France sends two planes to help Bulgaria put out wildfire

6 September 2008

published by www.focus-fen.net

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Bulgaria — In a reply to the request Bulgaria’s Ministry of Emergency Situations has made to the EU and NATO, France is sending two airplanes to help the country put out the wildfire raging in Rila national park, the ministry’s press center announced.

The planes take off for Bulgaria on Sunday. They will land on Plovdiv airport and then will head to the Rila mountains.

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Wildfire smoke may have tainted wine grapes

19 September 2008

published by www.pressdemocrat.com

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USA — Three months after smoke from wildfires carpeted California’s vineyards, some winemakers in the thick of harvest are reporting grapes giving off unusual odors that may be signs of smoke taint.

Smoke from wildfires makes the sun look red as it sets over a vineyard off Geysers Road in June.

While it’s too early to generalize about the scope of the potential problem, some troubling reports are filtering in from Mendocino County, which earlier this summer endured some of the fiercest wildfires and worst air quality in memory.

“Winemakers are saying that they think stuff is smelling funny to them, and they want to know what’s going on,” said Glenn McGourty, viticulture adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension in Mendocino.

While worrisome for winemakers, consumers may not need to worry about tasting smoke instead of oak in their favorite chardonnay because winemakers have sophisticated filtration tools to remove offending flavors.

To help winemakers understand their options, McGourty hosted a workshop last week in Ukiah to share some Australian research on the subject.

About 20 people, mostly winemakers, attended, he said. Not all were reporting problems. Many were there to educate themselves as a precautionary measure given the scope of the fires, which broke out on the North Coast after a June 21 lightning storm.

Some took more than a month to extinguish.

“There were 120 fires in Mendocino County, and there were fires on all sides of our wine grape areas,” McGourty said.

Laboratories, such as Vinquiry in Windsor, are seeing a stream of grapes and juice samples coming in for tests that can identify smoke taint.

“We’re definitely getting a few samples here and there that are tainted by smoke taint,” said Michelle Bowen, director of laboratory operations at Vinquiry.

The aroma “is kind of smoked salmony and fishy, and people are picking it up in the juice right now.”

Bob Kreisher, president of Santa Rosa-based wine filtration company Memstar North America, said many winemakers he speaks with report test results confirming smoke taint.

“It’s really hard to say how widespread it is at this point,” said Kreisher, whose company removes the compounds that produce smoke-tainted wine. “I would say it’s widespread and common but not ubiquitous.”

Not everyone agrees with that assessment.

Sonoma County, where skies turned hazy, did not have a major blaze itself this summer and appears to have been spared.

Nick Frey, president of the Sonoma County WineGrape Commission, said he’s heard no concerns here.

“Certainly, a lot of grapes have been tasted by now, and lots of fermented product has probably been tasted as well, and there’s not been a peep from anyone that I’ve heard of in this county,” Frey said.

His counterpart in Lake County, Shannon Gunier, had a similar reaction.

“We’re not really seeing the same problem Mendocino is,” Gunier said. She pointed out that many of the county’s fires were on the eastern edge of the county, east of most of the grape-growing areas.

Gordon Burns, president of ETS laboratories in St. Helena, said he receives about 1,500 samples a day from wineries this time of year, and only a small fraction this year are requesting smoke taint tests.

No one in the industry can yet say just how big a problem exists, Burns said.

One reason for the uncertainty is that some research suggests taint can’t necessarily be detected from tasting grapes or unfermented juice. Studies have shown the compounds that cause smoke taint—guaiacol and 4-ethylguaiacol — bind to sugar and aren’t fully released until fermentation, Burns said.

McGourty doubts Mendocino County is unique in being affected by the phenomenon. The problems are turning up “all over the North Coast,” but McGourty thinks “nobody wants to own up.”

Some winemakers are concerned but also have reason to be cautiously optimistic.

Sarah Bennett, research enologist and co-owner of Navarro Vineyards, said she and winemaker Jim Klein have been keeping a close eye on the grapes as they move through the earlier stages of harvest.

Fires were all around their 90 acres of Anderson Valley vineyards in the early summer, as the grapes were growing rapidly.

One blaze came within about 1½ miles of a vineyard.

Firefighting helicopters took a million gallons of water from the winery’s Boonville irrigation pond, she said.

While there were some days when it was too smoky for workers to spend much time outside, the Anderson Valley’s proximity to the coast helped, she said.

“We definitely had some days where it cleared out,” she said. As a precaution, they are regularly sampling grapes in the vineyard to see if they can detect funky flavors. So far, everything seems fine. So they wait and hope and educate themselves as best they can.

Some of their preliminary research suggests the gentle way they make their wines — mostly pinot noir, gewurztraminer, riesling and chardonnay — may minimize any problems that could arise.

Some harvesting methods the winery uses may reduce the amount of taint that makes it into the wines, Bennett said.

Research suggests that when the grapes get warm or when they get mushed during harvest, as with mechanical harvesters, the skins can get broken.

Because offending smoky compounds concentrate in the skins, this can exacerbate the problem, she said.

But Navarro picks its grapes by hand at night, which may reduce problems.

Research also shows that gently pressing grapes may reduce the amount of compounds squeezed out of the skins, she said. But Navarro already uses settings more gentle than suggested maximum levels, she said.

Another way to manage problem grapes may be to segregate them from the rest of the crop, but that won’t be terribly difficult either, because the winery already tends to pick grapes in small batches and keeps them in different tanks, she said.

Whatever the scale of the problem, McGourty is confident winemakers will be able to muddle through.

“The good news is that there seems to be the technology to fix things if something is wrong,” McGourty said, referring to filtration companies that specialize in removing the compounds. “Winemakers are wizards at taking problems and turning them into drinkable products.”

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Three killed in KZN gale force winds and fires

31 August 2008

published by www.sabcnews.com

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South Africa — At least three people have been killed and many people left homeless in gale force winds and fires which swept through parts of KwaZulu-Natal.

One of the victims was the six-year-old daughter of Chief Bhekumusi Zuma – a nephew of ANC President Jacob Zuma. The child was killed after being hit by a sheet of corrugated iron which was ripped off during a windstorm at the chief’s homestead at Inkandla. Two more people were killed in the area and 40 homesteads destroyed by fires. Elsewhere in the province runaway veld fires have caused havoc and left many people destitute.

A number of homesteads were razed in Umlalazi near Eshowe in the northern part of the province. Fires were also reported in Bergville in the northern Drakensberg area, where fire fighters were still fighting the blaze late this afternoon. Local municipalities have handed out relief aid such as blankets and food, for those left without shelter.

Fires in Mpumalanga
Meanwhile, severe fires aided by a strong wind are currently raging in Mpumalanga. Plantations and veld in the Graskop, Kaapsehoop, Piet Retief and Bushbuckridge areas were some of the places affected. Six people had to be taken to hospital in Ermelo after they were caught in a fire. Buildings at the Lowveld Showgrounds in Nelspruit were also gutted by fire.
The first fire was reported just before 7am today.

Hours later, huge clouds of smoke were still hanging over Mpumalanga. The strong winds made it impossible for fire fighting planes to take off. Only two bomber helicopters had been deployed at the Berlin Plantation outside Kaapsehoop. Buildings and a vehicle were burnt to ashes when a spark from a veld fire ignited a building with a thatched roof.

“Working on Fire” has deployed fire fighters to all the affected areas. Strong winds are predicted for the Eastern Higveld tomorrow, but it is expected that the weather will clear up later this week.

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Wildlife refuge begins recovery

3 September 2008

published by www.newsobserver.com

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USA — POCOSIN LAKES NATIONAL WILDLIFE REFUGE – Burned pond pine trees stand as if on stilts in this blackened scrub after a summer wildfire burned away the peat soil beneath their roots. All but dead, the pines have sprouted bright green clumps of needles directly from their charred trunks in a reflexive bid to survive.

Ferns have started reclaiming the blackened ground where firefighters battled the wildfire in June and July as it scorched 64 square miles of Eastern North Carolina. Black bears and deer are moving back onto the land.

The Pocosin Lakes refuge is starting to recover three months after a lightning strike ignited the wildfire.

Fueled by dense underbrush and dry conditions, the fire spread quickly and grew into one of the nation’s largest blazes for a time in June. It burned about 25,000 acres of the 110,106-acre Pocosin Lakes National Wildlife Refuge and cost more than $18 million.

Even now, fire smolders underground in the carbon-rich peat soil in remote parts of the refuge. Foresters with the N.C. Forest Service fly over the refuge every few days in a helicopter scanning the blackened ground through an infrared camera looking for hot spots.

“Depending on the camera, it looks like heat shimmering on a road,” said Ed Christopher, district forester for the region.

Refuge officials remain concerned that a prolonged dry period could allow the underground fire to revive.

“The big concern is when we get into a dry period that it stokes back up,” said Howard Phillips, the refuge manager with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service. “In fall, it often gets dry.”

Phillips said that they hoped the recent rain had put out the ground fire but that they won’t know until the ground dries out again.

Fire is nothing new here. It has been a part of the natural cycle long before the refuge was created in 1990 to give sanctuary to migratory waterfowl and to protect the unique wetlands called pocosin — an Indian word for swamp on a hill. Tens of thousands of tundra swan and snow geese flock here each winter. Black bears, foxes and endangered red wolves roam the bog land year-round.

Most of the large animals escaped the fire.

“There is no doubt that some animals died,” Phillips said. But there were thousands of acres that didn’t burn where animals could seek refuge, and wildlife staff had seen little evidence of dead animals, Phillips said.

Evolving to survive

The natural ecosystem has evolved to survive regular, low intensity fires that burn vegetation yet leave root systems intact. For example, pond pine release more seeds when the cones are heated.

Much of the swampy land blackened by the Evans Road fire is crosshatched with ditches and canals that were installed in earlier decades to lower the water level and make the ground suitable for farming. It allowed the deep peat soil to dry out and made the refuge more vulnerable to catastrophic wildfires.

“This is a fire-adapted ecosystem,” Phillips said. “It’s the artificial ditching and draining that creates conditions where the fire can burn way down in the peat.”

But the canals also helped in fighting the fire. Crews pumped about 2.2 billion gallons of water through them to saturate the ground and try to contain the fire.

Refuge managers have allowed the water to remain on the land for about a month to allow it to penetrate the peat soil. Recently, they’ve installed pipes to lower water levels in some parts of the refuge and have drawn a plan to remove the temporary earthen dams in the canals if they need to lower water quickly if a tropical storm approaches.

Trees didn’t make it

David Kitts, assistant refuge manager, recalls earlier fires on refuge lands and said he was amazed the first time he saw burned pond pine trees put out needles from their trunks.

“I thought the trees are going to make it, but they didn’t,” Kitts said. “If you look at the trees next year, you won’t see any of them living where the roots were burned.”

As part of the recovery plan, Phillips said the wildlife service is considering replanting a portion of the refuge with Atlantic white cedar, a native species that once grew here but was harvested for roofing shingles and other commercial uses.

“We’ve seen diminishing stands of Atlantic white cedar,” Phillips said. “We’re trying to get back some remnant of it as best we can.”

Doug Rader, chief ocean scientist for Environmental Defense Fund, said the loss of trees would mean more runoff into the canals that could harm coastal waters that provide nursery areas for crab, fish and shrimp.

“If you look at a forest of pine trees, they are like soda straws sucking water out of the ground and releasing it into the air,” Rader said. “There are going to be bigger pulses of water coming off these burned zones.”

Rader said the fish and wildlife service needed to continue working to reverse the effects of ditching and restore water levels that generally prevented big fires.

Impact on hunters

The refuge manager hasn’t decided whether to open the refuge to hunting this fall. Mike Noles, who operates Conman’s hunting guide service and cottages beside the refuge, said the fire would improve hunting by clearing out underbrush. At the same time, Noles said, the fire burned down into the peat in areas creating huge potholes and unstable footing for hunters.

“You could be walking along and hit one of those spots and just go out of sight,” he said. “You could lose a tractor in it.”

Noles said the fire’s benefit to hunting should last for years. The removal of the underbrush allows new plant growth that provides food for deer and small game and makes it easier for hunters to access once impenetrable thickets.

“Wildlife is already moving back in there,” Noles said. “A lot of the area is already greening back up. Starting next year for the next three or four years, it will be a mecca.”

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