Valley forests ignite
By Meghan Patrick, contributing writer
Posted on April 20, 2006

Controlling the forest fire that blazed over 1,000 acres of Shenandoah National Park this month closely involved the efforts of one JMU student.

Akiva Gordon, a natural resource management major, is also a fire monitor for the National Park Service. After lightning struck a tree and ignited a fire on top of Lewis Mountain April 4, Gordon was summoned to the park to use his skills in controlling the natural fire.

“I worked as a sawyer during this fire,” said Gordon, who had a role in controlling hundreds of fires in Virginia and out of state since he started fighting fires with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources in 1990. “I fell any burning trees or trees that could possibly fall over the fire line,” he said.

The fire line is man-created barrier, used to contain the fire in a specific area.
“We cleared vegetation out of the way and dug the line so that when the fire reached the break in the soil,” Gordon said. “It would have nothing to burn, and would stop.”

Julena Campbell, public information officer with the National Park Service in an interview with the Daily News Record said, “They’re digging down to what we call mineral soil. They are also burning everything that could be burned. It’s fighting fire with fire.”

The fire was a large one for this area, and is reported as the biggest since 2003.

“It burned downhill,” Gordon said. “This made it a lot slower and less intense than it is when it is burning uphill.”

The fire occurred during “fire season, which is in the spring, because of all of the thunderstorms and high chance of lightening,” Gordon said. “We’ve also been in a drought recently with dry conditions allowing it to burn more intensely.”

Throughout the five-day blaze, the fire was monitored through fire weather reports. “We measured humidity, dew points, moisture levels and fuel to monitor its activity,” Gordon said.

In addition to the fire lines, helicopters dropped 400 gallons of water from the Shenandoah River every time they passed over the fire. It was reported as contained when rain showers added to the efforts, a few days after it began.

Forest fires are positive and necessary natural occurrences “as long as they are contained,” Gordon said.

“Fire is very beneficial for the forest, as certain plants require fire to transmit seeds, clean up underground growth and open up the ground floor to more sunlight,“Gordon said. “It won’t even look like there was a fire in the park later this summer.”

The naturalness of the fires is what attracts Gordon to working with them.

“The most exciting part is being out there and seeing mother-nature at its extreme,” said Gordon. “It’s also one of the few jobs where you get paid to play.”