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WILDLAND FIRES (HUMAN AND LIGHTNING-CAUSED): The park had three human-caused fires
(all arson) and all were in the western portion of the park in Tennessee. A total of 191 acres burned.
While the number of ignitions and total acreage is not very high, the number of structures threatened
was above average. One fire set near the Look Rock Ranger Station threatened it. One fire set near
the mouth of Abrams Creek threatened private structures; the landowner used his dozer to put in a
fire line to protect his buildings. In addition, the park employees assisted Blount County on at least
two other occasions in the protection of structures.
The park had one lightning-caused fire that was managed for resource benefits. This was the Shot
Beech fire which started June 13 and burned for 35 days during which time it survived several inches
of rain. Interestingly, the fire consisted of a single 35-foot hemlock snag that burned down to 12-feet
before going out. Only a few square feet of vegetation burned on the ground.
FUELS TREATMENTS/PRESCRIBED FIRES: The park completed five prescribed fires during the
year for a total of 448.5 acres. Four of them involved burning hand-made piles at Ace Gap, Highlands
and the Bypass project sites. Noteworthy among the pile burning is when the Fire Use Module burned
approximately 600 piles in three days at Ace Gap. The fourth was the Wash Ridge prescribed fire.
The park Fire Ecologist wrote "In qualitative terms, the Wash Ridge burn was an outstanding first entry
of fire back into a fire adapted landscape. Weather conditions on days one and three of the burn
were very near the optimal prescription conditions; in particular, the relative humidity on those days
was at the "warm" end of the prescription."
In addition, at least four major prescribed fire challenges were highlighted during the year. First, the
Fire Ecologist worked closely with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Park Wildlife Biologists
to develop the guidelines on prescribed fire in respect to the federally endangered Indiana Bat. When
burns can occur and when preparation work can be done is limited. Secondly, the need to satisfy the requirements of pre-burn cultural resource surveys while at the same time trying to accomplish
landscape-sized fires to accomplish the park's mission of perpetuating existing biotic diversity.
Thirdly, the park must pay closer attention to ozone emission levels since the park was designated a
Non-attainment Area by the EPA. Fourthly, it has become increasingly clear that the park needs to
define the desired future conditions of the park's vegetation types given that landscaped-sized fires
are now taking place.
PLANNING/PREPAREDNESS ACTIVITIES: There were several significant planning related activities
completed this year. One of the most important occurred on September 15 when Superintendent Dale
Ditmanson approved the second version of the Park's Fire Management Plan. The revision was the
result of work over two years by a contractor, a Park Task Force, Regional Fire Staff and various
individuals from the park. Another significant accomplishment was the initiation of the Fire Program
Analysis (FPA). This new interagency budgeting and staffing system will be used to allocate
resources jointly between the Park, Cherokee National Forest, and Eastern Band of the Cherokee
Indians and other nearby park units. In order to help implement the system, the Park hosted a team of
FPA experts to help prepare for the implementation. The team worked on fuel modeling, fire history,
fire occurrence, inspecting weather records and developing program specific fire management units.
A side benefit to this project is that the park will receive a GIS data layer with all of its known fires.
This produce will be a very power tool for many disciplines to use in the future.
The Preparedness Staff updated the Park's Preparedness Plan; they started from scratch and
developed a very good product. In addition, they developed Park-specific Readiness Review
checklists for the Fire Office, Engines, Fire Caches, and individual fire fighters. This will certainly help
in being prepared for fire responses. Training is always an important function and the staff taught
four, eight-hour Annual Fire Fighter Refresher classes, two in North Carolina and two in Tennessee.
In addition, they taught the basic fire course twice; once for the interagency cooperators and once for
three volunteer fire departments. The Pack Test was given numerous times to qualify fire fighters for
fire line duty. Lastly, they responded to four wildland fires and assisted with four prescribed fires.
RURAL FIRE ASSISTANCE (RFA) PROGRAM: This is the park's fourth year working with the RFA
program. As in the past, it worked with ten fire departments and dispersed $64,630. In the preceding
three years of this program, funds were allocated for equipment, supplies, personal protective
equipment, and training materials. For the first time, the park accomplished the goal of teaching the
basic fire courses to some Departments. Three Departments had this training opportunity. Next year
we are planning to offer the same opportunity to three different departments.
FIRE ECOLOGY/EFFECTS: The Great Smoky Mountains fire effects crew supported fire programs
in ten National Park Service units during FY 2004, including monitoring, prescribed fire operations,
and planning. This included seven parks throughout the Southeast Region as well three parks in the
Pacific West and Intermountain Regions. In all, more than 35 vegetation/fuels plots were monitored,
including program start-ups at Big South Fork NRRA and Cumberland Gap NHP. Virginia McDaniel
presented some exciting results from our Great Smoky Mountains data at the International Fire
Ecology Conference as well as this year's Ecological Society of America annual meeting. The
analyses that were presented at these meetings will serve as a springboard for future investigations
into our fire ecology. Finally, the fire ecology program worked on testing the first versions of a new
National Park Service fire effects database that will help to modernize our program and make future
data sharing and analysis much more streamlined than in the past. The final transition to the new
database should be complete by next spring.
FIRE USE MODULE (FUM): The Module was fortunate to have a veteran crew back for the year. As
a result, there were many accomplishments. It was able to accomplish most of the prescribed fire
projects that the Southeast Region was tasked with in FY 2004. Prescribed fire projects were
completed at Great Smoky Mountains, Mammoth Cave, Kings Mountain, Congaree Swamp, and
Cowpens. In addition, it participated in a historic 11,000-acre unit on the Buffalo National River. The
FUM worked on two Wildland Fire Use fires; one at the Smokies and one at the Grand Canyon.
Between the two fires, significant fire monitoring experience was obtained by four individuals.
Training and development of employees was impressive. Task Books completed were for Fire Effects
Monitor, Faller Class B, Engine Boss, Incident Commander Type IV, and Helicopter Crewmember.
Employees participated in the following courses: Sand Table Exercises, Fire Business Management,
Wildland Fire in the Urban Interface, Pumps and Saws, Ignition Techniques and Helicopter
crewmember. Three crewmembers had prolonged details with the Great Northern Crew in Missoula,
Montana, the Mesa Verde Helitack crew at Mesa Verde NP and the Craig BLM District in Colorado.
The experience gained by crewmembers in these diverse assignments is one of the key reasons why
the Module has such a wide range of knowledge, skills, and abilities.
KNOXVILLE TANKER BASE (KTB): The national air tanker program was rocked by the cancellation
of all "heavy" air tanker contracts on May 10, 2004 due to airworthiness concerns. May 10 was the
day after Tanker 68 completed its spring contract at KTB. Fire danger was low in the Southern
Appalachians during the spring season, so Tanker 68 spent most of it detailed to the Lake City,
Florida base for response to wildland fires.
Contrary to what one would guess with the contract cancellation, the KTB Staff had a busy year. Base
Manager Doug Ivey completed five Western wildland fire assignments during the year serving as
Base Manager of a portable base in Payson, Arizona. He also assisted with managing aircraft
assigned to the Florida hurricane incidents. Lastly, he assisted with the national tanker program by
collecting data on tankers in California as part of the Aircraft Health Monitoring Systems study.
Other accomplishments included working with interagency partners to write position descriptions and
a Transition Plan for the new Chattanooga Tanker Base (CTB). Ground preparations for the
construction of the new base have been completed; however, it is unknown when the building and
mixing plant will be constructed. The retardant mixing plant was repainted and, as usual, the KTB
Staff maintained the park's remote weather stations used in the calculation of fire danger. The
Superintendent hosted a visit by the USFS Regional Fire Management Officer and the Cherokee NF
Fire Staff Officer. They requested the visit to inform the Superintendent that they hoped that he would
be willing to have the park manage the new CTB, should that opportunity ever present itself.
EMERGENCY STABILIZATION AND REHABILITATION: For the third and last year, the park
received $24,000 of Emergency Stabilization and Rehabilitation funding to monitor the invasive
nonnative plants on the Sharp and Green Mountain fires. The Supervisory Forester hired two
furloughed fire staff members to accomplish the field work, which consisted of inspecting sites and
treating the nonnative plants.
DISPATCHING – ROSS: Generally speaking, few employees were dispatched out of the park this
year. The primary reason being was that the National Preparedness Level did not exceed level thee
all year. Very significantly though, this was the implementation year for the nation-wide Resource
Ordering and Status System (ROSS). This system links the park to state and Regional Coordination
Centers as well as the incident itself, regardless of its location. This system is very labor intensive and
has created significant new workload that requires additional FTE to implement. Also implemented
this year was a new qualification system called Incident Qualification Certification System (IQCS).
IQCS is designed to interface with ROSS to ensure qualified individuals are assigned to incidents.
This new program, too, is very labor intensive.
RESEARCH: The park continues to work with several universities and agencies to accomplish a
wide range of fire research. Noteworthy last year was a project by the Aldo Leopold Wilderness
Research Institute of the Rocky Mountain Research Station. A study entitled "Can Wildland Fire Use
(WFU) Restore Historical Fire Regimes in Wilderness and Other Unroaded Lands?" This study
showed that lightning-caused fires in the park cannot perpetuate the park's biodiversity. This point
highlights the need for landscape-sized fires to accomplish agency and park goals. |
