Biscuit Fire


The Biscuit Fire was a massive wildfire in 2002 that burned nearly in the Rogue River–Siskiyou National Forest, in southern Oregon and northern California, in the Western United States. The fire was named after Biscuit Creek in southern Oregon. The Biscuit Fire was the largest wildfire in the recorded history of Oregon. The Biscuit Fire area is subject to warm, dry winds known as the Brookings effect, driven by high pressure over the Great Basin. The fire re-burned portions of the 1987 Silver Fire and subsequently burned in the 2017 Chetco Bar Fire.

The wildfire

The fire season in 2002 was an especially active one that started early with major fires in Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico, pulling resources from the Pacific Northwest. Between July 12 and July 15, a series of lightning storms occurred in California and Oregon starting hundreds of small wildfires. During this period, five such fires were started within a radius of each other near the state border. Due to the fires already burning in other areas, insufficient numbers of fire crews and smokejumpers were available to combat these fires and they began to burn out of control. The large Florence Fire, which had started approximately north of the border, eventually joined what was known as the Sour Biscuit Fire, which was burning very close to the border. Once the massive Biscuit Fire was created, it ended up burning a total of, and the fire was unable to be fully contained until December 31, 2002.

Damages

The fire destroyed 4 primary residences and 10 other structures, put 15,000 residents on evacuation notice and burned most of the Kalmiopsis Wilderness. Despite the level of destruction, there were no deaths attributed to the fire.

Aftermath

Since the fire, the United States Forest Service has been trying to log most of the severely burnt area, despite ecologists' concerns about the Port Orford Cedar, which is threatened from a root-attacking fungal-like organism that is most commonly spread on car tires and shoes. This will be the largest recorded timber sale in U.S. history, and a landmark case setting the future for all fires in national forests. The cost of salvage logging far outweighed the proceeds from sales.
In 2006, a research paper on the effects of post-wildfire salvage logging caused a controversy within the forest sciences community.
TM, false color infrared, bands 642. Data source: https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
TM, false color infrared, bands 642. Data source: https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/
, 18 October 2017, Landsat 8 OLI, false color infrared, bands 758. Data source: https://earthexplorer.usgs.gov/

Citations