WESTERN WILDFIRE ROUNDUP
Fires Ignite Debate on Urban Interface Development
By Headwaters News, 6-26-07
The wildfire burning near South Lake Tahoe has destroyed more than 100 homes, and according to a Los Angeles Times article on Monday, most of those homes burned within the first few hours of the wildfire’s start.
Those homes were tucked away in the tinder-dry forests, and are indicative of what’s gone awry with development in the Rocky Mountain West, according to a Christian Science Monitor article.
The New York Times reports today that the federal government put states and local governments on notice this spring that more needs to be done to control development in the areas where public lands and private homes abut and that more firefighting costs must be borne by the states.
Public lands are the Rocky Mountain West’s equivalent of California’s ocean shores--a wonderful amenity to have outside your front--or back--door. But just as crashing tides and wicked weather pose a risk to shore homes, those public lands, too, can be both a wonderful asset and a potential danger during wildfire season.
The U.S. Forest Service now spends about 43 percent of its budget fighting wildfires, and while the public agency is prone to the same market trends of labor and material costs, most Forest Service officials say that the increase of development along the fringes of forest lands are primarily responsible for the agency’s increasing costs.
But as Susan Gallagher of the Associated Press reports, while a 2005 study found that 8.4 million homes were built in the wildland-urban interface during the 19902, few state legislatures and county governments have done little to address the issue of wildland-urban development. An official with the National Conference of State Legislatures told Gallagher that his group had seen very little in the way of innovative solutions to address the increasing problems of building homes in the woods. States where the practice is most prevalent seem to still be focusing on the effects of wildfires, instead of taking proactive steps to limit damage, such as limiting development in fire-prone areas.
The public sector may get some help from the private sector as many insurance companies are now taking a second look at insuring homes in the woods. One insurance broker in Montana told the New York Times that it used to be brokers just wrote the policy and took the money, but now they go look at the property and if the homeowner can’t complete a “wildfire checklist” to the company’s satisfaction, they won’t write the policy.
Meanwhile, wildfire season is off and running in the West.
In Montana, rainfall helped slow the 1,000-acre fire burning near Utica in the Lewis & Clark National Forest.
In Colorado, a 50-acre wildfire was contained before it could consume a YMCA camp, and the hundreds of campers were able to be safely evacuated.
In Wyoming, wildfire officials said lightning had sparked fires around the state, the largest of which was an 1,000-acre fire in western Wyoming.
In Utah, firefighters were not only dealing with rough and steep terrain in the Lake Mountains, but also errant shots from target shooters and toxic fumes from household appliances and other trash that had been dumped by scofflaws in the canyons.
In Idaho, the news was good in that crews had contained the wildfires burning there.
Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.
Comments
The opening paragraphs are below:
The raging fire that is denuding hillsides and darkening the clear blue waters of Lake Tahoe is the final product of 150 years of mismanagement of the Sierra Nevada ecosystem, fire management experts said Monday.
From Gold Rush clear-cutters to modern home-builders, people have brought changes to the Tahoe basin that have fueled the intensity of the 2,500-acre Angora fire near the town of South Lake Tahoe.
"Federal officials began to shift fire-management policies in the mid-1990s and in recent years have sought to clear away dense underbrush and thin trees in the forests around Tahoe and in the rest of the Sierra. U.S. Forest Service officials said those efforts probably saved at least 500 homes that otherwise could have been engulfed by the Angora fire.
"But many forests are still vulnerable to catastrophic burns. This past winter had a notable shortage of snowfall, and Sunday brought ferocious winds that whipped the flames from treetop to treetop even in woodlands where some thinning had been done."
* * *
"Just letting nature handle the recovery isn't an option after 150 years of human activity and mismanagement.
"We need to more aggressively manage our forests," Miller said. "In the days of the Indians you had a lot of periodic small fires that kept the forests clean, so fires wouldn't get huge and out of control. We can't rely on that anymore."
Fire works like that. If you have really messy neighbors, and you are a clean freak, with no flammable junk and trash, the fire will burn your neighbors shake roof and the house under it, and skip you as it races to find fuel. It might not look nice next door, but when fire comes through, it will just blow by Mr. Neatfreak's as it seeks fuel your neighbor has so generously provided. And when the fire has gone by, you are still whole and the neighborhood has been cleansed of junque, doodads, woodpiles, old cars, tires, and outbuildings with tarp roofs. Only chimneys still stand.
The real afront to recent forest history is not human activity, but the wilderness concept of no human involvement at all. If you really think that we have done something physically that has made the forests burn, it would the very specific act of doing nothing, which was not the case for the 10,000 years prior to Europeans on the land. Our Native American predecessors burned with vigor, with a plan, and if you smoked or had asthma, tough! It was through burning that all the plant and animal associations we think ought to be there came about. It is a SET fire ecosystem, not a by-chance lightning set fire ecosystem. All too much evidence of frequent fire in patterns in areas of low lightning incidence. Lightning does not set spring burns of consequence across a broad landscape. But human set fire to bring about plant responses that were favorable to human success in the environment was what shaped our heritage forests. It was not uncontrolled burning as we have our public employees doing right now with the WFU program. It was fire set for specific reasons in specific places at specific times of the year in anticipation of specific results. The Indians were pros. And that 150 years of neglect is the neglect of DOING NOTHING AND EXPECTING SOMETHING TO HAPPEN IN A POSITIVE WAY. When we were kids, we would call that "dumb." Well, we grew up, and the urban majority voted to do nothing out of ignorance, and out of that ignorance, their summer homes and retirement homes are now burned, burning, or going to be burned sometime sooner than later. The old hook tender told me you could wish into one hand and poop into the other, and guess which hand filled up first? That is public forest policy today. One empty hand, and one now filled with so much crap nobody can remember what should be done and how. Wash your damned hands, quit wishing, and go do something!! Remove the fuel. Then burn the small stuff in the spring. Set big fires in the fall just ahead of the equinox storms. Sell some timber, and do some logging. Thin the hell out of dense stands. Again and again. Practice restoration forestry. DO SOMETHING! This deal of sending lawyers to joust in the courtrooms just wastes years of being able to act sensibly. And costs a lot of money. Lost opportunity and direct cost of litigation. We do need to change how we are conserving our public resources and lands. Sooner than later.
http://www.concretelogs.com/
...and the "fire insurance."
As long as humans put themselves above the environment, as if the wildland urban interface is our playground where we can live in our picture postcard dream home (with fire insurance), then "we" are the invasive species. When we declared war on fire a hundred years ago and labeled (for the records) fire "evil," we lost touch with our "purpose" as human beings. As a wildland firefighter ceritified in many areas in wildland fire operations as a "single resource," it is clear to me that we humans are out of touch with why we are here on this planet. We invade other countries out of selfishness and greed. We invade the forests out of selfishness and greed. We invade other human and animal "spaces" out of selfishness and greed. Like the fuels that have built up in our forests because of prolonged fire suppression, the same insatiable human appetite for more and more, with disregard for the effects, has reached the point of an inevitable catastrophic (economical, social & environmental) collapse.
We are out of touch with who we are as a cuture. We are out of touch with what we are and why we are. We are more concerned with buying more useless material items while staying in debt, rather than taking responsibility for the well being of everything around us. Those who choose to live in a wildland urban interface to satisfy personal motives need to snap out of DENIAL (a contageous dis-ease that is running rampant throughout this culture) and learn to become "Stewards of the Land."
What is your relationship with the Land? What did the land look like before fire suppression became the policy of a corrupt government owned by greedy corporations? What did the land look like before European settlers "invaded" this country?
Fire was once a natural part of our landscape. Low intensity fire helped maintain balance and order in the forests and kept forests "healthy and biodiverse." (Many Native Americans understood this principle and, prior to the arrival of European settlers, practiced "prescribed burning" methods that supported the health of themselves AND the health of the forests and animals.) However, that knowledge was lost when the European settlers came to understand "timber" as a valuable commodity and perceived fire as "evil" and actually declared war on it. (Good old Smokey the Bear became the perfect propoganda prop to further their cause.) Unfortunately, without low intensity fire to keep forests healthy and diverse, we now have a catastrohpic problem on our hands. The amount of acummulated "bio mass" needed to be removed from our forests, to help nature recover somewhat, is MASSIVE! Like the Karma that will come to all Americans for, directly or indirectly, invading and destroying other peoples cultures, a similar Karma is now at our doorstep.
You want fire insurance? Look inside yourself. Learn to connect to your true nature and how that supports and nourishes your environment...the land your home is on. Each and everyone of us has a purpose on this planet, unrelated to the fashionable addictions most Americans have to any and everything that keeps them constantly preoccupied with being busy doing absolutely nothing worthwhile.
We each need to realign ourselves with our purpose and mission in life; not to serve ourself (always first), but to serve the greater good of all living creatures. Time is growing short on all fronts. Our forests need to be intelligently and carefully "thinned" (leaving all old growth) with mimimum impact on the sensitive ecosystem. Low intensity fire must follow. Therapy for the forests will be therapy for ourselves. They go hand and hand, limb and limb. (Channel the billions of dollars allocated to an illegal war, by a corrupted administration, towards hiring a few million "poor" people to recover our forests. It's a "win-win" situation.)
Time to make a stand for something good, anything. Either this makes sense or it doesn't. The lines are being drawn. Whether you are rich or poor, it does not matter. What does matter is what side you choose to align yourself with?
A fully functional and dedicated "Steward of the Land," steeped in principles gleaned from Nature (and not the corrupted corporations), is the only true "fire insurance" there is. Our ability to positively Steward the Land is the "fire insurance" policy that the old growth forest has always expected from us, as a coherent human race. The policy expired over the last hundred years. Time to renew it for the sake of the forest and ourselves?
Jeffrey Learned
Engine Boss, Firing Boss, Crew Boss, Prescribe Burn Boss, ICT5
What a deal for youngsters without means who would hope to amount to something if they could just get the boost that would let them enjoy an education. Two hots and a cot, two moonlight rides each day to work and back, a picnic lunch in the woods, uniforms, low pay and free health care in exchange for hard work in the national interest. 4 years in the CCC and you get 4 years of tuition, books and a small stipend, at any college that you can qualify to attend. All the schools get the same remittance from the govt., and have no say about it, albeit there would be a cap at some percentage of total enrollment. Ohio State would have more kids than Pepperdine. Fund it with a payroll over-ride, shared equally by employer and employee, like social security, but with a limit engraved in stone.
If the public wants great expanses of public land, they have to belly up to the bar and pay their share to tend as it should be tended. If this great experiment is to succeed, this democracy, we must have educated people working, and it is our job to make that happen any way we can. The socialists who dream of ecotopia are just that, dreamers. We have legislated environmental dreams for naught, and common sense has to prevail at some point. Conservation is about limits on use, and non-use over the greatest landscapes simply has not worked. It is time to go back to measured use and husbandry, not unlike the thousands of years of human impact before the advent of the European democratic idea. Having a social program to benefit the commons is not communism, and should be embraced as a step forward to help young people achieve their dreams. Make it a part of immigration reform. Secure borders, enforcement of present law, and a new Civilian Conservation Corps to train people to do the jobs we have, not the jobs people wish for. The opportunity to get the job you wish for would come after time served in the new CCC, as you would have most of the cost of a higher education paid for by your service to your country. How cool would that be?