How Earlier Fuel Treatments Helped Lassen Volcanic Weather the 2021 Dixie Fire

Fuel treatments helped protect the Summit Lake Ranger Station from the Dixie Fire. NPS.

Defensible space pays off

Lassen Volcanic National Park's fuels program has long made defensible space around park buildings a priority. During the 2021 Dixie Fire, that meant some park facilities were judged safe for firefighters — with access to control lines and good escape routes.

• Summit Lake: earlier thinning, chipping and burning of small trees around the campground and ranger station lightened the fuel, calmed the fire's behavior and let firefighters guide the fire around the buildings. With less fuel, sprinklers also covered the station and its surroundings better.

Where no one could stay

Much of the park's infrastructure could not be staffed: firefighting resources went to higher priorities such as communities at risk, and many park buildings were too remote, the fire too fast, or escape routes too long to be safe. Several structures were destroyed.

Even so, earlier treatments likely helped some unstaffed buildings survive as the fire burned around them. Near the Juniper Lake Ranger Station, small trees and dead debris had been cut, piled and burned, leaving little surface fuel and no ladder fuels — and the station is still standing.

The lesson

Huge fires like the Dixie Fire "take on a life of their own." But defensible-space work, pile burning and prescribed fire give historic structures a fighting chance and make it safer for firefighters to protect them.

Sources

Based on "Previous Fuel Treatments Around Park Infrastructure Assist Firefighters During Dixie Fire at Lassen Volcanic National Park," National Park Service Fire and Aviation Management; a work of the United States government in the public domain.