Good Question

DENVER (CBS4/AP) ― In California Wednesday investigators were trying to figure out what set off the blaze in the Angeles National Forest that has already burned nearly 219 square miles. An incident commander said the fire was human-caused but that was as far as he would go. The California fires are enough to trouble anyone in Colorado again. Memories of the 2002 Hayman Fire and the deadly 1995 Storm King Mountain Fire still resonate.

All in all, it's been a pretty good fire year in Colorado. Wildfires have done relatively little damage and things are so quiet, firefighting equipment has been sent to California to help battle the blazes there. Thank the weather. This summer's wetter weather has helped keep down bigger fires, but the chances of a big fire are still there, every year.

First, don't think of fire as all bad when it comes to our forests. Colorado State University assistant professor of wildland fire science Monique Rocca says fires decrease the fuel load. That means with periodic fires, forests are thinner and thus less likely to spawn huge fires. Fire science has evolved a great deal over the past fifty years or so.

"What we've found since then is many species depend on fire," said Rocca. "They're adapted to fire and they're healthier when they're allowed to burn."

Many people are worried about the risks of huge fires in the matchstick looking beetle-kill areas of Colorado's forests. It's bad, but it's not so simple, according to Rocca.

"There is probably a short-term increased risk when red needles are on the trees, but those red needles don't last very long. They fall off within a year or two," Rocca said.

Once the needles fall off, the trunks and branches don't burn very well -- as long as the trees are standing. Once the trees fall there's another problem, according to the Colorado Forest Service's staff forester Chuck Dennis.

"It's just like jackstraws, you know the old pickup sticks game? You can picture that only with trees that are 12 to 14 inches in diameter and 40 feet long," Dennis said.

That means hot ground fires. They don't spread as quickly as the crown fires that jump from tree to tree, but they may burn hotter. The danger would be for firefighters trying to escape those fires over fallen logs.

There are different theories about the environmental effects of one of those ground fires. It's often been believed that the heat can sterilize the soil, rendering the seeds left behind useless for regeneration and making the soil less absorptive, causing more damaging erosion. But there's a little good news, indicated Rocca.

"There's evidence from (fires at) Yellowstone that a lot of these trees will be able to grow up even if it's a really hot fire on the soil surface," Rocca said.

The lodgepole pines killed by beetles may be a fire danger, but there could be greater danger among the ponderosa pine forests found closer to the Front Range.

"Ponderosa pine compared to lodgepole historically burn much more frequently, but with much less severity," said Dennis. "However we've suppressed fires for many, many years and the fire situation is actually worse in the ponderosa than the lodgepole."

Ponderosas typically burn every 35 to 75 years. Lodgepole forests burn every 180 to 300 years. With fire fought along the Front Range, the ponderosa pines are overgrown and dense, creating a fragile situation.

In California, the fires are different. There's far more brush. Still there are comparisons. Slope is one of them.

"Slope is a very strong driver of fire behavior," said Dennis. "It's often said that if you take a 30 percent slope and compare it to level ground that fire spread will double everything else being equal."

California's fires are often fueled by hot Santa Anna winds -- again the weather.

Rocca says there's a new effect researchers are seeing from climate change.

"There's been studies that have shown that even already in the last 20 or 30 years that we're seeing longer fire seasons because the snow is melting earlier in the Spring," Rocca said. "So the fire season starts earlier and then it gets drier because you've lost all the moisture earlier and so the fire seasons are also going longer into the fall."

Hot dry weather may be the biggest factor.

While there has been fire mitigation along the Front Range, there's certainly a need for more. Dennis believes it's cheaper to prevent than to react after a big fire as they will be forced to do in California. The loss of homes is not cheap and heartbreaking.

"We don't think that way. We always react more to the crisis as opposed to putting money up front," Dennis said.

Additional Resources

• Blog Tracks Wildfires In California
• California Department Of Forestry & Fire Protection
• Follow Los Angeles Fire Deparment On Twitter

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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