What Can People Do About Wildfires? Many Things. I. Improving Suppression Practices, Coordination and Technology

As promised, this is the first of (at least) two posts on “what people can do about wildfires like those in California?”.    Like many problems, there are many “little” things that can be done by a variety of people in different situations to improve the situation.  In a way, these are our toughest problems, because they require focused attention over time.   People from different disciplines with different interests need to be organized in some fashion to all work together toward the same goal.  You have to get into the weeds to make a difference, and be comfortable listening to people with whom you might not have much in common.

We can divide the different pieces of the problem in this way:

1. Improving what suppression folks do and how they do it.

2. Improving what homeowners do.

3. Improving what wildland vegetation managers do.

4. Improving what communities do, aside from strict suppression, like code requirements and evacuation planning.  Generally I’d call this “things generally found in a CWPP” (Community Wildfire Prevention Program) although CWPPs can be uneven and not updated.  How is wildfire incorporated into community planning and activities?

5. Reducing sources of ignition.

Can you think of others?

On TSW, we spend a great deal of time on 3, and despite the fact that LA fires were in coastal sage-scrub and other brushlands, I think we can skip it.

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So I’ll start with improving suppression.

Turns out that suppression folks have many ideas about this, from the macro to the micro.  I’ll point you first to this excellent interview by the Hotshot Wakeup with new Senator Sheehy of Montana, who founded Bridger Aerospace:

Bridger has become a leader in fighting wildfires, specializing in aerial fire-mapping operations, air attack, aerial fire suppression, and wildland firefighter technologies. We focus on providing the most effective and modern capabilities to fight fires from the air, supported by a world-class team and state-of-the-art facilities.

Our priority is to address the increasing threat of economic and environmental damage caused by wildfires and to provide support for ground-based firefighters.

The interview was interesting for a number of reasons. I asked the Sheehy media folks for summaries of his positions, because he is quite articulate on these issues, but I haven’t heard back, so you will get my interpretation (and please listen yourself, it’s not that long). First of all, Sen. Sheehy, having been a Seal and Veteran, brings the idea that “if firefighters are risking their lives, we should pay them decently and give them some of the same benefits we give veterans.” He also said something like “since so much of the FS budget goes to fire, they should have leadership from the fire community,” kind of implying that the new Chief should be from that community. Side note: ensuring casualty assistance for firefighters is included in the current Fix our Forests Act in the House.

This hearkens a bit to the old “should fire folks be put into a separate agency” which has been brewing for decades. Side note: the Fix our Forests Act requires a study by GAO which includes:

SEC. 304. GAO study on Forest Service policies.
Not later than 3 years after the date of enactment of this Act, the Comptroller General of the United States shall—

(1) conduct a study evaluating—

(A) the effectiveness of Forest Service wildland firefighting operations;

(B) transparency and accountability measures in the Forest Service’s budget and accounting process; and

(C) the suitability and feasibility of establishing a new Federal agency with the responsibility of responding and suppressing wildland fires on Federal lands; and

(2) submit to Congress a report that describes the results of the study required under paragraph (1).

Both the interview with Sheehy, and the interview with Orange County Fire Chief Brian Fennessy, had many ideas for improving suppression, including ordering difficulties, lack of communication with the water folks, and other coordination and communication issues. And some of the commenters there thought that those improvements would be good, but wouldn’t help with these kinds of fires. As a non-fire person, what I gleaned from this is that like any human institution, or inter-agency combination of such, there are tedious details about working efficiently and successfully that need to be attended to. Via after-action reviews, fire folks are better than most (I’m still waiting on the Covid response after-action review). But it requires constant attention to keep the wheels greased, the communications happening, and the old ways or systems or regulations updated. The folks who attend to this are the unsung heroes of any organization.

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This LA Times article cites Stephen Pyne and Jack Cohen

When catastrophic fires occur, experts often blame the so-called wildland-urban interface, the vulnerable region on the perimeter of cities and suburbs where an abundance of vegetation in rugged terrain is susceptible to burning.

Yet the fire disasters that we’re seeing today are less wildland fires than urban fires, Cohen said. Shifting this understanding could lead to more effective prevention strategies.

I agree that it’s difficult to change the narrative from “people shouldn’t build there” to “how can we make cities and suburbs manage wildfire better?”.

“We’re not recognizing, analyzing, questioning how we’re failing,” Cohen said. “We just think we need more airplanes and more helicopters flying 24 hours a day.”

More CL-415 super-scoopers or Firehawk helicopters will not help when water is being dropped into 60 mph wind gusts.

“We don’t necessarily need a trillion-dollar program and a fire czar to get control of the fire problem,” Pyne said. “What we need are a thousand things that tweak the environment in favorable ways such that we can prevent these eruptions.”

For example, municipal and fire prevention agencies must give property owners advance — and continual — warnings to clear dead vegetation and to wet dry brush within 10 feet of the house with periodic, prolonged sprinklings.

I wish the reporter had asked more questions about this:

And while climate change is increasing their frequency and severity, Pyne argues that a society dependent on fossil fuels plays a significant role as well.

“A fossil-fuel society remakes landscapes as well by affecting how humans organize agriculture, urban development, the placement of roads and power lines,” he said.

I’m not sure that that’s true. Maybe it depends on the part of the country you are from. And it’s kind of hard to imagine a fossil-fuel free society in the past, because coal was important for the development of industry and transportation. I guess another society would have stuck with horses and wood for fuel? I’m sure my ancestors came to the US on fossil-fueled ships, so maybe only immigrants from the age of sail? I’m more with Cohen on this one.

For Cohen, shifting the conversation away from climate change is important because it gives us more control over our fire environment and will ultimately make us less vulnerable to these disasters.

“We don’t have to solve climate change in order to solve our community wildfire risk problem,” he said.

Like almost all complex problems or issues, there are many moving parts that can, and should be, improved at the same time.

In the aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 — 17,000 structures destroyed and more than 100,000 residents left homeless — city planners and local governments began to focus on fire protection engineering as a way of keeping cities safe.

“The idea was not to catch the arsonist or the mythical cow that kicked over the lantern in Chicago,” Cohen said. “Experts began to consider the role that our buildings played in creating the problem.”

Yes, but if there was a new pattern of behavior that led to many more ignitions, certainly that would be a piece of the puzzle. Or if certain things, say powerlines, had a pattern of causing ignitions, you would work on reducing the hazard. You certainly would if you were a power company who didn’t want to go bankrupt from litigation.