FIGHT FIRE WITH FIRE | |
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By BRUCE BABBITT SECRETARY OF THE INTERIOR |
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The Next Chapter in the History of Fire Fighting
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In the year of El Niño and La Niña, I come in response to a seasonal disturbance that wreaks havoc in the West, costing businesses and property owners roughly one billion dollars in losses each year. I come to San Francisco because your city has stood at the very epicenter of increasingly destructive and expensive events. And I come to the Commonwealth Club because your leadership can help Californians slow, stop, and eventually reverse the downward spiral from this recurring threat. The threat I refer to, of course, is wildfire. That's a word loaded with connotations. So let me first define the issue, and the scope of the problem, before discussing what to do about it. We often think of wildfire as being all bad; just pure, plain, destructive evil. We all know Smokey Bear. We watched Bambi as children, and perhaps again as adults. The truth is that fire is timeless and essential. It is as necessary to California's forests, rangeland, and wildlife as rain and sun. Fire recycles nutrients, helps native trees reproduce, keeps some invasive weeds in check, renews soil, and supports fish and game habitat. We have learned, only recently, that to extinguish all blazes in the wild is like wiping out all predators from nature. Without fire, California has no circle of life; it loses balance. Fire, in short, is natural. We also typically lump wildfire in with events such as the Loma Prieta earthquake, Hurricane Bonnie, or Mount St. Helens. We assume there is nothing we can do about it in advance, and then wait for disaster relief to come afterward. The truth is that while wind speed, humidity, and temperature will always remain beyond our reach, we can control the key ingredient fire needs to burn: fuels. By fuels I mean those that grow naturally, unchecked in the wild and those built by humans in that wildland. Most important, we have long thought of wildfire as being something that happens "out there." Too often we considered wildfire a public lands problem, something for the federal government to handle alone. We read about fires ten years ago, or seemingly far away in Yellowstone, or on our national forests, all distant from our homes and families. No longer. With development in foothills and mountains, "out there" is now right next door. Men and women trained to protect trees are suddenly asked to protect structures and resorts -- often with deadly results. Federal firefighters can't -- and for safety's sake, shouldn't -- try to spread their resources so thin. All of this adds up to a fire problem on an historic scale, demanding a rapid, sustained, and coordinated response not just from Washington, but also from Sacramento, from county commissioners, city councils, and the private sector -- including realtors, farmers, insurance companies, landscape architects, and builders. Does my tone sound somewhat "alarmist?" Consider a brief history of firestorms in California:
In one typical national forest in the West, for example, fire before 1986 burned an average 3,000 acres each year. Since then fire has averaged 63,000 acres, a 21-fold increase. Modern infernos generate their own heat, gases, and wind, killing even fire-resistant old-growth ponderosa pine. Decades ago, taxpayers spent $100 million to fight fires in the U.S.; today we often spend $1 billion. And with new developments tucked into those dense fuels, the threat only gets worse. Each year in California, wildland fires consume an average of 700 homes, worth $165 million. Yet we build and grow ever faster: Statewide, there are now one million structures within the wildland/urban interface. Half the homes are located in very high fire hazard zones and would cost $50 billion to replace. Within four decades, as California's population doubles, the fastest growing counties -- Stanislaus, Calaveras, Sutter, Kern, and Contra Costa -- are among the most fire-prone in the state. California's Mediterranean fire-dependent climate -- combined with rapid growth into foothills and forests and budget austerity for local, state, and federal budgets -- intensifies the situation. The question is never whether fire will come, but when, where, and what kind. What are you doing about it? As I stated at the beginning, we can't change anything about Santa Ana winds or California's aridity. Nor do we want to eliminate all fire, everywhere, as "bad." What we can do, at the federal, state, and local levels, is manage the fuels fire needs to burn. Those fuels range from white fir growing amongst the ponderosa wilderness around Tahoe to the wood shake shingle roofs on houses in the East Bay. As those fuels overlap in a wildland/urban tinderbox, our jurisdictions and responsibilities must overlap as well. By teaming up, we can reduce the long-term losses, risks, and costs of fighting wildfire. We can take the heat out of fire -- saving lives, resources, and taxpayer money. I know we can because I have taken part in such efforts, personally, on the fireline. For the past several years I have worked as a red-carded firefighter to help suppress flames that threaten lives and property. I have seen private, local, state, and federal crews work together as effective units. More recently, I have used driptorches and flamethrowers; I've even taken advantage of lightning strikes to increase national efforts to "fight fire with fire." The change has come with a shift in federal wildland fire policy that I unveiled recently with Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman. We knew from science, and from fire scars, how long ago natural fire cleared out alien species, digested and recycled nutrients, and kept landscapes healthy, stable, and resilient. Cooler ground fires also burned in a mosaic, allowing for easier, safer, and cheaper management. Using the new policy, the Clinton Administration is making those exceptions the national rule, saving money and lives. This policy recognizes that we don't have a fire problem. We have a fuels problem. And therefore we must treat those fuels, prepare them to absorb the impact of fire, thinning and burning wildlands so that fire will lay down, and stay down, mimicking a pre-settlement fire, rather than crowning up into roaring infernos. The policy calls on us to increase the average size of individual burns. The Stanislaus River burn, complete in November 1995, burned 4,800 acres in a wildland/urban interface. More important, when a wildlfire later raced through the region, it laid down like a rug when it hit the burn. The same thing happened this season at Pinnacles National Park. Both fires show graphically how treatment helps us fight fire on our terms, in advance. The policy also costs money up front. When this Administration took office, for example, the Forest Service's hazard fuel reduction program in California spent roughly $1 million to burn less than 10,000 acres a year. Next year we've allocated $11 million to burn 100,000 acres. Now $100 per acre may seem steep. But any investment in prescribed burns is proving to be money in the bank. We now know from experience that pre-treatment saves money that would otherwise be lost in forest value and in trying to fight wildland fires everywhere. Recent Boise fires drained between $1,000 and $1,800 per acre in resource loss and suppression costs. By contrast, managers who invested $100 per acre in prescribed burns, as they did on the Stanislaus, slashed combined losses in half, saving the taxpayer's money and the firefighter's time. We are also discovering that prescribed fire is subject to economies of scale: It may cost $100 per acre to treat 4,300 acres, but just $35 per acre to treat 14,000 acres. A more sensitive issue is how to carry out the thinning that is in some cases a necessary prelude to restoring healthy fire. How, in the wake of the timber salvage fiasco, will we ensure that it is done responsibly? Mere "thinning" is an invitation to turn a forest into a tree farm. And timber companies have historically gone after the big and valuable old-growth trees. But these trees are not causing the fire hazard, and in most areas, the old growth has already been overcut, triggering loss of biodiversity and forest function. A forest is more than the sum of its cellulose; we must not sacrifice the integrity of creation at the altar of commercial timber production. If our forest patient has a case history of bad habits, our prescription must be to burn off unhealthy fat, not practice forest liposuction. Perhaps the most exciting new development of our campaign to "fight fire with fire" is the birth of a new kind of mobile wildland fire crew. There used to be three types of highly skilled teams: smokejumpers, helitack, and hotshots. Each branch excels at a certain kind of approach. Each elite team is unsurpassed at suppressing wildland fire in a given stage or geographical terrain. But as we move into the next chapter of fighting fire with fire, we need a skilled team to monitor and ignite prescribed fires that do not threaten lives or property. We need crews that can focus on these healthy burns and not be taken away to suppress other fires. In response to that demand, the National Park Service developed Prescribed Fire Support Modules, a pilot program of teams made up of five- seven- or ten-person fire crews. There are now six established crews, with bases at Zion in Utah, Yellowstone in Wyoming, Bandelier in New Mexico, Great Smokies in Tennessee, Buffalo National River in Arkansas, and here in Whiskeytown, California. In their first year, these new fire crews were in heavy demand, used not only by 28 National Park units, but also by the Forest Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Land Management, and the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. One module put the torch to a hazard fuel reduction burn right here at Golden Gate National Recreation Area. Today, requests come in faster than we can fill them, and we are looking at ways to expand the fire crews elsewhere. They are a national model. All that, you may say, is the easy part. Sequoia and Yosemite National Parks have been studying fire on a small scale for over a decade. Managing fire has always been your business. Managing people, however, is another issue entirely. Federal firefighters and land managers have no plans nor desire to delve into the business of developing land use plans, zoning, or building codes. Nor do they want to spend their time in your back yards, armed with pruning shears, to "lollipop" trees, cut branches that lean against roofs, or plant fire-resistant vegetation. These are, as they should be, state and local and private issues. And when it comes to treating fuels in advance of wildlfire, I am pleased to say, California is stepping up to the challenge. Just as homes and businesses are reaching farther up into the wildlands, proven approaches to dealing with fire are coming down to meet them. The California Fire Plan recognizes that fire is a necessity, that landowners and taxpayers can reduce costs by reducing fuels, and that we must work together, because fire does not recognize political boundaries. To that end, the plan involves the community, identifies assets at risk, develops pre-fire management solutions, and carries out projects to involve all stakeholders. The state agencies have begun to work more closely with federal divisions, coordinating their treatment according to fuel type and terrain. We are working together on such diverse partnerships as the 5,000-acre North Slope Project (USFS, CDF, and CDF&G;); the 2,000-acre Iron Mountain Project (USFS, CDF, and Georgia Pacific); the Southern Sierra Project (USFS, CDF, BLM, and Kern County FD); and the North Mountain Prescribed Burn of 3,500 acres (Stanislaus NF and Yosemite NP). To reduce the frequency, severity, and size of wildlfires, the plan calls for fuelbreaks, protection zones, "Fire Safe" landscaping, and stewardship involving prescribed fire. But then it goes one step further. It takes steps that may soon ripple across the entire West. For it brought the private sector into the mix, getting them involved in their communities, taking steps that went beyond fire prevention advertisements and publicity campaigns. For example, the California Association of Realtors amended a property disclosure form to require that sellers disclose wildfire severity information about property in state responsibility areas under certain conditions. For competitive business reasons, insurance companies have traditionally shied away from custom-tailoring rates for individual "fire safe" homes. Thus there was no real economic incentive for landowners or developers to reduce their exposure to wildfire. That may change. Now, if an entire group or community adopt a standard protocol on procedures to fire-proof their neighborhood, and build right with double-paned glass, tile roofs, firebreaks, and stucco walls, insurance companies commit to better rates. When Dick Wilson of CDF told me of this development, he said "that's like crossing the Rubicon." And he's right. For if we can come together as communities over fire, it is a short transition to other stewardship issues, and toward seeing the role of fire in the whole ecosystem. Which brings me to one last issue that we cannot escape: Where there is fire, there is inevitably smoke. Smoke remains a serious and complex health issue. Yet we are learning how to lessen its effects in populated areas. By reducing fuels in advance, when it is most advantageous, we reduce the amount of smoke that comes later in extreme fire behavior. In short, by taking steps to "fight fire with fire," we also fight smoke with smoke. Neither fire, nor the smoke that comes with it, respects political jurisdictions. Fire takes on the living ecosystem in all its complexity, in all its wholeness. And therefore so should we. I have come here today to showcase the Clinton Administration's new Federal Wildland Fire Plan and the State's new California Fire Plan. These plans, which can dovetail in the wildland/urban interface, have the potential to open the next chapter in the history of fire fighting. They can provide the funds and the mechanism and the goal. But they are only plans. Unless you embrace them, take them into your communities, your boardrooms, your business plans and blueprints, they can only take us so far. You have heard me outline the billions of dollars and dozens of lives at stake, each year, if we fail to take aggressive, sustained, and coordinated action. You know the potential costs and losses. Yet the flip side is a blank slate. Only you can help us determine how far we go, how much we save, how many lives will benefit by working together. | |
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