Last Wednesday, still feeling sleepy, I felt the Vermont fog for the first time as I walked out of the dorm and rushed to take my morning class. The first question popping out of my mind is: am I still in Shanghai? Because of the serious air pollution problem, having a foggy day is very common back in Shanghai. It’s obviously not a case in Middlebury where surrounds by mountains and nature power, as I imagined. However, air pollution, in effect, is a problem in the Adirondacks. One big source of air pollution in the Adirondacks is wildfire. This intrigues me to explore a little bit deeper on the cause and history of wildfire of the Adirondacks.
One typical anecdote of the Adirondacks wildfire is in 1903, a wildfire “comprising 643 fires in Adirondack and Catskills region, New York, and lasted for six weeks.” The day was like a “Yellow Day” since for around a week the “sky had a peculiar yellowish color and the sun hung in the air like a hazy red ball,” as recorded by the camp diary of the Scott family on Raquette Lake. It sounds weird, seeming like the end of this era. Why did it happen? “The only spring moisture of the Adirondacks was supplied by snow melting in late March, followed by a seventy-two-day drought.” Therefore, the unusually dry spring created fuel for the fire, resulting in a number of forest fires that burned over 600,000 acres of land in the Adirondack Park. Also, most lumbermen were reluctant to remove all tree branches, especially conifer trees, before discarding the tops. Thus, another factor leading to such a horrible forest fire was everything from trees including small branches that didn’t clear out by loggers.
By 1909, many new laws were passed with the goal to prevent and detect forest fires earlier. For instance, the government required locomotives to burn only oil from April 15 through October 31 to prevent the sparks that ignited so many fires. Plus, logging companies were required by law to limb everything left behind. The latter one wasn’t effective at all because although companies would be fined if they didn’t adhere to the rule, the amount they would be fined was far smaller than that of the profits they would make if they didn’t clear out leftover.
Today, wildfire is still a problem in the Adirondacks. As the local communities know that it needs a long time for forests to recover after forest fire, some prevention strategies are emphasized. Wildfire detection is commonly used in the Adirondacks now. One method of wildfire detection was installing fire towers (with pictures attached below) and hiring observers who stay in the fire towers and use alidade tables to find exact locations of fires.
Nevertheless, between 1993 and 2017, the annual average of wildfires was 217 and 2,103 acres burned. Though last week’s fog might not be the consequences of a wildfire, this experience led me to explore more about the Adirondacks wildfire.
Work cited:
- Adirondacks Journal. <https://www.theadkx.org/the-adirondacks-are-burning-a-brief-history-of-forest-fires/>
- Yellow Days: Adirondack Forest Fires And Air Quality by Sheila Myers. <https://www.adirondackalmanack.com/2015/05/yellow-days-adirondack-forest-fires-and-air-quality.html>
- David A. Paterson & Alexander B. Grannis. “Fire Tower Study for the Adirondack Park.” NY State Department of Environmental Conservation.
I found your post very insightful on the history of wildfires in the region. One of the main reasons this fascinated me was because of the fire tower picture you put at the bottom of your blog. I have gotten to see a couple of these towers while hiking various mountains up there and could never fathom having to live up there for weeks on end. I also found your stat on trains being required to use oil as their fuel as a method to prevent wildfires during logging season. Very cool to see they cared more about preventing fires at the time than preserving forests.