High school students weren’t alive when Yellowstone burned in 1988. Do you remember?
NASA infrared satellite photograph of Yellowstone fires in 1988
It was a conflagration that made hell look like good picnicking. 1988 was a particularly dry summer, and hot. Lightning and human carelessness ignited fires across western North America. Five huge fires raged out of control, and burned huge swaths out of forests in Yellowstone National Park that probably hadn’t seen fire in 80 years, maybe longer.
The Salt Lake Tribune featured several stories about the fires and Yellowstone’s recovery today, “Yellowstone: Back from the ashes,” how wildland firefighting changed, a great chart on fire succession stages, and another chart on the effects of the fire on larger animals in the Yellowstone system.
Old Faithfull erupts against background of smoke from 1988 fires - NPS photo by Deanna Marie Dulen
The 1988 fires made history in several ways; it was the first time so many fires had burned simultaneously. Ultimately some of the fires merged into even greater conflagrations. The fires forced the shutdown of tourism and other activities in the Park. Inadequacies in fire fighting equipment, staffing and policies were highlighted and displayed in newspapers and on television for weeks, forcing changes in policies by cities, states and the federal government.
Some good came out of the fires. Much undergrowth and dead wood had choked off plant diversity in some places in the Park. The fires opened new meadows and offered opportunities for some species to expand their ranges.
Scientifically, a lot of information came out of the fires. The mystery of when aspen would seed out was solved — new aspen seedlings appeared in areas where the fires had sterilized the ground with extremely high temperatures that seemed to trigger the seeds to germinate.
Our visits in 1989 offered a lot of opportunities to look at very bleak landscapes.
Yellowstone National Park in 1989, a year after the big fires - Copyright 1989 and 2008, Ed Darrell
Recover of the forested areas began rather quickly, but will take time to cover over all the scars of the fires.
Other resources:
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
How do you stop global warming on one planet? You start it in another.
Why we insist on thinking that government will do a good job of doing ANYTHING is beyond me.
Government is good at one thing. CYA.
Anyone know what decimation means? Lets do that to the Fed. If 0bama was sincere about change decimation would be the only thing he had in mind.
Libs stink.
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I learned a joke in 1988 that only works on this discussion.
How do you stop a fire in your kitchen? You start a fire in your living room.
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Then there’s the whole discussion of how years of preventing small fires had built up that tinder (undergrowth and deadwood, as you call it). Fascinating stuff. There’s that whole – what’s the result of man trying to control nature – thing, which is far more complicated than “yes, we have to” or “no, we cannot.”
Jonathan
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