Nebraskaland

34 Nebraskaland • November 2022 vehicles and pickups equipped with water tanks and pumps. Their critical job was to prevent fl ames from creeping across or jumping the break. Radios were passed out to provide vital communications as the teams spread out and the burn progressed. With the meeting over, the crew crossed the bridge in a caravan of vehicles and lumbered up the two-track trail to the prairie fl at above the bluff . With the wind out of the north, the burn would start here on the downwind side of the unit's east end, with the trail road, which ran the length of the two-mile- long unit serving as the south fi re break. With Bladow orchestrating from the front seat of his four- wheel-drive pickup, one crew started lighting the backfi re directly off the trail. The fi re burned slowly into the wind, creating a blackened fi re break. Another crew followed the fi rst, fi lling in unburned gaps and widening the blackened area. Lighting the backfi re along the south line took several hours and was mostly uneventful. Only once did tension fi ll the air. About noon, as the fi re burned through a ponderosa pine stand near the trail road, the resin-soaked bark of several trees caught fi re. The crackling fl ames quickly climbed their trunks, sending embers skyward. These trees needed to be quickly extinguished or the wind might carry embers over the trail road and outside the burn perimeter. The call for help went out over the radio, and the dirty work began. First, crew members pushed through the heat and smoke of the fl aming trees and doused them with streams of water. With the fl ames extinguished, they used heavy rakes to break still-smoldering bark from trunks and limbs to prevent the trees from reigniting. Despite the crew's rapid response, a few embers landed across the trail road, igniting small fi res in dry grass beyond. Before these "spot fi res" could grow and intensify, waiting crew members snuff ed them out. Spot fi res are an expected part of prescribed burns, especially those including hot-burning, ember-producing cedars, pines, brush piles or tall grass, and on days when low humidity allows the errant embers to easily ignite dry grass or dead wood. Skillfully, our crew, like all trained fi re crews, predicted and was prepared for the spot fi res. With the fl aming pines extinguished, the crews lighting the backfi re continued to work westward. One could now gaze eastward and see a towering smoke plume rising near the river. The south line secured with a wide, fi re- blackened buff er, the third crew had started lighting the headfi re at the base of the bluff in the unit's northeast corner. Pushed by the wind and burning upslope, the fi re sent a wave of heat ahead, pre-heating and drying the fuels, intensifying the fl ames and sending many smaller cedars and pines to the afterlife. At this point, I was on the ridgetop, tasked with the duty of protecting a plastic deer blind set on short wooden poles by lighting a fi re around its perimeter, a practice known as blacklining. The grass around the blind had been mowed, but blacklining would add protection. As I drove a utility vehicle into the unit from the southwest, thick smoke began to block my path as I neared the blind. When I peered down the ridge, I saw fl ames heading my way: The crew lighting the fi re along the river had advanced farther than expected. I reversed course, leaving the blind to fate. The bark of a ponderosa pine was charred during the prescribed burn. GERRY STEINAUER, NEBRASKALAND

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