The Black Hills National Forest has produced a two-minute video about the process of cleaning up the dead vegetation resulting from several South Dakota tornadoes in recent years.
The footage shows the Spearfish area of the Black Hills, which was especially badly hit by tornados in 2018, 2020, and 2021.
While no fatalities were reported, hundreds of trees were brought down throughout the sparsely populated region.
In response, the US Forest Service has started burning piles of forest debris in the Black Hills to try and clear it in time for the summer months.
“This is a priority project for us to tackle this area, just because it is a heavily toursited area in the summer. We’re trying to focus on making it better on our end, and cleaning up hazardous fuels,” says John Snyder, acting fuels AFMO for the Black Hills.
“We’re cleaning up what those tornados created in those two years,” he adds, before going on to explain that his crew is currently using the wind to its advantage to tackle the hand piles without impacting local residents – or the nearby highway.
As per The Rapid City Journal , workers started burning the debris several weeks ago with drivers on Interstate 90 reporting that they could see heavy smoke emerging from the Spearfish area.
Chris Zoller, fire management officer for the Black Hills northern zone, said the burn piles will be covered with snow which will help prepare the landscape for planting in the spring. Burns also are planned in the southern and central Black Hills.
All in all, there are about 20 piles (from Moskee Road to Sand Creek to Williams Gulch) that crews are planning to burn over the next few days.
The piles have generally been gathered together by hand, with the challenging landscape making machine collection especially tricky.
Moreover, this method of collection has also helped crews reduce the chances of igniting a wildfire, as without snow on the ground, the chances of flames escaping drastically increases with larger machine piles.
