Top wildfire expert prescribes controlled burns as preventive care

From the perspective of Mark Finney, one of the nation’s top fire experts, the U.S. is too focused on fighting wildfires instead of trying to prevent them in the first place.

Finney runs the Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Montana, the country’s only public institution dedicated solely to the study of wildfires, and he’s critical of the recent response to blazes ravaging western states.