The California carbon rush
The outlawing of cultural fire and landscape burning in the United States emerged through industrial forestry practices that originated in seventeenth-century Western Europe—particularly in France—where foresters viewed fire as having no ecological role and considered it a wild, unnatural threat to future timber yields. In the late nineteenth century, settler-colonizers brought this approach to the western United States where, unlike Western Europe, forests had evolved to burn. Through violent means, the U.S. Forest Service imposed the idea that forest fires are the unnatural result of moral and ecological degradation.
Dr. Timothy Ingalsbee, the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE), told me that we need to end the “war on fire [and] focus on helping communities coexist with fire.”
New documentary looks at alternative approaches to wildfires
What if we learned to co-exist with wildfires rather than constantly fighting them? Portland filmmaker Trip Jennings’s new documentary “Elemental” includes the voices of climate experts, Indigenous people and fire survivors, and asks us to reimagine our relationship with wildfire. We hear from Jennings about what he hopes audiences will take away from his film.
Yosemite’s sequoias survive Washburn Fire—and might benefit from it
Many of the sequoias that have died were outside the most protected parts in Sequoia and Yosemite national parks, where officials have used prescribed fire to thin out the surrounding forest , said Zeke Lunder, a wildfire consultant in Chico, California. “The sequoias that burned were in the national forest surrounded by thickets of cedar and other trees,” Mr. Lunder said.
Are chemicals the best way to fight forest fires?
U.S. officials are testing a new chemical mixture that is able to slow down the progress of wildfires. But critics say the Forest Service should be spending less on these mixtures known as fire retardants and more on firefighters.
Ecologists say federal wildfire plans are dangerously out of step with climate change
"Seems astounding," fire ecologist Timothy Ingalsbee tells NPR's Here and Now. "Never again should we have the excuse that we failed to include climate conditions and climate data in our fire management actions. That's just the era we live in," says the former Forest Service wildland firefighter who now directs the group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. "I can understand why people are upset. It sounds like the 'dog ate my homework' kind of excuse,' he says.
Author: Flawed fire policies hurt Pecos River forests
In the 1970s and ’80s, forest officials resisted conducting prescribed burns and letting natural fires run their course but began embracing this type of fire management in the 1990s, said Tom Ribe, public lands advocate and author of a book that takes a critical look at the 2000 Cerro Grande Fire.
Some similar missteps were made with both the Cerro Grande and Hermits Peak fires, Ribe said. Crews felt pressed to complete the burns despite dry conditions and the risk of erratic spring winds, especially on sloping terrain, he said.
As U.S. tests new fire retardant, critics push other methods
Andy Stahl, executive director of the Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, and Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, both said that the ammonium-phosphates-based retardant is essentially a fertilizer that can boost invasive plants and is potentially responsible for some algae blooms in lakes or reservoirs when it washes downstream. They said the magnesium-chloride-based retardant is essentially a salt that will inhibit plant growth where it falls, possibly harming threatened species.
Check out the wildfire risk at your Oregon property. Building codes and other requirements may depend on it.
That broader approach is exactly what Tim Ingalsbee would like to see happen. The executive director of the Eugene-based advocacy group Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, he says the definition of fire risks within the interface will give property owners with a low-risk classification a false sense of security.
“They’re talking about zones and not the actual conditions of individual properties,” he said. “It’s not a bad thing as a sensitizing exercise, but all of us have to get prepared regardless of what color the map is where our properties reside. It’s about the home ignition zone.”
Ralph Bloemers, an environmental lawyer who is the director of fire safe communities for Green Oregon, agrees that “regardless of where you are on the map, hardening homes and business is the most durable, cost-effective and fire-safe step you can take.”
Forest Service failed to account for climate change in setting New Mexico's largest wildfire
A new report by the U.S. Forest Service finds that the agency didn't account for the ways climate change has altered the conditions and the landscape when it set a prescribed burn in the national forest in April. That blaze quickly grew out of control and became the Hermit's Creek fire that then merged with the nearby Calf Canyon fire, which has torched more than 341,000 acres. That's an area larger than the city of Los Angeles.
Host Peter O'Dowd talks with Timothy Inglasbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.
Forest Service says it failed to account for climate change in New Mexico blaze
Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director with Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, said authorities “can no longer manage fire according to the calendar date” and should incorporate climate data more thoroughly into their models. He also said firefighters need to intensify prescribed burns when weather conditions are favorable. He warned that halting prescribed burns for three months could have consequences later this summer. “Areas that should have burned under controlled conditions will burn under extreme conditions,” he said.
Wildland firefighters win pay rise - but is it enough?
Tom Ribe is the Co-founder of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology (FUSEE) and a retired wildland firefighter. He said firefighter pay and working conditions are so bad now, this rise may not change much. “I don’t think it’s enough,” Ribe said. “They need to be able to survive. They need to not be living in their cars when they are off the fires.”
Forest Service barely, sorta met burn requirements before Hermits Peak fire, plan shows.
Author Tom Ribe, a longtime wildland firefighter, has said it was “extremely risky” to light a fire on a windy April day and that the forecasted winds and humidity should have given a burn boss pause. He and other experts, however, said wind and relative humidity are just two of many factors a burn boss considers when they approve a burn.
4 Investigates: The prescribed burns that started the Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire
“They are professionals, and I respect that very much, but obviously it was a risky thing to do given the dryness of this year,” said Tom Ribe, a fire scholar.
Ribe worked for the National Park Service for years doing prescribed burns in California and in New Mexico. He lived in New Mexico for most of his life and even wrote a book on the 2000 prescribed burn that turned into the Cerro Grande wildfire near Los Alamos. “I can’t imagine that the place was, as we call, ‘in prescription,’ which means that the conditions were right to do this,” Ribe said.
Massive fires should be a wake-up call
More research and experience show that prescribed burning is an excellent remedy for our fire-starved forests. Though the prescribed burn that was partly responsible for the fire’s ignition was very badly timed, in principle, carefully executed prescribed fire is a key answer to our unhealthy forests. Another approach lets large areas burn when lightning starts fires in moderately wet conditions. We need to get our forests back in balance with fire.
Fighting fire with fire: Controlled burns remain essential as US wildfires intensify
"There's a lot of politics in play," said Matthew Hurteau, a professor at the University of New Mexico, who studies the effects of wildfires and climate change on Southwestern forests.
"After a plane crashes, we don't shut down all air travel for three months," he said. "The worst thing that can happen to our wildfire situation is that it get politicized."
The decision will affect the 193 million acres of land managed by the agency. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore called it a pause, "because of the current extreme wildfire risk conditions in the field."
He acknowledged 99.48% of prescribed burns go as planned and said the forest service will conduct a national review and evaluation of its program during the three-month hiatus.
It's the wrong message at the wrong time, said Lenya Quinn-Davidson, director of the Northern California Prescribed Fire Council.
More evacuations ordered as Calf Canyon/Hermits Peak Fire continues to spread
The other week Ribe snapped a photo of the fire from just outside Santa Fe and between the wind and the sheer size of the fire impressed him, and the fire crews who are holding their own.“I’m actually really impressed with how the firefighters are doing it and holding this all over the place this is an extraordinary fire to deal with I’ve worked on other forest fires over the last 30, 40 years and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Ribe.
Cerro Grande fire victims were ‘fully compensated’ decades ago. NM gov seeks the same in 2022.
But Tom Ribe, author of “Inferno by Committee,” a book about the Cerro Grande fire, told Source New Mexico recently that there might be some key differences.
For one, many of the Los Alamos fire victims were Los Alamos National Laboratories employees with Ph.Ds. That made it easier for them to draw the nation’s attention and navigate the FEMA aid process.
In the area burned by the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire, many of those who suffered losses are low-income.
So finding a way to reach those who were impacted and fully compensate them will potentially be a new challenge from this latest escaped prescribed burn, Ribe said.
In light of all this, Ribe said of the folks affected by the Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire:
“They’re going to need an advocate.”
Let's Talk: forest management
Prescribed burns are a commonly used land management technique that reduces the amount of combustible material (leaf litter and dead grass naturally occurring in the natural landscape) and performed only when conditions such as humidity, wind, and temperature are ideal for managing fires, and not conducted unless all required weather conditions are met.
Echoes of the Cerro Grande wildfire 22 years later
Tom Ribe, wildland firefighter and author of “Inferno by Committee,” a book about the Cerro Grande fire, said he sees plenty of parallels so far between what happened in 2000 and what happened in early April this year.
The Forest Service’s prescribed burn was “extremely risky,” he said. He recommends agencies only do prescribed burns in the very early spring or the late fall. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham recently called on the federal government to change its prescribed burn rules for the Southwest for that same reason.
In 2000, when the Park Service lost control of Cerro Grande, condemnation was swift about the timing, in particular. Many called the Park Service officials “amateurs,” Ribe said.
“The Forest Service piled on with that, too,” at the time, Ribe said. “And now we’re seeing that anybody can do it. Anybody can make a mistake.”
As feds stay quiet on state’s largest-ever wildfire, theories circulate about its cause
On Monday, Michelle Burnett, a spokesperson for the United States Forest Service, declined to comment on whether investigators are looking into whether the Calf Canyon fire started earlier than April 19. The service also did not answer how it arrived at April 19 as a start date. “The comprehensive internal Declared Wildfire Review of the Las Dispensas prescribed fire is still ongoing, and the cause of the Calf Canyon fire remains under investigation. It would be premature to comment until either of those is complete,” she said.
There are now two investigations unfolding while the merged Hermits Peak-Calf Canyon fire grows: One into Calf Canyon’s origins and another as to how the prescribed burn escaped to become Hermits Peak.
Some answers to the second question lie in the past, said Tom Ribe, a wildland firefighter and author of “Inferno by Committee.” Just look at the last time we were in this mess — 22 years ago.