This is a long read but underlines the reality of what's going on in our forests:
Forest Fire Suppression
Friends - for 20 years I have spent time in burned landscapes, with fire experts, biologists, foresters and ecologists. I have also visited with home safety experts, firefighters and first responders.
Last year I testified numerous times to the Oregon Wildfire Council about the need for Oregonians to harden their homes to fire.
I have also spent the last three years with Trip Jennings and Sara Quinn making films about fire in the West and the solutions. The feature length film is called Elemental and it is almost complete. The message from the experts is clear.
1) most big fires are driven by drought and wind (climate) not by the amount of fuels or forest conditions. While vegetation and topography are important factors, remember grasslands and shrublands burn too. In CA this year nearly 65 percent of landscapes that burned so far were not forestlands (as of Sept 6)
2) forest management - thinning, logging, clearing is a shot in the dark at reducing fire severity or risk and oftentimes it increases fire severity and danger. Around homes thinning can help to reduce the immediate risk and provide for defensible space, but in the backcountry or further from homes it makes little to no difference in terms of home safety. And the forest grows back. We do not have enough money to tend 350 million acres, and often the tending is logging that takes the most fire resistant material.
3) in extreme fire weather firefighters just try to help people escape. They don’t have enough “wet stuff to put on the red stuff” as they say. We need to stop believing that firefighting will save us and put out fires. In Detroit-Idanha, the firefighters fled. In Paradise the first responders told us they would have needed EVERY fire truck from ALL of California in town within 1 hour to be able to save SOME of the homes. The fire hit the town in about 2-3 hours after ignition as it moved very rapidly (3x normal rates) through previously logged and salvaged areas.
AND, most important
4) if we want to protect homes and communities from fire, then we have to harden our homes to fire, prevent ember penetration and home ignition. We have to make our homes less ignitable. And it is relatively easy and not high cost. Cover vents, clean gutters, hardscape perimeter, use non-flammable materials on the exterior...
As to the long held belief, promoted by industry, that it is a problem in our forests, that logging-management-thinning can solve it — well it does not hold up to scrutiny. Trying to make forests less flammable is like trying to make the ocean less wet. Let’s take a look at just one example.
Last night the Bear fire in the northern Sierra Nevada blew up.
This area has been heavily logged over the past couple of decades--clearcuts, commercial thinning, "salvage" logging of snags, you name it, mostly on private lands but also quite a bit on National Forests too. The Bear fire just dramatically expanded today when it got to this massive area of heavy logging. The fire is now over 200,000 acres (mostly from last 24 hours), and at least three people have been killed as of now. There will likely be more.
This situation is very much like the Camp fire that hit Paradise in terms of the direct threat of recent logging to lives and homes, by contributing, along with the dominant force of extreme weather and climate change, to very rapid rate of fire spread, giving people little time to evacuate.
At this point, anyone--including you and any reporters, agency or university scientists--who is still promoting logging as "fuel reduction", and saying the problem is in our forests, or a lack of firefighting resources — or denying the fact that weather and climate change are the dominant drivers of fire behavior - or not acknowledging the fact that logging is a substantial additional contributor to increased fire spread and intensity, is really just putting people at greater risk.
Forest Fire Suppression
Friends - for 20 years I have spent time in burned landscapes, with fire experts, biologists, foresters and ecologists. I have also visited with home safety experts, firefighters and first responders.
Last year I testified numerous times to the Oregon Wildfire Council about the need for Oregonians to harden their homes to fire.
I have also spent the last three years with Trip Jennings and Sara Quinn making films about fire in the West and the solutions. The feature length film is called Elemental and it is almost complete. The message from the experts is clear.
1) most big fires are driven by drought and wind (climate) not by the amount of fuels or forest conditions. While vegetation and topography are important factors, remember grasslands and shrublands burn too. In CA this year nearly 65 percent of landscapes that burned so far were not forestlands (as of Sept 6)
2) forest management - thinning, logging, clearing is a shot in the dark at reducing fire severity or risk and oftentimes it increases fire severity and danger. Around homes thinning can help to reduce the immediate risk and provide for defensible space, but in the backcountry or further from homes it makes little to no difference in terms of home safety. And the forest grows back. We do not have enough money to tend 350 million acres, and often the tending is logging that takes the most fire resistant material.
3) in extreme fire weather firefighters just try to help people escape. They don’t have enough “wet stuff to put on the red stuff” as they say. We need to stop believing that firefighting will save us and put out fires. In Detroit-Idanha, the firefighters fled. In Paradise the first responders told us they would have needed EVERY fire truck from ALL of California in town within 1 hour to be able to save SOME of the homes. The fire hit the town in about 2-3 hours after ignition as it moved very rapidly (3x normal rates) through previously logged and salvaged areas.
AND, most important
4) if we want to protect homes and communities from fire, then we have to harden our homes to fire, prevent ember penetration and home ignition. We have to make our homes less ignitable. And it is relatively easy and not high cost. Cover vents, clean gutters, hardscape perimeter, use non-flammable materials on the exterior...
As to the long held belief, promoted by industry, that it is a problem in our forests, that logging-management-thinning can solve it — well it does not hold up to scrutiny. Trying to make forests less flammable is like trying to make the ocean less wet. Let’s take a look at just one example.
Last night the Bear fire in the northern Sierra Nevada blew up.
This area has been heavily logged over the past couple of decades--clearcuts, commercial thinning, "salvage" logging of snags, you name it, mostly on private lands but also quite a bit on National Forests too. The Bear fire just dramatically expanded today when it got to this massive area of heavy logging. The fire is now over 200,000 acres (mostly from last 24 hours), and at least three people have been killed as of now. There will likely be more.
This situation is very much like the Camp fire that hit Paradise in terms of the direct threat of recent logging to lives and homes, by contributing, along with the dominant force of extreme weather and climate change, to very rapid rate of fire spread, giving people little time to evacuate.
At this point, anyone--including you and any reporters, agency or university scientists--who is still promoting logging as "fuel reduction", and saying the problem is in our forests, or a lack of firefighting resources — or denying the fact that weather and climate change are the dominant drivers of fire behavior - or not acknowledging the fact that logging is a substantial additional contributor to increased fire spread and intensity, is really just putting people at greater risk.