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Comment by hydrox24 | Hacker News Reader

I want to know if backburning is a common practice in California, or in the USA at all.

In Australia a big part of a Firey's job is running controlled burns in the (relatively) low fire risk season to keep the amount of flammable material around cities and property to a minimum.

It is a continuation, in a way, of a much more ancient indiginous practice of regularly burning large swathes of bush. It is very much a part of the natural ecosystem here.

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Im a wldland firefighter from the northern Rockies, just returned from a deployment to the Woolsey incident (LA and Ventura counties).

Yes, prescribed burns are common in the off season for all fire districts. However, CalFire has some unique challenges [1] that most of the other states do not have to deal with when it comes to air quality and sufficient water conditions during their shrinking off season. https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-he...

I'll add statistics for the 2018 fire season that includes southern and northern California [1] at a combined 55,000 acres versus the northwest (WA, OR) of a similar geographic size [2] and atmospheric conditions to Northern CA at over 100,000 acres in prescribed burns.

[1] https://www.nifc.gov/nicc/sitreprt.pdf (page 6) [2] https://www.nifc.gov/nicc/

Proper forest management, including controlled burns, have always been difficult due to the politically powerful ignorant.

Because controlled burns experienced increasing friction, policy evolved to a "let-burn" policy for naturally-started fires (brush gets cleared without anyone having to take responsibility). Problem is, if an area is unnaturally overgrown, fire can have disproportionate severity and become impossible to constrain.

So controlled burns are definitely done, but it's difficult. There's issues with air quality after a burn, waiting for ideal conditions, and sometimes even losing control of the burns. Don't know how that compares with Australia.

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/california-will-se...

https://www.kqed.org/science/1927354/controlled-burns-can-he...

All of these things are issues in Australia, though out of control prescribed burns are very uncommon.

Basically all of the northern areas in the Northern Territory are burnt once every two years or so.

One thing to consider is that Indigenous Australians have been doing regular burns for tens of thousands of years. It's pretty well understood how the land burns, how often it needs to be burnt and what good/safe conditions look like.

99% Invisible has some amazing episodes on this topic. Apparently controlled burns used to be a tjing, until society collectively decided all wildfire is bad and started the abstinence approach of sorts. As a result fires are a little less frequent, but much much much bigger when they do happen.

And they’ve been happening more and more anyway.

Wildfire is a natural part of the ecosystem in CA as well. Forests need it to stay healthy and clear the underbrush. But humans decided fire is bad because we like to live in fire areas.

It happens a fair amount here in the hills of Southern California, although at a much smaller scale than I understand happens down under. The goal here seems to be to burn out a buffer around homes rather than using fire to manage the whole forest.

The flora is quite different, too — a coastal live oak takes way longer to grow back than a eucalyptus (and is also less ridiculously flammable when established). So burning huge swaths here would generally not be a great thing.

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