Fall 2000

by Joe Neumann

8:30 AM. The phone rings. It’s Forest Preserve District ecologist Steve Thomas. He and a district crew are en route to Zanders Woods for a prescribed burn. "We could use another person," Steve tells me. A prescribed burn, today? There’s patchy fog and a damp breeze off of the lake. "We need an east wind," Steve says. I-394 runs due east of the preserve. So wind from the east will push the smoke away from the expressway. As for the damp conditions, Steve assures me: "This site burns hot."

"Zanders Woods Prairie" a district sign at the site declares. Sedge meadow and prairie pockets mingle among the dominant oaks. Fire maintains this diverse landscape. Just as at the Indiana Dunes to the east, sand rules here. This site is one of the three best sand savannas in the Cook County Forest Preserves.

Today’s crew consists of six district personnel and three volunteers. The first order of business is to make a fire break around the burn area. We rake a path clear of oak leaves. Without oak leaves to fuel it, the fire will die at this break.

The weather radio reports 89 percent relative humidity. We eat our lunch and hope that somehow the humidity will drop in the afternoon. You can see your breath. The tree trunks are damp on their east side. After lunch, we hike into the old field south of the burn area. We light a test fire in a clump of Eurasian grasses. The flames fizzle. Now we ignite a stray clump of prairie grass. It burns without difficulty. Maybe there’s hope for a burn today after all. Even as I think this, drizzle begins to fall.

We gather at the middle of the western fire break. Thankfully, the drizzle has passed quickly. The time has come to see what kind of burn we are going to get. With an east wind, the west break is the first one that needs to be secured. We will light the fire along this break, allowing it to move east against the wind while using our break to halt any advance to the west.

We split into two crews. One will go south and one north. I am assigned to the north crew headed by Mary who works at the district’s Salt Creek Nursery. Some of the volunteers call her "Seed" Mary because she grows native seedlings for restoration projects. Mary assigns me the drip-torch. Barbara, another volunteer, has a flapper. A flapper is a stick with a slab of flat rubber on the end. It is used to smother minor flames. Mary has a water pack. I light a line of oak leaves along the break. They burn most acceptably. I head north with the torch, igniting as I go, but keeping an eye behind me. We pause at the northwest corner. Mary uses her radio to inform Restoration Forester John Raudenbush, who is in charge of the burn, about our location.

As we await John’s permission to begin burning along the north break, a visitor appears. A man in a blue suit tramps up the trail in galoshes. He is Cook County Commissioner William Moran. Zanders Woods is in his district.

While we ignite the north break, the other crew ignites the south break. Now both crews make their way along the east break, a minor street that parallels the expressway. With the other breaks secure, we can safely light the head fire that will push forward with the support of the wind. The head fire, orange and active, gobbles up the dried native grasses and then sets off rapidly into the interior crackling and smoking as it goes. Damn the humidity, full speed ahead!

Late in the afternoon, while the flames are still milling about in the interior, the rain that has threatened all day finally begins to fall. In the end, eight of the 12 acres targeted by the burn plan have actually burned. When you work with fire, you must always be on the lookout for lessons. Today’s lesson is that soil conditions as well as atmospheric conditions affect fire. Porous, sandy soil wicks away moisture. 0.2" of rain fell two days ago. After today’s experience, I almost believe that one day I might witness a sandy area burning in the rain.

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