Last summer s wildfires were bad. This summer s debris flows could be worse. It looked like a crazy painter went through. He's talking about a Malibu-area bungalow that survived a close call with a 1993 brush fire, only to end up awash in rocks and mud when the winter rains arrived months later.
Common sense dictates that the worst part of a forest fire is, well, the fire.
With acres of steep mountainous terrain across Colorado, New Mexico, Idaho, and Montana no longer held together by the roots of plants and trees, University of New Mexico geologist Grant Meyer says it could take only a few severe storms to deliver a century's worth of erosion. A year after the 1988 Yellowstone fires, a storm triggered debris flows in Gibbon Canyon, burying a camper trailer seconds after a family of three escaped. This summer, scientists worry that heavy rains across the scorched Rockies could set off hundreds of small flows, and a few big slides. But, as Dietrich points out, it s all part of the normal geologic ebb and flow. That's why we have hill slopes.