[pct-l] Fires

[elee@microsoft.com (Eric Lee (RAT))]

David Craft wrote:
>
If we had let many more fires burn over the last 100 years we wouldn't
be in 
the predicament we are in now, high fire loads and endangered
properties.  If 
you build out in the woods, then face the music, you may burn.  Perhaps
the 
government should begin prescribed off season burns around at risk 
properties, instead of fighting large fires in the summer.
>

Boy, you sure know how to make incendiary statements!  Let the flame
wars begin!  (OK, bad puns, sorry!)

I don't think too many people would argue with the idea that our past
management practices have exacerbated our current forest fire problems.
It's just common sense that if you always fight all forest fires
everywhere, then fuel simply continues to pile up year over year until
you have a situation that is literally explosive.  It's probably true
that fires today tend to be bigger, hotter, and more destructive of
mature timber stands than they might have been if we had chosen a
different policy a long time ago.

(Sorry, Rich, I don't have studies to cite, but my understanding is this
is more or less agreed upon by forest management professionals.  If I'm
wrong, I'm sure someone will correct me. <grin>)

However, it's not at all obvious what we should do now to solve the
problem.  Because uncontrolled fires now have such a tendency to blow up
into enormous firestorms, it's not a good idea to simply throw up our
hands and "let it burn" in all cases.  If we were to do that, entire
wilderness areas would be incinerated down to bare rock and take a
hundred years to recover, and entire towns would be wiped out.  The
situation doesn't lend itself to easy reversal.

It's going to take a carefully thought-out policy to get ourselves out
of this mess.  One, we need to do more prescribed burns to clear out
undergrowth.  Two, we need to perform more mechanical thinning and other
operations designed to reduce fuel.  Three, we need to gradually
decrease the aggressiveness of our firefighting efforts, in conjunction
with getting the fuel problem under control.

The problem is that each of those steps will attract vocal criticism
from all sorts of groups.  Prescribed burns?  What if one gets away?
Just ask the folks in Los Alamos how they feel about prescribed burns.
Mechanical thinning?  Oh my gosh!  That's uncomfortably close to
logging.  Who wants to let the guys with the chainsaws into your local
wilderness area?  And stop fighting fires?  That's all very well and
good when it's someone else's part of the country that's going up in
flames, but what if it's your favorite local haunt?  Are you going just
smile and watch it burn, knowing that it will probably not return to its
former splendor within your lifetime?

See, that's a big part of the problem here.  Forest fires are a force of
nature that operates on a cycle of fifty or a hundred years or more.
Sure, it's all very natural and beneficial in the long run, but from the
perspective of individual people, it's devastatingly permanent.  I was
in Yellowstone just last month and saw the fire damage from, what, a
decade ago?  Sure, the trees are growing back, but they're like six feet
tall.  Major portions of the park are irretrievably lost, at least from
my perspective.  They won't develop mature forests again until I'm using
a wheelchair to get around.  I happen to think the National Park Service
made the right call in Yellowstone, but the point is this is a very hard
problem to solve to everyone's satisfaction.

Now, about your wild claims of profit-mongering, etc.  I was going to
write a blistering reply to your stupid and thoughtless accusations, but
I'll restrain myself.  I'll simply say that you have NO RIGHT to call
into question the motives of the people out there on the fire lines.  I
live in Washington and we lost four firefighters just last month.  I
didn't know them personally, but a close friend of mine is a high-school
teacher and had two of the girls in her class just this past year.  So
for me, the tragedy is close to home.  Don't you dare talk about them
that way.  No one's getting rich out there on the fire lines.  It's hot,
exhausting, dangerous work, and the people who risk their lives like
that deserve your respect, not your sneers.

Eric