This app is helping Californians stay on top of wildfire risks
Zeke Lunder, an analyst with two decades of experience mapping wildfires, was already in the habit of sharing his expertise on Facebook, often writing posts providing insights into official announcements. This fire hit close to home, though, and he wanted to expand his offerings. Lunder started a website, The Lookout, which he populated with maps he built based on publicly available data, as well as analysis and interviews. Rather than offering emergency alerts, like Watch Duty, Lunder wanted a space to provide additional context for people interested in, and impacted by, wildfires—context that was not restricted by official protocols or talking points.
Questions raised after controlled burn near Las Vegas, N.M., goes out of control
Given that history, it’s always big news when a prescribed burn turns into a wildfire, said Tom Ribe, a longtime public advocate and author of a book that retells the Cerro Grande Fire with a critical eye about what went wrong.
Ribe said he’s reluctant to criticize forest managers in this situation because he doesn’t want to discourage them from what’s otherwise a healthy practice.
Prescribed burns are tricky because they must be done when forest debris is dry enough for the flames to consume an ample amount, Ribe said. Sometimes fall and winter are too damp, so forest managers opt for the spring, when the debris is drier but also when New Mexico is windy, he said.
“It definitely is risky this time of year,” Ribe said.
Forest Service stands firm in dispute on fire retardant
Photos of red or orange retardant being dropped from airplanes make good, but misleading, public relation images, said Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology in Eugene, Ore.
"We used to call them photodrops," said Ingalsbee, a wildland fire ecologist and former firefighter with the Forest Service and the National Park Service.
Ingalsbee said "bureaucratic inertia" keeps the federal government from a deeper examination of fire retardant, for which the Forest Service contracts for helicopters and airplanes, a lucrative arrangement for companies.
California Congressmen Push for Aggressive Fire Suppression
Timothy Ingalsbee of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology said that this effort represents a mindset back from the 1930s. "We live in a very different world now. Climate-driven wildfire events have really surpassed human abilities to control all fires, to prevent all fires, to put them out when they burn." He said that it's past time to start working with fire not just for the good of the land, but also for our own health and safety, and for the health and safety of wildland firefighters.
Interview: Wildfire scientist says LaMalfa’s recently introduced wildfire suppression legislation takes the wrong approach
"This legislation that proposes that we put out every wildfire--it's impossible to implement. There's nothing about that [legislative proposal] that would change the outcome of a fire like the Dixie Fire or the Caldor Fire because they're not proposing at the same time to build up more resources or to support wildland firefighters doing their job better. They're just taking away one of the tools we have." said wildfire scientist, Zeke Lunder.
"To say that there's absolutely no time to let public lands burn for resource benefits--that's ridiculous!"
How one Oregon town put politics aside to save itself from fire
The Forest Service — no longer able to conduct the business of managing timber sales as usual — focused instead on building access roads for firefighters and thinning trees deemed a wildfire threat. “It was almost presto-chango,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. “All of a sudden the Forest Service, instead of doing timber extraction, was all about tinder reduction.”
How one Oregon town put politics aside to save itself from fire
Things had started to change in Ashland in the ’60s and ’70s: A new generation of residents saw the forests of the Pacific Northwest not as an industrial resource for exploitation, but a place for recreation and serenity. Throughout the 1980s, activists set up camps to block logging roads, gave speeches outside ranger stations, filed lawsuits, and lobbied politicians — a period known as the Timber Wars. Then, in 1990, environmentalists got the spotted owl on the endangered species list, and shortly thereafter a judge stopped all logging on state and federal land in southeastern Oregon.
The Forest Service — no longer able to conduct the business of managing timber sales as usual — focused instead on building access roads for firefighters and thinning trees deemed a wildfire threat. “It was almost presto-chango,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. “All of a sudden the Forest Service, instead of doing timber extraction, was all about tinder reduction.”
New federal plan aims to prevent wildfire in high-risk areas of Oregon. Supporters say wildfire prevention spending could create forest industry jobs; critics say it’s too heavy on logging
Tim Ingalsbee, executive director for the Firefighters United For Safety, Ethics and Ecology, said the plan brings nothing new other than funding. He said he’s disappointed it focuses on fighting fire instead of working with fires when they naturally occur.
“To me a wildfire strategy would be centered on that,” he said. “How are we going to live and work with wildfire instead of the same old obsolete paradigm of how can we prevent wildfire or if it happens, how can we fight wildfire.”
Fire strategy stuck with old tactics, experts warn
Although it uses the words “paradigm shift” 13 times, the U.S. Forest Service’s new wildfire crisis strategy appears stuck on old tactics, according to area fire experts.
“I saw no new strategy but rather a potential increase in the same fire control strategy of ‘fuel treatment’ to enhance fire control,” retired Forest Service fire scientist Jack Cohen said after reviewing the documents released on Tuesday.
Intentional blazes spark new complaints in fight against wildfire
People and groups critical of backfires said they're not looking to end their use. "By using wildfire, you can steer wildfire," said Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology and author of the report on Oregon's Biscuit Fire.
But the environment in forests has changed, thanks to drought brought on in part by climate change, and the Forest Service is being reactive rather than proactive, critics said. Even where backfire is effective, Ingalsbee said, forest managers need to ask what the cost is in landscapes burned at high intensity and wildlife habitat damaged.
"Lack of planning leads to crisis," Ingalsbee said. "They're managing fire as if it's unforeseen. It's time we prepare for it. We can't prevent it."
Yelling timber
FUSEE believes that doing better requires a complete reevaluation in how we view and treat wildfire in our society; the organization strives for a “paradigm shift” in society’s relationship with wildfires, manifesting in new firefighting strategies that focus on using controlled burns and working with wildfire as a natural occurrence.
“Nothing influences fire like fire,” Ingalsbee says. “We’re pitching that new kind of strategy for active ecological fire management — incorporating this concept of fire mosaics and prescribed fires.”
This isn’t the California I married. The honeymoon’s over for its residents now that wildfires are almost constant. Has living in this natural wonderland lost its magic?
I asked Zeke Lunder, the best wildfire analyst that I knew, who should be worried. He rejected the whole premise of the question. Worried? Ha. We’ve passed that stage. We exist in a world of knowing that not everywhere nor everyone will be spared. “We need to accept that there’s going to be a fire,” he said. “It’s going to burn the whole town down. When that happens, let’s have identified a pot of money to buy these 5,000 lots that are in the worst places and we know are never going to be safe. So, let’s buy them and rebuild in a footprint that’s defensible.”
I asked if he knew of any towns doing that. He said no.
The U.S. government is wasting billions on wildfire policy that doesn’t work
More than 6.5 million acres in the U.S. have been affected by fire so far this year. The Dixie Fire, at nearly 1 million acres burned, was the second-largest fire in California’s history. Faced with such catastrophic wildfires, it seems only natural for fire services to respond with every resource available. But according to many of the country’s most respected fire experts, there is little evidence that most of these fire suppression campaigns are effective. These critics say that the current practice of trying to suppress every big wildfire is foolhardy, especially given the huge, climate-driven fires more and more common in the West. Some blame this policy on what they call the fire-industrial complex: a collection of the major governmental fire agencies and hundreds of private contractors, who are motivated by a mixture of institutional inertia, profiteering, and desperation.
Using the old burns to help lessen the new burns
When you hear that a fire burned 100,000 acres, the degree of burning can vary wildly inside that perimeter. In fact, some patches may not have burned at all.
This is the "mosaic" of fire, where burned land is not burned evenly. The firefighter group FUSEE--Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology--advocates making use of the fire mosaic to lessen the intensity of future fires in the same area.
We explore the concepts with FUSEE Executive Director Timothy Ingalsbee and Mike Beasley, retired Fire Management Officer for the U.S. Forest Service and National Park Service.
Timber, Interrupted
Anti-logging environmentalists protest Freres Lumber Company's executive's presentation at Knight Law Center, the day after activists announce an occupation to stop post-wildfire logging.
Environmental groups, scientists raise concerns over Monsanto’s Phos-Chek
Tim Ingalsbee, a fire ecologist, told EHN that aerial retardant is used wastefully, and that resources should instead be directed towards preventative strategies like prescribed burns, ecological fire management, and getting more firefighters.
U.S. firefighters on climate frontline face 'broken' health system
From 2017 to 2020, 2,500 work-related injuries or illnesses were reported on average each year by the roughly 10,000-strong U.S. Forest Service wildland firefighting force – the nation's biggest wildland force, a database provided to the Thomson Reuters Foundation showed.
"Our occupation is very risky, with high consequences ... We have to make sure we're taking care of people," said Kelly Martin, president of Grassroots Wildland Firefighters, a group lobbying for better workplace protections.
Too often, that is not the case, she said.
What it’s like to fight a megafire
In 2017, Timothy Ingalsbee, the executive director of the organization Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, published an article in the International Journal of Wildland Fire in which he argued that firefighters know that large fires will defy suppression until weather conditions change or fuels run out. Steve Pyne, a historian and a former wildland firefighter, asked me, “Why are firefighters there at all? That’s the fundamental question.” Putting out too many fires contributes to the creation of even bigger blazes: fire ecologists call this the “fire paradox.” Today’s wildland firefighters are trapped within it.
Wildfire, drought provisions in infrastructure bill bring new funding to old ideas on Western Slope
Tim Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, told Energy & Environment News that other portions of the infrastructure bill reflect a legacy of misguided wildland firefighting tactics, citing a provision in the bill which calls for $500 million in creating fuel breaks, areas near communities in the wildland interface which have been cleared of vegetation to contain a fire. “But fuel breaks have proven ineffective in wildlands, because embers can travel so far on the wind,” Ingalsbee told E&E News, citing the 2017 Eagle Creek Fire in Oregon that jumped the Columbia River.
California burning: A special edition on wildfires — Debate rages amid smoke and flames: How do we stay safe?
Our ‘California Burning’ series originally ran in Fall 2020. It was recently awarded First Place by the National Newspaper Association for Investigative Reporting. We are reprinting the series in the next several weeks, because issues covered in this reporting still pose threats to our Mountain Communities. We also have many new residents who have settled here in the past year who may benefit from understanding these urgent issues.