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.
Amid devastating US fires, experts urge fire prevention rethink.
Tim Ingalsbee, a former wildland USFS and NPS firefighter who now runs the FUSEE think-tank told Al Jazeera huge wildfires could be prevented if there were a more robust state and national prescribed burn strategy. “There wouldn’t be the big catastrophic fires that burned small towns, it would not be the disaster we’re seeing today,” he said.
Dylan Plummer (op-ed): Industrial forest management and the Holiday Farm Fire
While we all want an easy answer, there is no single cause for the recent mega-fires. We do know that the conditions were ripe to burn: high temperatures, low humidity, severe east winds and a surrounding landscape made up largely of cutover, flammable tree plantations. We also know that runaway climate change is going to exacerbate these types of cataclysmic events into the future.
Fanning the Flames
“It’s the legacy of forest mismanagement that is fueling the wildfires, along with climate change, which is the ultimate driver,” says Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology (FUSEE).
Fighting fire with fire
"More people means more pressure to suppress wildfires early and often to protect homes, and more barriers to the kind of regular prescribed burning that many parts of California needs," says Timothy Ingalsbee, the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology.