Fire Policy

The world, as I knew it for decades, is coming to an end. While not quite as serious as the second coming threatens to be, the world of wildland firefighting is undergoing some earthshaking changes. Many of these changes are probably justifiable, but I’m not sure if I like all this or not.

When I started firefighting oh so many years ago, at the first sign of smoke every able bodied man in our rural neighborhood grabbed a shovel or axe, and ran off to help Smokey Bear defend the forest, thereby saving their jobs, and probably their homes, and the town as well. At the same time, the Ladies started making a small mountain of sandwich’s and what seemed like a million gallons of coffee to sustain the firefighters. Hand lines and ‘dozer lines were the rule, the old timers could fall a tree in amazingly short time with an axe (us younger guys much preferred a chainsaw), and we probably did more damage to the ecosystem with our efforts than the fire did! Those were the days when it was almost a “badge of honor” to bring your engine back to the station house with half the paint burnt off, as that showed you were “tough” and could take it.

As time went on, things changed considerably, and certainly for the better. What had been an extremely hazardous occupation became much more professional, and through extensive training was reduced to being only “very” hazardous. Dozens of firefighters were still killed each year, equipment was lost, huge amounts of money was spent, and hundreds of thousands of acres of forests burned every year. However, “the times they are ‘a changing” I’m afraid.

For decades most of the justification for aggressively extinguishing forest fires was based on the idea that if we saved the forest from burning, the trees were then available for logging, and there was nearly always a high demand for lumber. In this modern day however, lumber is no longer a local or even national market, but has become a globalized big business. If you buy a board today, it could have come from nearly anywhere, the United States, Canada, Europe, Siberia perhaps… Here in the states, the days of Paul Bunyon are long gone, and I’m afraid they’re not coming back, thanks to the efforts of the radical environmentalists and the federal courts. So, we’ve now lost our primary justification for extensive fire fighting. Then too, as we’ve been told countless times over the last few years, the firefighting efforts during the twentieth century have allowed a tremendous fuel load to build up in the woods, a point I’ll quickly concede. With those fuel loads we get some very large and quite intense fires during the summer months, long duration fires that require a lot of effort and expense to contain, and even more expense to rehabilitate afterwards. The 1940’s saw the begining of the use of prescribed fires to control that excessive fuels accumulation, a practice that soon spread across the nation. But still, firefighting was an expensive proposition, and the costs grow every year. I understand that the Nez Perce National Forest has been spending nearly half their annual budget over the last few years just in fire related operations. Looking at the individual cost of these fires, that’s a lot of money out of the taxpayer’s pockets!

To make a long story short, something’s obviously got to give, and in this case it was traditional firefighting.

After much soul searching and brain storming I’m sure, the Forest Service has again changed their approach to wildland fires. Certainly a lot of fires will continue to be aggressively attacked, but not as many as we’ve seen in previous years. A lot more of the marginal fires will be used as WFU (wildland fire use) burns, and I suspect the majority of fires will be handled in a manner similar to what we’ve seen on the Rattlesnake, Concord, Raines, and Loon-Zena fires this year, they’ll be “managed” to achieve land use objectives. Rather than surrounding a fire with control lines and then extinguishing it, I expect we’ll see a lot fewer fire crews and engines during the summer, the judicious use of only a few fire lines, and a lot of helicopter bucket drops to cool hot spots and slow a fire’s advance. As we saw on the Rattlesnake fire, “high value” exposures will be protected as happened in Dixie, but the majority of the fire will be allowed to burn. The forest service insists this isn’t really anything new, but rather is a further development of their existing policies. The new decision criteria includes considering things like the property value at risk, potential hazards to firefighter lives, and the expected costs of extinguishment. It’s not a “Let it Burn” policy according to the forest service, but I suspect we’ll be hard pressed to tell the difference in many cases. I certainly can’t say I’m very happy with this change, but I can understand the reasoning behind it, and I can see where the Forest Service managers feel they have no other option.

Still, I drove to Boise Monday, by way of Highway 55. As I left town early in the morning, I noticed that there was a lot of smoke in the sky. Guess what… that smoke plume continued all the way to Boise, making driving, and breathing, rather difficult. I also noticed that the Boise VA hospital had a lot of elderly veterans sitting around suffering from respiratory problems… brought on by that smoke I understand. Is this what we’re going to see every summer, for weeks on end? Considering the impact local citizens wishes have on the doings of the US government, we’re going to have to learn to live with it I guess.

The big impact will be on private land owners. Protecting private property adjacent to forest lands is expensive, particularly so if the land owner hasn’t made any previous effort to prepare for a fire. Far to many property owners have ignored the possibility of fires right up to the time it crossed their boundaries, and then they expect the firefighters to save everything for them. With this new policy the land owner will have to assume a large part of the responsibility by removing those excessive fuels, assuring that his buildings are at least somewhat fire resistant, and probably installing a minimal fire fighting capability as well. From a fire tactics viewpoint I see no reason why this policy wouldn’t work, but it’s going to be mighty hard to tell dedicated firefighters to “back off” when a fire starts moving on someone’s home. From a purely economic viewpoint however, I guess it makes good sense.

People are going to have to get real serious about the objectives behind the “Fire Wise” and “Fire Safe” programs on their private property. Yes, brush and dead trees can be cleared from the property. Yes, excessive trees can be thinned out. Yes, tall grass can be mowed. And yes, buildings can be made more fire resistant as well. In some cases this can get pretty expensive for the individual, as well as requiring a summer long ongoing effort to maintain that fire safe condition.

Still, I don’t think I’d want to bet the farm that we won’t have a fire in any particular year either.