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The fundamental problem that controlled burns face today is that there has been a huge and irresponsible increase in development on "Urban-wildland border". Her

The fundamental problem that controlled burns face today is that there has been a huge and irresponsible increase in development on "Urban-wildland border". Here in the California Sierras, you have a uniform peppering of (often luxury) houses outside of the various small urban areas. Those forests naturally burn on a regular basis but with this situation, any controlled burn is going to threaten some number of houses. Of course, the regular fires threaten and destroy these areas too. We've seen the destruction of Paradise, Berry Creek, Greenville, and Grizzly Flats in the last few years (just reading from Wikipedia). Edit: Always need to mention that global-warming/climate-change makes this worse even if it was caused by local irresponsible behavior. Of course what climate hits first are areas where the local ecology already had problems (In before "It's not [Local bad behavior], it's climate change" or the opposite).

s1artibartfast 3y ago
This is not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that fires were suppressed for nearly 200 years and now turn into raging infernos. Fires were suppressed first for economic reasons, and then later for misguided Environmental reasons Forest fires of a historically typical magnitude would pose much less Danger to communities adjacent to wildlands. This is further complicated by the fact that any of these communities and dwellings were not designed for fire resistance because public policy at the time was no fires ever.
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  It depends how you want to put. Fire suppression is indeed the fundamental cause and the shape of development is the barrier to fixing it.
  - s1artibartfast 3y ago
    I don't think I agree that the distribution of development poses a significant challenge. If that were the case, you would see at least some controlled Burns in undeveloped areas, but that is not the case. You might see more logging or a small low risk Burns near inhabitated areas. The fact that we still see essentially no control burns is strong evidence that the barrier is Still what it has been for the last 100 years. Bad government policy informed by Environmental emotion instead of environmental science. At the end of the day, the rationale is stupid but simple. People don't like the Aesthetics of a burn Forest for the smell of smoke in the air. Actual risk to life and property from controlled Burns can be effectively minimized. In some areas of the state they never existed in the first place and still don't exist The solution isn't rocket science. You just start with small safe Burns adjacent to communities. Nobody wants to look at a burn scar for several years, so instead they roll the dice on their Community burning down
    - cameldrv 3y ago
      It’s also dumb concern cargo-cutting in California. Even the limited number of burns that are authorized can be cancelled if the air quality that day is bad.
bsder 3y ago
This is true, but even where it's not, the biggest issue in doing controlled burns is simply funding. Controlled burns aren't just "light it up". You may need to create a firebreak. You may need to cull some trees as too many areas have lots of spindly, unhealthy trees that are going to make a controlled burn much harder to control. etc. All of this costs manpower which translates to money.
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  Controlled burns cost money, no doubt. But just an example, California's fire suppression complex is very well funded. California has a fleet of 747s and other huge aircraft, just for example. My guess is there's no funding where there's no people and where there are people, there's funding but the people's arrangement prevents controlled burns.
  - 650REDHAIR 3y ago
    I thought CA contracted out most of the aviation and one of the big companies sold their fire fighting 747 and it was converted to a cargo plane. Cal fire operates some small craft I think.
  - bsder 3y ago
    > California's fire suppression complex is very well funded Perhaps very well funded for putting out an existing fire at a specific spot. Controlled burns for prevention need to occur over VAST areas--it's an O(1) vs O(n^2) scaling problem.
- onecommentman 3y ago
  What everybody (homeowners, forestry types, loggers, environmentalists, etc.) can agree to is prescribed burn practices should be improved. At the time, the story told about the Cerro Grande fire was an inexperienced Forestry agent started a prescribed burn in the heart of the Spring wind season, leading to an inevitable wildfire that no local NM understanding local conditions would have approved. Probably the most expensive fire in NM history. The story told of the Hermits Peak fire is another outsider Forestry agent tried to squeeze a prescribed burn into a very narrow “safe” time slot to stay “on schedule”. To no one’s surprise, the fire didn’t care much about the narrow slot of safety and the largest wildfire in NM history resulted. I think giving a State powers to selective delay any specific prescribed fire within their borders (State, Fed, tribal) would have prevented both destructive NM fires. Local wisdom counts for something and at least the Feds don’t come off looking like idiots when things get out hand. Maybe the Feds and the State together would look like idiots, but not just those outsider Feds.
runtime_blues 3y ago
That's how development always happened in much of the US. Cities expanding into forestland or grassland. The problem isn't that the homes are all of sudden luxurious, or that we somehow do less planning than in the 1880s or 1960s. It's that a mix of well-intentioned environmental policies and activism mean there's no fuel reduction happening at all. Controlled burns are one way, but logging is another.
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  Yes but ultimately No and No. US cities have always expanded but the current level of "exurban" development is new - a continuation of the expansion trend no doubt but still more expansiveness, sufficient to be a barrier to fixing the problems created by fire suppression forestry. And logging doesn't fix things the way natural fires fix things. Logging companies only want big trees and a sustainable forest has big trees that survive fires and little tree that are removed by modest fires. Clear cut areas tend to burn quite intensely because they're all small tree.
heywherelogingo 3y ago
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airtonix 3y ago
[dead]
toofy 3y ago
I just want to chime in not to disagree with anything you’re saying (for the record I think your post is thoughtful. I don’t know enough about the nuances to agree or disagree) and it isn’t even directed at you but to all of us and our discussion styles. I really hope that the collective We shift to saying something like “One of the many complications…” rather than “The problem” or “The biggest problem”. When it comes to very large and very complicated problems we often get stuck arguing over which one piece is The problem or The cause or The singular thing. Over and over and over we get stuck arguing over which is the biggest or the only cause/solution. A ton of the issues that we confront here are some of the most complicated issues that interweave technology, economy, ecology, humans, weird borders, power/influence, money, etc… I know this is just semantics but I really do believe that for complex issues we’d get a lot further in discussions if we weren’t limiting ourselves to a silver bullet solution or the one cause. I know it’s “just a casual internet forum” and i know we can’t (and shouldn’t) expect intense rigor on our comments, but i think the hn community has some good minds to discuss some of this and it pokes at me every time i see us (i do the same shit too) get bogged down with “well acksually the biggest cause” or “THE solution is…” Sorry for the tangent poster and readers, but this minor quibble seems important.
- JALTU 3y ago
  To your point, I wish there were diagrams "we'd" all use to illustrate any issue with complicated interwoven relationships that put the complexity into at least some degree of comparability. Ideally you'd be able to see how some relative amount of funding needs to support some physical effort required and in the context of some degree of regulatory scope. A simple example is the two-factor, two-axis diminishing returns line graph. As cost goes up, returns decrease and we can point to a spot and discuss it. I wish I could give you a good intuitive example of a far more complex (more factors), but if this were easy we'd all be doing it and we'd all be seeing such diagrams more frequently. So in the absence of simple and nuanced illustrations, we have lists and we necessarily fall back on language and our own biases like we do here. (Just humans being human, no judgement.) One possibility I can imagine is a table with solutions on one axis and influencing dimensions on another. e.g., One axis is tech, funding, regulatory, etc. and the other is proposed solutions. In the table, the cross referenced cell might contain a number showing how much of some environmental dimension is needed for a given solution. This example is crude at best because clearly we can debate what the cross-reference values assigned are, and whether or not they're correct, and even whether or not a dimension should be broken down further, but this technique's shortcomings are a compromise–the price paid for attempting to communicate the holistic understanding of an issue. One hopes that price is worth paying for greater appreciation of the issue's systemic complexities, and enabling others to see and evaluate factors they might not otherwise consider.
baryphonic 3y ago
The wildland-urban interface (that's what I've heard foresters call it, also "WUI") is a problem, and it's amplified by the fact that the US Forest Service and various state foresters will more or less subsidize those people living in the WUI. They nearly have a blank check. Rather than having some sort of extra tax or additional insurance requirement for living in the WUI, the USFS simply lobbies for (and usually receives) more money every year. Even though there is this WUI problem, there's also the problem of past poor forest management, where fuel coats the bottom layer of many forests in the West. The forests are denser than the natural equilibrium, and they are primed to become wildfires because so much fuel has built up. That's a serious problem even without encroaching the WUI. It's a complex problem, though various jurisdictions could probably implement more controlled burns than happen today and make the entire ecosystem a bit stronger. I worry about the places where poor management leads wildfires to be so hot that they essentially sterilize the soil, preventing quick regrowth. At scale, that makes climate change worse.
thallium205 3y ago
I live in Tahoe and firefighters do controlled burns feet from houses all the time (in Nevada) without a problem. I see them rake the debris into piles and burn them. … not that hard.
- samrus 3y ago
  Those firefighter haven't dealt with the toughest challenge of all: NIMBYs
Slava_Propanei 3y ago
[dead]

s1artibartfast 3y ago

This is not the fundamental problem. The fundamental problem is that fires were suppressed for nearly 200 years and now turn into raging infernos. Fires were suppressed first for economic reasons, and then later for misguided Environmental reasons Forest fires of a historically typical magnitude would pose much less Danger to communities adjacent to wildlands. This is further complicated by the fact that any of these communities and dwellings were not designed for fire resistance because public policy at the time was no fires ever.

joe_the_user 3y ago
It depends how you want to put. Fire suppression is indeed the fundamental cause and the shape of development is the barrier to fixing it.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  I don't think I agree that the distribution of development poses a significant challenge. If that were the case, you would see at least some controlled Burns in undeveloped areas, but that is not the case. You might see more logging or a small low risk Burns near inhabitated areas. The fact that we still see essentially no control burns is strong evidence that the barrier is Still what it has been for the last 100 years. Bad government policy informed by Environmental emotion instead of environmental science. At the end of the day, the rationale is stupid but simple. People don't like the Aesthetics of a burn Forest for the smell of smoke in the air. Actual risk to life and property from controlled Burns can be effectively minimized. In some areas of the state they never existed in the first place and still don't exist The solution isn't rocket science. You just start with small safe Burns adjacent to communities. Nobody wants to look at a burn scar for several years, so instead they roll the dice on their Community burning down
  - cameldrv 3y ago
    It’s also dumb concern cargo-cutting in California. Even the limited number of burns that are authorized can be cancelled if the air quality that day is bad.

bsder 3y ago

This is true, but even where it's not, the biggest issue in doing controlled burns is simply funding. Controlled burns aren't just "light it up". You may need to create a firebreak. You may need to cull some trees as too many areas have lots of spindly, unhealthy trees that are going to make a controlled burn much harder to control. etc. All of this costs manpower which translates to money.

joe_the_user 3y ago
Controlled burns cost money, no doubt. But just an example, California's fire suppression complex is very well funded. California has a fleet of 747s and other huge aircraft, just for example. My guess is there's no funding where there's no people and where there are people, there's funding but the people's arrangement prevents controlled burns.
- 650REDHAIR 3y ago
  I thought CA contracted out most of the aviation and one of the big companies sold their fire fighting 747 and it was converted to a cargo plane. Cal fire operates some small craft I think.
- bsder 3y ago
  > California's fire suppression complex is very well funded Perhaps very well funded for putting out an existing fire at a specific spot. Controlled burns for prevention need to occur over VAST areas--it's an O(1) vs O(n^2) scaling problem.
onecommentman 3y ago
What everybody (homeowners, forestry types, loggers, environmentalists, etc.) can agree to is prescribed burn practices should be improved. At the time, the story told about the Cerro Grande fire was an inexperienced Forestry agent started a prescribed burn in the heart of the Spring wind season, leading to an inevitable wildfire that no local NM understanding local conditions would have approved. Probably the most expensive fire in NM history. The story told of the Hermits Peak fire is another outsider Forestry agent tried to squeeze a prescribed burn into a very narrow “safe” time slot to stay “on schedule”. To no one’s surprise, the fire didn’t care much about the narrow slot of safety and the largest wildfire in NM history resulted. I think giving a State powers to selective delay any specific prescribed fire within their borders (State, Fed, tribal) would have prevented both destructive NM fires. Local wisdom counts for something and at least the Feds don’t come off looking like idiots when things get out hand. Maybe the Feds and the State together would look like idiots, but not just those outsider Feds.

runtime_blues 3y ago

That's how development always happened in much of the US. Cities expanding into forestland or grassland. The problem isn't that the homes are all of sudden luxurious, or that we somehow do less planning than in the 1880s or 1960s. It's that a mix of well-intentioned environmental policies and activism mean there's no fuel reduction happening at all. Controlled burns are one way, but logging is another.

joe_the_user 3y ago
Yes but ultimately No and No. US cities have always expanded but the current level of "exurban" development is new - a continuation of the expansion trend no doubt but still more expansiveness, sufficient to be a barrier to fixing the problems created by fire suppression forestry. And logging doesn't fix things the way natural fires fix things. Logging companies only want big trees and a sustainable forest has big trees that survive fires and little tree that are removed by modest fires. Clear cut areas tend to burn quite intensely because they're all small tree.

heywherelogingo 3y ago

[dead]

airtonix 3y ago

[dead]

toofy 3y ago

I just want to chime in not to disagree with anything you’re saying (for the record I think your post is thoughtful. I don’t know enough about the nuances to agree or disagree) and it isn’t even directed at you but to all of us and our discussion styles. I really hope that the collective We shift to saying something like “One of the many complications…” rather than “The problem” or “The biggest problem”. When it comes to very large and very complicated problems we often get stuck arguing over which one piece is The problem or The cause or The singular thing. Over and over and over we get stuck arguing over which is the biggest or the only cause/solution. A ton of the issues that we confront here are some of the most complicated issues that interweave technology, economy, ecology, humans, weird borders, power/influence, money, etc… I know this is just semantics but I really do believe that for complex issues we’d get a lot further in discussions if we weren’t limiting ourselves to a silver bullet solution or the one cause. I know it’s “just a casual internet forum” and i know we can’t (and shouldn’t) expect intense rigor on our comments, but i think the hn community has some good minds to discuss some of this and it pokes at me every time i see us (i do the same shit too) get bogged down with “well acksually the biggest cause” or “THE solution is…” Sorry for the tangent poster and readers, but this minor quibble seems important.

JALTU 3y ago
To your point, I wish there were diagrams "we'd" all use to illustrate any issue with complicated interwoven relationships that put the complexity into at least some degree of comparability. Ideally you'd be able to see how some relative amount of funding needs to support some physical effort required and in the context of some degree of regulatory scope. A simple example is the two-factor, two-axis diminishing returns line graph. As cost goes up, returns decrease and we can point to a spot and discuss it. I wish I could give you a good intuitive example of a far more complex (more factors), but if this were easy we'd all be doing it and we'd all be seeing such diagrams more frequently. So in the absence of simple and nuanced illustrations, we have lists and we necessarily fall back on language and our own biases like we do here. (Just humans being human, no judgement.) One possibility I can imagine is a table with solutions on one axis and influencing dimensions on another. e.g., One axis is tech, funding, regulatory, etc. and the other is proposed solutions. In the table, the cross referenced cell might contain a number showing how much of some environmental dimension is needed for a given solution. This example is crude at best because clearly we can debate what the cross-reference values assigned are, and whether or not they're correct, and even whether or not a dimension should be broken down further, but this technique's shortcomings are a compromise–the price paid for attempting to communicate the holistic understanding of an issue. One hopes that price is worth paying for greater appreciation of the issue's systemic complexities, and enabling others to see and evaluate factors they might not otherwise consider.

baryphonic 3y ago

The wildland-urban interface (that's what I've heard foresters call it, also "WUI") is a problem, and it's amplified by the fact that the US Forest Service and various state foresters will more or less subsidize those people living in the WUI. They nearly have a blank check. Rather than having some sort of extra tax or additional insurance requirement for living in the WUI, the USFS simply lobbies for (and usually receives) more money every year. Even though there is this WUI problem, there's also the problem of past poor forest management, where fuel coats the bottom layer of many forests in the West. The forests are denser than the natural equilibrium, and they are primed to become wildfires because so much fuel has built up. That's a serious problem even without encroaching the WUI. It's a complex problem, though various jurisdictions could probably implement more controlled burns than happen today and make the entire ecosystem a bit stronger. I worry about the places where poor management leads wildfires to be so hot that they essentially sterilize the soil, preventing quick regrowth. At scale, that makes climate change worse.

thallium205 3y ago

I live in Tahoe and firefighters do controlled burns feet from houses all the time (in Nevada) without a problem. I see them rake the debris into piles and burn them. … not that hard.

samrus 3y ago
Those firefighter haven't dealt with the toughest challenge of all: NIMBYs

Slava_Propanei 3y ago

[dead]