Whack and stack: PG&E’s toppling of trees creates new hazards
In an attempt to clear vegetation from around power lines, the workers cut down old-growth redwoods, and in some cases simply sawed off the tops of the beloved giants, creating a “horrid Dr. Seuss kind of tree,” Kristi Anderson said. “It makes us sick to our stomachs.”
“Some of these guys on the powerlines are going for overkill, with minimum supervision and no ecology,” former firefighter Ingalsbee said. “They are little fire bombs waiting to ignite. They can burn for hours.”
Can 'fuel treatments' like thinning and controlled burns slow Oregon wildfires?
In addition, opening the tree canopy can dry out ground fuels and increase wind, fueling wildfire behavior rather than slowing it, said former firefighter Tim Ingalsbee, director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. “Particularly in a world where climate change is drying out soils and vegetation faster than ever, we need to hold on to as much canopy cover as we can to retain that moisture,” he said.
How can wildfires like those Oregon experienced in 2020 be avoided? Scientists and loggers have different ideas.
“The 21st century climate is rapidly ending the effectiveness of our 20th century firefighting strategies and tactics,” said Dr. Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology. He spoke on the Oregon Wild panel in October. He said aggressive firefighting is becoming more dangerous to firefighters and more expensive to taxpayers and isn’t effective at stopping fires.
California firefighters critically injured setting backfires
“Their burnout may have backfired,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former federal firefighter who reviewed the report at the request of The Associated Press. “That’s a horrible thought.” ”These were explosive fire conditions — the classic what we call ‘blowup conditions’ — and the crews were really, really pushing the envelope” by trying to set backfires, said Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.
Experts frustrated by stalled efforts to counter megafires
"This is really a healthy-looking forest, to me,” said Beasley, looking over a spot where his crews intentionally burned 5,000 acres in 2002 as part of Yosemite National Park’s pioneering program to use prescribed fires under controlled conditions to ease the threat of extreme wildfire. The retired forest fire chief – a designated “burn boss” at the park for a decade-- looked up into a tree blackened at its base from the megafire seven years before. “This large tree is still alive, right here,” Beasley said. “It looks like a red fir -- it's still alive because all the fuels were cleared away in 2002 when we burned here.’’ Beasley said that’s because his crews removed a million tons of so-called surface and ladder fuels – a century’s buildup of small trees, dead needles twigs and branches – from the forest floor. Without the surface fuels, he says, the Rim fire still burned but did not shoot up and engulf entire trees.