The Deadly Cost of Misguided Federal Wildfire Policy

But among the tributes and reminders of how wildland firefighters put their lives on the line to protect communities was the question from Timothy Ingalsbee, a former federal firefighter and founder of the group Firefighters United For Safety, Ethics and Ecology:  “Why were they attacking that fire in the first place?” 

The reason is that the Trump administration has reinstated a full suppression strategy applied to every wildfire, resurrecting an almost 100-year-old debate over how to handle wildfires — a debate that science and long-standing indigenous practices had settled by the late 1970s. Combined with the establishment of the US Wildland Fire Service, such policies could cost more lives