism by
(17:50):
Wyoming Republican US SenatorsAlan Simpson and Malcolm Wallop
of Yellowstone's natural burnpolicy, despite the fact that
this hasn't been the policysince mid-July.
But that was nothing comparedto an August 30th story on ABC
television featuring aninterview with Stanley Mott,
director of the National ParkService, except that the
(18:12):
director of the National ParkService at the time was William
Penn Mott and the ABCinterviewer was a tourist.
Local media did better in theassessments of coverage produced
by scholars later, especiallyMontana's Billings Gazette,
coverage of the economic impacton the park-dependent businesses
by Robert EK and the WyomingCasper Star Tribune, coverage of
(18:37):
the ecological dynamics byAndrew Melankovich and Jeff
O'Gara.
But the rest of the nation gota different story.
Time captured the spirit of thecoverage when editors first
wrote the fires have ruined 1.2million acres of Yellowstone and
adjoining national forests.
All this quickly worked its wayinto a political discourse.
(19:00):
President Reagan called thepark's fire policy cockamamie.
It's a disaster, said the USDepartment of Interior Secretary
Donald P Hodel.
He told the New York Times ashe and US Department of
Agriculture Secretary Richard ELing visited the park.
I think it's devastating andwe've only seen part of it.
(19:20):
Wyoming Senator Malcolm Wallopsaid the park's 16-year-old
let-burn policy was absurd andscientifically unsound.
He joined with Senator AlanSimpson in calling for the
resignation of National ParkService Director Mott.
Montana Democrat Senator JohnMelcher told the New York Times
(19:42):
They'll never go back to thispolicy.
From now on the policy will beputting the fires out when they
see the flames.
Bob Barbie and thesuperintendent of Yellowstone
was cast as the bad guy in thePark Fire drama.
In a 2013 retrospect pieceabout the fires, barbie told the
New York Times.
(20:03):
It's like well, why don't youjust put it out?
Well, why don't you just stopthe hurricane or tornado?
You don't just put it out?
On September 11, 1988, aquarter inch of snow fell across
the greater Yellowstone areaand the fires quickly died out.
Underneath that quarter inch ofsnow lay the blackened
(20:23):
carcasses of trees, bleachedwhite, heat-blasted soil and the
deep uncertainty about thepost-fire future of the park.
It was accepted wisdom thatYellowstone wouldn't recover for
hundreds of years.
Even so, the Yellowstone bigfires were not a surprise to
anyone.
Paul Scullery wrote in the 1989Northwest Science article.
(20:46):
Only months before the fires of1988, a preliminary research
report by Dr William Ramey, anindependent fire ecologist from
Fort Lewis College, colorado,and Dr Don Despain, nps plant
ecologist, suggested that theYellowstone area fire regime
(21:07):
involved many small firesinterspersed every two to four
hundred years by massive firesthat swept across large portions
of the park.
Both men concluded that anothermajor burning cycle may begin
within the next century, asextensive areas are now
developing flammable latesuccessional forests.
During the fires themselves,despain achieved a level of
(21:29):
notary unusual for a plantecologist when he showed a
Denver Post reporter a fireimpact research plot near Ice
Lake near Norris Geyser Basin.
Environmentalist writer ToddWilkerson describes the incident
recently in a Jackson Hole Newsand Guide column published in
April of 2015.
(21:50):
The site was established toallow researchers to gauge how
smart drought anddisease-affected pollution is
found as wildfire approached andswept across the plain.
But Despain and the other firescientists had the last word.
The recovery in Yellowstone wasa slam dunk for science and the
let-burn policy.
As little as five years afterthe fires the park was
(22:12):
recovering well.
The forest is going to bere-established.
In many cases the seedlingdensity is greater than the
original stand density, saidMonica Turner of the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory at a 1993meeting in Jackson held to
discuss the implications of the1988 fire.
In many burned-over areas wherethe mature lodgepole pines once
(22:35):
stood, the number ofestablished seedlings is eight
times as large as the originalnumber of trees.
Many lodgepole seeds require afire to open.
The fires also put to rest theBambi myth that wildlife flees
in panic from approaching fires.
At the same 1993 conference,grizzly Bear researcher Steve
French said we didn't see a lotof stress on the animals.
(22:58):
Bison right in front of thefire line only moved out of the
way very casually.
A survey French conducted oflarge animal deaths found that
more than 390 documented deathsfrom fire, nearly all from smoke
inhalation.
Of those, 333 were elk, 32 muledeer, 12 moose, 9 bison and 6
(23:20):
black bears.
There were no antelope,mountain lion, grizzly bear or
bighorn sheep carcasses.
With no exception animals sawthe flames coming and simply
stepped aside.
University of Wisconsin-StevenPoint professor Mark Boyce said
in a talk at the conference thatif he were the superintendent
of Yellowstone I would maintainfire every chance I had.
(23:42):
I would do my best to eradicatethis species.
At this he showed a slide ofSmokey Bear, the patron saint of
the fire suppression,advertisement from the park.
Research findings on theecological impact of the
Yellowstone fires indicate therewere very few cases one-tenth
of one percent of the burnedarea where the high fire
(24:04):
temperatures burned deep roots.
The impact on the park wildlifewas minimal, despite early
concerns.
White bark pine and aspen cameback.
The Yellowstone fires were awatershed in the public
understanding of fires' impacton ecosystems.
Wildland fires have become moreeasily tolerated, except in
(24:26):
cases where fires threatenpeople's houses and structures,
an increasing problem as morepeople moved into the
urban-wildland interface.
Thanks for joining us today andwe hope you enjoy our podcast.
As per the code of the west, weride for the brand and we ride
(24:46):
for wyoming.
We'll be right back.
(25:43):
3, 2, 1, go, go, go, go.
Thank you.
Good morning and welcome to let's Talk Wyoming.
I'm Mark Hamilton, your host,and today we'll be talking about
our weather and our fires inthe state.
We'll have a quick recap on theelections, our primary
elections.
We'll talk about our WyomingCowboys and, on the hook, a fish
truck.
And finally we'll talk aboutthe Yellowstone fires of 1988.
(00:46):
Thanks for joining us and Ihope you enjoy the show.
Taking a look at Wyoming weather, it's been definitely hot here
at the tail end of August.
Yesterday here in Hot SpringsCounty we were up at 98 degrees
(01:11):
with 20 mile an hour winds justbrutal.
It has definitely not been verygood for our areas.
We have fires going on aroundthe state, a couple big ones.
There's a big one over east ofBuffalo, between Buffalo and
Gillette, wyoming, that has hadthe interstate closed down.
A lot of ground is being burnedup in that area.
(01:36):
It's a very sparsely populatedarea between the two communities
but it's one of those that itkind of changes direction every
time the wind changes and itcould be a hazard for the town
of Gillette or back to Buffalo,depending on what happens, and
the last I saw it was zerocontained.
Those type of grass.
Fires are hard to get in frontof now we're looking at maybe
(01:59):
some moderation in the weathercoming up and if we can get
these winds to die down and wemight be able to have some luck.
The firefighters I just feelfor these people out there.
They're just working so hard onthis stuff.
It's been a tough year takingcare of all these fires staying
in front of them.
Then at the same time there wasa fire down east of Casper
(02:21):
between Casper and Glenrock.
It had the interstate, thesouth lane of I-25, closed.
Then I saw later this morningthat there was a fire on I-25
north of Casper between thereand KC.
So they're popping up all overthe place.
So we'll keep an eye on that.
But again, as we always say,with these wet springs there's a
(02:44):
big chance of having these typeof conditions in the summer,
especially where the wind andthe heat have been so bad.
It's got so many red flag days,I should say it seems on our
weather map every day there's ared flag warning for a majority
of the state.
So thoughts and prayers for allthose people that could be in
the line of fire on these.
(03:05):
Hope everyone stays safe, butkeep an eye out and listen for
warnings in your area.
In other news around the statethe primaries are over.
It's rather interesting thathere in our state there was a
lot of talk about the primariesfor the legislature.
A lot of different groups werebringing money into the state.
(03:28):
The biggest battle between theRepublicans, the Freedom Caucus
and the RINOs I should sayprobably somewhere in between
that, but as it turned out theFreedom Caucus candidates ended
up with a controlling majority,it looks like in the House, and
(03:50):
so that will make a bigdifference on a lot of these
bills that have been overpassed.
I know the governor here hadstarted his own PAC.
We talked about it a week ortwo ago.
It was called PAC-PAC.
They were donating money toeverybody that wasn't a Freedom
Caucus member.
So a lot of partisan activitiesgoing on within the state of
(04:12):
Wyoming with our legislaturethat is predominantly Republican
.
But we've got to put a kind ofa question mark, I guess,
depending on which side of theRepublican fence you are.
Don't have that problem withthe Democrats, but the
Republicans always seem to havethat problem.
So pretty much most of our racesare decided coming up into
(04:33):
November.
The biggest one, of course,would be our presidential
election here in Wyoming.
That'll be the only thing I didsee some inklings of maybe some
hurt feelings and such here inthe state, did see some inklings
of maybe some hurt feelings andsuch here in the state, and
I've seen it before and theytried to do that back in 2022
(04:54):
with Harriet Hageman and LizCheney on the Secretary of State
.
There was a lot of pushback onChuck Gray being the winner in
the primary.
So I think, if I remembercorrectly, they did try to have
a write-in candidate.
Write-in candidates are reallyhard to get in place, especially
(05:15):
if that person's already beendefeated.
So are losers and they justhave to continue just to cause
problem and just muddy thewaters.
National elections will causeus enough issues to go around
for everybody.
Other news yes, cowboy footballis back here in the state of
(05:35):
Wyoming.
Cowboys have been in their fallcamp and they've started
preparation for next Saturday'sgame in Tempe, arizona, against
Arizona State.
Boy, it's going to be hard forthose players to adjust to that
heat.
It is going to be hot and hotand hot down in the Valley of
the Sun.
(05:55):
The Cowboys are coming in witha lot of new players, a new
quarterback with a lot ofpotential, a pretty good group
of running backs.
Harrison Whaley had a kneeprocedure but it sounds like
he'll be back here in the nextfew games.
But the Cowboys have somepotential but we've heard that
before, so kind of excited.
(06:17):
We've got a new head coach,some new coaches, we have a new
offensive coordinator, so we arelooking forward here in the
state of Wyoming for CowboyFootball.
They'll be back home thefollowing week in September as
they take on Idaho at WarMemorial Stadium.
So we've got a full slate thisyear and a game that everybody's
(06:41):
talking about is BYU will be intown.
I don't know if there's anytickets left, but that's a night
game.
If I'm not mistaken, that willbe the last meeting between the
two schools.
Wyoming had played at Provolast year and part of that was
them coming back here for onegame.
So now the BYU Cougars are inthe Big 12.
(07:03):
They had been independent for awhile after they dropped out of
the Mountain West or the WAC inMountain West.
A lot of really unbelievablegames between Wyoming and BYU, a
lot of history between BYU andthe Wyoming Cowboys.
So that's another game we'relooking forward to.
So football's in the air.
(07:23):
Also just wanted to report somegood news Cowboys.
So that's another game we'relooking forward to, so
football's in the air also.
Just wanted to report some goodnews.
This week I was up in Cody.
I had to do some shopping atdifferent places and going down
the street and guess what?
I saw the on the hook fishtruck was parked at Tractor
Supply.
Got my shopping done and wentto stand in line, got my fish
(07:48):
and chips and definitely it wasworth the wait.
They were in Worland a fewweeks back but there was road
construction that day and I justdidn't want to have to go
through the long delays bothways.
So it was not a plan.
I didn't know anything aboutthem being in Cody, but
(08:09):
definitely thanks to the guysfrom the on-the-hook fish truck
for another outstanding meal.
It's just one of those mealsthat you enjoy every bit of it.
It's something we don't havearound here and something that
is just very enjoyable Today inour history section with the
(08:32):
amount of fires that we have inthe region right now.
I want to go back to a storyfrom Yellowstone Ablaze, the
fires of 1988.
And this is by Dan Whipple fromWyomingHistoryorg.
On June 30, 1988, lightningstruck a tree in the Crown Butte
region of Yellowstone NationalPark, in the park's far
(08:54):
northwest corner, near where theborders of Idaho, montana and
Wyoming meet, the lightning boltstarted a small forest fire,
which became known as the FanFire.
The Fan Fire ballooned over1,800 acres by July 2nd, but
then slowed.
The Fan Fire was the first fireof that summer to erupt within
(09:15):
Yellowstone National Park,though the Storm Creek Fire had
ignited about a week earliernorth of the park boundary and
would eventually make its wayinto the park proper.
Park fire experts noted thatfan fires ignition and did
nothing.
Then, in rapid succession, overa period of about two weeks, a
(09:35):
series of fires broke out acrossYellowstone National Park.
The largest were named Fan,north Fork, clover, mist, hell,
roaring, storm Creek, mink,snake and Huck.
They grew so large that theywere no longer fires but
complexes, according to a 1994report issued by the US
(09:57):
Department of the Interior.
During that overheated summerof 1988, they burned about
683,000 acres of the park's 2.2million acres and about 1.2
million acres total within thegreater Yellowstone area, which
included several nationalforests adjoining the park as
(10:17):
well as Grand Teton NationalPark.
Fire experts originally didnothing to combat the blaze
because of their park policy, apolicy that surprised a lot of
reporters and politicians,including the President of the
United States, president RonaldReagan, roused to comment on the
policy, admitted that he didnot know about it until
(10:39):
September 14th, after the fireshad long been underway.
The understanding of fire innatural ecosystems has been
growing for years and one of thelegislative mandates of the
Yellowstone National Park is tomaintain as nearly as possible
primitive ecological conditions.
Fire is one of the most basicnatural processes.
(11:00):
In fact, many plant specieswithin the park are fire adapted
.
In fact, many plant specieswithin the park are fire adapted
.
Some lodgepole pines, which canmake up about 80% of the park's
forest, have cones that aresealed by resin until the
intense heat of a fire cracksthem open and releases the seeds
.
Fire also stimulatesregeneration of sagebrush, aspen
(11:23):
and willows.
Since the mid-1970s, park firepolicy has been to allow natural
fires started by lightning orother natural causes to burn.
Human-caused fires wereextinguished.
The park also had an active,prescribed burn program to try
to reduce fuel loads, fallentrees and dried vegetation that
(11:44):
could contribute to catastrophicburns.
In 1975, an environmentalassessment was prepared which
allowed natural burning on 1.7million of the park's 2.2
million acres.
In the years between thisassessment and the 1988 fires
the policy was a quiet,uncontroversial success.
(12:05):
Tens of thousands of lightningstrikes simply fizzled.
There were 140 fires, but mostburned themselves out after
swallowing a few acres.
The average burn size was 250acres.
The largest fire during thattime was 7,400 acres.
In 1988, as in past years, eachfire was evaluated individually
(12:29):
to determine how it related tothe fire plan.
The fan fire, for instance.
A natural fire was permitted toburn at first In the early
summer.
Before the fan fire struck, 20lightning-caused fires had hit
the park.
Eleven burned themselves out,just like fires in previous
seasons.
So park scientists and managersseemed justified in sticking to
(12:52):
their fire plan.
But the weather conditions of 88in Yellowstone were taking on a
dimension not seen since thepark was established in 1872.
After a wet spring, the summermonths were the driest ever
recorded.
Still, by July 15th, only 8,500acres had burned in the entire
(13:13):
Greater Yellowstone ecosystem.
But a week later visitors werenoticing the smoke and the
national news media was startingto pay attention to the
situation.
Dry conditions and high windswere creating perfect conditions
for massive fires.
On July 21st things werespiraling out of control.
Park officials decided to tryto suppress all new and existing
(13:37):
fires as resources allowed.
At the time, all the fires inthe park covered a total of
17,000 acres, about 2.5% of thearea that eventually burned.
In a paper prepared shortlyafter the fires for the journal
Northwest Science, yellowstoneNational Park technical writer
(13:57):
Paul Scolari writes Extreme firebehavior became nearly the
order of the day as fires ran asmuch as 10 miles in a day,
sending embers as much as a mileand a half ahead of the main
fire to create dozens of spotfires.
The presence of so many spotfires, along with rapid and wide
(14:17):
advances of the main fires,made it impossible to fight the
fires head-on without riskingmany lives.
Hundreds of miles of fire lineswere constructed, but with the
spotting behavior, firesroutinely jumped usual barriers
such as rivers and roads.
Standard hand or bulldozerbuilt lines were no barrier at
(14:37):
all.
Among the examples of blackhumor, an appropriate term, if
ever there was one with fires,was what's black on both sides
and brown in the middle?
The answer a bulldozer line.
In Yellowstone, at the peak offirefighting efforts, 9,500
military and civilianfirefighters were engaged, using
(14:58):
dozens of helicopters and morethan 100 fire trucks to try to
stop the blazes.
Costs passed $120 million.
Remarkably, no firefightersdied during the firefighting in
Yellowstone, though there weretwo fire-related deaths.
Outside the park, students froman elementary school sent trees
(15:18):
to firefighters to replace thelost ones.
Women of Broadus, montana, sentthem homemade cookies.
Chief Ranger Dan Scholey wrotethe women a thank you note.
From the speed with which theydisappeared I know they were
appreciated by all of us in thecamp and on the fire line.
Despite the manpower, the firescontinued to grow.
(15:41):
A total of 248 fires ignitedthat summer, but the seven
largest caused 95% of the damage.
On July 5th the lava firesstarted, july 11th the mink and
clover fires.
July 22nd the North Fork fire.
July 23rd the clover and mistfires joined, and so on.
(16:03):
There were eventually a totalof eight fire complexes,
depending on who's counting withevery section of the park
aflame.
Media reporting was often poorlyinformed and contradictory.
The word disaster, devastatingand catastrophic appeared often.
The New York Times report notedstretches of charred, lifeless
landscape left by the months offires.
(16:25):
Newspapers began covering thestory in early July, almost as
soon as the fires ignited, whilethe national broadcasting
television coverage came weekslater.
The ABC and NBC televisionnetworks broadcast their first
stories on July 25.
Cbs broadcast its first storyon August 22nd.
Ohio State Universityjournalism professor Conrad
(16:49):
Smith writes in a 1991 paper.
Yellowstone fires were morenewsworthy in the West than in
the East.
They made the front page of theLos Angeles Times 39 times,
starting on July 18th with abrief news brief about wildfires
in the West, the front page ofthe Washington Post three times,
(17:10):
starting on September 8th afterthe fire visit to the Old
Faithful Geyser Complex, and onthe front page of the New York
Times three times, starting onSeptember 11th when the
Secretaries of the Interior andAgriculture arrived in
Yellowstone for an inspection.
Both print and broadcast mediamade some serious mistakes in
(17:30):
their coverage.
For instance, on July 21st of1988, the park abandoned its
let's Burn policy and begansuppressing all fires.
But as late as September 1stthe New York Times was still
reporting that some fires werebeing allowed to burn.
And on September 10th the paperreported on criticism by
(17:50):
Wyoming Republican US SenatorsAlan Simpson and Malcolm Wallop
of Yellowstone's natural burnpolicy, despite the fact that
this hasn't been the policysince mid-July.
But that was nothing comparedto an August 30th story on ABC
television featuring aninterview with Stanley Mott,
director of the National ParkService, except that the
(18:12):
director of the National ParkService at the time was William
Penn Mott and the ABCinterviewer was a tourist.
Local media did better in theassessments of coverage produced
by scholars later, especiallyMontana's Billings Gazette,
coverage of the economic impacton the park-dependent businesses
by Robert EK and the WyomingCasper Star Tribune, coverage of
(18:37):
the ecological dynamics byAndrew Melankovich and Jeff
O'Gara.
But the rest of the nation gota different story.
Time captured the spirit of thecoverage when editors first
wrote the fires have ruined 1.2million acres of Yellowstone and
adjoining national forests.
All this quickly worked its wayinto a political discourse.
(19:00):
President Reagan called thepark's fire policy cockamamie.
It's a disaster, said the USDepartment of Interior Secretary
Donald P Hodel.
He told the New York Times ashe and US Department of
Agriculture Secretary Richard ELing visited the park.
I think it's devastating andwe've only seen part of it.
(19:20):
Wyoming Senator Malcolm Wallopsaid the park's 16-year-old
let-burn policy was absurd andscientifically unsound.
He joined with Senator AlanSimpson in calling for the
resignation of National ParkService Director Mott.
Montana Democrat Senator JohnMelcher told the New York Times
(19:42):
They'll never go back to thispolicy.
From now on the policy will beputting the fires out when they
see the flames.
Bob Barbie and thesuperintendent of Yellowstone
was cast as the bad guy in thePark Fire drama.
In a 2013 retrospect pieceabout the fires, barbie told the
New York Times.
(20:03):
It's like well, why don't youjust put it out?
Well, why don't you just stopthe hurricane or tornado?
You don't just put it out?
On September 11, 1988, aquarter inch of snow fell across
the greater Yellowstone areaand the fires quickly died out.
Underneath that quarter inch ofsnow lay the blackened
(20:23):
carcasses of trees, bleachedwhite, heat-blasted soil and the
deep uncertainty about thepost-fire future of the park.
It was accepted wisdom thatYellowstone wouldn't recover for
hundreds of years.
Even so, the Yellowstone bigfires were not a surprise to
anyone.
Paul Scullery wrote in the 1989Northwest Science article.
(20:46):
Only months before the fires of1988, a preliminary research
report by Dr William Ramey, anindependent fire ecologist from
Fort Lewis College, colorado,and Dr Don Despain, nps plant
ecologist, suggested that theYellowstone area fire regime
(21:07):
involved many small firesinterspersed every two to four
hundred years by massive firesthat swept across large portions
of the park.
Both men concluded that anothermajor burning cycle may begin
within the next century, asextensive areas are now
developing flammable latesuccessional forests.
During the fires themselves,despain achieved a level of
(21:29):
notary unusual for a plantecologist when he showed a
Denver Post reporter a fireimpact research plot near Ice
Lake near Norris Geyser Basin.
Environmentalist writer ToddWilkerson describes the incident
recently in a Jackson Hole Newsand Guide column published in
April of 2015.
(21:50):
The site was established toallow researchers to gauge how
smart drought anddisease-affected pollution is
found as wildfire approached andswept across the plain.
But Despain and the other firescientists had the last word.
The recovery in Yellowstone wasa slam dunk for science and the
let-burn policy.
As little as five years afterthe fires the park was
(22:12):
recovering well.
The forest is going to bere-established.
In many cases the seedlingdensity is greater than the
original stand density, saidMonica Turner of the Oak Ridge
National Laboratory at a 1993meeting in Jackson held to
discuss the implications of the1988 fire.
In many burned-over areas wherethe mature lodgepole pines once
(22:35):
stood, the number ofestablished seedlings is eight
times as large as the originalnumber of trees.
Many lodgepole seeds require afire to open.
The fires also put to rest theBambi myth that wildlife flees
in panic from approaching fires.
At the same 1993 conference,grizzly Bear researcher Steve
French said we didn't see a lotof stress on the animals.
(22:58):
Bison right in front of thefire line only moved out of the
way very casually.
A survey French conducted oflarge animal deaths found that
more than 390 documented deathsfrom fire, nearly all from smoke
inhalation.
Of those, 333 were elk, 32 muledeer, 12 moose, 9 bison and 6
(23:20):
black bears.
There were no antelope,mountain lion, grizzly bear or
bighorn sheep carcasses.
With no exception animals sawthe flames coming and simply
stepped aside.
University of Wisconsin-StevenPoint professor Mark Boyce said
in a talk at the conference thatif he were the superintendent
of Yellowstone I would maintainfire every chance I had.
(23:42):
I would do my best to eradicatethis species.
At this he showed a slide ofSmokey Bear, the patron saint of
the fire suppression,advertisement from the park.
Research findings on theecological impact of the
Yellowstone fires indicate therewere very few cases one-tenth
of one percent of the burnedarea where the high fire
(24:04):
temperatures burned deep roots.
The impact on the park wildlifewas minimal, despite early
concerns.
White bark pine and aspen cameback.
The Yellowstone fires were awatershed in the public
understanding of fires' impacton ecosystems.
Wildland fires have become moreeasily tolerated, except in
(24:26):
cases where fires threatenpeople's houses and structures,
an increasing problem as morepeople moved into the
urban-wildland interface.
Thanks for joining us today andwe hope you enjoy our podcast.
As per the code of the west, weride for the brand and we ride
(24:46):
for wyoming.
We'll be right back.
(25:43):
3, 2, 1, go, go, go, go.
Thank you.
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