Wildfires are setting off hundreds of unexploded bombs on WWI battlefields, endangering firefighters
The summer's unusually hot temperatures have led to several wildfires across Europe and, according to Vice World News, they are setting off unexploded World War 1 bombs in the process. It is estimated that, as of Thursday, there had been more than 500 detonations, according to local media. The unexploded ordnances, mostly underground, explode when they overheat due to the extreme rising of temperatures as a result of the fires. An incident on July 22 saw the heat from the raging fire set off an unexploded WWI-era bomb, launching shrapnel at nearby firefighters, per local media. Nobody was injured.
Op-Ed: Why forest managers need to team up with Indigenous fire practitioners
The forests of the Western United States are facing an unprecedented crisis, besieged by wildfires and climate change. There is a precedent for part of the solution, though: intentional burns such as those set by Indigenous peoples.
Two California fires in the Sierra Nevada have very different outcomes. Why?
Why was one fire so much more destructive? Experts attribute the difference to variations in weather, vegetation and topography. The management history of each landscape also played a role: Yosemite boasts decades of active stewardship, including prescribed burns, while areas outside the park bear a legacy of industrial logging and fire suppression.
The case against commercial logging in wildfire-prone forests
The truth is that logging activities tend to increase, not decrease, extreme fires, by reducing the windbreak effect that denser forests have, for example, and by bringing in highly combustible invasive grasses that are spread by logging machinery.
Forests in the American West need more “good fire.” Tribes can help
National conversations about fire policy often ignore the fact that millennia-old models of “best available science” and “on-the-ground-implementation” are right before our eyes: Long before U.S. bureaucrats embraced prescribed burns as a forest management tool, Indigenous stewards across the West tended woodlands by routinely removing excess vegetation, pruning trees, and setting “good fires.” This practice, known as cultural burning, should be a key part of fighting what scientists predict will be a mega-wildfire season for 2022—and beyond.
At Yosemite, a preservation plan that calls for chain saws
Central to the thinking of scientists looking for ways to protect forests is research showing that the “natural state” of America’s wild lands was for millenniums influenced by humankind.
Decades of research have shown that the wilderness appreciated by early European settlers, as well as 19th century naturalists like John Muir, was often a highly managed landscape. Core samples from beneath a pond in Yosemite, retrieved in the way that scientists might bore deep into a glacier, showed centuries of layers of pollen and ash. The findings suggested a long history of frequent fires in Yosemite and buttressed the oral histories of Native American tribes who have long seen fire as a tool.
Scientists explain the factors that caused the Oak Fire to explode so suddenly
Ironically, the growth of the Oak Fire began to slow on Monday as it started to run into fire scars from previous large fires, including the Ferguson Fire, which burned in the same region in 2018, Burke said. That slowdown is further proof that fire management, including the prescribed burns that were put out of practice for more than a century, are integral to preventing large wildfires from occurring -- especially as climate change conditions continue to warm the planet and create scenarios for devastating wildfires to wreak havoc on communities and nature, Dahl said.
A new proposal to ensure fire protection for all
“If they’d stayed at home, they would’ve likely perished,” said Dan Efseaff, the Paradise Recreation and Park District manager. Sparked by electrical transmission lines, the Camp Fire was the deadliest, most destructive fire in California history. The blaze killed at least 85 people and destroyed 18,000 structures. And it showed how the usual suggestions for home hardening, such as clearing vegetation or removing propane tanks near homes, are not always enough on their own — especially since not everyone can afford to do them. Efseaff and other Paradise government leaders realized that when a fire is that dangerous, individual actions aren’t enough to protect homes and people from future fires. Efseaff is now working on a project that he hopes can protect entire neighborhoods, not just individual properties: a combination firebreak and trail system that would encircle Paradise.
These maps show severe fires are morphing California forests into something we won’t recognize
Megafires with high burn severity are a reflection of a landscape changed over centuries by exploding populations and suppression-oriented fire management policies and practices — one in which flame-friendly shrubs grow where trees once stood, making the environment even more vulnerable to fires.
Can we coexist with big wildfires? A new documentary, ‘Elemental,’ suggests we can
The premise is that by more heavily managing the forests, we can create better outcomes. It’s an approach consistently promoted by timber industry lobbyists and representatives or rural communities who stand to benefit economically.
But researchers featured in ‘Elemental’ suggest it’s a ludicrous strategy. The scale of the problem is simply too large. The vegetation grows back in short order. The chance of a wildfire actually encountering an area that has been treated is less than 1%, one researcher found. And when one does, the treatments frequently have little to no effect on fire behavior.
Ancient sequoias safe for now as crews continue battling 3,500-acre Washburn fire in Yosemite
But sequoias have also evolved with wildfire and in fact rely on extreme heat to help release their seeds. Crystal Kolden, a fire scientist at UC Merced who has been tracking the blaze, said she was “not worried” about the trees in Mariposa Grove. “They’ve been doing prescribed burns in that grove for over 50 years, and it’s early in the season yet,” Kolden said via email. “This fire should actually be pretty beneficial for them, and it is much better for them to burn in July — which is normally when most of the lightning ignitions are in Yosemite, so it’s the natural fire timing — rather than in September.”
Karuk leader Bill Tripp appointed to new federal wildfire commission
A Karuk leader who has been among those leading the charge to bring managed fires back to the landscape has been appointed to a new federal wildfire commission.
On Thursday, the Biden-Harris administration announced that Bill Tripp, the Karuk Tribe’s director of Natural Resources and Environmental Policy, was one of 18 experts appointed to the Wildland Fire Mitigation and Management Commission, established by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. The commission is expected to provide recommendations to the federal government on how to address catastrophic wildfires.
Tripp said it was “quite the honor to be selected.”
“I think that we are in a new time where people are ready to listen to the perspectives that come from Indigenous communities on this subject matter,” Tripp said.
All that’s needed is a spark’: why the US may be headed for a summer of mega-fire
Fire activity is expected to increase in several US states over the coming months, according to a newly released outlook from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC), with parts of the Pacific north-west, northern California, Texas, Hawaii and Alaska forecast to be among those hardest hit by fire conditions in the months ahead.
The severity of the emergency will depend on four key factors: drought, dried fuels, windy or warm weather, and of course, ignitions. But the climate crisis and human-caused warming has turned up the dial on risk-factors with more intense conditions and a greater frequency with which these conditions align.
More wilderness, more … wildfire?
As the West reckons with decades of suppression and mismanagement, some politicians are exploiting the politics of wildfire in peculiar ways.
Wildland fire agencies work to create 'better work-life balance' as fire seasons grow longer
Congress passed the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law in late 2021, which funds $8.25 billion for wildland fire management around the country. A considerable amount of that money is designated for federal wildland firefighter pay increases and will turn many seasonal jobs into full-time positions for the longer fire seasons.
NIFC spokesperson Jessica Gardetto said the goal is to help improve their way of life, while also recruiting and retaining more wildland firefighters.
Gardetto said federal agencies will not begin to see the staffing effects of law until next fire season because they do most of their hiring in the fall which was around the same time Congress passed the law. She said leadership does believe the law will certainly entice new and former wildland firefighters to join crews in 2023.
Oregon faces firefighter shortage as it looks toward wildfire season
This year's fire season could be a challenging one for crews in Oregon. They're dealing with a firefighter shortage and a delayed pay raise. Sen. Ron Wyden visited Southern Oregon Tuesday to get an update on this year's fire season from state fire officials. Wyden has been pressuring the Biden administration to speed up a promised pay increase for wildland firefighters. Congress approved $600 million last year to raise firefighter pay, but that’s been delayed by over a month.
Oregon wildfires offer new clues on forest management
In the Pacific Northwest, land managers should focus on fire-resistant construction and fire suppression, not big forest management projects, a research paper on the Labor Day 2020 fires said.
Even the ‘Good Fires’ Can Now Turn Disastrous
But Pyne is most focused on what he calls “working with wildfires”: a more open and fluid approach that treats those that begin with an accidental or natural ignition almost like prescribed burns by guiding them toward useful spread. “I wish the agencies were a little more forthright about this” — that some remote fires can just be left to burn, he said. “It’s legal, it’s legitimate. But it can also seem evasive, a little sub rosa,” especially against a backdrop of growing fire anxiety across the West, driven not just by the fires themselves but the smoke they produce. “People get hay fever in the spring,” Pyne said. “Well, you may be dealing with smoke fever in the fall.”
Cal Fire fumbles key responsibilities to prevent catastrophic wildfires despite historic budget
Cal Fire has publicly signaled a commitment to rebalancing its priorities. But a monthslong investigation by The California Newsroom, a public media collaboration, found that the department continues to fumble key responsibilities related to forest management and wildfire mitigation.
Trial by fire: The trauma of fighting California’s wildfires
As California’s wildfires intensify and burn year-round, its firefighters suffer from the increasing strain of post-traumatic stress. Decisions made while struggling with lack of sleep, long hours and stress could endanger not just the crews, but the public, too. What is the state doing to respond? Overwhelmingly, California’s firefighters and mental-health experts say, “Not nearly enough.” Cal Fire has been slow to address PTSD and suicides among its ranks, and firefighters routinely encounter problems getting workers’ comp insurance to cover their care.