27 ms·

Bill introduced to promote prescribed fire intends to reduce fire risk

155 points by blendo 6y ago

torstenvl 6y ago
Original title is poorly worded, recommend instead: Senate bill would promote controlled burns to reduce wildfire risk
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Send email to hn@ycombinator.com requesting this & linking submission & source.
cma 6y ago
It's sort of the trolley problem. Prescribed fire might get out of control sometimes and kill a few people and damage property, but overall it should save way more.
- xiphias2 6y ago
  The real question is whether it is enough to stop huge fires from happening: is it enough to counteract global warming?
  - wtracy 6y ago
    If it doesn't, hopefully it will take us one step closer to forcing Republicans to face reality.
    - almost_usual 6y ago
      Anyone who cares about global warming should want controlled burns.
  - wavefunction 6y ago
    I don't see the connection between prescribed or wild fires with global warming other than global warming has led to droughts and climate change that make these fires worse to manage.
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      That's what I was writing about. I see wildfires around the world getting more serious (Australia had huge fires effecting the whole southern hemisphere's air quality). I'm worried that forrest management is not enough at this point to stop air quality from getting worse.
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    Imagine these two scenarios: 1.) Everyone in California got rid of their gas vehicle in July and drove an electric vehicle. Fires still burned in August-October. 2.) No change, gas drivers kept their vehicles and no fires happened. The emissions in California would have been the _same_. If it were Oregon option 1.) would have been _worse_ than option 2.) That’s how much co2 is being emitted from these fires. Of course we want to do calculated controlled burns to not let them explode uncontrollably. https://qz.com/1903191/western-wildfires-are-producing-a-record-breaking-amount-of-co2/ https://qz.com/1903191/western-wildfires-are-producing-a-rec...
    - xiphias2 6y ago
      Of course, I'm not arguing against controlled burns at all. My question was: are they enough to stop the huge emissions from forest fires, or are we as a species already over that point, and even with the best available methods air quality will get worse every year? I'm asking because I have vasomotor rhinitis and I'm extremely scared that I won't have any place on earth to hide from air pollution.
      - bluGill 6y ago
        Depends on what emissions you are worried about. Let'ssstarts with pollution, smoke and particals. There will always be emissions from fires. Smaller fires spread the emissions out over several years, while this large fire is many years at once. However smaller fires don't burn as much of their emissions, so the total over a large number of years is greater. However the earth is better able to absorb them when spread out over time. If you live next to the fire it is better to evacuate every 20 years than live next to the smaller fire every year (Small means you don't need to evacuate) for the rest of the world though the small fire means the pollution doesn't reach you and so smaller is better. If you are worried about CO2, then smaller fire leave a bit more unburned charcoal (sequestered carbon) behind every year and contribute to a long term global cooling. (it will take thousands of years to make up for one year of the rest of what we do, so don't get excited).
- Maximus9000 6y ago
  Has that ever happened?
  - Rebelgecko 6y ago
    Yes. There was a death last year in South Carolina (Angela Chadwick Hawkins) when a device used for starting fires blew up. According to one article [1] there were 6 deaths from prescribed burns between 1963 and 2013 (and 201 deaths from undesired wildfires). While looking this up,I was also surprised to learn that the #1 cause of death when fighting wildfires is vehicle accidents, and the majority of those are plane crashes [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4605741/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4605741/
xrd 6y ago
I'm really interested in hearing from someone that knows much more than me about this question: Don't we generally know that we need to do more prescribed fire burning? Isn't this generally highjacked by the timber industry to protect valuable "product?" If that's true, will this federal bill address that? It seems like it allocates money but doesn't talk about the other 53% of the lands that are not federally managed. And, it doesn't talk about whether the 47% lands are the problem or not. In Oregon where I live, the massive fires were ten miles from me in largely residentially adjacent lands. Are those going to be helped? I love that this bill offers jobs to formerly incarcerated people that have been fighting fires. If I'm wrong about my first assumption, would really like to know. Also, I saw a statistic that said California needs to do prescribed burns of about a million acres a year to manage wildfire risk. They are currently doing only 40,000. But these massive fires over the last month are approaching that million acre number: does anyone know if next year we will be safer because of those fires?
- born_a_skeptic 6y ago
  Ahhh, I didn't think about the Lumber Industry pushing for less prescribed fires. Makes sense.
  - redis_mlc 6y ago
    Some things to research: 1) the lumber industry obviously prefers clearcutting in the short-term, but generally follows selection laws if they get access to more forests and the logging equipment fits, but that means logging roads. 2) It's needed to harvest fallen trees within about a year of a fall for lumber. By 6 years they're rotten and not economically viable, but still contribute to fires - this was a problem in 2020. 3) Generally scheduled, controlled burns only quickly burn the forest floor (detritis like branches, deadfalls, etc.) and some outside bark, which trees evolved to tolerate, and not the inner core of trees, so doesn't affect logging. When you wait too long, trees actually heat and explode, setting the canopy on fire far and wide. If you make charcoal, that's a more persistent fire. Source: very lucky to have grown up outside a national park, which makes one a hard-core ecologist.
Ericson2314 6y ago
The end of the article talks about grants for homes in fire-prone areas. No thanks; this sounds just like the FEMA rebuilding the same flood-prone areas again and again. Let's not subsidize the exurbs, but get people away from dry Forests.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  Totally agree. You just have to look around and see tons of really nice houses up in the hills that will be very hard and extremely expensive to defend. These people should have to buy market based fire insurance or figure out something else. It's much more efficient to defend groups of hundreds or thousands of houses in towns.
- jayd16 6y ago
  This is getting voted down but I also think we should consider the moral hazards.
- bleepblorp 6y ago
  Ideally, people shouldn't live in high risk fire areas. However, there's already a shortage of housing on the west coast. Removing housing stock from fire areas will reduce the fire risk to human life but will also make the housing shortage worse. Short of resolving the NIMBY problem that prevents higher-density construction in fire-safe areas, paying residents in fire-prone areas to harden their communities is the best choice out of a selection of bad options. Also keep in mind that keeping people away from fires does nothing to reduce the smoke problem, which is very severe in its own right. The solution needs to be fewer fires, whether they pose an immediate risk to human life or not.
  - spaetzleesser 6y ago
    Building into fire areas is not a solution for the housing shortage. Usually these houses are widely distributed with tons of land around them. In absolute numbers they are probably negligible. But they cost a lot of money to protect during a fire.
  - Ericson2314 6y ago
alextheparrot 6y ago
> Risk-related barriers (fear of liability and negative public perceptions) prevent landowners from beginning the burn planning process. Both resource-related barriers (limited funding, crew availability and experience) and regulations-related barriers (poor weather conditions for burning and environmental regulations) prevent landowners from conducting burns, creating a gap between planning and implementation [0] My opinion is that this legislation does not go far enough to address the chronic disregard of action to inhibit these cataclysmic events. I would much rather have the government over-correct and over-allocate instead of taking an incremental approach on this. I do not want to wake up to months of awful quality air or see the forests that I have come to love so much be scorched more than is necessary. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0451-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0451-7
clairity 6y ago
i was hoping to see mention of employing cultural burning methods used by indigenous folks[0], who have multiple generations of experience already in this area. it seems possible some of this money does end up being employed this way, but it's disappointing that it's not more prominently featured in a story like this. [0]: for instance, https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-09-01/california-and-australia-look-indigenous-land-management-fire-help https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-09-01/california-and-austra...
- rch 6y ago
  As an amature biodiversity-focused conservationist, I've found it hard to keep policy conversations from devolving into zero sum economic reasoning. It seems like once a certain threshold of wealth and equity issues is crossed, systems thinking goes out the window completely.
- dredmorbius 6y ago
  Similarly: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/17/1008473/wildfires-california-prescribed-burns-climate-change-forests/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/17/1008473/wildfire...
  - clairity 6y ago
    some takeaways on size and cost: * 33 million acres of forest in CA, 57% owned by the feds, 3% by CA, 14% by the logging industry, 26% by others * $200/acre for prescribed burns, $1000/acre for thinning, ~$800/acre on average for the US fire service * 1.1 million acres need treatment each year (~$1B/year) to be effective, according to the little hoover commission * ~$2B committed by CA, but over at least 5 years * this bill would appropriate $300M/yr from feds on the flipside, it's harder to pin down benefits. they cite $9B in costs from one fire, but how much of that is (socialized) losses from excessive (private) risk-taking? it's unclear, but likely not none. how does insurance account for and/or distort that risk? none of the articles spend much time quantifying health or environmental costs (e.g., CO₂e) of forest fires on the population, and the potential reductions from better management. it's hard to take a reasonable position without knowing the magnitude of these benefits as well.
pvaldes 6y ago
So the plan seems to remove water from the soil to fight the lack of water in the ecosystem, that is bone dry because the water has been removed previously... I can't wait to see the results.
jayd16 6y ago
Whats the argument for managing these forests in such a hands on way? For the health of the forest or to make it easier to live in them? The talk that fires are a natural part of a forest and that we should also do prescribed burns seems at odds.
- almost_usual 6y ago
  The reality is we forced nature to _not_ burn for far too long and now it’s exploding when it happens. You could argue this is a “flattening the curve” approach to wildfires. https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_gotten_worse_and_what_we_can_do_about_it/ https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_g...
- bigbubba 6y ago
  Decades of putting out naturally occurring fires has already precluded a 'hands off all natural' approach.
- tialaramex 6y ago
  Actual Old Growth Forest is very cool, but it's totally unsuitable anywhere near humans. It will sometimes burn spectacularly for various reasons, which would be devastating locally, and so if there are humans they'll try to stop it doing that because they don't want to die or have their homes destroyed. So - we're not talking about Old Growth Forest, these are managed forests, humans are already messing with them, the only question is what management strategies to use. "Let's just not manage the forest" is not an option unless you are going to evacuate essentially all the humans from the region. Like, if the only human for 100km is a government official surveying the forest or something, that doesn't need managing. If there's a town there, you have no choice, you're managing that forest now, like it or not.
forgotmypw17 6y ago
How often do prescribed fires run out of control?
- pixl97 6y ago
  Often enough. With this said, if the prescribed burn goes out of control, when they tend to be burnt in the best of conditions. What's going to happen when a spark hits the ground in the same area when the wind is blowing 35+ knots? It's time to rethink the WUI.
hash872 6y ago
Can I ask a bit of a dumb question though? It seems like educated opinion has swung towards doing prescribed burns, and I remember hearing about this decades ago too. But- don't the same areas keep burning in California every fire season? Shouldn't these uncontrolled burns have already swept out the detritus, easily burnable material, etc.? If the same areas burn every year- doesn't that sort of indicate that controlled burns aren't effective?
- naringas 6y ago
  as far as I know the recent terrible fires swept through parts that hadn't burned in decades
- reportingsjr 6y ago
  No, they typically don't burn the same regions. The crux of the matter here is that getting forested areas to the point of being able to do controlled/prescribed burns is going to take an insane amount of effort and is only happening to a fraction of the forest needed to keep things under control. You can't just go start a fire in a forest and hope it goes well. You have to manually go through and clear the brush in the understory, or else the fire will be so hot it will burn down large trees. Once you've cleared much of the small woody brush, etc that causes these fires to be absolutely massive, regular fires will typically be much more mild and continue helping keep the forest understory clear without requiring much manual labor. It really is pretty effective, but it does require lots of little fires quite frequently.
- almost_usual 6y ago
  The fire that burned east Santa Rosa in the past week went between burn scars from the fire in 2017.
- pixl97 6y ago
  It's a complicated issue for a few reasons... Most of it doesn't burn every year, but many places that have been logged and now have no trees will have issues with invasive species that grow quickly and explode into flame. Those invasive species will be displaced when larger tress grow over them, but in the meantime will be a substantial fire risk. Having both the invasive species and high fuel loads under large trees leads to megafires. At the end of the day things are going to burn. The question is can we build better to lessen some parts of the human impact, such as houses not burning to the ground. We may not be able to do anything about the air quality at all.
wwweston 6y ago
If you're interested in this topic (and if you live in California, you probably should be), I recommend reading reports like this one from a California State policy arm: https://lhc.ca.gov/report/fire-mountain-rethinking-forest-management-sierra-nevada https://lhc.ca.gov/report/fire-mountain-rethinking-forest-ma... It'll take you through a better-than-surface understanding of the problem history and how we got here, contributing factors, potential solutions, and political/social obstacles.
supernova87a 6y ago
Newsom was touting the other day that the state is dedicating another $2B (not sure if incremental or what) towards fighting wildfires. The problem is, the more money you make available, the more that the agencies will find to justify that it needs to be spent. How? Well, we'll figure that out later. Probably something having to do with more planes, technology, contractors, etc. I.e. bandaids. Seems similar to healthcare -- you pay for treatments, and that's what you're gonna incentivize. As many treatments as doctors can justify, with outcome or root cause only as an afterthought.
- dannykwells 6y ago
  Healthcare worker here. Love this comment, spot on. Newsom should allocate 2B, or 20B, and create a metric of fire prevention relative to fire risk, and then reward communities with a higher value (i.e., fewer fires per unit of fire risk means more dough). That would align incentives and fix the problem (or at least, not make it worse).
almost_usual 6y ago
“The fires have released about half the typical annual emissions from the transportation sector. And they’ve topped annual emissions from all of the state’s power plants—a threshold that hasn’t been passed even in recent severe fire seasons.” “In Oregon, a similar story is unfolding—except there, wildfire emissions have managed to surpass annual transportation emissions as well.” https://qz.com/1903191/western-wildfires-are-producing-a-record-breaking-amount-of-co2/ https://qz.com/1903191/western-wildfires-are-producing-a-rec... This was weeks ago before the recent fires in Napa, Zogg, and the August complex kept burning. Kinda incredible and gives you perspective into how much co2 is being released.
- aunty_helen 6y ago
  Trees work on a much shorter carbon cycle though so shouldn't be equated to digging million year old oil out of the ground and burning that. 20 years time, most of that carbon will be sequestered back in the form of new trees.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- kanox 6y ago
  The carbon released by wildfires was previously captures by trees as they grew, right? So if a wooded area burns and then grows back again it is carbon-neutral.
  - ip26 6y ago
    Unsettling observations of burn scars have hinted that, thanks to climate change, some of these burning wooded areas may not grow back, and instead convert permanently into scrubland or grassland.
Lammy 6y ago
A lot of discussion on this issue rightfully centers on California and often touches on the prison labor aspect without exploring the history. Anyone who wants to understand the real priorities behind California’s “honor camps” (later “conservation camps”) should compare their history and expansion [0] to the demographic changes happening in the state around the same time [1]. [0] http://archive.oah.org/special-issues/teaching/2009_12/article.html http://archive.oah.org/special-issues/teaching/2009_12/artic... [1] https://depts.washington.edu/moving1/map_black_migration.shtml https://depts.washington.edu/moving1/map_black_migration.sht...
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
I think this is a good idea, but I doubt it will end up being popular. One of these prescribed fires is going to get out of control, then the victims will sue the state, and it will end up being much more expensive for the taxpayers than a larger fires with less payout per victim. Any such law should include a component freeing the state from any liability for damage.
- ip26 6y ago
  I agree, although it's ridiculous- judging by past news releases, a prescribed fire that gets out of control will grab headlines if it burns 50 acres more than planned. What is 50 acres compared to preventing the next August Complex?
exabrial 6y ago
Prescribed fire is also necessary to preserve species and habitat. Native species have long evolved to deal with natural fires, whereas invasive species have not. Like many things with nature, it's counterintuitive, but proven science.* If populated areas are nearby, logging and subsequent mowing flat are alternatives in some circumstances (and act as a great carbon sink). 1. Source: I worked and volunteered many years in college on the Kanza Tallgrass Prairie preserve which experienced natural fires regularly through it's evolutionary history.
- baybal2 6y ago
  One more thing, add a line to the building code that you cannot build a residential building within 1km of a tree line. Less chances of somebody setting the forest on fire unintentionally, and vice versa. You also need prescribed forest clearings inside the forest around settlements to create multiple rings of fire stops.
  - HarryHirsch 6y ago
    cannot build a residential building within 1km of a tree line Absolutely. I've got somewhere an edition of Tacitus' Germania with commentary that states as a matter of fact, no explanation needed that "the forest is not part of the human sphere". Why is this so controversial that it needs to be downvoted? It is baffling that anyone would want to live on the wrong side of the urban-wilderness interface, especially if wilderness means wildfire risk.
    - jimmaswell 6y ago
      This suggestion is baffling. The nicest place to have a home is in an enclave of forest.
      - skmurphy 6y ago
        It's OK to build there as long as you acknowledge that fire is a natural inhabitant of any forest and over a 20-30 year period is likely to come for a visit at least once.
nickhalfasleep 6y ago
What is interesting is that you may not get the same habitat you started out with. The current forest may be what is overgrown for over a hundred years. What grows well after a fire might be different trees that thrive in the current climate. Many parts of Colorado have had fires in pine forests. What grows back will be pinion and scrub.
vaccinator 6y ago
Lol I suggested that a long time ago... Florida has been doing it for a long time.
cameronfraser 6y ago
Consider that the constant blaming of forest management is actually a tactic from the right to prolong denial of climate change by their voting base. Yes it helps, no it isn't going to do that much when California fire seasons have extended over 2 months due to climate change.
- endogui 6y ago
  Two things can be true at once: fire season is coming earlier (climate change) and we have known since the 1990s that the West Coast needs controlled burns, but have not been doing them. (I saw an article about the CA wildfire and brush buildup problem in 1998.)
- TimTheTinker 6y ago
  Consider also that truth is not relative to political persuasion, and a commitment to truth above partisanship is likely the only way initiatives will succeed with bipartisan support. “The truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
damm 6y ago
Great idea the only problem is preventing the fire from getting out of control. As we haven't been doing we can't just start tomorrow as they will turn into the fires we have today. Doesn't mean we shouldn't still use prescribed burns; we should. Just smaller burns with proper protection to ensure the fire is under control.
accurrent 6y ago
Has anyone considered using IOT sensors in forests to monitor patches before a fire breaks out?
davidbanham 6y ago
From an Australian perspective the main factor in us not getting as many hazard reduction burns as we’d like completed isn’t financial it’s the weather. There’s such a thin window of time when the bush is dry enough that we can actually light it but the weather conditions aren’t so dangerous that to do so would be foolhardy. We could spend money to eke out a little around the margins like using more paid firefighters to do mid week burns. It’s not addressing the main issue, though. The climate is changing.
egberts1 6y ago
Anyone with a rural home should know how to clear a fire zone around his humble Adobe unless they’re prepared to lose it. Once cleared, it’s easy to cut trees down to keep it clear when these trees are smaller. Same thing with maintaining MANY fire-lines (wide cleared path) crisscrossing their precious forest. Modern folks expects modern firefighters. And one of the modern tools for today’s firefighter MUST be clear-burning and control-burns. But do modern folks know this? Noooo, it’s just a pearl-clutching, collective-gasp that their poorly-trained notion expect firefighters not to start fires and ONLY to stop fires. Me think firefighting unit and forestry management needs to be a bit more cohesive either in principle or practice.
silexia 6y ago
Key point readers are missing from the bottom of the article- Jack Cohen is a retired U.S. Forest Service Research fire scientist who has spent years determining how structures ignite during extreme wildfires. In a September 21, 2020 article he wrote for Wildfire Today with Dave Strohmaier, they addressed how homes ignite during extreme wildfires. “Surprisingly, research has shown that home ignitions during extreme wildfires result from conditions local to a home. A home’s ignition vulnerabilities in relation to nearby burning materials within 100 feet principally determine home ignitions. This area of a home and its immediate surroundings is called the home ignition zone (HIZ). Typically, lofted burning embers initiate ignitions within the HIZ – to homes directly and nearby flammables leading to homes. Although an intense wildfire can loft firebrands more than one-half mile to start fires, the minuscule local conditions where the burning embers land and accumulate determine ignitions. Importantly, most home destruction during extreme wildfires occurs hours after the wildfire has ceased intense burning near the community; the residential fuels – homes, other structures, and vegetation – continue fire spread within the community. “Uncontrollable extreme wildfires are inevitable, however, by reducing home ignition potential within the HIZ we can create ignition resistant homes and communities. Thus, community wildfire risk should be defined as a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem.”

155 points by blendo 6y ago

torstenvl 6y ago

Original title is poorly worded, recommend instead: Senate bill would promote controlled burns to reduce wildfire risk

dredmorbius 6y ago
Send email to hn@ycombinator.com requesting this & linking submission & source.

cma 6y ago

It's sort of the trolley problem. Prescribed fire might get out of control sometimes and kill a few people and damage property, but overall it should save way more.

xiphias2 6y ago
The real question is whether it is enough to stop huge fires from happening: is it enough to counteract global warming?
- wtracy 6y ago
  If it doesn't, hopefully it will take us one step closer to forcing Republicans to face reality.
  - almost_usual 6y ago
    Anyone who cares about global warming should want controlled burns.
- wavefunction 6y ago
  I don't see the connection between prescribed or wild fires with global warming other than global warming has led to droughts and climate change that make these fires worse to manage.
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    That's what I was writing about. I see wildfires around the world getting more serious (Australia had huge fires effecting the whole southern hemisphere's air quality). I'm worried that forrest management is not enough at this point to stop air quality from getting worse.
- almost_usual 6y ago
  Imagine these two scenarios: 1.) Everyone in California got rid of their gas vehicle in July and drove an electric vehicle. Fires still burned in August-October. 2.) No change, gas drivers kept their vehicles and no fires happened. The emissions in California would have been the _same_. If it were Oregon option 1.) would have been _worse_ than option 2.) That’s how much co2 is being emitted from these fires. Of course we want to do calculated controlled burns to not let them explode uncontrollably. https://qz.com/1903191/western-wildfires-are-producing-a-record-breaking-amount-of-co2/ https://qz.com/1903191/western-wildfires-are-producing-a-rec...
  - xiphias2 6y ago
    Of course, I'm not arguing against controlled burns at all. My question was: are they enough to stop the huge emissions from forest fires, or are we as a species already over that point, and even with the best available methods air quality will get worse every year? I'm asking because I have vasomotor rhinitis and I'm extremely scared that I won't have any place on earth to hide from air pollution.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Depends on what emissions you are worried about. Let'ssstarts with pollution, smoke and particals. There will always be emissions from fires. Smaller fires spread the emissions out over several years, while this large fire is many years at once. However smaller fires don't burn as much of their emissions, so the total over a large number of years is greater. However the earth is better able to absorb them when spread out over time. If you live next to the fire it is better to evacuate every 20 years than live next to the smaller fire every year (Small means you don't need to evacuate) for the rest of the world though the small fire means the pollution doesn't reach you and so smaller is better. If you are worried about CO2, then smaller fire leave a bit more unburned charcoal (sequestered carbon) behind every year and contribute to a long term global cooling. (it will take thousands of years to make up for one year of the rest of what we do, so don't get excited).
Maximus9000 6y ago
Has that ever happened?
- Rebelgecko 6y ago
  Yes. There was a death last year in South Carolina (Angela Chadwick Hawkins) when a device used for starting fires blew up. According to one article [1] there were 6 deaths from prescribed burns between 1963 and 2013 (and 201 deaths from undesired wildfires). While looking this up,I was also surprised to learn that the #1 cause of death when fighting wildfires is vehicle accidents, and the majority of those are plane crashes [1]: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4605741/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4605741/

xrd 6y ago

I'm really interested in hearing from someone that knows much more than me about this question: Don't we generally know that we need to do more prescribed fire burning? Isn't this generally highjacked by the timber industry to protect valuable "product?" If that's true, will this federal bill address that? It seems like it allocates money but doesn't talk about the other 53% of the lands that are not federally managed. And, it doesn't talk about whether the 47% lands are the problem or not. In Oregon where I live, the massive fires were ten miles from me in largely residentially adjacent lands. Are those going to be helped? I love that this bill offers jobs to formerly incarcerated people that have been fighting fires. If I'm wrong about my first assumption, would really like to know. Also, I saw a statistic that said California needs to do prescribed burns of about a million acres a year to manage wildfire risk. They are currently doing only 40,000. But these massive fires over the last month are approaching that million acre number: does anyone know if next year we will be safer because of those fires?

born_a_skeptic 6y ago
Ahhh, I didn't think about the Lumber Industry pushing for less prescribed fires. Makes sense.
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Some things to research: 1) the lumber industry obviously prefers clearcutting in the short-term, but generally follows selection laws if they get access to more forests and the logging equipment fits, but that means logging roads. 2) It's needed to harvest fallen trees within about a year of a fall for lumber. By 6 years they're rotten and not economically viable, but still contribute to fires - this was a problem in 2020. 3) Generally scheduled, controlled burns only quickly burn the forest floor (detritis like branches, deadfalls, etc.) and some outside bark, which trees evolved to tolerate, and not the inner core of trees, so doesn't affect logging. When you wait too long, trees actually heat and explode, setting the canopy on fire far and wide. If you make charcoal, that's a more persistent fire. Source: very lucky to have grown up outside a national park, which makes one a hard-core ecologist.

Ericson2314 6y ago

The end of the article talks about grants for homes in fire-prone areas. No thanks; this sounds just like the FEMA rebuilding the same flood-prone areas again and again. Let's not subsidize the exurbs, but get people away from dry Forests.

spaetzleesser 6y ago
Totally agree. You just have to look around and see tons of really nice houses up in the hills that will be very hard and extremely expensive to defend. These people should have to buy market based fire insurance or figure out something else. It's much more efficient to defend groups of hundreds or thousands of houses in towns.
jayd16 6y ago
This is getting voted down but I also think we should consider the moral hazards.
bleepblorp 6y ago
Ideally, people shouldn't live in high risk fire areas. However, there's already a shortage of housing on the west coast. Removing housing stock from fire areas will reduce the fire risk to human life but will also make the housing shortage worse. Short of resolving the NIMBY problem that prevents higher-density construction in fire-safe areas, paying residents in fire-prone areas to harden their communities is the best choice out of a selection of bad options. Also keep in mind that keeping people away from fires does nothing to reduce the smoke problem, which is very severe in its own right. The solution needs to be fewer fires, whether they pose an immediate risk to human life or not.
- spaetzleesser 6y ago
  Building into fire areas is not a solution for the housing shortage. Usually these houses are widely distributed with tons of land around them. In absolute numbers they are probably negligible. But they cost a lot of money to protect during a fire.
- Ericson2314 6y ago

alextheparrot 6y ago

> Risk-related barriers (fear of liability and negative public perceptions) prevent landowners from beginning the burn planning process. Both resource-related barriers (limited funding, crew availability and experience) and regulations-related barriers (poor weather conditions for burning and environmental regulations) prevent landowners from conducting burns, creating a gap between planning and implementation [0] My opinion is that this legislation does not go far enough to address the chronic disregard of action to inhibit these cataclysmic events. I would much rather have the government over-correct and over-allocate instead of taking an incremental approach on this. I do not want to wake up to months of awful quality air or see the forests that I have come to love so much be scorched more than is necessary. [0] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0451-7 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0451-7

clairity 6y ago

i was hoping to see mention of employing cultural burning methods used by indigenous folks[0], who have multiple generations of experience already in this area. it seems possible some of this money does end up being employed this way, but it's disappointing that it's not more prominently featured in a story like this. [0]: for instance, https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-09-01/california-and-australia-look-indigenous-land-management-fire-help https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-09-01/california-and-austra...

rch 6y ago
As an amature biodiversity-focused conservationist, I've found it hard to keep policy conversations from devolving into zero sum economic reasoning. It seems like once a certain threshold of wealth and equity issues is crossed, systems thinking goes out the window completely.
dredmorbius 6y ago
Similarly: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/17/1008473/wildfires-california-prescribed-burns-climate-change-forests/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/09/17/1008473/wildfire...
- clairity 6y ago
  some takeaways on size and cost: * 33 million acres of forest in CA, 57% owned by the feds, 3% by CA, 14% by the logging industry, 26% by others * $200/acre for prescribed burns, $1000/acre for thinning, ~$800/acre on average for the US fire service * 1.1 million acres need treatment each year (~$1B/year) to be effective, according to the little hoover commission * ~$2B committed by CA, but over at least 5 years * this bill would appropriate $300M/yr from feds on the flipside, it's harder to pin down benefits. they cite $9B in costs from one fire, but how much of that is (socialized) losses from excessive (private) risk-taking? it's unclear, but likely not none. how does insurance account for and/or distort that risk? none of the articles spend much time quantifying health or environmental costs (e.g., CO₂e) of forest fires on the population, and the potential reductions from better management. it's hard to take a reasonable position without knowing the magnitude of these benefits as well.

pvaldes 6y ago

So the plan seems to remove water from the soil to fight the lack of water in the ecosystem, that is bone dry because the water has been removed previously... I can't wait to see the results.

jayd16 6y ago

Whats the argument for managing these forests in such a hands on way? For the health of the forest or to make it easier to live in them? The talk that fires are a natural part of a forest and that we should also do prescribed burns seems at odds.

almost_usual 6y ago
The reality is we forced nature to _not_ burn for far too long and now it’s exploding when it happens. You could argue this is a “flattening the curve” approach to wildfires. https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_gotten_worse_and_what_we_can_do_about_it/ https://www.ted.com/talks/paul_hessburg_why_wildfires_have_g...
bigbubba 6y ago
Decades of putting out naturally occurring fires has already precluded a 'hands off all natural' approach.
tialaramex 6y ago
Actual Old Growth Forest is very cool, but it's totally unsuitable anywhere near humans. It will sometimes burn spectacularly for various reasons, which would be devastating locally, and so if there are humans they'll try to stop it doing that because they don't want to die or have their homes destroyed. So - we're not talking about Old Growth Forest, these are managed forests, humans are already messing with them, the only question is what management strategies to use. "Let's just not manage the forest" is not an option unless you are going to evacuate essentially all the humans from the region. Like, if the only human for 100km is a government official surveying the forest or something, that doesn't need managing. If there's a town there, you have no choice, you're managing that forest now, like it or not.

forgotmypw17 6y ago

How often do prescribed fires run out of control?

pixl97 6y ago
Often enough. With this said, if the prescribed burn goes out of control, when they tend to be burnt in the best of conditions. What's going to happen when a spark hits the ground in the same area when the wind is blowing 35+ knots? It's time to rethink the WUI.

hash872 6y ago

Can I ask a bit of a dumb question though? It seems like educated opinion has swung towards doing prescribed burns, and I remember hearing about this decades ago too. But- don't the same areas keep burning in California every fire season? Shouldn't these uncontrolled burns have already swept out the detritus, easily burnable material, etc.? If the same areas burn every year- doesn't that sort of indicate that controlled burns aren't effective?

naringas 6y ago
as far as I know the recent terrible fires swept through parts that hadn't burned in decades
reportingsjr 6y ago
No, they typically don't burn the same regions. The crux of the matter here is that getting forested areas to the point of being able to do controlled/prescribed burns is going to take an insane amount of effort and is only happening to a fraction of the forest needed to keep things under control. You can't just go start a fire in a forest and hope it goes well. You have to manually go through and clear the brush in the understory, or else the fire will be so hot it will burn down large trees. Once you've cleared much of the small woody brush, etc that causes these fires to be absolutely massive, regular fires will typically be much more mild and continue helping keep the forest understory clear without requiring much manual labor. It really is pretty effective, but it does require lots of little fires quite frequently.
almost_usual 6y ago
The fire that burned east Santa Rosa in the past week went between burn scars from the fire in 2017.
pixl97 6y ago
It's a complicated issue for a few reasons... Most of it doesn't burn every year, but many places that have been logged and now have no trees will have issues with invasive species that grow quickly and explode into flame. Those invasive species will be displaced when larger tress grow over them, but in the meantime will be a substantial fire risk. Having both the invasive species and high fuel loads under large trees leads to megafires. At the end of the day things are going to burn. The question is can we build better to lessen some parts of the human impact, such as houses not burning to the ground. We may not be able to do anything about the air quality at all.

wwweston 6y ago

If you're interested in this topic (and if you live in California, you probably should be), I recommend reading reports like this one from a California State policy arm: https://lhc.ca.gov/report/fire-mountain-rethinking-forest-management-sierra-nevada https://lhc.ca.gov/report/fire-mountain-rethinking-forest-ma... It'll take you through a better-than-surface understanding of the problem history and how we got here, contributing factors, potential solutions, and political/social obstacles.

supernova87a 6y ago

Newsom was touting the other day that the state is dedicating another $2B (not sure if incremental or what) towards fighting wildfires. The problem is, the more money you make available, the more that the agencies will find to justify that it needs to be spent. How? Well, we'll figure that out later. Probably something having to do with more planes, technology, contractors, etc. I.e. bandaids. Seems similar to healthcare -- you pay for treatments, and that's what you're gonna incentivize. As many treatments as doctors can justify, with outcome or root cause only as an afterthought.

dannykwells 6y ago
Healthcare worker here. Love this comment, spot on. Newsom should allocate 2B, or 20B, and create a metric of fire prevention relative to fire risk, and then reward communities with a higher value (i.e., fewer fires per unit of fire risk means more dough). That would align incentives and fix the problem (or at least, not make it worse).

almost_usual 6y ago

“The fires have released about half the typical annual emissions from the transportation sector. And they’ve topped annual emissions from all of the state’s power plants—a threshold that hasn’t been passed even in recent severe fire seasons.” “In Oregon, a similar story is unfolding—except there, wildfire emissions have managed to surpass annual transportation emissions as well.” https://qz.com/1903191/western-wildfires-are-producing-a-record-breaking-amount-of-co2/ https://qz.com/1903191/western-wildfires-are-producing-a-rec... This was weeks ago before the recent fires in Napa, Zogg, and the August complex kept burning. Kinda incredible and gives you perspective into how much co2 is being released.

aunty_helen 6y ago
Trees work on a much shorter carbon cycle though so shouldn't be equated to digging million year old oil out of the ground and burning that. 20 years time, most of that carbon will be sequestered back in the form of new trees.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
kanox 6y ago
The carbon released by wildfires was previously captures by trees as they grew, right? So if a wooded area burns and then grows back again it is carbon-neutral.
- ip26 6y ago
  Unsettling observations of burn scars have hinted that, thanks to climate change, some of these burning wooded areas may not grow back, and instead convert permanently into scrubland or grassland.

Lammy 6y ago

A lot of discussion on this issue rightfully centers on California and often touches on the prison labor aspect without exploring the history. Anyone who wants to understand the real priorities behind California’s “honor camps” (later “conservation camps”) should compare their history and expansion [0] to the demographic changes happening in the state around the same time [1]. [0] http://archive.oah.org/special-issues/teaching/2009_12/article.html http://archive.oah.org/special-issues/teaching/2009_12/artic... [1] https://depts.washington.edu/moving1/map_black_migration.shtml https://depts.washington.edu/moving1/map_black_migration.sht...

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

I think this is a good idea, but I doubt it will end up being popular. One of these prescribed fires is going to get out of control, then the victims will sue the state, and it will end up being much more expensive for the taxpayers than a larger fires with less payout per victim. Any such law should include a component freeing the state from any liability for damage.

ip26 6y ago
I agree, although it's ridiculous- judging by past news releases, a prescribed fire that gets out of control will grab headlines if it burns 50 acres more than planned. What is 50 acres compared to preventing the next August Complex?

exabrial 6y ago

Prescribed fire is also necessary to preserve species and habitat. Native species have long evolved to deal with natural fires, whereas invasive species have not. Like many things with nature, it's counterintuitive, but proven science.* If populated areas are nearby, logging and subsequent mowing flat are alternatives in some circumstances (and act as a great carbon sink). 1. Source: I worked and volunteered many years in college on the Kanza Tallgrass Prairie preserve which experienced natural fires regularly through it's evolutionary history.

baybal2 6y ago
One more thing, add a line to the building code that you cannot build a residential building within 1km of a tree line. Less chances of somebody setting the forest on fire unintentionally, and vice versa. You also need prescribed forest clearings inside the forest around settlements to create multiple rings of fire stops.
- HarryHirsch 6y ago
  cannot build a residential building within 1km of a tree line Absolutely. I've got somewhere an edition of Tacitus' Germania with commentary that states as a matter of fact, no explanation needed that "the forest is not part of the human sphere". Why is this so controversial that it needs to be downvoted? It is baffling that anyone would want to live on the wrong side of the urban-wilderness interface, especially if wilderness means wildfire risk.
  - jimmaswell 6y ago
    This suggestion is baffling. The nicest place to have a home is in an enclave of forest.
    - skmurphy 6y ago
      It's OK to build there as long as you acknowledge that fire is a natural inhabitant of any forest and over a 20-30 year period is likely to come for a visit at least once.

nickhalfasleep 6y ago

What is interesting is that you may not get the same habitat you started out with. The current forest may be what is overgrown for over a hundred years. What grows well after a fire might be different trees that thrive in the current climate. Many parts of Colorado have had fires in pine forests. What grows back will be pinion and scrub.

vaccinator 6y ago

Lol I suggested that a long time ago... Florida has been doing it for a long time.

cameronfraser 6y ago

Consider that the constant blaming of forest management is actually a tactic from the right to prolong denial of climate change by their voting base. Yes it helps, no it isn't going to do that much when California fire seasons have extended over 2 months due to climate change.

endogui 6y ago
Two things can be true at once: fire season is coming earlier (climate change) and we have known since the 1990s that the West Coast needs controlled burns, but have not been doing them. (I saw an article about the CA wildfire and brush buildup problem in 1998.)
TimTheTinker 6y ago
Consider also that truth is not relative to political persuasion, and a commitment to truth above partisanship is likely the only way initiatives will succeed with bipartisan support. “The truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)

damm 6y ago

Great idea the only problem is preventing the fire from getting out of control. As we haven't been doing we can't just start tomorrow as they will turn into the fires we have today. Doesn't mean we shouldn't still use prescribed burns; we should. Just smaller burns with proper protection to ensure the fire is under control.

accurrent 6y ago

Has anyone considered using IOT sensors in forests to monitor patches before a fire breaks out?

davidbanham 6y ago

From an Australian perspective the main factor in us not getting as many hazard reduction burns as we’d like completed isn’t financial it’s the weather. There’s such a thin window of time when the bush is dry enough that we can actually light it but the weather conditions aren’t so dangerous that to do so would be foolhardy. We could spend money to eke out a little around the margins like using more paid firefighters to do mid week burns. It’s not addressing the main issue, though. The climate is changing.

egberts1 6y ago

Anyone with a rural home should know how to clear a fire zone around his humble Adobe unless they’re prepared to lose it. Once cleared, it’s easy to cut trees down to keep it clear when these trees are smaller. Same thing with maintaining MANY fire-lines (wide cleared path) crisscrossing their precious forest. Modern folks expects modern firefighters. And one of the modern tools for today’s firefighter MUST be clear-burning and control-burns. But do modern folks know this? Noooo, it’s just a pearl-clutching, collective-gasp that their poorly-trained notion expect firefighters not to start fires and ONLY to stop fires. Me think firefighting unit and forestry management needs to be a bit more cohesive either in principle or practice.

silexia 6y ago

Key point readers are missing from the bottom of the article- Jack Cohen is a retired U.S. Forest Service Research fire scientist who has spent years determining how structures ignite during extreme wildfires. In a September 21, 2020 article he wrote for Wildfire Today with Dave Strohmaier, they addressed how homes ignite during extreme wildfires. “Surprisingly, research has shown that home ignitions during extreme wildfires result from conditions local to a home. A home’s ignition vulnerabilities in relation to nearby burning materials within 100 feet principally determine home ignitions. This area of a home and its immediate surroundings is called the home ignition zone (HIZ). Typically, lofted burning embers initiate ignitions within the HIZ – to homes directly and nearby flammables leading to homes. Although an intense wildfire can loft firebrands more than one-half mile to start fires, the minuscule local conditions where the burning embers land and accumulate determine ignitions. Importantly, most home destruction during extreme wildfires occurs hours after the wildfire has ceased intense burning near the community; the residential fuels – homes, other structures, and vegetation – continue fire spread within the community. “Uncontrollable extreme wildfires are inevitable, however, by reducing home ignition potential within the HIZ we can create ignition resistant homes and communities. Thus, community wildfire risk should be defined as a home ignition problem, not a wildfire control problem.”