When we talk about big fires,
we most often focused on acres
burned and homes destroyed,
and that certainly is important.
But sometimes there's another impact as
well that we don't get to see so easily,
and we're going to take a bit of
time to talk about that tonight
when fire burns through an area,
it chews up the forest and destroys
the trees and underbrush that holds
all the dirt and rock in place.
That happened about a week ago,
near a place called Happy Camp,
which is along the Klamath River.
In Northern California,
40 miles South of the Oregon border,
you can sort of see it where that
red dot is and the borders at the top
of the screen there after the fire,
a powerful thunderstorm rolled
through and created a flash flood,
sending lots of mud into the river.
All that mud and debris swelled,
the Klamath River,
and choked off the oxygen for the fish.
Craig Tucker is a natural resources
policy advocate for the Karuk tribe,
which first discovered the fish kill.
People sort of observing dead fish
floating into town and you really kit
and go upstream to investigate things
thoroughly because of active fire activity,
the highways closed 50 miles up the road,
but our fisheries program at the
corrupt tribe launched an action went
as far up about 20 miles upstream
from Happy Camp as they could,
and we're really devastated about what
they saw Friday and Saturday 10s of
thousands of dead fish are floating in
the river or filling up every Eddy.
We started putting all the pieces together,
best we could.
We have water quality equipment in
the river that's monitored remotely,
So what we know happened was there was
a high severity burn event on a couple
of creeks in that area followed by a
thunderstorm that created a flash flood.
So this was a.
Kind of a rare and unseasonable
heavy rain event in a small area,
and it just washed tons and
tons of sediment and ash
and debris into the river.
It doubled the flow of the
Klamath River in this area.
Now, typically rivers like the
Klamath are clear and clean
as they run through Northern
California in those remote areas.
That flash flood really changed that.
Take a look at this picture
sent to us by the Karuk tribe.
There's a distinct line between
the awful muddy water there,
kind of in the far end of the picture,
and the clear water trying to flow into it.
Craig told me all that mud took
the oxygen level of the water,
which the fish of course need to live
down to 0 for several hours on the
night of August 3rd it suffocated.
Thousands and thousands of fish.
And what kind of fish were dying?
I saw those pictures,
but I couldn't really identify
them well. The some of the bigger fish
in this pictures are actually suckers.
I think people sometimes despaired suckers,
but they're fundamentally
important to the river.
They they clean the river system,
they eat the algae really
important for water quality,
but mixed in there and hard to
see in those pictures were 10s
of thousands of juvenile salmon.
So these are Chinook and coho salmon
that are just a few inches long.
Knowing that those fish some of those
fish will spend a year of their life
in the river before they're big and
strong enough to go out to the ocean.
So we will really see the consequences
of this event a few years when we're
looking for those adult fish return.
So that's not great.
Again, we're talking about the
Klamath River and a massive fish kill
just South of the Oregon border.
Some of the pictures and videos
from the scene there showed lots
of smoke down in the water.
I don't know if you noticed that,
but it looks sort of foggy,
but that was smoke.
Craig Tucker with the Crook
Tribe says actually smoke is
not the problem for the fish.
Yeah well. Interestingly,
smoke can really be beneficial to
fish smoke actually shades the river
from sunshine and so sometimes.
Our events actually have a
cooling effect on the river,
and so for the Karuk tribe who I worked
for and other tribes in this area.
In the late fall,
fires are often set on the landscape
as part of cultural practices,
and it probably was the cue for the river
to cool down and for fish to start moving.
So there is a a positive
relationship between fish and fire.
In this case, the landscape that's
burning hasn't seen fire for 70 years,
and that's not normal.
This is from policies enacted by
the Forest Service and California.
Of Cal Fire, this landscape
should see fire more regularly.
It should see fire at a time of
year where it's safe to burn when
the temperatures are cooler and the
humidity is higher than would consume.
A lot of this fuel that's on the ground.
But when you spend 70 years putting
out every fire as fast as you can,
eventually it catches up to you and
you have a catastrophic fire event
like we're living through right now.
So there it is. Fires happen,
especially this time of year and can bring
devastating impacts to streams and rivers.
Whether we see it or not.
And that's in addition of course
to homes and acres and many,
including Craig Tucker.
There the natural resources policy,
advocate for the Karuk tribe.
Think there needs to be more use
of fire in cooler months to safely
clear the landscape.
So what's your take on all this?
Do you have a forestry expertise?
Do you want to share your expertise with us?
Does the Northwest need more managed fires?
And even if you're not an expert?
I'd love to hear from you.
You can e-mail me the address is the story
at kgw.com or call and leave a voicemail.
Our phone number is
503-226-5090.