Tom Reilly
As the Forest Supervisor of the Clearwater Forest, Tom Reilly watches over the northern Idaho forest that was burned in the great fire of 1910. During the 2007 fire season, he quickly began seeing similarities between the two fire seasons. He discusses the parallels and what ultimately prevented the 2007 season from repeating the devastation of 1910 on the Clearwater Forest.
On the similarities between 2007 and 1910:
“When I started hearing that Missoula was breaking fire records that were set in 1910, 1934, 1967 over the last couple months I’ve been thinking more and more about the scenario that those fires played out in, and it must have been very similar to this year where we had a normal snow pack, but it was light in moisture, it went off early. We started having high temperatures, unseasonably high temperatures in May, and really, an unbroken strain of about six weeks of hot dry weather. I think that is very similar to 1910.”
On the differences:
“I think one of the differences between this year and 1910 is we actually did have a break in the weather. Last weekend it cooled off and we got some moisture. They didn’t have that in 1910. And the other big difference was in 1910 my understanding is that there was a cold front passage that brought two days of sustained winds. Up until last weekend when we had the break in the weather and I looked at the landscape and how much fire we had on the landscape in terms of the established fires, I could imagine where three days of sustained winds could have caused some of these fires to run quite a ways.”
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