Local firefighters tend to flames and mental health
Firefighters are often expected to work through anything without concern for their own well-being, according to wildland firefighter Courtney Kaltenbach, who is employed by a local contractor.
“Firefighting is an extremely patriarchal, masculine field, so it’s dominated by a culture of toxic masculinity, which is ‘don’t show any weakness,’ so already there’s a huge difficulty trying to change the culture around talking about mental health,” Kaltenbach said. “It’s especially difficult I think for people who aren’t men, mental health-wise, to exist in that world.”
Kaltenbach mentioned that in their experience, they have only just begun discussing mental health in their training process, but it is far from adequate.
Can mushrooms prevent megafires?
If you’ve gone walking in the woods out West lately, you might have encountered a pile of sticks. Or perhaps hundreds of them, heaped as high as your head and strewn about the forest like Viking funeral pyres awaiting a flame.
These slash piles are an increasingly common sight in the American West, as land managers work to thin out unnaturally dense sections of forests — the result of a commitment to fire suppression that has inadvertently increased the risk of devastating megafires.
Firefighters across Canada focusing more on mental health as wildfire seasons worsen
Fighting wildfires has always been a physically demanding job, but attention is increasingly being paid in Canada to its psychological toll.
Wildland firefighters and professionals who work with them say the job has become mentally tougher as fires have become larger and more complex, increasingly getting close to or reaching areas where people live.
"I hear it over and over again that these are unprecedented conditions, and yet every every other week there's new unprecedented conditions," said Steve Lemon, an incident commander with BC Wildfire Service.
Debate Over Wildfire Retardants Continues in CA
Some groups are pushing to stop the use of fire retardants dropped at wildfires, saying the impact on nature is worse than the fires they halt.
As California fire season begins, debate over wildfire retardant heats up
When it comes to preventative spraying along roadsides, Timothy Ingalsbee, a former wildland firefighter and executive director of the nonprofit Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology, argued that resources would be better spent hardening homes and communities and conducting controlled burns, which are “more effective and actually less damaging than chemical warfare.”
Ingalsbee has long been critical of how fire authorities use air-dropped retardant in wilderness areas, saying the material is overused and frequently deployed in areas where its effectiveness is limited. The new product, he said, will only help the manufacturer earn even more profits. He calls the use of both materials “a government boondoggle.” “It is true that a lot of ignitions do start along roads, but how many roads do we have?” he said.
The emerging science of tracing smoke back to wildfires
Smoke traveling long distances is “the new normal,” he said. This reality challenges the ways governments have historically dealt with air quality, through regulations like the Clean Air Act. Now that pollution is increasingly crossing borders, Dr. Lin said, the way that people manage air quality should evolve accordingly.
Biden’s Forest Service is dragging its feet on protecting ancient trees from logging
Critics say it is time for the White House to make demands of the Forest Service instead of letting the agency advance pro-logging policies.
Billions are being spent to turn the tide on the US West’s wildfires. It won’t be enough
With climate change making the situation increasingly dire, mixed early results from the administration’s initiative underscore the challenge of reversing decades of lax forest management and aggressive fire suppression that allowed many woodlands to become tinderboxes. The ambitious effort comes amid pushback from lawmakers dissatisfied with progress to date and criticism from some environmentalists for cutting too many trees.
“What’s driving all of this is insect infestation, drought stress, and all of that is related to the climate,” said Wild Heritage chief scientist Dominick DellaSalla. “I don’t think you can get out of it by thinning.”
These bleating firefighters have an insatiable appetite for wildfire fuel — weeds
Goats are just about the best when it comes to clearing large swaths of weeds on steep terrain, said Michael Choi, co-owner of the Mariposa-based herding company Fire Grazers Inc. Sheep are pickier eaters, he said, “and if you tried to put a cow in this canyon, it might start rolling down the hill. Goats are natural mountaineers.”
Wildfires in the U.S.: Changing Our Response Is the Focus of the FireGeneration Collaborative
Reed is now dedicated to restoring humans’ relationship to fire. He's a graduate student, Indigenous fire practitioner and wildland firefighter, and he’s teaming up with other young fire practitioners to change the way the U.S. responds to the wildfire crisis.
‘First of its kind’ fund established to provide liability insurance for prescribed, cultural burning
The National Park Service says that prescribed burns are conducted regularly throughout the state to eliminate hazardous fuel loads near developed areas, manage landscapes, restore natural woodlands, and for research purposes. But what happens if a controlled fire becomes uncontrollable?
This question has been answered in the form of the “Prescribed Fire Liability Claims Fund Pilot.”
FireGeneration wants young people to help shape wildfire policies
The FireGen cohort believes that getting more young and Indigenous people involved in developing wildfire policies can increase support for proactive tactics like prescribed burns. It’s a shift that Tim Ingalsbee, an instructor at the University of Oregon and a former wildland firefighter, said he’s noticed among his students in recent years.
“Young people want to get involved in putting good fire on the ground,” said Ingalsbee. “Thirty years ago, no one asked me that. They all wanted to be firefighters.”
Wildfires were once slowed by night and winter. Not anymore.
We live on a flammable planet. The public and government agencies need to move from an emergency and reactive mind-set about wildfire to a proactive, planning mind-set that emphasizes resilience. Data and partnerships can help: We can use satellites to give us early warning of wildfires the way we do with dangerous storms. We can use social media to better understand and manage evacuation chokepoints. We can use housing data to identify highly flammable neighborhoods.
‘The fire equivalent of an ice age’: Humanity enters a new era of fire
Sooner, rather than later, it may all start to feel normal. There will be a smoke season, just like there is now an allergy season, Pyne said. Fires will become a part of the rhythm of our everyday lives.
Prescribed burns, dramatically cutting carbon emissions — all of that will help soften the changes to come. But there is no getting around the fact that most of humanity is now plunged into an extra fiery age. “We have created a Pyrocene,” Pyne wrote. “Now we have to live in it.”
Will wildfires like these become the new normal?
In places that become hot and dry, wildfires can become more prevalent or intense.
The unifying fact is that more heat is the new normal.
The most efficient way to keep temperatures from rising further is to reduce the combustion of fossil fuels. They are the drivers of heat and its hazards.
Canada’s ability to prevent forest fires lags behind the need
“We need to do more to get ahead of the problem,” said Mike Flannigan, who studies wildfires at Thompson Rivers University in Kamloops, British Columbia, a community in the heart of that province’s wildfire country. “And progress on that has been slow, primarily because we are kind of stuck in this paradigm that fire suppression is the solution.”
Forest managers using lightning-caused wildfire near Flagstaff for ecological benefit
The Volunteer Fire was initially reported as just a single acre two weeks ago within the scar of the 2021 Rafael Fire. But following the burn-out operations, it’s grown much larger though managers intend to keep it within a broader 3,580-acre footprint. In the coming days they plan to ignite another 1,800 acres, which will likely produce smoke that’ll impact Flagstaff. It’s among several prescribed and managed wildfires currently taking place in the region.
‘Missed opportunity?’ Records detail Forest Service response to Beachie Creek Fire before blowup
The documents and actions illustrate a team trying to put out a fire with no ground crew availability, said Michael Beasley, deputy fire chief of Yosemite National Park from 2001 to 2009 and a retired interagency fire chief.
“They dumped a lot of water on it, they used a lot of resources and spent a lot of money," he said. "That wasn't for show."
Beasley said his only question about tactics was: “I would say in my day we never did water drops without a crew on the ground, because you really need that ground crew to be effective in actually putting out the fire. These days, hotshot crews have more ability to turn down dangerous missions and it has become more common to have aircraft dropping water without ground support.”
Three national forests in Colorado receive nearly $47 million for wildfire barriers
North of Pagosa Springs in Archuleta County, the 2021 fuel break project cleared shrubs and small trees across about 100 acres in a narrow, 25-foot-wide strip along Fourmile Road. During wildfires, similar undergrowth can act like a ladder and carry flames higher into tree canopies, which helps the fire spread.
Clearing it away from roads, rivers and other landscape features helps slow down wildfires, reinforces existing barriers and enlarges the buffer zone. Wildland crews use these fuel breaks as safe spaces to work while battling fires or assisting with prescribed burns.
Readers respond: Invest in workforce with Oregon Conservation Corps
The Oregon Conservation Corps offers a glimpse of the future community wildfire preparation workforce needed to live with fire on the land but keep it out of our homes. This science-based, socially-progressive program should be expanded, even exported to other western states, and the Legislature would be wise to fully renew its funding as an investment in youth and rural communities.