Wildfires

Introduction

Wildfire is a natural process necessary to the functioning of many ecosystems—but it can be both destructive and deadly. Wildfire should rarely come as a surprise, but it often does. And it makes news. Like firefighters, reporters will do a better job if they are prepared for it.

Wildfire came as a surprise to the gorgeous urban hills above Oakland and Berkeley, California, on October 20, 1991. It started as a small fire in ground litter, but high winds pushed it onto dry and overgrown vegetation, up to tree tops, and on to the wood-shingle roofs of houses. Out of control within minutes, it turned into a firestorm, creating its own strong wind and a rain of embers to spread itself. It spread so fast that burning cars blocked roads, hindering people from escaping and firefighters from getting in. Before it was over, it killed 25 people, injured 150, destroyed 2,886 homes, and caused some $1.5 billion in damage. Almost 30 percent of the homeowners did not rebuild.

This year, fires in Washington, New Mexico, Colorado, and Florida have already been getting national headlines. The Cerro Grande fire that ravaged Los Alamos, NM, in early May started as a prescribed burn, and raised special concerns because it threatened an area where nuclear weapons research was being done. Eventually, it destroyed at least 235 homes and burned some 50,000 acres.

But the big headline fires obscure the fact that wildfire is a recurring natural and seasonal event in many parts of the country. As this article was being written in July 2000, some 59,664 wildfires had already burned 3,231,204 acres nationwide in the year 2000 alone.

Background and Context

The wildfire that ravaged Yellowstone National Park in 1988 shouldn't have come as a surprise. Between June and September more than 1.6 million acres of Yellowstone and nearby forests burned. Fighting the fires took 10,000 firefighters and moe than $120 million.

Since Yellowstone had been established in 1872, it had been the policy of federal agencies running it to try to suppress wildfires when they broke out. It seemed understandable to want to protect a national treasure. But scientists later learned that wildfire had for millennia played an important role in regenerating forest ecosystems and keeping them vital. In 1972, Yellowstone managers adopted a "let burn" policy in hopes of maintaining the ecosystem in a natural state. The problem was that a century of fire suppression had left an unnatural accumulation of fuel. When that fuel finally was ignited in the hot, dry summer of 1988, the fires were unusually large. Policy-makers and the public wrung their hands over whether to fight the fires or let them burn. Today, after the fires, the Yellowstone ecosystem is flourishing.

A policy debate has continued since the 1988 Yellowstone fire—fueled by a number of other newsworthy incidents, like the loss of 14 smokejumpers in the Storm King, Colorado, fire of July 1994. The timber industry tends to view wildfires as a waste of good timber, while others view suppression of remote fires that threaten neither lives or property as a potential waste of firefighters' lives. The equation becomes even more complex when fires threaten the limited remaining habitat of particular endangered species. Problems are especially likely when human urban development intrudes into fire-prone wildlands—as it did in the Oakland/Berkeley Hills.

Wildland managers today often see benefits in "prescribed burns," in situation where excess fuel has accumulated or fire-dependent species like lodgepole pine need to be re-established. By deliberately igniting fires under controlled conditions to reduce the fuel load, wildland managers can actually reduce the dangers fires present to people—but they may find little sympathy from the public at large, who dislike fire in any form.

Low-intensity prescribed burns, typical of natural fires, reduce the chance of catastrophic fires which kill the big trees when fire moves up into the canopy of large, old-growth trees.

In December 1995 the Clinton administration put forth its Federal Wildland Fire Policy—which states that "agencies and the public must change their expectation that all wildfires can be controlled or suppressed".

Issues

• When should wildland fires be suppressed, and when should they be allowed to burn? The December 1995 Federal Wildland Fire Policy attempted to address this issue, but it flares anew every fire season.
• How should "prescribed fires" be used as a management tool? Under what circumstances? With what precautions?
• Is prescribed fire an ecologically adequate substitute for natural fire? Do limitations on when and how prescribed burning is done alter or limit the ecological benefits?
• Is the large annual federal expenditure on fire suppression worthwhile? Should more federal money be spent instead on education, mitigation, prevention, and prescribed fires?
• Should the Forest Service and other wildland managers offer timber in "salvage sales" on burned land? Environmentalists say this can damage ecosystems or even encourage arson—while timber companies say salvage sales keep a valuable resource from going to waste.
• Is mechanical thinning of a forest a legitimate policy to reduce fire hazards or simply an excuse to log?