Why we need to fight fire with fire
If you were anywhere on the west coast this summer, escaping the smoke from the raging wildfires was nearly impossible. For most of us, this meant waking up to red, apocalyptic skies and not being able to leave home for days because of the unhealthy air quality. For some, it also meant fleeing from homes and losing land and property to wildfires.
I’ve been on the west coast for three years now and, while there’s always been some smoke every summer — sometimes from California, sometimes from Canada — this summer was an outlier. So, what happened this year? Was it the impact of climate change? Or was it because of bad forest management, as President Trump is heard saying?
Since I know next to nothing about wildfires and wanted to learn more about how the system worked, I reached out to Sam Schnabel, a firefighter for the National Forest Service, to help break it all down.
Sam, who grew up in the Midwest, has spent the last four years fighting fires on the west coast.
“Every fire has a name!” he remarked, recounting how surprised he was at the whole culture and industry surrounding firefighting here that is practically absent east of the Mississippi.
As we dug into understanding wildfires, it pretty quickly became clear that, unlike some natural disasters, like hurricanes and earthquakes, the strategy for tackling wildfires is not as simple as detect and mitigate. The ecological system around fires is more complex and is actually more under human control than I expected.
“Most of the American landscape has evolved with frequent, low intensity fires,” Sam explained. Fire is an integral part of the forest ecosystem and is important for developing a healthy forest. Fire helps give life to the forest: it returns nutrients to the soil, it opens up the forest to more sunlight helping young plants grow, and it triggers the release of seeds for some plants.
Native American tribes recognized the importance of fire, and converted it into a practical tool through prescribed burning, the act of willingly burning down parts of the forest in a controlled way to clear out thick undergrowth, fallen branches, and dead trees.
Studies in fire history show that the aboriginals in Australia practiced a form of prescribed burning, as well.
Prescribed burning converts fire into a tool we can use, instead of a disaster we have to react to.
This practice not only improves forest health but also prioritizes human safety because it reduces the buildup of flammable content on the forest floor and thus, minimizes the risk of massive wildfires in the summer.
Today, prescribed burning can be more data-driven, taking into account factors like outside temperature and type of underbrush to determine the size and duration of fire needed.
Unfortunately, western settlers did not adopt Native American practices and limited prescribed burning.
In fact, after severe wildfires in Yellowstone in 1988 became politicized, forest policy doubled down on controlling wildfires immediately, regardless of whether it was causing danger to people or not. The forest service infamously had a 10 a.m. rule, where fires had to be put out by 10 a.m. the next day.
While these practices may have made sense in the short-term, in the long run, they’ve led to a build-up of wildfire risk, with forest underbrush piling up like kindling, waiting for lightning or human error to catch fire.
To make things worse, more people are migrating into regions close to forests, increasing the risk of human error causing fires (think: utility lines sparking or gender-reveal parties).
Additionally, climate change is making environments drier, hotter, and windier — all prime factors in increasing the chances of a wildfire.
So, Trump is partly right, better forest management is part of the answer, but so is better land management policy and adaptation to climate risk.
For Sam, this meant for a busy September spent with other firefighters in ‘fire camps,’ driving engines with water out to douse fires, digging handlines, and cutting down trees to stop fire from spreading further.
For a service that is becoming increasingly essential, the fire crew is made up of mostly seasonal workers with low wages and poor benefits, especially mental health benefits, which are critical to help with on-the-job trauma, like seeing people lose their homes or being away from family.
But, of course, any improvements for the firefighters are dependent on policy changes and increased access to limited public funding.
As with most things, doing better here requires us to shift our mindset and take a longer-term view.
We can only hope that the devastating fire season this year can help spark necessary change.
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