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Outside Magazine June 2003

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We're Toast (Cont.)


	Looks bad, but it's natural: This area from 2001-02 fires in Montana and Oregon, will see an explosion of growth and returning wildlife in the years ahead. (Kurt Markus)

THE PRICE OF PANIC

What did U.S. taxpayers get for all this expense and loss? Not much. When you stare at the sea of black left by the Biscuit Fire, your first reaction is to think, We can't let this happen again. But in reality there's little anyone can do once a big fire gains momentum. Only a change in the weather makes a real difference, either extinguishing it outright or allowing firefighters to creep up and encircle it with a line of bare earth. The Biscuit Fire certainly paid no heed to the efforts of men, jumping fire lines and resisting every effort to contain it until cooler weather and moisture helped shut it down.

Not only are we unable to stop big burns; the firefighting establishment itself is part of the problem. The nation's long-standing policy of fire suppression has allowed small trees, brush, and other fuels to build up to the point where blazes now routinely mushroom into towering pillars of flame and smoke. Our tendency to fight every fire, meanwhile, has blinded people to a basic reality: Forest fires have always been with us, always will be, and—when they burn in the way that nature intended—they do far more good than harm.



	Looks bad, but it's natural: This area from 2001-02 fires in Montana and Oregon, will see an explosion of growth and returning wildlife in the years ahead. (Kurt Markus)

This was the case even with the Biscuit Fire, which drought helped make much larger than it otherwise would have been. Dubbed "the monster in the woods" by the Portland Oregonian, it resulted in the loss of only four rural homes and led to catastrophic burning—meaning trees were reduced to dead, charred sticks—over just 16 percent of its total acreage. More than half the area inside the fire's perimeter was unburned or only scorched, with the balance receiving what the Forest Service calls "moderate" burns, which left pockets of fire-killed trees next to scarcely damaged stands. And a sizable percentage of the Biscuit burn was caused by fire crews themselves as they set "back fires" meant to deprive the advancing fire of fuel. These were touched off using torches that dribble a mixture of gasoline and diesel, and they increased the fire's area by tens of thousands of acres.

The Federal Government has budgeted $580 million for fighting fires in 2003. Last year, like every year, the U.S. firefighters got a blank check when flames erupted, and spent 1.6 billion.

Still, even though D-day-scale firefighting is a failed strategy for dealing with fires like this, the machine is already muscling up for an encore. By mid-spring, one of the worst droughts in recent memory kept a firm grip on Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah—the heart of fire country. Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Oregon, and parts of California were also still suffering long-term drought. When fires start breaking out, the government will jettison whatever budget numbers it set for 2003 and give firefighters a blank check. In 2002, $380 million was budgeted, but the eventual expenditure was $1.6 billion. This year's budget figure is $580 million, but far more than that will probably be spent.

Looking ahead to 2004, the U.S. Senate is already adding to what the Bush administration wants for firefighting and related work. Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator from Oregon, evidently agrees that more is better, declaring in March that, unless the overall fire budget gets doubled, "a big chunk of the West is going to be a rural sacrifice zone. I'm not going to let that happen."



	Looks bad, but it's natural: This area from 2001-02 fires in Montana and Oregon, will see an explosion of growth and returning wildlife in the years ahead. (Kurt Markus)

That scorched-earth imagery is typical of how politicians and the media talk about fires—calling them monsters in the woods, searching for villains when fires break out, and jamming the debate into trash-talking, blame-seeking categories. In one sense it's understandable that they adopt this tone: A fire is a terrifying event, as loud and threatening as a tornado, seemingly as hot as hell itself. And sometimes there are villains. Last year's huge fires in Arizona and Colorado, for instance, were caused by arson.

But whether we spend one billion or ten, our current approach presupposes that pouring money into firefighting helps solve the problem. It doesn't. We've been trying that for decades, and fires have responded only by getting worse. With another fire season on the horizon, it's time to seriously rethink what we're doing, because business as usual just isn't cutting it.

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