Flash flooding in a Northern California burn scar triggered a massive debris flow that is now suspected of killing scores of Klamath River fish.
A massive debris flow triggered by flash floods that followed a wildfire in Northern California is believed to have killed scores of fish along a 50-mile stretch of the Klamath River last week., pushing charred soil, rocks and trees into the river near Humbug Creek, said Craig Tucker, natural resources policy consultant for the Karuk Tribe. At least four deaths have been linked to the 60,000-acre fire, which is the largest to burn in California so far this year.
“From about Humbug Creek all the way to Indian Creek, which is in Happy Camp, it was a kill zone those two days,” Tucker said. “It looks like probably everything in the river died.” “As bad as this is, we do feel like we dodged a bullet, because if this had happened at the end of August, it could devastate the adult fish migration,” he said.
Research has suggested that land that burns at a high severity, in which most or all of the vegetation is killed, is even more susceptible to debris flows. That appears to be the case with the area where this flow took place — the fire was stoked by a buildup of flammable vegetation and burned intensely, Tucker said.Indigenous people regularly applied fire to the landscape until the practice was criminalized, he said.
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