Disaster on the Fen

By Alan Wilson

One unfortunate day of wildfire fighting ended with trucks stuck in sensitive wetland habitat. How a better understanding of nature can help firefighters do their job while protecting rare ecosystems.

On the evening of March 30, 2005 — the day that the big storm blew in from the south with high winds and lightning — I got a call from a newspaper reporter. She told me that there was a big fire at the fen.

My wife, Barbara, and I have been volunteer stewards at Lake in the Hills Fen, a 240-acre nature preserve in Lake in the Hills, Illinois, for the past 15 years. Working with the McHenry County Conservation District, we’ve been entrusted to preserve and restore the enchanting and rare “hanging fen,” sedge meadow, and dry gravel hill prairie there. Each year alone, we coordinate volunteers in about 6,000 hours of physical work.

The preserve’s restoration includes a long record of successful controlled burns to benefit the natural plant communities. Every time the Conservation District performs a burn, they contact the fire department, have professional firefighting equipment on hand, and call the department again when the fire is out.

But occasionally, it’s not conservation professionals who start a fire — it’s lightning, trains, arsonists, or (the likeliest cause in this case) teenagers sneaking cigarettes or having a campfire.

I arrived to see the fire spreading north from the southwest corner of the preserve. Fire trucks and ambulances were lining Jefferson Street on the west. The fire had jumped a stream, then sped off across the northern hills. I wasn’t too worried about the fire itself — it was headed toward a wide gravel pit that separated the preserve from the local airport. But to my horror, I found that there were brush trucks — heavy pickup trucks with tanks and hoses — moving all over the preserve. Five or more other fire companies had been called in to help. I heard that as many as five trucks had become stuck.

When I was finally allowed onto the preserve, discovered that a local contractor had come to rescue the two hopelessly mired vehicles. The contractor managed to pull out one of the trucks with a backhoe. Then he had driven in with his skid steer, a “bobcat” with tracks instead of wheels. Like the drivers of the fire trucks, he had no knowledge of the preserve and headed straight out, amazingly making it as far as one of our most precious fens, where he sank in the quicksand up to the windows. Having gone for his backhoe (to “dig a trench and drag it out!”), he was two scoops through a prized sedge meadow when I arrived and stopped him. I knew he was just trying to help. Worse, he needed the stuck equipment to earn his living.

The next morning came the reckoning. I had John Nelson, the conflicts officer for the Illinois Nature Preserves Commission, meet me first thing. About 60 acres had burned, but this was not the problem. (On the contrary, the wildflowers and grasses in the burned area will prosper in coming years as a result of the burn.) For us, the saddest effects of the incident were the intrusion of the trucks and other equipment, which sank deep ruts across land full of rare and sensitive plants. The equipment compacted earth and altered water flows — particularly bad for a fen, which is utterly dependent on its unique hydrology. And then there was still the problem of a 9,600-pound skid steer stuck like a cyst in the middle of one of the preserve’s rare freshwater seeps, the source of the fen’s mineral-rich water.

Nelson, too, was horrified at all the damage that had been done, and he organized a meeting at the firehouse. About 15 people who had been involved sat around the table to review what had happened and plan the next moves.

Firefighters are taught from day one that fire is their deadly enemy and must be extinguished. Conservationists, on the other hand, approach fire as a friend — one to be deeply respected — and a restoration tool. From decades of experience, we’ve developed a specialized set of rules for dealing with fire in natural areas, especially near human habitation. One of the major differences is that we almost never try to put out the fire directly; instead, we contain a fire by identifying natural firebreaks, setting backfires, and letting the fire burn itself out. In this instance, if firefighters had perceived any threat to the airport, they could have set up in the wide gravel pit between the fire and the airport buildings to make sure nothing blew across.

There was a lot more to the discussion, but the result is that Algonquin-Lake in the Hills Fire Chief Guetschow has volunteered to send representatives to take a state-run wildfire training course, participate in a controlled burn, and receive an aerial map delineating the wetlands and boundaries of the preserve. We will mark the possible entry points and will take fire officials on a tour to see firsthand what they will be protecting.

As for the skid steer, the Conservation District did a remarkable job of getting the equipment removed. The only access to the skid steer was across prime seep, fen, and sedge meadow, so the district brought in 12-by-5-foot sections of heavy oak decking to better distribute the weight of the big backhoe needed to lift the skid steer. I could not watch, so I went to spread seed on the other side of the stream. Eventually, John Nelson told me that they had accomplished a clean extraction.

My wife and I went out next day to spread seed on the gravel hill above the fen where they had brought the backhoe down the slope. We were delighted to find that the decking had minimized damage except where the actual lift took place. The district is waiting until the end of the growing season to return with a smaller backhoe to smooth out the deep grooves in the wetlands and sedge meadow, with the hope that nature and the flow of seepage water will eventually do the rest. Four months after the incident, the fen and seep are rebounding better than expected. But we were lucky; it can take such a delicate plant community decades to rebound even superficially, if ever.

My hope is that other site stewards will use this article to start or continue a dialogue with their local fire departments. We spend so much time and energy in saving and restoring the land that it is devastating to see it so badly damaged. We have done so much to educate our public and gain their support, but a tragic slip like this one reminds us of the constant need to remain vigilant.

This story was adapted from an article that originally appeared in the McHenry County natural area volunteers’ newsletter “The Acorn.” To visit Lake in the Hills Fen, take Rte. 62 (Algonquin Rd.) to Pyott Rd. Go north 1.5 miles. The trailhead is off the parking lot of Barbara Key Park. To join a workday or tour, call (847) 658-0024.