Fall 1999

The Burn That Wasn't
by Joe Neumann

I’m late. But my destination is finally in sight. Strip mall...gas station...prairie. That’s my stop. I pull into a parking space and leave the buzz of the traffic behind.

I grab my gear — hard hat, flame-retardant Nomex suit, leather gloves and some drinking water. A crew is just heading into the prairie. I fall in with them. At a designated location, we begin to rake. We rake north into the interior of the prairie. We are raking a "fire break." In our wake we leave a line bare of stalks, stems and leaves. This line is as far west as today’s prescribed burn will go. We rake rake rake rake — whew! Finally we hit the ready made fire break of a sidewalk. We follow it back east. Wolf Road Prairie, like so many other preserves, almost wasn’t. So close did it come to being developed that sidewalks were laid into it. The Great Depression halted the development plans. As we follow the sidewalk, we come upon a gap. That’s where an alley would have been.

We walk back south along another line of sidewalk. Our walk has encompassed the three blocks that comprise today’s prospective burn area. The prairie within this area does not look like the finest silt loam prairie east of the Mississippi. It has been mowed. Mowing a prairie simulates the effects of a burn but does not replicate them sufficiently. Today we plan to give this prairie the real McCoy.

To the south the topography gently rises and the prairie gives way to woods. We plan to burn this area too. Young bur oak pack this woods. Few large oaks are evident. The spare number of mature trees reveals that this area was once a savanna, an intermediate system between the extremes of a well shaded forest and the full sun of the prairie. In the past fires thinned the oaks. The survivors prospered in the openness, as did a host of native plants. Without fire, savannas and prairies become clogged with woodies that shade out the groundcover of wild flowers and grasses. Today’s burn will assure that this woodland will host even more impressive displays of rue anemone, wild hyacinth, and wild geranium.

"Let’s go! Get with your teams!" John Raudenbush, restoration forester for the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, gathers us together in the prairie. We orient ourselves on a site map. John outlines "Plan A" in which the group will be split into two crews. One crew will secure the north end of the burn area while the other secures the east end. The wind is out of the south so it will push the flames north. The east break is essential for a different, but no less critical reason. Wolf Road and sensitive community structures, like a nursing home, reside there.

Today’s crew is composed about equally of FPD personnel and volunteers. Barbara, Bill, and Steve have come from the northwest corner of the county to the near west suburb of Westchester where the prairie resides. All of us, volunteer and FPD employee alike, have earned the S-130/S-190 National Forest Service fire training certificate. This course does an excellent job of training burn crews for the national parks. But Wolf Road Prairie and the rest of Cook County’s forest preserves are not Yosemite and Yellowstone. In the national parks there are fewer neighborhoods next to the nature.

It is with this understanding that John introduces us to Plan B. This plan calls for the eastern block to be burned in strips rather than all at once. This technique takes more time but results in the smoke being released more slowly and given more time to disperse. If even this "slow burn" option does not prove to be enough to control the smoke, then John has a Plan C: "Just walk away."

We light a "test burn." This involves igniting a small area to determine how the fire and smoke behave. The District’s restoration ecologist, Steve Thomas, monitors the weather radio. But it only relays the conditions at O’Hare at the top of the hour. Steve’s real job is to monitor conditions on-site. He has already made a worrisome observation. The southerly wind reported on the radio has a distinctly western bent at our location.

As the test burn starts to crackle, it quickly confirms the wind’s fickle character. Also immediately obvious is that the smoke is hugging the ground. District Land Manager Ralph Thornton is in the nursing home’s parking lot. He is in radio contact with John. Given the bent of the wind and the utter lack of lift in the smoke, Ralph’s directive to John is swift and sure: "Shut it down."

The burn’s cancellation can only be a disappointment for both the volunteers and the FPD employees. Steve Thomas reveals that out of the 55,000 acres of natural lands in the Cook County FPD, this prairie is the number one burn priority. The reality of doing restoration on urban nature is that sometimes even first priority plans must be set aside. Yet today’s cancellation is only temporary. When conditions are right for both the surrounding community and the prairie, we’ll be back.

Note: In the 1999 spring burn season, the Cook County FPD conducted 23 prescribed burns at 15 forest preserve sites totaling close to 433 acres. The FPD owns more than 67,000 acres, of which it is currently working to restore 8,061 acres (12 percent) to healthy habitat.