How can wildfires like those Oregon experienced in 2020 be avoided? Scientists and loggers have different ideas.
“The 21st century climate is rapidly ending the effectiveness of our 20th century firefighting strategies and tactics,” said Dr. Timothy Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology. He spoke on the Oregon Wild panel in October. He said aggressive firefighting is becoming more dangerous to firefighters and more expensive to taxpayers and isn’t effective at stopping fires.
California firefighters critically injured setting backfires
“Their burnout may have backfired,” said Timothy Ingalsbee, a former federal firefighter who reviewed the report at the request of The Associated Press. “That’s a horrible thought.” ”These were explosive fire conditions — the classic what we call ‘blowup conditions’ — and the crews were really, really pushing the envelope” by trying to set backfires, said Ingalsbee, executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology.
Experts frustrated by stalled efforts to counter megafires
"This is really a healthy-looking forest, to me,” said Beasley, looking over a spot where his crews intentionally burned 5,000 acres in 2002 as part of Yosemite National Park’s pioneering program to use prescribed fires under controlled conditions to ease the threat of extreme wildfire. The retired forest fire chief – a designated “burn boss” at the park for a decade-- looked up into a tree blackened at its base from the megafire seven years before. “This large tree is still alive, right here,” Beasley said. “It looks like a red fir -- it's still alive because all the fuels were cleared away in 2002 when we burned here.’’ Beasley said that’s because his crews removed a million tons of so-called surface and ladder fuels – a century’s buildup of small trees, dead needles twigs and branches – from the forest floor. Without the surface fuels, he says, the Rim fire still burned but did not shoot up and engulf entire trees.
Experts To Western States: Time To Finally Fight Wildfires With More Fire
If historically flawed forest management is half the problem here – battling most every fire - the other half is the world's warming climate with hotter, drier conditions igniting a Century of built-up fuel.