US Forest Service amends contested “let it burn” policy

[ad_1]

SACRAMENT

Faced with criticism of its practice of monitoring certain fires rather than putting them out quickly, the US Forest Service has called on its firefighters to stop the policy this year to better prioritize resources and help prevent small fires from turning into uncontrollable conflagrations.

The change came days after politicians in California and western states, including Gov. Gavin Newsom, publicly challenged the approach to letting it burn in the wake of the Tamarack fire, as the Times reported. detailed in an article on Sunday.

It also comes as high winds are expected to collide with dry conditions during the massive Dixie fire in northern California, already the eighth largest in California history with more than 270,000 acres, leaving firefighters to prepare for further spread during a red flag warning that passes until Thursday. Currently, the fire is 35% contained with nearly 5,000 people working to stop its progress.

Instead of allowing small, naturally occurring fires to burn, the agency’s priorities will change this year, U.S. Forest Service chief Randy Moore told staff in a letter on Monday. The focus, he said, will be on firefighters and public safety.

Moore, who took over as head of the agency last month, wrote that the 2021 fire season is unlike any previous one and posed a national crisis that has forced the US Forest Service to suspend its fire maintenance mission. forest land sometimes leaving forest fires. clean them to make them more fire resistant. Instead, he said, the agency will use its limited resources to protect lives and homes as more than 70 large fires burn across the United States, requiring more than 22,000 firefighters to fight.

We are in a triage mode where our primary focus must be fires that threaten communities and infrastructure, Moore wrote, citing drought conditions across the West and coronavirus cases among firefighters, further reducing the ranks. .

Christopher Dicus, professor of fire and fuel at Cal Poly, called the change prudent and said the reassessment was not at all surprising given the horrific drought and weather conditions in the West.

Partly to reintroduce fire to the landscape after decades of suppression that led to dangerous proliferation, the Forest Service for many years allowed a few small fires in isolated areas to burn. The Tamarack fire was one of them.

The blaze began on July 4 with lightning strikes on a single tree in the Mokelumne Wilderness, a remote and rugged area southeast of Sacramento. Forestry officials decided to monitor it rather than attempt to turn it off, a move, according to a spokeswoman, based on limited resources and remoteness. But the blaze continued to grow, ultimately consuming nearly 69,000 acres, destroying homes and causing massive evacuations. It is now 82% contained.

Speaking to President Biden in a virtual meeting with other Western state governors last week, Newsom asked for help changing the culture of the US Forest Service when it comes to allowing fires to burn.

Newsom said the waiting policy is the elephant in the room when it comes to wildfires.

You can’t just go away, not with this climate, not with this drought, he said last week while visiting the areas of the Tamarack fire. It’s life or death, and we can’t fight fires like we did 20, 30 or 40 years ago.

Newsom met with U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack and Moore at the August 2020 resort burn scar in northern California, the largest wildfire on record in California, on Wednesday morning to discuss how whose state and federal authorities can better work together on forest and fire management.

Nearby, the Dixie fire forced more evacuations on Tuesday, bypassing containment lines and bypassing 230,000 gallons of fire retardant dumped on a main road. At least 45 structures have been destroyed, with more than 12,000 at risk, according to the latest incident report.

In documents filed with regulators, PG&E said the Dixie fire may have been caused by a tree falling against its equipment, and then merged with the Fly fire, which may also have been caused by power lines. utilities.

Vilsack pledged more federal assistance and cooperation for California’s plight, acknowledging concerns about past practices while stressing that with dozens of fires in the West and months to come in a fire season prolonged, there are not enough resources to turn them all off.

Frankly, I think it’s fair to say that over generations, over decades, we’ve tried to do this job on the cheap, Vilsack said. We’ve tried to get by, a little here, a little there, a little forest management here, a little fire suppression here. But the reality is that it has caught up with us, which is why we have an extraordinary number of catastrophic fires and why we need to dramatically increase our capacity.

Vilsack said the bipartisan infrastructure bill now passed by Congress would provide some of these resources, but ultimately it would take billions of dollars and years of catch-up to create fire-resistant forests.

Dicus, the professor, said a decade or more is a very reasonable expectation given the scale of the problems and the amount of financial resources required to resolve them.

For decades, federal agencies that manage national forests and grasslands have fallen far behind in reducing brush, dead trees and other fuels for wildfires, in part due to environmental disputes and a lack of funding. Forests are also under stress from a bark beetle invasion after the latest drought, which left millions of trees dead in Sierra Nevada. In this volatile mix, climate change, with more intense weather conditions and rising temperatures, is making matters worse, as is the increase in the number of houses being built near wilderness.

While most experts agree that fire is part of the solution, attempts to use prescribed burns during wetter times to help restore forests to healthier conditions have at times been blocked by California air districts. , concerned about smoke exacerbating existing air pollution.

Last year, California signed an agreement to step up the pace of preventative maintenance, such as forest clearing and more planned burns, but that work is still unfunded from the federal side. Newsom said on Wednesday that the deal would cover at least one million acres of forest land each year. The federal government owns about 45 million acres in California, or about 45% of the state’s land.

While the policy change will affect how Forest Service fires are handled this season, Moore, the chief, said in his letter that the agency may resume letting the fires burn when conditions improve, including from the winter months.

Moore pointed out that fire remains an important tool and that the agency does not revert to the 10 a.m. policy, a directive instituted in 1935 that urged firefighters to put out every fire the morning after it was reported. This policy, which has led to years of aggressive fire suppression, has contributed to current conditions.

Rather, the Forest Service, Moore wrote, will revert to using prescribed burn in the right places at the right time.

[ad_2]