Congress Should Give the Government More Money for Wildfires

The big fires we now see roiling across the west are the result of a putting out 99% of the fires in our Western forest over the past 100 year. When we squash thousands of small fires, we are loading the ecosystem with fuels that inevitably yeild very big ones.

If you look at the budget of the Forest service you will find that as the subsidies for cutting timber went down since the 1990's, the funds for fighting fire has gone up, and the same staff that cut timber shifted to fire.

If you talked to staff in the Forest Service and asked why are you putting out all the little fires they would tell you that they know it is important to let fires burn but they need to fight fires every year in order to maintain their budget. If you look at the communities that live in these landscapes you will find a total unwillingness to enact any sort of zoning or building restrictions that would ameliorate the possible damage forest fires would cause.

Right now the Forest Service and Western communities are facing the consequences of 100 years of a fire policy. This should be a classic negative economic feedback loupe. The problem is not the result of too little funding but too much. It would be far better to allow the Forest Service to roll over funding they saved from not fighting fires one year towards future needs. This would encourage the Forest service to restrain spending some years and not put out every small fire, in order to have funding for the big burns.

Interesting to see how people try to turn this into a partisan issue. Many decades ago, preventing and fighting forest fires was unilaterally regarded to be the right thing to do. The USFS produced large amounts of revenue in timber sales, plowing money back into local communities and helping pay its budgets. Then, after new laws passed in the 1960s allowed the public to intervene in management decision making, environmental organizations began to litigate each and every timber sale. Now, they virtually control the agenda, fighting almost every timber sale, whether it is intended to ameliorate prospective forest fire or not. Meanwhile, the number and intensity of fires increases.

My recommendation is to amend the laws that allow short-sighted, often truly ignorant, environmental organizations to prevent and delay sound forest management.

Ah, but the fires are in the West--so far away from Washington DC and so full of Democratic voters! And I almost double-dare anyone to recall a Republican Dept of the Interior or President who presided over expansion of the National Park's budget or didn't call for commercialized harvesting of resources on National Park lands.

Good article Th fires have also caused economic damage to many many state budgets

People should stop building their houses in fire prone areas, and the government should not use taxes to pay for rebuilding those homes amd businesses when a fire occurs.

The same is true for hurricanes, flood prone areas, high crime areas, etc.

Mud slides and forest fires arenatural phenomina. Housing should not permitted in either environments. Mud slides occur in areas totally unsuitable for affordable contruction and forest fires have existed throuth the millenia and are part and parcel of nature's renewal cycle. Do not foist "global warming" into all and every situation involving nature nor have the arrogance to believe that puny humans can do more than have a minimal effect on it, the same applie to "global cooling" when it comes as it surely will.

Good luck getting any needed money from this current crop of Republicans. They HATE anything that costs money for anything other than WAR and especially hate anything that helps "liberal" States. California could really use the extra Fire fighting money.

To be successful will require a major change in USFS culture as well. There's not much enthusiasm among the rank and file for mechanical thinning and prescribed fire treatments because they don't make the same money they do fighting fires conducting those activities. Much of it is also contracted out to private companies.

The firefighters I know are very happy this summer because they are making huge amounts of money. The USFS went from being primarily a land management agency to a fire fighting one about 20-25 years ago and most of the employees like it that way. Hazard pay and OT add up in a hurry on fire assignments and most have been out on non-stop call-outs for the last two months.

USFS whining about having to use all of their funding to fight fires is reminiscent of Brer Rabbit and the briar patch. Yes, the ever increasing wildland fire season is a huge problem and is only going to get worse. USFS forest "management" is one of the biggest reasons why and has been for years. Leaving a solution primarily up to them is a mistake as they caused most of the problems in the first place. They have about as much credibility on the issue as Dick Cheney on Iraq.

I live in one of those rural, forested tinderbox neighborhoods of the California mountain ranges. While I have no opinion on how the federal government funds wildfire and forest management -- beyond the very general "more, please" -- I can tell you from personal experience that we in the fire lands do not pay enough in fire protection assessments. (We pay through the nose to private insurers, but not to the agencies that actually keep us whole.) The fire tax assessment on my large property is essentially pocket change compared to the half-dozen or more bonds I pay for public schools and community college. Our community has been saved from out-of-control fires by our volunteer fighters and CDF twice in the last decade or so. Yet there is a group here dedicated to fighting every assessment increase attempt with lawsuits. They would rather spend money on lawyers than pay for a service that keeps their homes safe and their families alive. Why should I be allowed to rely on a reserve of men and women willing to risk their lives to protect me and my possessions , and not be required to pay more than the equivalent of a few tanks of gasoline or a couple dinners out? Why should the local community college get three times the money I pay to county fire? The priorities are skewed.

I love firefighters. I have no idea how they do what they do, but I am willing to pay several times my current tax assessment to make sure they can keep doing it.

Bless all fire crews, and Godspeed.

In California a "tax" was imposed on property owners living in what is described as a Wildland Urban Interface. Property owners that are not protected by a local fire department and are in a rural setting rely on state resources and pay a fee for state protection. In addition, many building codes are being adapted to include better construction of fire resistant structures.
In the Valley Fire and Butte Fire, two recent incidences in California, the primary responder was Cal Fire, a state agency. Federal resources were limited to the BLM because both fires had small BLM holdings within the fire perimeter. Most of the property is privately owned, and, a least with the Butte Fire, a portion of the property is owned by PG&E and utility districts.
Much of the land surrounding and even within Forest Service and BLM boundaries are privately owned by timber companies.
The Forest Service, BLM and private timber companies are all involved now with thinning and brush control. The problem with these efforts is the same facing infrastrucure repairs throughout the country. Who is going to pay for it? There is a huge backlog of forest that needs thinning and brush control and the payback does not necessarily mean an end to forest fires but it does mean a huge cost is imposed. The will to pay for it is not there. For private timber companies, the payback is not there either. Big, hot forest fires are the future.

If and when the forest service actually does go out and thin trees, cut brush, and keep electric lines clear, we will see the fires reduced. Thinning includes controlled burns. Yes, they do these things, but not in a sufficient manner. They also love to close areas to camping or simply driving through, which means no one is there to see the lightning strike start a fire, and no one is available to fight it immediately. As long as the attitude of "Save the Trees" means every single sapling and twig, huge destructive fires will continue. And that means we will continue to spend lives and money fighting fires that did not have to be spent. Fire is nature's way of maintaining her forests. If it does not threaten lives, let it burn!

I am a forester for a state agency in the west, and also have fought fires these past two seasons as a kind of 'reservist', they call us permanent employees up to fight fires when all the other resources are already occupied.

Those who say that wildfires are natural occurrences are correct, but to say 'just let it burn' is wrongheaded. That may have worked out in 1920, but now, following a century of putting everything out, the conditions are such that simply letting it burn every time will completely destroy forests that could have survived fires before human intervention. Habitat for furry creatures gone, all of that carbon stored released to the atmosphere, significant value (if it's allowed to be logged) up in smoke. Reality is not so simple, we've created a situation where ladder fuels and the density of growth is such that any fire can crown out and burn so intensely that, in some instances, trees cannot grow back.

Funding fires as disasters will allow FS and BLM managers to thin, prescribed burn, and use other preventative tactics to reduce this fuel load problem, at least partially returning a human-caused problem to a more natural state. In the state where I work, timber sales pay millions of dollars a year into state coffers; perhaps it's time for the anti-logging crowd to accept that 1. Allowing some logging on national forests could help pay for better overall ecosystem management, and 2. Forests don't act as good carbon sinks if they constantly burning down.

A good start, but not enough. Most land management and fire agencies continue to pursue a policy of fire suppression as their only firefighting strategy. Suppression does work in most cases, however about 3% of all fire starts turn into conflagrations that are unstoppable for weeks. Over a century of fire suppression means there's s just too much built up fuel and over too continuous an area to stop them.

Western forests today are dog thickets of dense trees with "ladders" of branches that carry fire from the ground to the crowns of tall trees. When you have a fire moving, creating its own winds with flame lengths of 30 to 50 feet, you just have to drop way, way back and hope the weather changes.
Part of funding, then, needs to include ambitious efforts to reduce fuels around communities through mechanical cutting of trees and eliminating the slash created. Equally critical, though, is the need to reintroduce fire to their ecosystems on a wide and ambitious scale. This creates zones – a mosaic – of large areas with fuels reduced enough such that fire intensity is diminished creating a chance of stopping it.

Zoning helps but it’s not just woodsy people building an idyllic life amongst the trees that’s the problem. The entire west is built amongst grassland, brush and forest ecosystems. Policy based only on suppression has not and will not work. A total rethinking of strategy is now needed.

I couldn't agree more. But, this issue is not unlike all the other far more important domestic emergencies we have. Congress is too busy pushing religion, blackmailing congress in order to deny personal health rights to women, pushing for war with Iran, and taking a 50th vote to kill the Affordable Care Act. YOU elected this wretched bunch.

Yes but take it from some other wasteful project, and require better management of the forests to produce income and reduce fire risk. Logging when done properly reduces fire risk, and the roads make fighting fires easier and safer.

Well, this isn't going to happen until there's a wildfire in Aspen.

Unfortunately, opposition to the Forest Service (unless it's selling trees at below rate prices to timber companies) has been around since the moment of its inception. As chronicled in Timothy Egan's excellent "The Big Burn", its creation was one of many progressive moves that eventually split the Republican party. Chronic underfunding - even in the face of these dangerous fires - is just sadly another way to "prove" that the land needs to be sold off and cut since the Federal Government obviously can't manage them. Just imagine if the Forest Service had proper funding, and was able to diminish fuel loads safely before peak fire season through thinning and controlled burns. Not only would our forests be healthier, but jobs would be created, money would be saved (not responding to crises) and lives not (potentially) lost in battling enormous conflagrations.

Wildfires are NOT disasters and should NOT receive disaster funding; they are natural and necessary ecological events. The out of control spending can be solved instantly by leaving fires in the outback alone! Disaster funds should be used for UNAVOIDABLE human disaster only. Unfortunately, fire research shows that most home losses are avoidable, so we don't need to be wasting taxpayer dollars on a heck of a lot of what we spend them on now.

For those of you crying 'stop building in the woods' I'd like you to know that our home, on a major highway in Montana was at risk from fire this season, as were many others located most decidedly 'on the beaten path.' Unless you think we should all live in concrete jungles, your comments are nonsense to any of us in the path of fires. The areas of California that have been so hard hit were rural but hardly desolate. The same is true in Washington state. These areas are no more rural than parts of Oklahoma or Alabama swept by tornadoes every year but no one tells those folks to stop building there. Were the residents of the Jersey Shore told to pack it up after Hurricane Sandy? And lastly, a fire that started on Forest Service land menaced our private property. How exactly are we expected to exert any control over that? If a windstorm in Central Park blew debris onto your penthouse, would you happily cover those costs yourself?

How fires are funded does need to change. We see first hand the neglect of our nation's public lands while funds are depleted to fight fires. What is proposed here is to put fires on an equal footing with the Hurricane Sandy's and other natural disasters. It would make much more sense than the current method which has the potential to eliminate any budget the agencies have for an entire year with one natural disaster.

One reason the cost is so high is that urban sprawl has brought housing to areas that previously were wilderness. How about a tax on developers who extend the suburbs into these places, since the first information we invariably receive about spreading fires is how many homes they are endangering?

There is more than just money at stake and where it comes from to these agencies. Firefighter fatalities from entrapments and burn overs are sadly an annual occurrence with the extreme conditions, as well as aircraft accidents and injuries from hazard trees. Unfortunately getting some in congress to admit to climate change, let alone doing something about the budget is a broken down bridge too far. Not even the Pope's message can fix that mess.

Here is a newsflash. Some people live in the woods - even on the east coast, the south, the southeast...you get the picture. For those who point the finger at woods loving folk, how about this?Better not allow human habitation in states prone to tornadoes. Man, they can be expensive to clean up....and deadly How about those pesky hurricanes? Sandy? Andrew? No more homes where hurricanes can occur! Let's talk earthquakes - thinking just about the west? Look up New Madrid, MO.
Droughts are a natural occurrence, as are hurricanes, tornadoes and earthquakes. Shocking to me that some people seem to think disaster could not befall them at the hand of Mother Nature.
It is not all just about bad zoning, and no, I don't live it the woods.

The federal government should immediately get out of the business of fire fighting or funding fire fighting.

Forest fires are natural events that cause catastrophes only if not allowed to burn on small scales.

I agree wholeheartedly. As a person living in the west, I know the fear of wildfires. You don't have to live "in the woods" to fear them and the danger they present to firefighters lives as well as towns. With climate change occurring, the fires will only become more dangerous and frequent. To pretend otherwise is sheer folly.

There are several issues here and money is not necessarily the answer.

First, unless a fire is caused by humans, it should be allowed to burn. Natural fires are good for the forest and, indeed, vital to its health.

Next, humans need to stop building their homes in heavily wooded areas that are prone to fire. It is ridiculous--similarly, humans should not be building homes in flood-prone areas. But that's a discussion for another day.

Last, but not least, if humans insist upon building in fire-prone areas, building and construction codes must be changed. The type of building materials must change and the management of landscaping must change.

While many progressive politicians and greenies like to blame global warming for the long and devastating fire season this year in California the real culprit is lying underfoot. Since the early days of the Clinton administration it has been illegal for large timber companies or many communities to clear the inevitable underbrush that accumulates in every forest and woodland area. With all of that fuel underfoot the large areas of timberland have become a tinderbox. We are now reaping the natural outcome.

Editorial asking for action on the budget is a futile attempt but thank you for making it. Republicans and conservatives in congress have no vision beyond their nihilism and superstitions

We cannot afford to spend money frivolously here at home.
We have two bankrupting, futile, wars to pay for and more on the drawing board.
Perpetual War "R" US.

We need an entirely new approach to forest fires.

We need to accommodate what we now know of the Fire Cycle of forests. They are supposed to burn. They are supposed to burn in small fires that are cooler and do a lot less damage. In fact, the smaller first promote growth and protect species.

We've built a tinder box in our forests, and now act surprised it burns big and hot and ruins things.

As we develop a better way to pay for regular care of our forests, we need to develop a more accurate and reasonable way to manage their fires. They will burn. The only question is how, what the fires will be like.

Wouldn't it make more sense for people living in the forests or on the edge of the forests to pay for putting out fires?

The key to reducing the frequency and damage from forest fires is for local governments to stop zoning practices that permit building in fire-prone areas. The Federal Government can make this happen by refusing to fight fires in these areas, forcing local governments to confront the financial consequences of bad zoning policy.

Asking for a miracle.

The profoundly romantic but naive infatuation with "living in the woods" needs to be tempered by a knowledge of how the forest works. Maine has been swept by widespread fires at least twice since European occupation; they burned from the western border to the sea, but wise farmers and their farms survived. The protection against loss by fire is a wide, clear space around the home and outbuildings, and pre-emptive burning or clearing of brush around houses and outbuildings. Native Americans knew that, and set preemptive fires around their settlements regularly to keep brush down.

The irony is that many whose homes and towns are in danger of nature's wildfires vote GOP, the party which still demonizes "government" whenever possible. Apparently they are happy to assume risk without any government protections.

With a GOP controlled Congress?

Every fire season will be an extreme event until nature reaches a new equilibrium as a consequence of (Non-existent according to the Propaganda Channel, but DOD believes in it) Climate Change.

Oh, and find a way to prevent the comfortable classes from building houses in the exurban fringe. Yes, it's nice out there, no pesky poor people or homeless to see every day, but that is part of our problems, it becomes someone else's geographic problem.

As one who was stuck in the Superdome during Katrina, there's often a blurred line between a natural and unnatural disaster. Most of the damage in New Orleans was not done by Katrina but rather a shoddy infastructure known as the Army Corps of Engineers levee system. We absolutely can budget for most disasters along with a safety net if we choose to do so rather than spending billions invading countries under false pretenses. If we don't prepare our infrastructure better then our casualties at home will far surpass any amount some terrorists might hope for.

Paul Harris, Author, Diary From the Dome Reflections On Fear and Privilege During Katrina