Smokey Bear to Trump: You're AWOL!
A USDA-approved mask mandate outlines the consequences for employees who refuse to wear approved face coverings to prevent the spread of Covid-19.
Native Forests Need Native Fires
This is a transcript of a speech that was given at the "Traditional Fire Use and the National Fire Plan Conference" hosted by the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians, Grand Ronde, Oregon, on June 12, 2002.
Solemn and Steadfast in the Year of Living Dangerously
Firefighters working on the line will face extreme difficulty maintaining healthy distance from each other.
Locked down and unequal: The looming shortage of firefighting crews in California
Over 1,400 inmates and employees at San Quentin Prison have tested positive for COVID-19. Six on death row have died of the disease. A growing public health crisis in the Bay Area, itself, transfers from San Quentin are responsible for COVID-19 being introduced into the Susanville prison population and the Conservation Camp of firefighters there. In Northern California last week, during the run-up to the 4th of July holiday, only 30 of 77 inmate crews were available in Northern California. That’s 800 fewer wildland firefighters available to dig lines, put in hoselays, and save homes and communities.
Head Fire
…I remember my hardhat being nearly blown off my head by the B-1 bomber from nearby Ellsworth Air Force Base passing low overhead at nearly treetop level. Myself and a squad of firefighters were in positions all around the amphitheater at the base of the “heads”, as they were affectionately known.
The Science Basis for Ecological Fire Management
An introductory guide to the literature of Ecological Fire Management. This database provides an introduction to the fire science literature that gives evidence of a paradigm shift and validates the need for EFM. The database is organized by key topics in fire science and management that are also often the subject of public and policy debates over forest management.
Short synopses of each topic synthesizes some of the main papers, and each section will include bibliographic references and excerpts from of key publications. The papers cited all contribute to a growing literature that may be the science basis for developing policies, programs, and projects that implement EFM.
The Literature of Ecological Fire Management
An Unfolding Bibliography for an Emerging New Paradigm. This is a list of the best peer-reviewed publications for providing the scientific foundation for Ecological Fire Management.
Key Covid-19 Policy Documents
A compilation of the key policy documents that were published around the Covid-19 pandemic and wildland firefighters.
Covid-19 Wildland Firefighter Policy Synthesis
Synthesis of policy proposals gathered from a number of agency documents from spring 2020.
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.
We Need Progressive Fire Management in Southern Oregon
This is a proposal for fire management changes in Southwestern Oregon.
Oregon Governor Wildfire Response Council - A Lost Opportunity
This post concentrates on the work of the Fire Suppression Committee of the Governor's Wildfire Response Council (WRC), relying on draft policy recommendations issued on September 16, 2019
Analysis of policy recommendations by the Governor's Wildfire Response Council
This analysis concentrates on the work of the Fire Suppression Committee of the Governor's Wildfire Response Council (WRC), relying on draft policy recommendations issued on September 16, 2019.
We Had to Do Something: Futility and Fatality in Fighting the 2018 Mendocino Complex Fire
Fire managers felt pressure to “do something” to stop the spread of the Ranch Fire, attempting a hastily planned burnout along a bulldozer fireline. But this action contradicted the advice from Forest Service risk management experts who warned that aggressive firefighting tactics had low probabilities of success given record-level fuel dryness at the time.
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.
World on Fire
It's no wonder that we live in a society rife with depression, adolescent suicide, mass shootings, and opioid addiction. One might think that all this despair was driven solely by economic distress and hopelessness - the inability to even get one rung up on the ladder to prosperity, but I believe that there are deep feedback loops connecting humans and the natural world.
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.