Speer: We can’t afford to be careless with fire

Bill Speer
Friday’s rain had to be greeted with open arms from Department of Natural Resources firefighters.

Across most of Michigan fire conditions were at high or very high levels for the past several weeks, and one would assume that at least the rain will give DNR crews at least a little respite in monitoring conditions outdoors.

Driving back from Ann Arbor this week, I was shocked to see the devastation from last month’s wildfire near Grayling that destroyed 1,100 acres. A bleak and barren black-charred landscape greets motorists along I-75 south of town. Reading accounts of the fire a week ago, I thought at first officials closed the interstate because of the thick smoke related to the fire but driving through the area, it is evident the fire jumped the interstate into the tree-lined median area, then again to the other side of the interstate.

While the area looks more like I would envision the dark side of the moon looking, even more shocking to me was seeing how incredibly close the fire crept to both the community’s industrial park as well as its commercial stretch on that side of town.

Literally, the fire came within feet of several commercial businesses — including a gas station. Imagine the devastation that would have caused if it had caught fire.

Anyone versed in our state’s history knows there is hardly a community in the state that hasn’t been rebuilt because of fire. For instance portions of Alpena were reconstructed several times because of fire — a curse to early settlers who used wood to construct everything.

However, those fires we associate with 100 years ago or more now. Would a fire today have that same potential?

In the past I probably would have been highly skeptical to that possibility, which now I believe is perhaps naive after driving through Grayling. The evidence left behind is disturbing as to how close the community came to even more disaster.

Driving on through Mio, the DNR office had listed Thursday the potential for wildfire as “very high” and even there, evidence of a recent burn could be seen along the highway.

“The return of warm, windy weather has led to wildfires across southern and central Michigan already this year,” said Paul Kollmeyer, DNR fire prevention specialist, a few weeks ago. “It only takes a short time after the snow recedes to dry out the dead grass and leaves to the point at which they will easily ignite and burn.”

Equally as disturbing for me this morning, after viewing the Grayling fire area, is the fact the DNR has 76 officers dedicated to fire control — the fewest in quite some time.

Last year’s Sleeper Lake fire in the Tahquamenon region of the Upper Peninsula was a hard fire to battle because of its remoteness. However, that remoteness also contributed to the fact so little structural damage occurred from the fire which destroyed 18,000 acres.

If you had moved that fire to other areas of the U.P., or worse, the Lower Peninsula, the results could have been devastating. All across Michigan a lot of construction has taken place in recreational forest areas the past several years.

In the past seven days I have been from Ann Arbor to Marquette — putting over 1,200 miles on my vehicle. While in Friday’s newspaper I wrote an editorial about the benefits of the Adopt-A-Highway program, the truth of the matter is I was appalled in my 1,200 mile tour of the state of the number of people I followed who were throwing trash out of their vehicles.

On three separate occasions I witnessed lit cigarettes hitting the pavement from the car in front of me.

With conditions outside the way they were, something as simple as one of those cigarette butts could be all that was needed to start a fire.

We need to become more responsible for our actions. It’s easy to always point the finger at someone else, or presume someone else is going to do something.

This morning let’s start simple by just committing to no longer littering our landscape, even if it is one little cigarette butt.

Maybe, just maybe, by doing so we can avert a potential disaster.