What Los Angeles could have done to prepare better for wildfires

Los Angeles County has one of the world's top fire suppression organizations. Most technologically advanced. The firefighting force is highly trained and well paid.
There could have been ten times the number of crews and equipment there and they would not have been able to stop the spread of these fires.
If anything, this is another screaming signal about climate change. When these conditions of prolonged droughts and hurricane force winds and record heat waves are all aligned, it's just not humanly possible to stop the spread or put out these fires.
[Interview with Timothy Ingalsbee at 3:25:00 mark]

Inconvenient truths about the fires burning in Los Angeles from two fire experts

For decades, Jack Cohen and Stephen Pyne have studied the history and behavior of wildfires. The magnitude of destruction this week in Los Angeles and Altadena, they argue, could have been mitigated. Society’s understanding and relationship to fire has to change if the conflagrations like these are to be prevented.

Why Los Angeles was unprepared for this fire. Several key factors left L.A. exposed to disaster.

“There was a lot that could have and should have been done,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Oregon-based Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. “Decades before we knew about climate change, we knew this kind of urban sprawl was a big risk.”

We Are Not Prepared for Fires Like This

A decade ago, this kind of disaster seemed unthinkably rare. In retrospect, Canada’s 2016 Fort McMurray disaster, which formed the basis of John Vaillant’s book “Fire Weather,” was the beginning of a frightening new era. Then came Santa Rosa, Paradise, Boulder and Lahaina — the deadliest North American fire in more than a century, if one that now hardly stands out in cultural memory against the other scars of urban firestorms. In neighborhoods like these, often far from the wildland-urban interface, it’s almost impossible to clear enough brush to make homes defensible, as the wildfire expert Zeke Lunder noted on Tuesday. The homes provide the fuel, and the fires jump from house to house.

Giving Guide! Eugene Weekly’s annual effort to help you decide what nonprofits to support—FUSEE

“FUSEE is engaged in paradigm-shifting educational and policy work around fire. Shifting fire policy is essential to responding to the climate crisis, protecting communities and ecosystems, and supporting Tribal sovereignty and traditional ecological management. FUSEE’s work is incredibly important for our region at this moment.” – Sarah D. Wald, associate professor of environmental studies and English, University of Oregon

The uncertain fate of America’s iconic Christmas tree

Rich Fairbanks is among the rare-but-vocal landowners who support fire management, even as he questions some of the federal government’s efforts. He collaborated with a regional Prescribed Burn Association — the first of its kind in the state — to burn an acre of land right by his home.

He wishes more landowners would realize that to protect the forest, it needs to burn occasionally.

There’s a Simple Way to Stop Dangerous Wildfires. We Barely Use It.

Latest writing by Friend of FUSEE, M.R. O’Connor. She lives in Brooklyn and is author of the recent book, “Ignition: Lighting Fires in a Burning World.” This article continues her journey of discovery within the fire practitioner movement.

Working with fire: Eugene-based organization FUSEE celebrates 20 years of rethinking what we think we know about wildfires

Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology is celebrating 20 years of advocating for change in wildfire media coverage and management. For FUSEE members, proactive fire lighting can solve the wildfire crisis. This stance has been historically underrepresented in media and policy because of the conventional narrative that fire suppression and logging will prevent wildfire damage.

“We’re torch bearers for a new paradigm of fire management” says founder and executive director Timothy Ingalsbee, echoing FUSEE’s slogan. Over its 20 years FUSEE has been featured in over 400 news stories and has had a national impact on wildfire policy.

Ten days of action: The Eugene Environmental Film Festival starts Oct. 11 at Art House

“Environmental justice is at the heart of this year’s festival,” says EEFF Director Ana McAbee in a press release. “We believe that films have the power to educate, inspire and mobilize communities.” Each day of the festival is hosted by either filmmakers or by local nonprofits working in collaboration with the festival. Those nonprofits include Mount Pisgah Arboretum, Beyond Toxics, Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, the Edelic Center for Ethnobotanical Services, Friends of Family Farmers, BRING Recycling and the Willamette Resources and Educational Network.

How the Northwest Forest Plan may reshape management of our woods

“One of the biggest barriers is just risk-averse managers. There’s this double standard,” continued Ingalsbee. “They can light up an entire mountainside in a huge backfire, fighting the fire and celebrated as heroes. But if they try to light a prescribed fire and things go wrong, it could cost their career.”

Wildfire Data Is Flawed — Here’s How to Fix It.

The U.S. Forest Service includes fire it intentionally sets as part of its acreage count of the nation’s “wildfires.” That presents an inaccurate picture.

Can Washington hack and burn its way out of a future of megafires?

By the 1950s, wildfires that used to burn around 30 million acres each year now burned close to 3 million a year, said Timothy Ingalsbee, a wildfire ecologist and the executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology. During these decades, forests across the American West were accumulating a fire deficit. Grasses, shrubs and trees that historically burned away collected and piled up.

In the Park Fire, an Indigenous cultural fire practitioner sees beyond destruction

Where others might see only catastrophe, Don Hankins scans fire-singed landscapes for signs of renewal.  

He identifies prohibitions on Indigenous cultural fires as some of the most destructive ecological policies in history for both Native cultures and the lands they traditionally stewarded. “Indigenous communities often recognize colonization as the beginning of the climate crisis,” Hankins wrote. “Spanish, Mexican, and American governments enacted policies enabling private ownership of land and forbidding Indigenous peoples from setting fires—often with extreme penalties (i.e., death).” A complex web of state and federal laws continues to severely limit cultural burning.

A megafire overwhelmed even some of the best preparations. What’s next?

But there are already questions about whether it was enough. Zeke Lunder, a Chico resident and wildfire and fuels management expert, quickly pointed to an overgrowth of invasive thistle near the Park Fire ignition site that Chico could have reduced with a prescribed burn, as it recently had in other parts of Upper Bidwell Park.

The enormous flaw in wildfire data

The first publicized example of such wildfire expansion was the 2002 Biscuit Fire. Timothy Ingalsbee, PhD of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology estimated that a large proportion of the Biscuit Fire was ignited by Forest Service firing operations. Inglasbee stated in a 2006 report largely focused on the Biscuit Fire: “…burnout operations can sometimes take place several miles away from the edge of a wildfire, or alternately, miles away from the fire containment line.” Wildfire expansions have increased since 2002, and wildfire starts, such as lightning strike ignitions, are often simply the “match that lit the fire” leading to numerous firing operation ignitions to implement intentional burns that they call wildfires.

Why the Park Fire exploded so quickly

“What climate change is doing is just adding more energy into the system and amping up what’s there,” said Stephen Pyne, an emeritus professor and fire historian at Arizona State University.

Will the Northwest Forest Plan finally respect tribal rights?

Ryan Reed (Karuk, Hupa, Yurok), an Indigenous fire practitioner and wildland firefighter and the youngest advisory committee member, said he pushed the committee to start to address the impact of settler colonialism on Indigenous communities, citing the impacts of the agency’s long suppression of cultural fire:

“If we’re able to empower Indigenous people, we’re also going to empower the various communities that are directly impacted by fire and have limited access to traditional foods or cultural practices.”

“We’re all feeling the negative impacts of fire suppression,” said committee member Ryan Reed.

Heavy gear, unforgiving terrain, backbreaking work. Now firefighters contend with extreme heat too

The conditions also illustrate the increasing prudence of managing some backcountry fires for ecological benefit, treating them more like controlled burns rather than trying to immediately suppress them, Duncan said. That benefits the environment, and it protects the physical health of firefighters by permitting them to focus on fires threatening people or structures, she said. The idea remains politically unpopular, she noted.

It will also be increasingly key to set more controlled fires in the spring and fall to reduce the amount of fuel on the ground come summer, Ingalsbee said. “Big picture, we’re going to have to be proactively managing fire during the cooler period of the year, rather than attacking all fires at the hottest period of the year, when we fail, and we surpass human physical ability for working in these kinds of conditions,” he said.

Forest Service, Native American Tribes partner to promote forest resilience

Ryan Reed, a member of the Hoopa Tribe in Northern California, is also member of a 21-person federal advisory committee for the Northwest Forest Plan. (And at 23, he’s the youngest.) He said true co-stewardship with tribes starts with early engagement in the planning process. Too often, he said, tribes are notified toward the end and then under pressure to find the people and resources to respond.

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Reed added that not everyone embraces tribes sharing in policy decisions. But he’s seen Forest Service leaders working “to make some serious change” in tribal consultation practices. “Climate change has been an unfortunate vehicle for tribal leadership and knowledge to be reintroduced,” he said. “The colonial mismanagement ... in our forests since contact has really caught up with the rest of society. We have large catastrophic wildfires and fuel loading in our forests. And so now the agencies are in a pinch.”

We are living in the Pyrocene—At our peril

Ancient prophecies of worlds destroyed by fire are becoming realities. How will we respond?