Study: Feds' Wildfire Efforts Misdirected

Government Fire Prevention Programs Target Wrong Areas, Miss Riskiest, Scientists Say

(AP)  While more than 1,000 homes across the West burn each year in forest and brush fires, only a fraction of federal efforts to reduce fire danger in the region has been concentrated in the communities at greatest risk, a group of scientists found.

The scientists analyzed a database containing the locations of all 44,613 fuel-reduction projects undertaken in Western states by various federal agencies under the National Fire Plan from 2004 through 2008. They found that only 3 percent of those projects were within what is known as the wildland-urban interface.

Wildland-urban interface is a term for areas where suburban and rural homes meet forests and rangelands. The National Fire Plan is a program that is intended to reduce the risk of wildfire to communities.

The scientists found that 11 percent of those fuel-reduction projects were within an area that includes the wildland-urban interface plus a 1.5-mile buffer strip around it.

That is far short of the 50 percent goal set by the Healthy Forests Restoration Act of 2003, which was supposed to help control the $1 billion regularly spent each year fighting wildfires.

Wildfires burned 5.3 million acres in the U.S. in 2008.

"We're going to have to adapt to these large fires as a way of life," said Tania Schoennagel, a fire ecologist at the University of Colorado and lead author of the study, appearing in Tuesday's edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Fire suppression is doing an outstanding job, but there is only so much they can do," she said. "So we are probably going to continue to have more home losses unless we have communities more adapted to fire."

That means helping homeowners fireproof their homes by clearing trees and brush around them and using building materials that don't burn, such as metal roofs, she said.

"With crime, we lock our doors and we get a security system," she said. "With earthquakes, quake-proof construction is required in earthquake zones. We are not allowed to build in 100-year flood plains.

"But with wildfire, it's different. We don't lock our homes down to fire."

From 2002 through 2006, 10,000 homes nationwide were destroyed by wildfire, the study noted.

Joe Walsh, a spokesman for the U.S. Forest Service, said the agency had just received the report and was still reviewing it: "Once that review is finished, we'll have a comment."

The study found that federal agencies working under the National Fire Plan have a tough job because they control only 17 percent of the land in the West's wildland-urban interface. Private land covers 71 percent.

"Our results suggest the need for a significant shift in fire policy emphasis from federal to private lands, if protection of communities and private property in the wildland-urban interface remains a primary goal," the authors wrote.

Meanwhile, studies indicate that longer and hotter summers connected to global warming are behind the increasing number and intensity of wildfires, which hit nearly 10 million acres nationwide in 2006.

Schoennagel noted that research at the Forest Service's Missoula Fire Sciences Laboratory in Montana has found that most homes that burn in wildfires are ignited by falling embers, sometimes from far away, showing that thinning forests and cutting brush on public lands is not enough.

Scott Stephens, associate professor of fire science at the University of California at Berkeley, said he was surprised by the findings, given the hot debate over reducing fire danger in communities.

Stephens agreed that more needs to be done on private land, particularly by homeowners who fail to clear trees and brush around their homes or build with materials that are less likely to burn.

"No fuel treatment on federal lands adjacent to the WUI (wildland-urban interface) will keep fire out," he said. "Even if we treat those areas, you're still going to have embers and sparks flying."

Those embers can start a house on fire by landing on a shake roof or wooden deck, in gutters filled with dry leaves or pine needles, or on a woodpile stacked next to the house.

Andy Stahl, director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a conservation group, said the $2 billion spent under the National Fire Plan since 2000 has failed to reduce the number of acres burned by wildfires, the homes destroyed or the firefighters killed.

He noted that most of the homes that burn each year are in California, and are in chaparral, rather than forests.

The study was funded by the National Academy of Sciences, the Wilburforce Foundation, and a Smith fellowship, Schoennagel said.

[aChangeOfIdeas]

response to n0k0mis at 7:30 AM : Jun 9, 2009

So there used to be some common sense building codes then., so either they've gone backwards or people aren't following them... I'm just surprised because my in-law's home is in upstate NY and their building code requires a tile or slate roof, I guess b/c of the state forest surrounding them. Also no wood siding... brick and stone acceptable and probably others but most houses are brick sided. And this is upstate NY, not the desert. I had really just assumed that in So. Cal. there would be some mighty strict rules about building! (silly me). I had never heard of gravel roofs before, I take it they are flat? Otherwise the gravel would kind of roll off... I was going to ask how the water drains off and then I remembered, duh, it's a desert. =)

[jable23]

The Forest Service can only do so much, especially with the paltry funding they receive. Where are the insurance companies in this debate? Insurance companies could make homeowners coverage in areas prone to wildfires contingent on developing fire-safe building codes, or insurance companies could perform free home inspections and recommend methods of improving fire safety for existing homes. Why aren't homeowners working with their insurance companies to take more personal responsibility for their homes?

Also, while some rural communities need protection, many people who live in the "fire plane" choose to live there for esthetic reasons. And many (or most) of these are wealthy. Will it turn out that most of the "communities at greatest risk" are upper class suburbs? Will focusing on protecting these communities simply be a subsidy of the rich?

Lastly, while protecting homes can be important, the Forest Service also is obligated to restore forests and improve ecosystems. Should that work be abandoned to instead protect the McMansions and tennis courts built on the beautiful and expensive edges of the national forests?

[n0k0mis]

When I was growing up in southern Cal, there were rules, when it came to housing construction, that did not allow construction materials such as wood shakes and shingles for roofing, and wooden shingles and siding. They were deemed too flammable in an area of the country that is so susceptible to brush fires. I don't know if there were actual laws, I only know that those materials would not be approved for building. Also, there were ordinances in many towns and counties, that required vegetation be non-flammable (such as the many types of ice-plants and other arid-loving plants) or kept very low, so as not to be a conduit for fire form a brush-fire to the structures. My father taught me "how to burn" (if you had to burn debris, do it in the rainy season) or "not to burn". Most of the "old timers' there did so because they understood that it could mean life or death, or the loss of livestock or your own home. The perimeters of the "old timers" were usually bare, dressed up by "rock gardens" with ice plants and cacti. Shrubs around a house were a definite invitation to burn. Yes, it was a little stark, but it was smart and safe in a fire-prone area. I grew up having to evacuate, almost every year, while my dad stayed at the house wetting it down to keep it from burning. Back then, white gravel roofs were the norm. If you wet the roof down, during a fire, it prevented embers from starting a fire on it. The gravel also helped keep the summer heat away from the inside of the house. And, of course, the gravel doesn't burn. Somewhere in the 60s and 70s, when the "me" generation became voters, those rules and regulations were challenged or ignored, or even bribed out of by the wealthier residents, and thus people began ignoring the common sense that should have dictated how to live in a fire-prone area. The influx of easterners didn't help at all either. They moved to So. Cal. and missed their vegetation from back east, many times bringing some with them. That brings up another can of worms in the water situation out in So. Cal., but I won't go there. I left So. Cal. because I married a G.I. from the east. But my family is in the west, and I watch the fire situations out there all the time. I am appalled at the way people are allowed to build out there, and then they whine because their homes burn! There is absolutely no common sense out there anymore. So many homes burn. And if you look at the pictures, they all have vegetation hanging all over them - invitation to flame. I am of the opinion that anyone who insists on flammable materials for the exterior of the home, and vegetation up to the roof, should be made to sign waivers not holding anyone liable (but themselves) if the place goes up is flames. Some of these yahoos rebuild in the SAME MANNER and with the same flammable materials - at government and/or insurance expense (which, of course keeps the insurance rates so high). Anyway, things haven't improved out there, and really is NOT the fault of the forestry people.

[mrs_trepidatious]

God sends fires to sinners for pestilence, there is no way to prevent them.

[aChangeOfIdeas]

Seriously, there are homes in these areas with wood shake siding or roofs? Wood decks? Firewood stacked outside, not in a metal shed? Hopefully these are the minority... I know you can't prevent all disasters, but it seems a little common sense would go a long way.

[veils-2009]

small controlled burns sounds like a smart way to deal with the tender. That way you fight the fire on your terms.