Two years later, Whiskeytown NRA is continuing to recover from the Carr Fire/NPS
Editor's note: It's been two years since the Carr Fire blackened most of the landscape at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area in California. In words and pictures taken by the National Park Service and Rebecca Latson, we take a look at how that fire impacted the NRA and how it's coming back.
It was a freak accident on a hot July day, and one that couldn’t have come at a worse time. A double-axle travel trailer being pulled through Whiskeytown National Recreation Area on Highway 299 during a record-tying heat wave in California blew out a tire, and the rim scraping along the pavement showered the tinder-dry vegetation lining the road with sparks.
Winds that rose to 14 mph were enough to fan the flames in the 105-degree heat and they quickly ran up steep hillsides and turned into a firestorm. In a sense, it was a perfect storm of heat, wind, and dry landscape, a wicked combination of extremes that saw the flames at times form a “fire tornado’ with winds swirling at 165 mph and more.
Entire mountainsides were engulfed by the flames/NPS
Many of the NRA's forests were charred by the Carr Fire/NPS
Before it was put out, the 2018 Carr Fire burned more than 97 percent of the recreation area’s 42,000 acres, along with 200,000 acres outside Whiskeytown’s boundaries. Ultimately, eight lives were lost and more than 1,000 homes and buildings were destroyed. At the time, “The Carr Fire was the most destructive fire in the history of the National Park System,” the National Park Service said.
The devastation was widespread. More than 100 structures inside Whiskeytown were destroyed. Among those lost were five of six park residences, as well as several cabins at the Whiskeytown Environmental School, park staff note. Footbridges, boats, boat docks, signs, water treatment buildings, and several historic fruit trees dating from the 1850s also were lost to the fire.
Two years later, rehabilitation of the national recreation area continues. Quick and decisive responses by emergency services during the fire, as well as dedicated restoration work by park staff and their partners once the flames were out, has enabled the reopening of most of the recreation area to visitation.
Greenery is starting to sweep across the landscape/Rebecca Latson
The hillsides are sprouting with vegetation/NPS
Mountainsides are beginning to recover/Rebecca Latson
Familiar viewsheds will take longer to return/Rebecca Latson
Many parts of the recovering landscape, however, are still bare, dotted only with the black toothpicks of burned trees. With little-to-no vegetation anchoring the loose soil on Shasta Bally (a slight corruption of the Wintu word for “mountain”), concerns now turn to water: rainfall could create the very real danger of a debris flow, a fast-moving landslide of mud, sand, soil, rock, water and air. As such, a large swath of the park, including “the majority of roads and trails on Shasta Bally and its north and west face” remains closed for safety reasons while allowing the terrain a chance to recover.
As intense as the Carr Fire was, that intensity wavered as the flames crept across the park. Weather changes affected the fire, as did topography, vegetation, and past efforts by Whiskeytown staff to reduce fuels on the landscape. “Some areas were totally charbroiled, while other areas only lightly burned,” Park Service staff noted.
Today the Whiskeytown staff suggests you look for the differences in how the fire burned the landscape, and the “mosaic” pattern the flames created. Along the short hike to Crystal Creek Falls, for example, the vegetation looks like it was barely touched by flames. A visit to Whiskey Creek, on the other hand, exposes bare hills with the beginning of regrowth beneath and between charred, stark, still-standing tree trunks.
It’s been two years since the Carr Fire, but the aftermath is still fresh in the minds of those who worked and lived there. National Park Service Ranger Jennifer Gibson worked at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area for 20 years with “an awesome job as the chief of resources management and Interpretation.” Today she is chief of resources and fire at Crater Lake National Park. In an email, Ranger Gibson said she “lost my house, my neighbors, my community and my park and it just broke my heart.”
During her visit to Whiskeytown this fall, Rebecca Latson stopped in the visitor center to discuss the recent Zogg Fire that burned extremely close to Whiskeytown. As she talked with the ranger there, another ranger walked in to say she’d been chatting with a gentleman who had returned to the area for the first time since the Carr Fire had burned down his home. She mentioned that the more the man talked about his return, the more emotional he became, and the ranger ultimately chose not to press him with further questions.
Looking across the Whiskeytown landscape, it’s hard to say exactly how it will come back, and on what timetable.
Even in areas that didn't burn, there usually is a view of areas that did go up in flames/Rebecca Latson
The shrub-dominated communities in the lower elevations and south-facing slopes will recover because of the resprouting shrub species and they are rather resilient in the face of disturbance,” Gibson told Latson. “The north-facing and coniferous forests took a big hit and the park lost a lot of old growth trees. Oaks will most likely resprout, but rather than one dominating trunk they will be multi-trunked. There might be some shift in communities from coniferous forest to shrub.
“So, in terms of plant communities, the same species are going to be there - just the park will look a whole lot different,” she explained. “In ecological terms, the species will remain the same, but the structure and composition has changed … there is a lot of research and monitoring going on in the park to assess these impacts and recovery - which is really exciting.”
Comments
This article puts about as optimistic a spin on it as can be put. But I can't imagine anyone wanting to come to this park for the beauty and natural scenery for many years to come. And I can't see its conifer forests ever growing back much (eg ponderosa pine, sugar pine, douglas fir, incense cedar - not talking about gray pine), at least not below four thousand feet. This park is not Yellowstone; most of the land is at the marginal lower end of the elevation range for such forest, in a marginal climate zone (Mediterranean) for such forest, and so climate change will put the kibosh on that. Hope you like chaparral.
I was there during a really smoky time of the year to capture some of the photos you see in this article. And yes, there is still much recovery to go at Whiskeytown National Recreation Area. That said, even during the smoky autumn days I was there, I saw people fishing, kayaking, swimming, and enjoying themselves. It's still beautiful out there, but it's a different kind of beauty. It's a haunting beauty, with reminders of the damage done by the Carr Fire. But the National Park Service has done a wonderful job of rebuilding much of the infrastructure (the marina, parking lots, swimming areas). And beauty is what you make of it, I suppose. I saw beauty out there and have captured it with my cameras. You'll see it too when my photography article is published this spring.