Soils and sediment

As the Mullen Fire has been all but entirely extinguished following a heavy snow near the end of October, the assessment of damage done by the fire and future impacts to the area has been completed. 

Carbon County Fire Warden Ron Brown gave an update to the Board of Carbon County Commissioners (BOCCC) on the Mullen Fire during their November 10 meeting.

While the Burn Area Emergency Response (BAER) team’s assessment comprised the entirety of the fire’s burn area, Brown’s updates focused specifically on the potential impacts within Carbon County.

“We did do a site visit, mostly on the Carbon County side. The things that I wanted to put eyes on is exactly how bad that area was impacted, where the heaviest impacts were, things like that,” said Brown. “Where the fire weakened trees are. In these drainages, how bad did the soil erosion or the soil impact happen in those areas (where) we still have dead standing trees? What’s the potential of these trees getting into these drainages, causing blockage? How much debris are we going to be kicking down? Things like that.”

In debris flow maps made available by the United States Forest Service (USFS) at https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fseprd836598.pdf, one of the highest impacted areas for potential debris started near the Lower Douglas Creek area and moved south toward the Six Mile Creek area. Another area that Brown said he focused on with his site visit were the Spring Creek and Big Creek areas.

The county fire warden stated that the assessment by the BAER team was based on a 15 minute period in which a quarter-inch of rain would fall.

“My question to them was, ‘We’re going into winter. What’s three, four, five foot of snow on this going to look like in the spring?’ and they couldn’t answer me,” Brown said. “The crystal ball didn’t go out that far. We don’t know how well this is going to settle down, how well it’s actually going to settle these debris into that soil and, basically, contain them.”

Brown informed the BOCCC that there were multiple basin areas within the burn scar in Carbon County that could see debris move down and gather. He reiterated that there wasn’t any clear answer on what spring would look like in regards to run-off and how impacted certain areas might be.

“I will say, I was pleasantly surprised at the burn pattern on this fire. It is a very mosaic pattern. Some areas we would consider being almost a perfect prescribed burn. It took out a lot of trash and left a lot of live stuff,” said Brown. “There was a lot of areas with past logging operations where that regen (regeneration) had come in and the fire would bank up to that regen and lay down and they’d catch it. A lot of the regen areas and new generation trees were not impacted very bad.”

Chairman John Johnson asked Brown if the majority of the impacts from the Mullen Fire were on the Albany County side. Brown confirmed that they were and stated he had approached his site visit with a broader viewpoint, wanting to determine the impacts the soil burn and debris flow would have on ranches in the area.

“It’s going to have a tremendous impact on stream bank erosion, more than anything,” said Johnson.

“There’s so many facets and so many angles to look at this. We’ve got the Trouts Unlimited guys involved in this. There’s so many different agencies and aspects that this does affect. It’s a lot to wrap your head around in a very short amount of time. It’s kind of a wait and see,” Brown said. “All in all, considering that was the biggest fire this county’s ever saw, I think we’re doing pretty good.”

The Board of Carbon County Commissioners will have met at 9 a.m. on November 17 at the Carbon County Courthouse in Rawlins. The next meeting of the Board of Carbon County Commissioners will be at 9 a.m. on December 1 at the Carbon County Courthouse in Rawlins.