LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — An 11,000-acre controlled burn in Camp Robinson is serving as a training opportunity for firefighters ahead of the dry season.
“Our goal is to reduce the fuel load within these areas,” said Darrell Daniels, the environmental programs director, or “burn boss” for the home base for the Arkansas National Guard. “We're trying to get rid of the leaf litter and the underbrush.”
Camp Robinson is a wilderness that's only miles from a lot of neighborhoods. Wildfires threatened those neighborhoods six years ago.
“We had high winds that particular day and it started traveling east and we were concerned that it might actually get off the installation,” said Daniels, who added that ever since, fire prevention efforts have stepped up including wider fire breaks and controlled burns like Friday’s.
The team of about a dozen people musters along a dirt road and an ATV with a flamethrower ignites the targeted area. Because the land is used by Guardsmen, the fire sets off small explosions from blank rounds dropped on the ground during training exercises. It’s a reminder that Camp Robinson features a few extra fire hazards than a public forest.
Forestry officials and politicians like Rep. Bruce Westerman (R – AR) advocate for this type of active forest management as a way to prevent the deadly wildfires in California in recent years.
“It’s not as much risk here because of the type of vegetation we have, the humidity levels that we have and then the winds,” Daniels said but says the burning and training they do is good practice for many fire fights. “While there is risk in Arkansas, it's not as much the risk there, but we can even further reduce that risk by doing these controlled fires.”