BOISE,Idaho (AP) -- If advancing flames, shifting winds, backbreaking work andsearing heat weren't enough, firefighters are now routinely warned ofanother kind of hazard: swarms of biting and stinging insects drawn towildfires.
''On a fire line, there is always something trying tobite you, poke you, stick you and sting you,'' said Eric Walker,assistant operations manager at the National Interagency Fire Center inBoise and a smokejumper on more than 100 wildfires.
The dangersof fire line insects range from the creepy nuisance of hundreds ofpinching bark beetles crawling down shirt collars and pant legs to aface full of stinging bald-faced hornets that can cause alife-threatening allergic reaction known as anaphylactic shock.
Inrecent years, training for federal, tribal, state and privatefirefighters at the center administered by the Bureau of LandManagement have included sessions on insect hazards.
''Just asinsects are attracted to weakened trees in a drought, they can alsosense through heat and smoke when trees are in trouble during a fire,''said Dwight Scarbrough, a U.S. Forest Service entomologist.''Environmentally, they know there's going to be a feast.''
And firefighters are often caught in the chow-line crossfire.
Theaim is to encourage firefighters to be aware of the potential hazardsof fire bugs, the loose term for the nearly 40 species of insects thatare attracted to flames or smoke.
''As highly trained as peopleare in emergency situations, ... the training is usually getting themto focus on the problem at hand, such as putting out the fire,'' saidScarbrough. ''There's a whole other world going on around them that maynot even be within their peripheral senses, so we're just trying openthat focus up.''
Insects on a ''watch-out list'' distributed totrainees at the national fire center include varieties of wood-boringbeetles that infest drought-ravaged pine and fir forests. Most barkbeetles, such as long-horned beetles and fire beetles, present merely adistraction or nuisance to crews, while the metallic variety _ calledbluebacks or Ninja beetles by firefighters _ have been known to pinchand may be attracted to human perspiration or pheromones.
Ground-dwellingyellow jackets and paper wasps are sometimes attracted by smoke fromfires and can attack en masse without warning, forest entomologistssay. The larvae of Douglas fir tussock moths _ a species thatdefoliates stands of trees in the West, leaving them ripe for fire _have tiny hairs on their bodies that cause a severe skin rash in somepeople.
Like the bark beetles, various kinds of parasitic waspsand stinging hornets follow smoke and fire pathways to seek out newhosts.
''I've been in fires where you can see the insects comingin and laying their eggs in trees that are still smoldering,'' said KenGibson, a Forest Service entomologist in Missoula, Mont. ''They areattracted to a burned tree before it dries out too much because therecently killed wood is where their young feed.''
While warningfirefighters of hazards the bugs present, instructors also stress theinfluence insects have on the growth and structure of forest stands andthe intensity and frequency of fires in those stands.
It's arelationship of mutual destruction: fires kill trees, creatingfavorable conditions for insects, and insects kill trees, creatingfavorable conditions for fire.
''A lot of the reason we haveoutbreaks of disease and insects is because we have hom*ogenouslandscapes that are in the same conditions across many, many acres,''said Sam Lindblom, national fire training coordinator for The NatureConservancy, which conducts prescribed burns of some 100,000 acres ofprivately owned forest land each summer. ''We are trying to make ourforests more resistant to disease and insects through the applicationof fire as a management tool.''
For the crews who work to controlthe flames, insects now are another topic covered during the safetybriefings usually held over the open tailgate of a pickup truck at firecamps across the West.
''Any time you give your briefing,depending on where you are, you're probably going to go over the insectsituation,'' said Walker. ''They are a daily reality. You sleep withthem, you eat with them, you work with them. You just have to deal withthem.''
