21st Century Problems

This is the town of Idyllwild (Inciweb had no photo links)

I thought, given our discussion here and elsewhere on the framing of the issue as “just move ’em out of the woods”, it was interesting to see, once again, exactly who and what is “in the woods.” Check out this article on the Idyllwild fire:

The communities of Idyllwild, Fern Valley and smaller surrounding communities in the mountains southwest of Palm Springs were under evacuation orders affecting some 2,200 homes and 6,000 residents and visitors, U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Carol Jandrall.

People were being allowed home long enough to pick up essential items before evacuating as the flames crept over a peak just east of the towns, Jandrall said.

There were 4,100 residences threatened by the fire including homes, hotels, condominiums and cabins, Forest Service spokeswoman Melody Lardner said.

Coincidentally, there was this story on Southern Cal public radio.

I wonder if the Forest Service ever said the below specifically (new fire policy = function of climate change) or this was an interpretation..

Climate change is forcing the US Forest Service to rethink how it fights large wildfires. Global warming has increased the intensity of fires, forcing the USFS to spend more and more of its money fighting them. Now the agency has decided that it should be less aggressive in attacking big blazes, so long as they are not threatening property.

In 1991, the US Forest Service’s spent 13 percent of its budget on fire management. Today, because of climate change, that figure is more than 50 percent, officials say.

The change is visible at the top. Three years ago, the USFS added a chief climate advisor. Agency veteran Dave Cleaves holds the job; he’s been with the Forest Service for more than 20 years. He says forest managers used to consider global warming as a future problem, “but now we’re finding more and more it is an issue of the present and the future.”

Headwaters Economics, a Montana think tank, found that when the temperature is one degree warmer, fires burn on average three times as much terrain. Headwaters economist Roy Rasker said the cost of fighting larger fires could overwhelm local, state and even federal budgets.

The Forest Service already cuts underbrush and thins tree stands to minimize risks. But agency predictions of increasing fire intensity suggest that, even with these tactics, the amount of forestland vulnerable to burning will increase in the years to come, says U.S. Forest Service fire researcher Elizabeth Reinhart.

That reality is changing federal fire management. The Forest Service has been successful over the decades fighting fires with personnel-heavy attacks that aim to shut a blaze down right when it starts. Reinhart and other federal officials say sticking with that strategy is costly, and could overwhelm other necessary work in the forest.

“So in some cases, rather than direct aggressive suppression tactics, we’re able to monitor wildfires to stop its movement in one direction while letting it burn in another,” Reinhart says. “This sets up the landscape to be more resilient to the next wildfire.”

Picture supplied by Larry, below.

Here is a link to an High Country News piece by John Maclean.

The headline is a bit overwrought in my opinion. But perhaps that’s the job of headline writers. In recent phone calls around the country, I’m also hearing about forest fires and homes elsewhere than in the west..

Here are some excerpts:

We need to encourage firefighters to exercise more caution, even when homes are at stake. Let the fires that are riskiest for firefighters burn. And assure the firefighters that the nation will have their backs when the inevitable complaints pour in.

Before I retired, there was a massive effort led by Chief Tidwell called the Safety Journey. Part of it was directed specifically at exactly that.. helping people become comfortable with saying “no” to unsafe conditions. Perhaps these efforts did not work and are not working. But it doesn’t sound like a policy question. The policy is not to endanger yourself.
Later, Maclean says:

Every firefighter like her who just says “No” needs support from the fire community and the public.

That was the point of the Safety Journey. If that’s not happening, I bet someone is studying why not. It would be good to hear from them.

Even with everything we hurl at the flames, Western states keep setting new records for homes lost and acreage burned. The federal government alone, not counting the state governments and other entities, has spent more than $3 billion per year on this war, on average since 2002, according to the Congressional Research Service. The U.S. Forest Service has tilted its budget toward preparedness and suppression, and the president’s 2014 budget calls for a 27 percent increase in the firefighting funding.

Meanwhile, budgets for fuels reduction — fire prevention — are cut, robbing the future to pay for the present. In the 2014 budget, for instance, fuels-reduction programs take a 37 percent hit, down to $201 million. The funding shift also reduces support for campground services, research projects, trail maintenance and other worthy — and popular — endeavors.

The prescribed burning and forest-thinning projects that fit within the budget are often stymied by environmental activists and locals complaining about smoke. Or severe fire risk interferes, as the prescribed-burning season grows ever shorter. Government agencies cannot catch up to the problem: There isn’t enough money or political will.

Even though safety practices have improved, each year between eight and 30 wildland firefighters are killed in the war (download one report here and another here covering a longer period.) It might not sound like a large number, but it takes a terrible toll in the families and the close-knit firefighting community. No one would be surprised if the toll rises. And regardless of the numbers, there’s a principle of homeowners taking responsibility.

It’s great that many homeowners are trying to make their homes more fire-resistant, but we need to tell them, we can no longer commit to saving their homes if their efforts fall short. They chose to live out there, and they — and their insurance companies — must accept the consequences.

I just read this piece in the Denver Post the Black Forest Fire this morning.
“Black Forest fire insurance claims nearing $300 million.” So at least in Colorado, folks are pretty aware of the consequences of fires burning.

At the end, he talks about letting his cabin burn. Once again, a cabin is not a subdivision. It seems like in many of these stories that are in the press, and op-eds, places like the Black Forest or Waldo Canyon are conflated with cabins or parcels deep in the woods.

If you are curious about the firefighter deaths statistics, here’s the paragraph in the report Macclean cites that describes the reasons for the fatalities:

Deaths on the Fire Ground
The breakdown of causes of fatal injuries on the fire ground is shown in Figure C. Thirty firefighters were killed in 20 fire department vehicle crashes during fire suppression activities, including 24 in 16 aircraft crashes. Nineteen of those 24 victims were contractors (mostly pilots) working for state and federal land management agencies. The others were employees of state and federal land management agencies.
Overexertion, stress and related medical issues accounted for the next largest proportion of deaths. Sudden cardiac death accounted for 25 of these 26 fatalities; one firefighter died of heat troke.
The third largest proportion of deaths during fire suppression activities occurred when firefighters were caught or trapped by fire progress (25 deaths). Seventeen of them died as a result of burns; eight died of asphyxiation.
Eleven firefighters were struck by objects — five by a tree or snag, three by vehicles, one by a rock, one by a section of an exploding storage tank and one by a rope that snapped while he was trying to tow a stuck apparatus at a wildfire.
Seven firefighters were electrocuted – five came into contact with downed power lines and two were struck by lightning.
Two firefighters fell from cliffs and two fell from apparatus during fire ground operations.

Here’s the post and below is an excerpt.

A new report shows an Arizona wildfire that began with a lightning strike and caused little immediate concern because of its remote location and small size quickly grew into an inferno, leading officials to rapidly order more resources in the hours before the flames killed 19 members of an elite Hotshot crew.

I like this quote by Chris Topik in the press release here:

“We must collectively and immediately dedicate ourselves to finding a way to effectively support both essential emergency wildfire preparedness and response AND the proactive fuels reduction and forest restoration that are needed to reduce the demand for emergency expenditures in the future. Our current approach to wildland fire and forest management creates a false choice, pitting the viability of one against the other. In reality, we cannot afford to short-change either.” – Christopher Topik, Ph.D, Director, Resorting America’s Forests, The Nature Conservancy

People I know who watched it, said that there was general agreement and a relative lack of partisan demagoguery.

Here’s the site with the testimony.

Following the deaths of the firefighters, there are thoughtful pieces about whether we as a society are doing everything we can to make firefighters (and other people) as safe as we can in the event of ever-present wildfires. These are good and important conversations to have.

An unfortunate part of human nature is the tendency to try to find scapegoats to blame when bad things happen. It could be ethnic groups. It could be “corporations”. It could be those of the other political party. And sometimes there is cause and effect; those groups or people really do annoying things. Scapegoating is when you take a behavior that you disagree with, and turn it into “if we get rid of this group, our problems will go away.”

And to the issues of wildfire, we have “people who live in the woods”. Last Friday, I read this letter to the editor in the Denver Post.

When so many fine young people die, we must ask: Is the price too high? The time when folks could live in the mountains seems to be passing, at least for the foreseeable future. Maybe those who feel they must live there need to work with their private insurance companies to safeguard their property, and not expect the taxpayer to supply firefighter crews and airplanes. The money and the remarkable people who risk their lives are no longer “protecting the forests.” They are trying to save homes and businesses that are just not safe anymore. Perhaps the price is just too high.

Mark Parsons, Berthoud

In the course of recreation Friday and yesterday, (to Allenspark and Estes Park), I traveled through our forests. I encourage those interested to do the same thing in their areas. Because, guess what, not building new homes is not the answer to forest fires. In my area, they’re already there. So let’s take a trip.

I live in Golden, Colorado, within walking distance of downtown. A couple of years ago, a fire came out of the canyons and was stopped short of our subdivision. That fire is in the photo above. We don’t live in the mountains, nor with trees. Still wildfires.

Then as I leave home and progress up Golden Gate Canyon, we see the more classic 30 acre or so parcels with houses. They seem to be pretty much everywhere going up the canyon. At the top, towns and gas stations, convenience stores, fairgrounds, libraries. Going along 119 north, there are more cabins, resorts, campgrounds, church and scout camps, ski areas, towns, restaurants. My point is that 1) it’s too late to depopulate our mountains, 2) people like to recreate in mountains and have infrastructure associated with that recreation, 3) not building new houses interspersed among the old houses might be helpful but will not solve any “house protection” problems.

So..even if folks want to stop new homes and subdivisions from going in…well, that’s an OK desire and may help in some places.

But what we already have still exists. Stopping new development doesn’t seem like it will do much to solve our Colorado Front Range fire problems, as far as I can see. Is this another issue where the solutions differ based on local conditions?

For those of your in the fire-prone West, if you took a trip to your favorite recreational trail from your house, what would you see?

Here’s the letter for those interested:

Fire Budgeting letter to OMB June 2013 FINAL

Below is an excerpt:

In a time when fire activity and costs are steadily rising, the 10-year rolling average budget formula that the agencies have used to set the annual budget request for suppression expenditures has translated into shortfalls in available suppression funds nearly every year since the mid-1990s. When the budgeted amount is insufficient, the agency continues to suppress fires by reallocating funds from other non-fire programs. This practice is called fire borrowing. This approach to paying for firefighting is nonsensical and further increases wildland fire costs.
The Federal Land Assistance, Management and Enhancement (FLAME) Act was enacted in 2009 to address these very issues. The FLAME Act authorized the establishment of two reserve accounts to provide additional suppression funding for large, emergency wildfire incidents, above and beyond the 10-year average annual suppression expenditures. In addition, any balances remaining in the FLAME accounts were to carry-over into future years so that funds would be available for the inevitable, high cost years and not have to be borrowed from other program accounts. Despite Congressional intent, OMB has forced the agencies to implement the FLAME Act in a manner that makes it ineffective: instead of funding the FLAME account in addition to the 10-year average cost of suppression, the account is funded as part of the 10-year average cost of suppression. Although authorized, no additional funding has been requested for the FLAME reserve accounts above the 10-year average cost of suppression. Thus, fire borrowing has continued to occur.
We are also concerned about the dramatic cuts to hazardous fuels treatments proposed in the FY2014 President’s budget request. For example, the Forest Service treated 1.87 million acres for hazardous fuels in FY2012, but expects to treat only 685,000 acres in FY2014. Our understanding is that these cuts were based on OMB’s continued skepticism about the efficacy of hazardous fuels treatments. We whole-heartedly disagree with OMB on this point.

Here’s an article worth reading..below is an excerpt:

Although it has been raging for a month, the wildfires known as the West Fork Complex in southwest Colorado present a seemingly odd profile of success: They remain only 20 percent contained, yet no significant structures have burned, residents have returned to the once-threatened town of South Fork and firefighters have reported only two minor injuries.

“Containment is not how you measure progress,” said Bobby Kitchens, fire information officer with the Type 1 Incident Management Team. “One day, this will be contained and be out. But now, we’re not concentrating on putting a perimeter around it. We’re just protecting certain points. We don’t have all the dots tied together. Eventually, we will.”

West Fork Complex differs significantly from the way firefighters attacked the flames that ravaged the Black Forest north of Colorado Springs — or any number of other wildland fires, for that matter.

Proximity of valuable resources, such as homes or infrastructure, as well as concerns such as terrain, weather and safety all figure into the methods employed by firefighters in any given situation.

As the dry, beetle-kill pine blew up in the West Fork fires, which have charred more than 110,000 acres, firefighters used helicopters and air tankers to divert the fire from valuable resources and dug a “dozer line” to defend the town of South Fork. In the Rio Grande National Forest, where rugged terrain presents dangerous conditions for ground crews, firefighters have battled the flames judiciously, on their own terms.

“As it goes through dead spruce stands, we’re not going in there,” Kitchens said. “Success is hard to get, and it’s too unsafe for firefighters. We’ll allow it to burn through those stands and catch it when it comes out the other side, at a highway or river. The fire will be controlled. We’re just being different in the way we approach it.”

Aerial photos sketched a puzzling portrait of the Black Forest wildfire, with splotches of charred blackness bleeding across the landscape and giving way, in some areas, to incongruous bands of green.

Amid vast expanses of scorched timber, tragic anomalies: homes reduced to ash still surrounded by healthy trees, speaking to the whims of an inferno whipped by winds and fed by the area’s bone-dry ponderosa pine and gamble oak.

This answers Greg’s question here about the houses burned with green trees around.

Also it appears that fire retardant is being used both by the Black Forest folks (not fed) and the West Fork Complex. You may remember our previous discussions and the quote by Andy discussed here that implied only feds use retardant.

There is a great slideshow here of many aspects of the fire, in at least one you can see retardant use.

Which reminds me of this effort to get more firefighting plane resources being discussed by the Western Governors.