Conflagration
The big firefighter in the sky finally put out the Camp fire. Not before scores lost their lives and tens of thousands of acres burned. Jerry Brown says climate change is the culprit. Donald Trump says it’s a failure of forest management. Who’s right? Jerry is a very successful four term governor of the most populace state in the nation — the eighth largest economy on earth. He is a smart guy. He is about as “woke” as an old fart could be. Donald Trump is a babbling buffoon and a serial liar. Who ya gonna believe? What is the answer? The answer is that they are both right.
Whatever your conclusions about the climate change debate, there are facts on the ground. The average temperature in the State is a bit higher than it has been for the last 100 years. In nine of the last ten years, the amount of rain and snow landing on the State have been below average. It’s a bit hotter and a lot dryer.
Our history of wildlife fire management is flawed. Francis Fukuyama, a very smart guy, says that effective government requires rule of law, consent of the governed and a professional bureaucracy. America made great progress on the first two from 1789 onward. We lagged on the last one; the spoils system lasted well into the 20th century. Our first genuinely professional bureaucracy was the Forest Service. It was staffed by educated people, dedicated to preservation of our natural resources. Unfortunately the dedicated professionals were 100% misguided. They spend a century trying to prevent and extinguish forest and brush fires. Smoky the Bear was blowing smoke where the sun don’t shine.
Fire is part of the cycle of nature. Lightening starts fires in the woods. The slash and undergrowth is burned in a slow moving fire and the mature trees survive. The resulting ash provides fertilizer for the continued growth of the mature trees. The density of tree growth is regulated by available fertilizer, precipitation and sunlight. It is controlled by periodic burns. Balance is achieved.
Brush has a different cycle. Periodic fires create ash, which fertilizes grass growth, which feeds grazing animals. The brush gradually takes over from the grass and the cycle repeats itself.
When fire is prevented or promptly extinguished, the cycles are interrupted with catastrophic consequences. Fuel buildup creates hot, fast moving fires. In the forest, the fires are hot enough to ignite the mature trees. This causes the fires to “crown”. I have watched the crown explosion close up as a firefighter. The ill-used word awesome is actually applicable. Once the fire crowns, it creates its own wind storm, which drives the fire from crown to crown in a maelstrom that no fire fighting efforts can counter.
In the case of a hot brush fire, the front can move uphill at the rate of 50 miles an hour. Nothing but the big firefighter in the sky or the front encountering a major fire break of some kind will stop it.
Now that hot/dry conditions and misguided policy have got us where we are, what should we do about it? The answers are not rocket science. We need to clear some hazards and a lot of environmentalist obstruction.
Electric lines in rural areas need to go underground. With the right condemnation policies, and a modest level of public subsidy, this should be relatively easy and relatively inexpensive.
We need to turn the loggers loose — on Federal, state and private lands. After any forest fire, the dead trees should be harvested. They can produce some lumber instead of being left to provide tinder for the next fire. Selective cutting of mature trees in return for elimination of slash and undergrowth would return us to a condition of slow burning fires in the woodlands. Environmentalist obstruction will have to be dealt with. Maybe the offending organizations can be made liable for the damage caused by hot wildfires
We should be continuously engaged in controlled burns when the weather conditions are right. Given the level of population density, the lightening cycle can’t get the job done. We will have to discourage the practice of environmentalists filing suit to block any controlled burn.
Anyone building anything in a fire prone area should be held responsible for rendering the structures defensible. That means fire resistant building materials and fire protection systems (gravity fed water storage and sprinklers on roofs). That means a defensible perimeter around the structure and/or subdivision. The barriers should be at least one hundred plus feet deep, with nothing flammable allowed to grow, and a strict maintenance requirement. Anyone failing to maintain would have their tax bill increased to pay for maintenance by government crews. The people who currently spend the fire season fighting fires could be improving fire breaks instead.
Finally, we should be cutting major fire lines at strategic locations that can be defended when a hot fire starts. Equipment should be pre-positioned so that response is prompt and back fires can be started in time to do some good.
Start with the premise that fire is a natural and inevitable phenomenon that is generic to the ecosystem. Then, find a way to work with the system instead of against it. It can be done. If we fail to do so, we will continue to have a tragic loss of life and shelter.
