A wildfire is bearing down on a tiny town. And hardly anyone is leaving.
The Pioneer Fire started nearly two months ago and at that time it was 10 miles from Stehekin. Now it’s only a mile and a half away, after burning through more than 33,000 acres. A week ago, authorities issued a Level 3 evacuation order for the roughly 100 people who live in Stehekin, instructing them to “go now.” Washington state Gov. Jay Inslee (D) urged residents to leave in a video message this week, saying that “their presence make it much more difficult for our firefighters to fight the fire.”
But Davis and many of his neighbors have chosen to stay, and some intend to fight the fire themselves.
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.
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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.
As wildfires rage, forecasters test new way to warn people near flames
Improved warnings are important but could also create a false sense of security among emergency responders, said Sarah McCaffrey, a retired research social scientist with the U.S. Forest Service.“ Most of the fires that are deadly — they’re deadly because from the moment of ignition to when they affect a lot of people is a very short time period,” she said. “There can be an underlying assumption that time will be on the side of the people making the warnings.”
There is also no guarantee people will receive a warning, even if one is issued quickly.
Millions of Californians live near oil and gas wells that are in the path of wildfires
“Wildfires are increasingly burning in oil fields over the past four decades, and it’s a trend that’s very likely to continue throughout the rest of the century, including near some densely populated parts of California,” González said.
The researchers also found that exposure to oil wells in the path of wildfires was unevenly distributed. Black, Latino and Native American people faced disproportionate risk.
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.
Artificial intelligence can be our first line of defense in limiting the effects of wildfires
“The AI platform is a new tool in the toolbox and allows data to drive firefighting decisions, which saves lives, protects habitats, and infrastructure. In its first season, the AI platform was utilized in all 21 CAL FIRE Dispatch Centers and detected over 1,200 fires across California, beating 911 call reporting over 30% of the time.”
By burning down buildings, insurers want to change how they’re built
The message to homebuilders is stark: Homes in certain parts of the United States must now be constructed with wildfires in mind, or they most likely will not be insured, which would mean they couldn’t be bought with a mortgage.
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.
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Timothy Ingalsbee, the executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics and Ecology said sensational media coverage of wildfires creates and instills fears of a natural process. Activists said the timber industry and politicians bank on these worries.
“Scientists call it a natural disturbance but I prefer to call it an ecological stimulus,” Ingalsbee said. “Fire is nature’s recycler. It helps create a diversity of habitats.”
Ingalsbee said fires burn down small trees while larger and older ones are able to resist the same type of damage. Timber companies, on the other hand, cut down the larger trees to maximize profits, leaving behind younger and highly flammable forest.
Fueled by climate change, extreme wildfires have doubled in 20 years
“We’ve had this paradox where the amount of burning on Earth is declining … and yet we are having fires that are more extreme, more damaging,” said Stephen Pyne, fire historian and emeritus professor at Arizona State University. “How do we reconcile these two?”
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.”
Scientists seek ways to protect PNW rainforests from wildfires
For instance, in a drier forest, the intensity of a fire is constrained mainly by how much burnable material sits on the ground. Counterintuitively, aggressively fighting too many fires in such an ecosystem can make future wildfires worse, because frequent, moderate fires clear away some of the smaller trees and undergrowth that could power an even larger, more severe fire. That’s why prescribed fire — the strategy of deliberately setting a moderate fire — works so well in many forests. It’s also why many ecologists argue that some wildfires should be allowed to burn, and that overzealous firefighting can worsen the risk of an uncontrollable megafire. In a dry forest, a smaller good fire makes an extreme bad fire less likely.
In controversial push to thin forests to prevent wildfire, concerns grow over loss of old growth
Conservationists say timber companies, brought in to assist with forest thinning for wildfire, are also taking old growth trees most resilient to fire
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A criminal case was dismissed Wednesday against a U.S. Forest Service employee arrested in 2022 by a rural Oregon sheriff after a prescribed burn on federal land unexpectedly spread to private property and burned roughly 20 acres.
Umatilla tribal leader passes the drip torch to future generations learning about prescribed fire
When it comes to fire, Huesties plays two roles: firefighter and fire starter. He fights fires that overtake buildings in town, then he sets fires to wild areas as a way to tamp down overgrowth.
He said the tribe continues to struggle to recruit young tribal members into firefighting, but maybe they would be interested if they got a taste of the excitement. He himself learned to love the adrenaline from the job.
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Bend is a national test site to expand prescribed fires close to communities
"There is a balance to be struck," Larkin said. "We know that every time we do a burn in this area we know we are going to introduce smoke into the community. With prescribed fire, we know when that smoke is going to come in and we have the opportunity to limit how much smoke comes into the community. The idea is by doing this work, we prevent future times when we have wildfire smoke coming in for extended periods of time in amounts that make life really unhealthy for the town."