Firefighter here. I support controlled burns because they're the only sensible way to manage large amounts of excess fuel in the western U.S. The problem is tha

Firefighter here. I support controlled burns because they're the only sensible way to manage large amounts of excess fuel in the western U.S. The problem is that there have been several occasions where frankly stupid mistakes were made by burn personnel and planners (e.g. not completely extinguishing previous fires [1] and going forward with a burn when the wind was clearly too high [2]) resulting in huge amounts of property damage and in some cases loss of life. This is why we now have to deal with a ton of regulations. Some wildfires will always happen when controlled burns get out of control and it's nobody's fault, but we need to decrease the number of them that are the direct result of somebody doing something very stupid. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calf_Canyon/Hermits_Peak_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calf_Canyon/Hermits_Peak_Fire [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Grande_Fire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Grande_Fire