A new Dismal Swamp arises after last year's wildfire

SUFFOLK

Through the bus window, out in the tangle of waist-high vegetation, the roots of the tipped-over trees sprawl from bald trunks like black spiders.

A wildfire that raged and simmered through three seasons here swallowed most of what it touched, turning thick patches of woods in the Great Dismal Swamp National Wildlife Refuge into wastelands.

Biologist Pennymarie Lazauskas remembers the awful feeling she got when she first saw it.

"It was really, really horrible," she says.

Months later, Lazauskas stands at the front of a tour bus full of onlookers in shorts and T-shirts and tells them how the smoke and flames took a native honey bee nest and displaced an untold amount of wildlife, including a bald eagle that hasn't been seen since. Some gasp quietly.

It burned deep into the nutrient-rich peat from which the trees grew, charring roots and upending them. But, Lazauskas says, looking out at the growth that has sprung up since spring, the fire that destroyed so much has opened up a new ecosystem.

"It was desolate," she says. "Not anymore."

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The fire started June 9, 2008, as the temperature neared 100 degrees in the midst of a drought. If not for the drought, the blaze might not have been so bad. If it had started at the old logging road flanked by ditches just dozens of yards away, it might have ended there. Instead, shifting winds sent it scattering.

The fire, sparked by a piece of logging equipment and doused at last by a storm last fall, scorched nearly 5,000 acres in all and spewed smoke that drifted over Hampton Roads and as far away as Richmond.

The costliest and longest-burning wildfire on record for the state started with a job meant, in part, to prevent such an event.

The aftermath is a highlight of a bus tour offered by the city on Saturday mornings, a talking point alongside the 900-year-old tree set off one of the gravel roads and the miles of ditches dug by slaves.

The seats fill up fast, sometimes weeks in advance. The tour starts downtown and winds its way toward the refuge and the North Carolina border. Forests rise up high in the beginning, but this gives way to scraggly, wide open spaces.

That June day, workers for Carson Helicopters worked to complete a job at the heart of the refuge clearing away Atlantic white cedars felled during Hurricane Isabel. The project's purpose was two-fold, said refuge manager Chris Lowie: Give the rare, sun-loving trees a chance to regenerate and reduce the likelihood of a catastrophic fire created by all that deadwood.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has asked the court for nearly $12 million from the contractor to cover the cost of fighting the fire, Lowie said, but the case isn't settled yet.

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Lazauskas points out the blackened bottom of some standing trees. Prescribed by the refuge, she says. It cuts down on the fuel load.

"Lightning fires are good for the environment," she says. Fire helps certain species thrive by removing overgrowth and allowing in more rain and sunlight. Sometimes they are out before they are ever discovered.

These burned-out places are ideal for egret, heron and killdeer, Lazauskas says.

But last year's wildfire, with its vastness and intensity, took more than it gave. Flames gobbled up what grew above ground. Then it moved below, into feet of organic material created by thousands of years of decomposition.

"It smolders," said Bryan Poovey, the refuge's forester. "It just burns deeper and deeper, and the only way to put it out is to just flood the area."

Firefighters did it by pumping water from ditches and Lake Drummond - and by hoping for a drenching storm.

The vegetation burned. Seeds and seedlings burned. Peat disappeared.

"That has altered the elevation, which also alters hydrology. That's going to change the species that site is suitable for," said Poovey, who has been at the refuge for almost two decades. "Everything in here depends on hydrology. Every time you change that, you change everything."

A spindly bald tree juts up from the earth near South Ditch, marking the spot where the fire began. The tour bus does not come back here, but Poovey does, stepping carefully over charred trunks and a pock -marked landscape he likens to the moon.

Like the rest of the burned forest, the vegetation grows thick now. Yellow blossoms and purple petals stand against shades of green. Tiny Atlantic white cedar seedlings pop from the dirt, a sign of survival that surprises even this veteran forester.

Kristin Davis, (757) 222-5555, kristin.davis@pilotonline.com