A bridge may seem like one of the places most immune to a wildfire. But take a ride on State Route 85 over the Gila River, and you’d be forgiven for putting a bit more pressure on the pedal.
“When these things burn, they burn so hot and thick that it carries fire in the smoke,” said Buckeye Mayor Jackie Meck, who stood amid the thicket of evergreen branches crowding the dry river bed.
There is a bridge above, and salt cedars peering just over the edges.
“You saw the freeway burning, that could easily happen here," Meck said in reference to a wildfire that jumped the freeway near San Bernardino, Calif.
Drivers fled from the vehicles as two semitrucks burned — and that’s rekindled anxiety in Buckeye about the tinder box beneath State Route 85.
Buckeye Fire Chief Bob Costello has fought fires fueled by these salt cedars in the river bottom before, and it was no easy task.
“If there was a big enough fire underneath [the bridge], it would actually cause the moisture trapped in the concrete to turn to steam, cause the concrete to fracture and allow the metal to heat up,” said Costello.
In short, the bridge would be rendered useless and possibly collapse. That would halt the more than 10,000 cars passing over this stretch of freeway every day — an economic and logistical nightmare. Just look at the collapsed bridge on I-10 in California.
Costello called salt cedar an intense and frightening fuel.
“It’s very difficult to get hand crews in there because they’re so dense, [and] it’s also difficult to get heavy equipment in there to make heavy fire lines," Costello said.
So what’s the hold up? Why hasn’t anyone removed these fire hazards?
Mayor Meck said countless agencies and owners are tied to this river and would need to sign off before they start removing the trees. These include Arizona Game and Fish Department, the Arizona State Land Department and the Bureau of Land Management, among others.
"They’re all in here plus individual owners," Meck said. "So it’s trying to connect all those dots. But until you have a permit what do you do? What do you say?"
That permit would be issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Even applying for that requires studies and lots of legwork and there are no obvious sources of federal funding for the project. But there’s another reason these salt cedars pose such a problem.
Farther down the riverbed, Rolland Wass, a consultant for Buckeye, pushes his way through a dense stand of the invasive species.
“It was burnt about eight to 10 years ago, and you can see how the salt cedars come back pretty robustly," said Wass. "Because it is a fire-adapted species.”
After a fire, if you don’t remove the roots or spray herbicide immediately, Wass said the cedar will come back, bigger and stronger. At last check, they made up more than 55 percent of all the vegetation between the Agua Fria confluence and the bridge on SR 85. Furthermore, they’re drinking up all the water, pushing out native trees.
"Each one of these branches can go down to 30 feet or greater and get water; whereas native species, cottonwood and willow, need to be close to water and within 3 to 10 feet," said Wass.
He estimates removing 1,000 acres of salt cedars would free up about 40,000 to 50,000 acre feet of water, which is a lot. But the havoc these trees are causing goes beyond fire danger and water guzzling.
“What happens during a large flow [flood] is it takes the energy out of the water. Everything the water is carrying, sediments, soil falls out and you actually see the bottom of the channels getting higher and higher over times,” said Wass.
Essentailly, that has grown the flood plain. More people around here are now buying flood insurance because of that.
All this due to a nefarious but rather unremarkable looking tree.
“It’s burned before and it will burn again,” said Wass.
The question is, how big will that fire be?
