Why the South is decades ahead of the West in wildfire prevention
As Western states contend with increasingly catastrophic wildfires, some are looking to the Southeastern U.S., where prescribed fire is widespread thanks to policies put in place decades ago. From 1998 to 2018, 70% of all controlled burning in the country was in the Southeast.
To save Lake Tahoe, they spared no expense. The fire came over the ridge anyway.
They sent thousands of firefighters, 25 helicopters and an arsenal of more than 400 fire engines and 70 water trucks. Yet the fire still advanced.
They dropped retardant chemicals through an ash-filled sky and bulldozed trees and brush to slow the march of the flames through the steep and rugged terrain of the Sierra Nevada. Yet the fire still advanced.
The difference between direct and indirect fire line
In the wrong situation, namely fast moving and intense fires, direct attack can be both dangerous and futile. Sending firefighters out day after day to employ the wrong tactics can expose them to undo risk and waste precious time if at the end of the day no real progress has been made. Deciding when to shift from direct attack to indirect attack is one of the more critical decisions firefighters must make.
Wildfire, drought and chainsaws: California’s iconic trees are casualties in the war on fire
California’s forests are in trouble. Wildfire and drought have ravaged millions of trees. Scientists say, perhaps surprisingly, the answer is more frequent fire.
Humans are largely to blame. Researchers say climate change underpins the devastation, while a century of aggressive logging and fire suppression has left timberlands choked with younger, thirsty trees primed by drought for destructive conflagrations.
The health of these exalted landscapes has for the last century taken a backseat to human interests and militarized firefighting forces. But a tipping point has been reached. Fires have become overwhelmingly explosive.
Why top California fire expert is so worried about Caldor Fire as it approaches Tahoe
The thing that’s surprising this year is the spot fires. Almost 90% of embers that are dropping on unburned fuel have the potential to start a new fire this year because it’s so dry after two years of drought. That’s very extreme and just really enables these fires to move ahead of the fire lines.
Attacking fires by air often does no good, expert says
More than three-quarters of air attacks on wildfires are ineffective, according to internal data from the fire command in the autonomous Spanish region of Catalonia, whose head researcher is calling for major changes in how the warming world battles its blazes.
The science of how wildfires got so hellish
Two factors have collided to turn “good” fires into “bad” ones: climate change and, ironically enough, a history of fire suppression. Climate change means that vegetation is drier and primed to burn catastrophically. Extinguishing burns, especially those that threaten lives and structures, means that mountains of that fuel have built up.
Wildfires are ravaging forests set aside to soak up greenhouse gases
“The worst fire season in Western U.S. history is going on,” said Danny Cullenward, the policy director of CarbonPlan. “That story is just crashing headfirst into some of the big bets that policymakers and private companies have made about the role of forest carbon as a climate solution. What we are seeing is, a bunch of projects are on fire.”
The burning debate: manage forest fires suppress them?
Fire suppression will not alter this unsettling dynamic. We paradoxically need more fire, not less — targeted, site-specific reintroductions designed to restore ecosystem health. This may seem counterintuitive, but as forest ranger and firefighter Allen Calbrick advised Pinchot in 1940, fire is “nature’s way of cleaning up her backyard” and providing “good clean ground on which to grow.”
As California burns, some ecologists say it’s time to rethink forest management
“There’s no way to keep fire out of forests,” Bauer said. “If you do it then the fuels conditions just become worse and worse until you get a really bad fire on a really bad weather day and it burns then. All putting fire out does really is defer the risk to a future fire.”
Documenting a wildfire when it’s in your backyard
I’ve photographed wildfires for The New York Times and other news outlets for 20 years. I covered the Tubbs fire in Santa Rosa in 2017 and the Camp fire in Paradise in 2018. Seeing the aftermath of the Tubbs fire was the real eye-opener. It jumped six lanes of Highway 101, burning through strip malls and destroying the Coffey Park neighborhood. To me, it showed that nowhere in the West is truly safe from wildfire.
California can either make fire part of its cultural identity, or it can watch its heritage go up in smoke
In the early 1900s, this practice of cultural burning was criminalized when federal and state officials initiated an era of fire suppression. The stated goal was to save trees — to protect forests from the very process that had shaped and maintained them through time. Yet we know now those losses weren’t avoided; rather, by removing fire, the losses were stalled, accentuated. It’s clear that the fires that burn now are making up for generations of missed fire. The more we’ve rejected fire as the natural — and human — process that it is, the more volatile it has become.
Welcome to ‘Trump world,’ the climate future scientists fear
“These politicians don’t dispute that the climate is changing, but they are absolutely in denial about what curbing it would entail,” wrote Kate Aronoff of the New Republic. “The report has made clear that the climate in which this country became a superpower no longer exists. So why are politicians stuck on twentieth-century answers to the twenty-first century’s problems?”
Climate change is only one driver of explosive wildfire seasons — don't forget land management
Welcome to a new era of wildfire in the American West — and increasingly, in other parts of the world. The fire seasons that have been scorching huge areas and wiping entire towns from the map are not anomalies — they appear to be the future. To meet that future, a response could be based on an understanding that wildfire is not going away, wildfire will be a part of the ecosystem moving forward and fire management systems should be modernized to meet the moment.
California's forests are at a turning point. Why aren't we committing to 'good fire'?
“The Karuk people have always lived on the Klamath River, and they used fire to manage resources," Kathy McCovey, a Karuk tribal member and former longtime Forest Service employee, told me.
"If you can’t learn to live with fire and learn how to work with what it is and what it does to help maintain all the things needed for survival in a place like this, then basically you’re working against it, and if enough time goes by, it will work against you," Bill Tripp, director of the Department of Natural Resources for the Karuk, said in a recent interview. "Things in nature have a tendency to win."
Forest Service maxed out as wildfires blaze across US west
The U.S. Forest Service said Friday that it was operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system as wildfires continued to break out across the U.S. West, threatening thousands of homes and entire towns.
‘The fire moved around it’: success story in Oregon fuels calls for prescribed burns
The weeks-long battle against the Bootleg fire, one of the largest burning in the US, has offered new evidence that Indigenous land management techniques and prescribed burns can change how megafires behave. Tribal experts and ecologists told the Guardian that, with enough investment, the application of “good fire” throughout the US west could make a big difference in defending ourselves against increasingly fierce and destructive fire seasons.
United States of wildfire
There’s a forgotten history that should serve as a warning — wildfire isn’t unique to the West.
Now the warming climate is increasing the risk of major wildfires across America. And more people are moving to fire-prone areas without realizing the danger.
'Good' fires can help slow wildfires, but the Forest Service is too busy to use them
Federal agencies are doubling down on stopping extreme wildfires. They're also limiting the use of fire to help with fire prevention, which is concerning some fire scientists.