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Hi, my name is Holly Kleindienst.
I work for the Kaibab National Forest, and I'm the forest fuels specialist.
I'd like to talk to you a little bit about fire danger and
how that relates to our fire danger rating signs in the woods,
and then how that, in turn, leads to things like forest
restrictions on campfires and things like that. [For] our fire danger rating
signs, we use the National Fire Danger Rating System to do that;
it's really based mostly on how dry the fuels
are in the forest, how hot it is out there, what
the potential is for fire behavior, and if there's
increasing numbers of people in the forest that could cause starts.
Through the year, we track how dry those fuels
are, and, as they start to increase [in dryness], we start to increase the staffing that we have for our fire
personnel. When it gets to certain levels and we anticipate lots of
folks in the woods with more of a chance for starts, we start to
increase those fire danger rating signs from "Low" through "Moderate" to "High."
Some years we reach "Very High." When we reach the top
three percent of those hottest, driest days of the year, that's when you'll see us change our
fire danger rating signs to "Extreme." When we're in the "Moderate"
range, we know that we're starting to get increased numbers of folks in the forest, but
the fuels really aren't at their peak dryness of the year. As we start getting towards
the peak dryness of the pine needles and the sticks that are out there in the woods,
then we start moving towards more of a "High" danger rating. As we get into
unusually dry conditions, then we move to "Very High" and "Extreme." What it [fire danger] really
means is how careful they [visitors] need to be with their activities in the forest.
At a "Moderate" fire danger, having a
campfire is okay. Usually we're not in any kind of restrictions yet, but
they want to take caution with putting those fires out; that's really the
greatest risk - escaped campfires or cigarette butts that
may light a fire. When we start moving into "High," we often start moving into
restrictions and limiting where people can have campfires
in the forest. Sometimes that leads to whether they can have motorized equipment
that might ignite a fire as well.