The wildfires in LA won't be the last. We have to change how we fight fires. | Opinion
The reality is it's hotter and drier out there. You can blame it on whoever or whatever you want – but get over it.
There used to be something called “fire season.”
In the 1970s, when I first became a firefighter, a really big fire was 10,000 acres. Oh, for those good old days. Today, a 10,000-acre fire doesn’t even raise an eyebrow unless it’s in Los Angeles. Now we deal with 100,000-to-500,000-acre fires. Everything is different.
Fire season was the time of year in every part of our country when there was the possibility of a wildland fire. Yes, everywhere – from New Jersey to Florida, the central plains and all of the West. But now we can have fires year-round.
So, what’s going on? It’s complicated. And complicated problems can’t be solved with simple solutions. We need nuanced discussions, not positions based on ideologies.
As we watch the fires burn our neighbors’ homes in Southern California, we have to keep in mind that the fires aren’t burning because of an inadequate water supply or a particular fire chief or a reduced budget. They’re burning because of the Santa Ana winds and high temperatures with low humidities.
When you have 60 mph winds or greater, there is no fire chief, water supply or budget that is going to put out the fires. The modern complication is the urban growth into the wildlands. That’s Southern California, but we have a growing fire problem throughout the entire United States.
California wildfires are part of a global crisis
The reality is it’s hotter and drier out there. You can blame it on whoever or whatever you want – but get over it. The climate is hotter and drier than it was even 30 years ago, especially in the West. The change in climate has made the fire seasons longer. They begin before the last one even ends. And longer burning seasons mean bigger fires.
Think about it: A “normal” fire season in Arizona, for example, used to start in June and end in September. Now it starts before March and hopefully ends in November. The wildland fuels – grass, brush and trees – only had three months to dry out. Now they have nine months. This year in Arizona, fires are still burning in January. The longer the fire season, the larger and more intense the wildland fires are likely to be.
What do we do about it?
Some people want to blame the government by saying they don’t cut enough trees anymore. The fires in Southern California this week are not timber fires. It’s all brush, chaparral – and chaparral is made to burn. Its resinous leaves are filled with terpenes that burn like gasoline and naturally burn every 20 to 50 years.
What about timber harvesting? Is that really a thing to stop the big fires?
Sure, if you cut down all the trees and pave the forests, we’d have no fires. But to maintain a healthy resilient forest, we need to thin the small trees and remove the underbrush by careful burning or mechanical means.
This doesn’t eliminate the fires, but at least there will be trees standing after the fire goes out. It will also make it easier for firefighters to be successful in extinguishing the blaze. So yes, human intervention is pretty important to manage and save our wildlands. Keep in mind, if you want to harvest timber there has to be a local market. You can’t sell trees if no one is buying them.
Like I said, it’s complicated.
We can't keep fighting fires the way we did in the '70s
On the other hand, those on the other side of the argument think we should just let the fires burn and let the wildlands return to their natural equilibrium. It’s too late for that. We’ve changed the environment, and now we have to deal with it. Remember the famous quote by Gen. Colin Powell, “You break it, you own it”? We changed it and now we have to deal with it.
But there are locations in the West where natural fires can and should be allowed to burn. In my career, I managed dozens of fires in the backcountry wilderness with excellent results.
Prescribed burning should also be a part of the equation, but the public has to be supportive. I’ve had to deal with angry homeowners because the smoke we created from our prescribed burn was a nuisance to them. But six months later, our prescribed burn resulted in saving their entire subdivision.
Homeowners and developers have to take responsibility as well. It’s not just those who live out in the forest who are at risk. Our wildland fires are turning into urban conflagrations.
In 2003, I was on the Cedar Fire near San Diego. We lost more than 2,000 homes in that fire. The wildland fire becomes an urban fire spreading from home to home.
Zoning should include road standards, clearances and water supplies, just to name a few. The zoning standards will cost more money. But so does losing an entire subdivision to fire.
What about our wildland fire response organizations? Do you know that there are five federal wildland fire agencies, 50 state wildland fire agencies and more than 27,000 local fire departments? Sounds pretty inefficient, doesn’t it?
In my career, I worked for two local fire departments, one state fire agency and two federal fire agencies. Each has its own policies and directions.
The U.S. federal wildland agencies are still operating like it’s 1970, treating their firefighters like casual laborers. Efforts are being made to improve pay, but the firefighters are working 16 hours a day for three weeks at a time for months on end. It is not sustainable.
During a particularly difficult fire season a few years ago, a high government official told me, “Get used to it, it’s the new normal.” I replied that we’re managing the new normal with the old-normal budgets, training, organizations and strategies.
He didn’t reply.
The new normal is complicated – and we’re going to need more than just easy answers to meet our current and future challenges.
Bobbie Scopa is a retired fire chief, author of "Both Sides Of The Fire Line" and hosts the podcast "BobbieOnFire."