YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK, Wyo. — If there is a place where heaven and hell meet, it's here.

Twenty years ago this summer, a series of wildfires burned 36 percent of America's first national park, scorching huge swaths of pristine forest and killing scores of wild animals. Today, there is new life at Yellowstone National Park, as trees have taken root among the burnt logs that still litter the earth.

The 1988 wildfires were not the ecological disaster many feared at the time. They did, however, force federal officials to tighten a policy allowing some fires to burn and develop new strategies to battle the "mega-fires" of today.

"The philosophy was, in these large natural areas, fire should be allowed to play its role," said Dick Bahr, a fire science and ecology specialist for the National Park Service. "What happened in '88 in Yellowstone was probably a passing of the threshold with what the political and social world was comfortable with. It was perceived that we were burning up their national park and there would be nothing left of it."

For nearly a century, Yellowstone managers were quick to douse wildfires. That changed in 1972, when ecologists, citing years of research, persuaded the park to adopt a policy allowing lightning-sparked fires to burn as long as they didn't threaten lives or park facilities. They maintained fire was a natural event that promoted healthy forests.

In 1988, the fire dangers were not immediately clear. Park officials did not know it would be Yellowstone's driest summer in recorded history, or that the lightning-sparked fires of May would burn into June. More storms in July would bring little rain and more lightning.

"Every single day you couldn't believe that you'd wake up and there was more fire, new fires started," said Joan Anzelmo, the park's spokeswoman in 1988 and now superintendent of Colorado National Monument.

As the blazes spread, officials decided on July 15 to begin suppressing all new fires in the park, and on July 21 it was decided that all fires would be fought.

"Nobody had the sense that these fires would get huge," said Bahr, who was the park's helicopter manager in 1988. "When it started getting big, it became obvious that we had to take action, so the focus became on what can we do to slow them down and stop them."

The escalating fire scene catapulted Yellowstone to the forefront of the nation's attention in late July. That's when one of the season's most destructive fires forced the evacuation of about 4,000 people from Grant Village, a collection of lodges, restaurants and a visitor center.

Hundreds of reporters descended on the park. Over the next six weeks, the fires made national headlines as they continued into August and early September. More than 25,000 firefighters battled the fires, costing some $120 million.

Overall, the fires burned 1.2 million acres in and around the park and destroyed 67 structures in Yellowstone, causing more than $3 million in property damage. Two firefighters were killed while working outside the park's boundary.

On Aug. 20, known as Black Saturday, winds up to 80 mph fanned flames and the fires doubled in size to 480,000 acres. On Sept. 7, the park evacuated the historic Old Faithful Inn, which was spared due largely to sprinklers installed on the roof the previous year.

Four days later, the first rain came. By Oct. 17, the fires were contained.

Facing criticism over the so-called "let it burn" policy, federal officials put a temporary freeze on allowing fires to burn in national parks. Three congressional hearings were held to review fire management practices for Yellowstone and other public lands.

Park officials say there was never a "let it burn" policy and that they carefully considered each time they chose to allow a lightning-sparked fire to burn.

"Because people didn't understand it — we didn't do a good enough job explaining it back then — it became known as the 'let it burn' policy," Anzelmo said.

In 1989, the National Park Service, along with several other federal agencies including the U.S. Forest Service, implemented new rules requiring long-term fire planning on public lands, according to Tom Zimmerman with the Forest Service.

"There was a view that we got into some long-duration events in 1988, and we weren't really prepared to plan ahead or look at the outcomes 30, 60 or 90 days down the road," Zimmerman said.

Tom Nichols, the National Park Service's acting chief of fire and aviation, said the resulting policy called for public land managers to conduct detailed analyses to determine which lightning-sparked fires should be allowed to burn.

These fire plans account for factors such as short- and long-term weather forecasts, fire behavior models and the regional and national strain on firefighting resources. The plans also set limits on where and how big natural fires will be allowed to burn. Yellowstone adopted its stricter fire plan in 1992.

"We learned a lot in 1988 about how much fire a park could take before they ran out of resources," Nichols said.

The 1988 fire season foreshadowed challenges that firefighters have faced over the last decade in dealing with increasingly bigger and widespread wildfires, while at the same time recognizing the good that fires can do for forest health.




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