It’s not the way we fight wildfires in the West that’s the problem. The problem is the way we manage our fire-dependent forests.
Since 2000, 154 wildfires in the region have cost over $20 million each to control. Many of them cost several times more. Together, these costliest fires, which were less than one-tenth of one percent of all Western wildfires in the period, cost more than $9 billion to fight. If you factor in property losses, natural resource damage and environmental impacts, the true costs skyrocket, but they are rarely measured or accounted for. What can’t be ignored is that these unprecedented wildfires tell us we need a much better land-management strategy.
In the aftermath of 9/11, the federal government established a commission to recommend ways to prevent future terror attacks. Among other findings, the commission’s report faulted leaders for a “failure of imagination,” citing a system that was hamstrung by convention.
We face a similar predicament with the West’s wildfires. Nearly every summer, the wildfire season exceeds our imaginations, as each “worst-ever” disaster soon eclipses its predecessor. In the past 20 years, most of the 11 Western states have suffered their worst wildfires on record — several states have done so more than once. At a time when firefighting budgets have never been higher, the West is experiencing its worst wildfires since it first organized for fire protection more than a century ago. If the aim is to protect life and property and minimize natural resource damage — and to do so at the lowest possible cost, without compromising firefighter safety — then we are headed down the wrong trail.
We need to be exploring more imaginative approaches. Protection of human communities ultimately matters most, but sometimes we are simply unable to save homes. Despite state-of-the-art gear, training, determination and other resources, firefighters are rarely able to control the worst wildfires until they get some relief in the weather or a break in the fuels. Neither can managers deal with the compounding effects of climate change, deteriorating forest conditions and uncontrolled residential development at the wildland-urban interface. The West remains tethered to an unworkable protection strategy that is stalled at a dangerous impasse, while costs, losses, damages and deaths all keep mounting.
Read more on this from Treesource at https://treesource.org/news/management-and-policy/wildfire-commission/.