California’s Wildfire Policy Backfired (2019) | Hacker News Reader

California’s Wildfire Policy Backfired (2019)

motherjones.com

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Reminder: Southern California's wildfire regime is not Northern California's. In NorCal, fire suppression makes fuel build up and forest fires burn too hot. In SoCal, chaparral wildland burns two to three times more often than it did pre-contact.

The main reason for the increase was that the old primary ignition source was lightning, while now there are lots of sources: catalytic converters getting too hot, discarded cigarettes, farming machine activity, and arsonists are a few. And of course, lightning implies higher humidity, unlike the offshore wind-driven fires we get now, so the intensity is worse now. Our recent lightning-sparked fires now seem like something of a departure from normal.

Controlled burns could help in SoCal, but I'm guessing only to reduce fuel load and create a temporary firebreak.

Really good points, and really calls into focus the need to empower individual counties to define their own fire policies (I think that's the right scale).

Counties would be good. Or something similar to our air quality districts, which are almost county-shaped with a few added merges and splits: https://ww3.arb.ca.gov/capcoa/dismap.htm

In BC there are Fire Centres which have their own level of management:

https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/safety/wildfire-status/ab...

The province is broken down by geography, terrain, and biome, so that specific resources and skillsets can be developed for each potential fire condition.

So I guess The West Wing was right about this back in 2001

> Josh: Putting out fires isn't necessarily our policy?

> Sam: Fire's good for the environment under certain circumstances. Forests have a natural cycle that requires purging burns to reinvigorate growth.

> Josh: Someone just said that to you, right?[1]

[1] http://westwingwiki.com/2014/04/season-3-episode-3-ways-mean...

Article:

> The Forest Service now admits that suppression backfired; excluding fire created an unnatural build-up of dry brush and overcrowding of trees that’s partly fueling today’s mega-fires.

In a fantasy book from 1998, the third book in the Circle of Magic quartet [0], a green mage gets extremely pissed off at a fire mage who between him and his father had been preventing forest fires for decades. By the end of the book, just such a "mega-fire" formed in the built-up dry material on the forest floor.

It kinda seems to me like this is a decently well-known effect that the government has been just been slow to acknowledge...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circle_of_Magic

> It kinda seems to me like this is a decently well-known effect that the government has been just been slow to acknowledge...

I think the problem is that with controlled fires, there is always a risk they could get out of control and burn down some properties, which will probably end the career of any politician who supported the decision/policy to not suppress that fire.

Suppressing fires is safer in the short run, while creating problems in the long run.

Maintenance burns getting out of control has happened several times in the past. That's the reason they changed what they called them from "controlled burns" to "prescribed burns". They got tired of the "That fire wasn't very controlled hahaha" jokes.

It's really hard to reconcile the fact that we need to build a lot more housing in California with the fact that we can't keep building in places where that housing is going to burn down in the near future. I don't know how long it's going to be until we realize that in certain areas, single family homes are non-viable for the middle and lower class, since we need medium to high density housing in the valleys below hills where fire risk is at its highest and insurance rates should be obscene.

I don't think that's the problem.

People, especially as they get older, tend to want more space. Being close to nature -- and California, in those rare moments when it isn't on fire, has beautiful nature -- is also a big draw.

The people living in those homes aren't, broadly speaking, lower-class. They live out there precisely because they aren't interested in medium- or high-density housing, for a variety of reasons.

I would say the primary cause is overzealous environmental legislation, brought to you by the same people that have fought tooth-and-nail against nuclear power -- and thus for burning lots of coal -- for the past seventy years.

Clean air is great. I like strong emissions standards on cars and factories. But controlled burns have been absolutely hobbled for years by regulators and environmental groups.

One of my nephews is a firefighter, currently in California. He'll rant your ear off about this.

If your nephew doesn’t mention liability concerns as a reason controlled burns aren’t done then you probably shouldn’t listen to him.

Light night starts a fire, it burns down a house, who is liable?

Government in the name of fire prevention starts a fire, it gets out of control and burns down a house, who is liable?

You know, that’s a fair point that I hadn’t thought about. I naïvely assumed that regulatory frameworks would take care of this, and I’m curious what legal precedent there is?

The headline is misleading. The original policy was the US Forest service - a federal agency.

As for calfire and the state being reluctant to authorize controlled burns, well given the risk of wildfire and having controlled burns escape, we probably need to not just be slack about who can burn what when, with which supervision.

The title does do the state of California a disservice. We already have a president* who is attempting to blame state leaders for fire, as a political fight. When the federal lands and federal agencies are also responsible for this as well.

The notion that not having smaller burns leads to larger fires is well established going back decades. We need to accelerate our adaptation to the new drier climate. This article could help. But give the blameology a rest.

Edit: also note the editorialization of the title. The original article title was a “native wisdom” approach, which got dropped for “some reason.”

The federal policy stopped in 1968.

Enthusiasts of subtraction of real numbers will note that was 52 years ago.

I'm a California native, and a quick look at past wildfires[1] confirms my hunch, that the vast majority -- 82% -- of California's most devastating wildfires have occurred in the past twenty years.

One peak happened in 2008, the other in 2018. Pretty sure Trump wasn't president in 2008.

California absolutely has done a poor job of state infrastructure management, across the board.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires

The bulk of public land in California is Federally controlled - BLM, USFS

True! Forty-five percent, in point of fact. That land is still jointly managed with the state[1], though.

[1] https://www.blm.gov/programs/public-safety-and-fire/fire-and...

(Also, I learned something new today -- thanks!)

Australia actually does a lot in its fire-prone areas: https://www.dpaw.wa.gov.au/management/fire/prescribed-burnin...

As an aside, some plants have in fact adapted to release their seeds in the event of a fire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotiny

Protection of housing from wildfires is somewhat a solved problem thanks to the pioneering research of Jack Cohen, and this excellent episode of the 99% Invisible podcast is well worth a listen:

https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/built-to-burn/

There's plenty of youtube vidoes featuring his research too:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL_syp1ZScM

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=jack+cohen+wild...

Perhaps a good way to encourage the work to be done is through the offering of lower insurance premiums for housing so protected.

When I was in Riverside California last year I saw either like this orange or pink stuff on the mountains. Is that some kind of fire suppression powder or something?

Yup, it's intentionally colored so the aircraft can see where they're dropping it, but unfortunately it can leave a mark on the terrain for a long time

> The Humboldt event united unlikely allies: Trump-supporting ranchers worked side-by-side with retired hippies and back-to-the landers

Maybe unlikely if you just look at the D and the R, but non-politicized, local issues like this will still get widespread interest across party lines.

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