Run to the Water. Run for Your Life…Updated 8/23
If you’ve ever visited the beautiful Lahaina town on the west coast of Maui you cannot help but feel a huge loss, not only for the lives lost, a number that is likely to increase, but for the loss of Hawaiian history.
Chief Moore's New Direction on Prescribed Fire
In his 2023 Letter of Direction to USDA wildland firefighters, Chief Randy Moore made a significant change in tone and language when it comes to the use of prescribed fire.
Big Iron & Big Profit
As is in vogue today, business experts are allowed to pose as experts in any and all things. I caught this review of the new book, Running Out of Time: Wildfires and Our Imperiled Forests in Wildfire Today.
Jetstream
“While most of the United States is coming out of a wet winter, large fires are ravaging Alberta and British Columbia just north of Montana. Ninety large fires have burned a million acres in 2023, burning 150 times more area than fires in the last five years combined. While May is typical fire season in western Canada, fires are going to new extremes this year, burning
In Oregon’s 2020 fires, highly managed forests burned the most
This record-breaking fire season has re-ignited discussions about causes of severe fires. One long-standing narrative is that fire suppression has resulted in ‘overgrown’ forests that fuel larger and more intense fires than occur under more intense management (the “fuels narrative”). This narrative, promoted by timber interests and the president, among others, is irrelevant within the context of Oregon's major western Cascades fires.
America’s Black Tuesday
“This could be the greatest loss of life and structures… in state history.”
Incendiary Rhetoric: Climate Change, Wildfire, and Ecological Fire Management
Incendiary Rhetoric: Climate Change,Wildfire, and Ecological Fire Management is a guide intended to help forest and climate activists talk to broad audiences about wildfire in the era of climate change, in ways that are grounded in the best available fire and climate science and progressive fire management policy.
PYROGANDA: Creating New Terms and Identities for Promoting Fire Use in Ecological Fire Management
Agencies, organizations, and institutions in the wildland fire community will have to engage in an explicit pro-fire “pyroganda” campaign to help counter its historic anti-fire propaganda and inspire necessary changes in consciousness and behavior in the public and fire management workforce. As part and parcel of this effort, FUSEE proposes renaming wildland firefighters as fire rangers.
Run to the Water
Christmas turkey in Australia this year was served smoked, if not charred. In the final days of 2019 the increasingly familiar eerie visions of a day sky turned to night with embers flying in all directions were dished up on the people of New South Wales and Victoria, Australia. Sirens sounded out and residents were told to flee to the water…to the beaches. Many huddled together in small groups out in the sand, others staged a Dunkirk-style apocalyptic retreat under red skies onto the water in boats.
10 Ways that the Climate Crisis, Wildfires and Militarism are Intertwined
The war on wildland fire is simply an extension of our country’s extreme militarism – a place where veterans of foreign wars, wanna-be cops, and other conservative-minded men, mostly, can assemble, bond, and wrap themselves in a narrative of strength, heroism and sacrifice. There is a place for men and women to suppress fires near homes and vulnerable infrastructure. However, claiming glorious victory when fires are easiest to suppress, go out on their own, or when a break in the weather moderates conditions is disingenuous.
Spotlight: FUSEE Board Members
Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology would like to welcome its two newest Board Members, Bill Tripp and Taro Pusina.
Forests, Wildfire and Climate Change
Wild re has been an integral part of western forests for thousands of years, but in recent decades con icts between people and re have increased dramatically. Climate change is bringing hotter, drier conditions to western forests, which is increasing re activity, and scientists predict that this trend will continue as the planet heats up. This guide is intended to help climate and forest activists understand the unique dynamics between forests, wild re, and climate so we can collectively chart a new path towards community resilience to the impacts of climate change. By modernizing our wild re policies, we can protect homes and communities while restoring the important role that re plays in the forest ecosystems of the American West.
Global Warming and Wildfire: Don’t Panic!
An activist guide to understanding our human relationship with wildland fire and global climate change.
The Jordan Cove Fracked Gas Pipeline: A Threat to Communities and Firefighters
Storymap depicting the threats the Jordan Cove Energy Project in Oregon would pose to communities and firefighters.
Stephen Pyne on Recent California Wildfires
Stephen Pyne, a FUSEE collaborator and ally, as well as distinguished fire historian, was joined last Friday by Alexandra von Meier, and urban electrical grid specialist, to discuss the devastation witnessed during the past two seasons of California wildfires and how this might be avoided in the future. Their discussion was moderated by Ira Flatow, on Science Friday, a radio show heard on public radio stations across the country and distributed by WNYC Studios.
History never repeats itself but it rhymes: Rim Fire redux
The year was 1961. President Robert F. Kennedy was President of the United States. The Central Valley Project had been built and the growing San Joaquin Valley agribusiness gave way to traditional ranchland in the oak savanna of the Sierra foothills southwest of Yosemite National Park. The Harlow Fire started on July 10th. The following day it exploded, burning over 20,000 acres in two hours, vaporizing the communities of Ahwahnee and Nipinnawasee, and killing an elderly couple. Supposedly, that run on the Harlow Fire was one of the fastest ever recorded. The communities would never recover.
Managing Wildfire: What Works and What Doesn't
We now have solid science and decades of experience managing western wildfires. But in our hyper-partisan age, the issue of fire management is becoming as politicized as timber management was in the 80’s and 90’s. In an attempt to contribute to a fact based debate, I present a brief summary of respected, published findings on wildfire management.