By Thadias King
If there was ever a time when the fire service found itself at a crossroad regarding the how, what, when, where, how much, and why of fighting wildland fires, it is now. Never before in our history have we faced such catastrophe from wildland fires, most of which we have brought on by decades of a fire restrictive policy and encroachment of the urban interface into the wildlands.
The purposes of this article are to find out how best to improve safety and protect lives and property and to address a long-range wildland fire/prevention management plan at the local, state, and national levels.
Last summer proved to be one of the most destructive and dangerous in memory. Approximately seven million acres of forest and rangeland burned, nearly double the 10-year average. Administration officials in the White House have called the situation a crisis. We as a vocation need to take a hard, thoughtful, and long look at ourselves, the way we fight wildland fires, and our off-season prevention measures.
A fundamental and philosophical shift needs to occur in our corporate culture regarding our stewardship of the wildland/ urban interface areas throughout this country. The question needs to be asked: Are we providing the appropriate guidance and leadership regarding our firefighting strategy, tactics, and prevention measures?
Decades of a fire exclusion policy have left many areas of the country’s most valuable resources at risk by allowing tons of biomass to build up to unnatural levels, producing fires that are uncontrollable and unnaturally destructive. The fires that burned last summer in Colorado and Arizona are harbingers of things to come; it’s my fear that fires like these will become the norm if we do not implement immediate and drastic steps to deal with the situation. Our lack of perspective puts our people at risk, produces multimillion-dollar fires, and leaves a landscape that often costs millions more to rehab.
C. Phillip Weatherspoon, an emeritus research forester with the United States Forest Service, has written extensively on wildland fire and is one of many experts who advocates the removal of brush and dense thickets of small trees as well as the use of deliberately set controlled fires to lessen the risks of major conflagrations in the wildland.
Another notable authority weighed in on this topic when Agriculture Under Secretary, Mark Rey, a former timber industry lobbyist and the architect of an administrative proposal that seeks to waive environmental reviews to speed up lumber harvests on up to 10 million acres of federal land at high risk of wildfire, said he was not blaming environmentalists for the fire problem, nor did he believe it had been created by logging: “I don’t think it’s any more accurate to say that our current fire situation is caused by the sharp logging reduction in the Clinton Administration than it is to say commercial logging is the primary reason for the wildfire situation.”1
The scope of this summer’s raging wildfires, he said, is a consequence of drought, expanding communities at the forest edge that drain firefighting resources, and nearly a century of fire suppression—the policy of putting out fires as quickly as possible. Rey insisted that the current proposals are aimed at reducing the fire hazard, not clearing the way for massive logging.
Dale Bosworth, chief of the U.S. Forest Service, estimated that under the new rules, 2.7 million acres could be thinned next year, compared with the two million last year.
To say there is a correlation between the buildup of fuels and firefighter safety would be an understatement.
When compiling research for this article, I reviewed numerous case studies from the beginning of the 19th century to the present day. Where is the common link between the Mann Gulch Fire fatalities and the Storm King Mountain incident? The Gulch Fire crews were, in their day, considered an elite firefighting force. The Mann Gulch crew had years of experience, the latest equipment, and training in the face of the fire that consumed many members of the crew. So, too, did the elite hotshot crews and smokejumpers of the Storm King Mountain incident.
When reviewing these two incidents, how can we draw a correlation between the two? How can a modern-day crew, with all the advantages of state-of-the-art technology, training, and equipment, still fall victim to the same tragedy as a crew back in the 1900s? What is the common thread in these recurring loss-of-life fires, and how can we break this cycle?
When compiling the data on these and other loss-of-life fires, I noticed that one glaring and compelling common factor kept surfacing: The vast majority of these incidents, by many considered to be a statistical anomaly, all took place during extreme fire weather, which in turn produced extreme fire behavior.
A century ago, fires caused by man regularly purged forests, says historian Stephen J. Pyne, who warns that decades of fire suppression have put our wildland one spark away from conflagration. One of the world’s leading authorities on fire, Pyne has for years advanced the paradoxical prophecy that the greatest threat to America’s forests is not too much fire but too little. In Pyne’s paradox, without regular, low-intensity (prescribed burn) fires to clear out undergrowth, the landscape will one day explode in devastating firestorms—fires so intense they obliterate the forests and the creatures within them.
Our fire service culture is one based on a quasimilitary model. This “can do” mindset is a source of pride instilled in all firefighters. But unlike the military, the fire service should not have an “acceptable losses” attitude. To this end, I believe this model has done the fire service a disservice by promoting a much too aggressive approach when dealing with wildland fires when a more deliberate process would not only be safer but most often more cost effective. In the final analysis, we are spending millions of dollars and still losing lives for what is for all intents and purposes a renewable biomass that most often would be better off left to burn under its own accord. A wise old captain once told me, “Risk a lot to save a life, risk a little to save a house, risk nothing to save the brush.”
The fire exclusion policy has produced a national fire problem that in most instances is beyond the capabilities of any safe application of a direct attack strategy on large-scale fires. The Yellowstone, Marble Cone, and Rodeo fires are a few examples of how the fire exclusion policy has affected ecosystems to produce such catastrophic fires by allowing accumulation of overgrowth and debris that leads to uncontrollable fires, loss of property, injuries, and fatalities.
For nearly 100 years, Americans have been at war with wildfire. For the most part we have been very successful, cutting U.S. acreage burned by 95 percent. But fire suppression has left the landscape loaded with fuel in the form of brush and trees. In essence, we have created the problem. Says Pyne, “If you take the normal, historical rhythm of fire out, you get the kind of horrific fires that scour out the landscape. These are of a scale and intensity and size that are just beyond the range of what the forest can adapt to.”2
Opinions vary, but the good news is that in most cases the aftermath of fires has left these areas more healthy and productive. The Yellowstone Park complex was thought to be a disaster for the park ecosystems when, in fact, the exact opposite was true. Mother Nature knows how best to tend her forests and wildlands, and fire has always been an essential element in that equation.
Likewise, the news reports of fires of this magnitude bring a parade of government officials repeating Pyne’s scenario like a mantra: There is too much fuel in the woods. But beyond that, the discussion quickly dissolves into a cacophony of old arguments, with the same antagonists drawing the same battle lines that have frustrated firefighters for years—environmentalists vs. loggers arguing about U.S. Forest Service policy, neither of them seeing the big picture. Nobody is willing to deal with the fire problem as a fire problem. These competing groups use it for a series of agendas that beg a central question: How can we keep our forests and wildlife healthy?
Environmentalists concede the need for logging and controlled burning to protect communities but bridle at allowing either in the backcountry. They also see fires set by humans as unnatural. The Sierra Club’s policy is typical: In wilderness, “fire should be managed primarily by the forces of nature.”
Taking these positions into account, you can surmise that in the interests of safety and the environment, wildland fires should be assessed first for stewardship and then, when absolutely necessary for life safety or property protection, proceed with direct intervention. Recently, a new term has made its way into the lexicon of wildland firefighting: “modified control,” the approach of allowing fires that pose no immediate threat to be monitored and allowed to burn.
Years of doing business the same way and a quasimilitary corporate culture make change very difficult on the fireground, especially when you ask tactical crews to take a more patient approach in wildland fire suppression. However, the choice is clear, and we need to establish new methods and mindsets. The status quo is producing fires of historic proportion and getting our people killed.
As managers, we need to be change agents and catalysts for spearheading a less aggressive approach to wildland firefighting during times of extreme fire weather. To this end, we should remove crews from direct operations during times of extreme fire weather and concentrate their efforts in safer locations away from the main body of the fire until such time as conditions allow for a safer and more direct effort.
Says Pyne: “The issue is that we need to start thinking seriously about how fire belongs here. And we have to accept that we are the creatures that have to make those decisions. It’s our ecological task. Other animals knock over trees, dig holes in the ground, eat plants, but we’re the fire creature, we’re the one creature that does that. It’s not enough to just turn it over to nature. If we can’t get fire right, we might as well resign from the Great Chain of Being, as far as I’m concerned.”3
While the inevitable point/counterpoint continues, the danger continues to rise each year. By government estimates, the United States needs to reduce fuel on 70 to 80 million acres; right now it is managing to deal with two million acres per year. The record-breaking fire season of 2002 is just one more hot summer in a ratcheting national bonfire. By mid-August of last year, Oregon and Colorado had joined Arizona in suffering the worst fires in their history.
To say the growing fire problem is a major safety issue for firefighters would be a gross miscalculation. In part, we should adopt a zero tolerance for unsafe acts. Take a personal interest in the levels of training your personnel receive, their level of physical fitness, and state of personal PPE; instill a mindset that makes your safety and that of your crew members a number one priority.
Our off-season prevention activities of controlled burning and defensible space criteria must be allowed to proceed without the hindrance of so many environmental, state, and local ordinances that most often limit the size or altogether cancel control burn programs and limit local fire crew authority in the enforcement of defensible space requirements.
In the past few decades, less than three percent of controlled burns have become uncontrollable—exactly the same percentage as the number of unintentional wildfires that defeat suppression efforts. But the exceptions make the perception. Some of the worst fires of the past 20 years have been escapes. Seven have killed firefighters; one burned a small town in Michigan to the ground.
For the first time in recent memory, the wildland fire problem has reached all the way to the White House. President Bush has called for a program of limited harvesting in the national forests in an effort to reduce flue loads and limit the destructive potential of uncontrolled wildfires, as was evident in his tour of fire-ravaged Oregon last summer. This proposal has already met immediate resistance from various groups that see it as a means to supplant legislation intended to protect wildland areas.
The nation unquestionably needs to find a way to put fire back into the landscape and on a huge scale. The idea of proactivity needs to start somewhere, and when all is said and done, our options are limited. Thinning a forest is a better alternative than an out-of-control wildland fire that costs millions to subdue and puts our people and those we’re sworn to protect in harm’s way. We need to foster collaboration with all concerned parties on these issues, not succumb to confrontation.
I have yet to see a structure or a stand of timber or brush that would warrant the injury or death of a fellow firefighter. We as a vocation need to rethink our position and come to the understanding that accepted norms for the deployment of ground forces need a critical reevaluation.
In other fire service disciplines—structure firefighting, urban search and rescue, haz mat—we have basic guidelines that delineate a go or no-go situation. When a situation reaches a critical level that direct intervention is not only counterproductive but also unnecessarily risks the lives of responders, the prudent incident commander backs his personnel off and reconsiders other options. This is done knowing that the additional risk does not outweigh the potential gain.
When we continue to put personnel on the fire line when conditions such as high winds, low humidity, high temperatures, and low fuel moistures—in essence, the things that make for extreme burning conditions—are stacked against us, it’s at that point that we have defined a go, no-go situation that requires us to back off and reconsider our options. Or, at the very least, we should wait until conditions are more in our favor. Keep in mind that the above disciplines make these decisions based on imminent threat to life—civilian and firefighter. In the wildland scenario, we are taking huge risks when no lives are in jeopardy.
As an IC, does your thought process allow for such risks to personnel under these kinds of conditions and the benefits that may be derived? Considering the old adage “Risk a lot to save a life, risk nothing to save bushes,” I believe you will come to the same conclusions I have.
There is a consensus that forest “treatment” must involve a combination of cutting and burning. But when you take into account the scope of the problem and the millions of acres at risk, perhaps the best method is to allow fires, for the most part, to be tended and managed in lieu of directly attacked.
Consider indirect action on larger wildland fires as a first option, for the following reasons:
- It ensures to a much greater and controllable degree the safety of personnel assigned to the fire line. Indirect operations by their nature do not put crews in harm’s way.
- It allows more reaction and planning time when dealing with fires in extreme fire weather conditions.
- It allows for a more efficient use of resources, as the planned needs for implementing a tactical strategy can be better thought out and implemented.
- Burning off the added acreage will be beneficial environmentally by decreasing the fuel loads, increasing grass and browse potential, and creating “thinned” pockets within large and unbroken sections of wildland.
- Costs for fighting such fires would be reduced by enhanced proactive planning rather than reactive planning.
- It limits greatly the chances for equipment damage, as personnel are working in a more tenable environment.
- Areas for potential indirect action can be preplanned, mapped out, and afforded environmental considerations—i.e., dozer line placement, drainage involvement, and so on.
- There is less reliance on air resources.
The greatest barrier to managed fires is the growing intrusion of homes being built in these fire-prone areas, the I-Zone (wildland urban interface). Pyne asks, “Now resources have to be committed to saving structures at great cost and risk to firefighters trained and equipped to fight for territory, not lives or property. Suddenly the firefighter is even more compromised. Do you save the houses or the trees?” (1)
In California, an explosive hillside intermix is a traditional form of urban renewal, and it has shown a discouraging pattern. When a neighborhood burns in Malibu or Oakland, the owners rebuild, generally with insurance and disaster relief money, building bigger and even more expensive houses. Property values rise, the area becomes more desirable, and more houses are built even higher on the slopes. Eventually, another fire torches the neighborhood, and the insurance and relief payments, being larger, cover the cost of rebuilding even bigger structures, and so on. So far, be it fire, flood, or other natural or manmade disaster, no limit to this perverse cycle has been reached. Common sense would dictate that homeowners in these historically dangerous areas should take ownership in their own salvation and institute measures to ensure their survivability and that of firefighters called in for protection.
Insurance companies in California have grappled with this problem for years with no real definable criteria or formula as to what warrants a significant premium based on location. The complexity of the urban interface problem reaches far and wide throughout our economy, but that’s another story.
When confronting a serious and life threatening problem, even after decades of study and research with the same negative results, it’s time to take a new approach. We can no longer afford to rely on old paradigms used as a reference point by default or allow our quasimilitary culture to enforce a mindset that is most often dangerous and counterproductive.
The concept of modified control, albeit not a new one, has not received the attention it deserves. You only have to look at our fire loss and fatality history to realize that the only alternative left to effect any real and meaningful change to wildland fire safety is to adopt the “indirect first” attitude when applicable.
To this end, we need to call for the question, bring together experts from all the related fields, and establish new and innovative approaches to wildland firefighting. We need to be proactive and establish aggressive control burn policies and protocols to reduce and break up those areas of wildland that put our personnel and the public most at risk. And we need to do this on a national scale.
Can the millions of dollars spent on these conflagrations best be spent on developing new tactical methods and preventative measures? The general populace and the Congress are starting to ask these questions. Rest assured, we had best have some answers.
References
1. Lotan, et al., “Vestal Fires and Virgin Lands: A Historical Perspective on Fire and Wilderness,” Proceedings-Symposium and Workshop on Wilderness Fire, Gen. Tech. Report INT-182, U.S. Forest Service, 1985, 254-262.
2. Graham, Wade, The Los Angeles (CA) Times, Oct. 20, 2002.
3. Crutzen, P.J. and J.G. Goldammer, eds., “Keeper of the Flame: A Survey of Anthropogenic Fire,” in Fire in the Environment: Its Ecological, Climatic, and Atmospheric Chemical Importance. (John Wiley & Sons, 1993), 245-266.
THADIAS KING is a captain with the Santa Barbara County (CA) Fire Department and a 25-year veteran of the fire service. He first served as a hotshot crew member during the firestorms of the late 1970s, later serving on the department’s Vegetation Management Program. He has served as section head of the Land Use, Development and Planning Department as well as on the Wildland Fire Code Committee. He is currently red carded as a division supervisor and strike team leader. He has an A.S. degree in fire science, a B.A. in public administration, and an MBA.
