Up In Smoke: Wildfires & Us—Forest service & fighting fires out of control—Ashes Ashes #12
Channel: Stop Fossil Fuels
Date: 2019-02-18

In forests, grasslands, and landscapes around the world, poor wildland management and climate change have combined to produce some of the most explosive fires ever seen. This trend is getting worse, and as we continue to push development into these areas, the need to extinguish fires that threaten human life and property rises. But paradoxically, fighting fires is a big piece of the puzzle in how we got here in the first place. We are joined by Tommy Nease and Tyler Marlow, both with professional Forest Service experience, to help make sense of this frightening trend.

Podcast by Ashes Ashes, reposted under CC License. Browse episode resources & read full transcript at https://ashesashes.org/blog/episode-12-up-in-smoke

Stop Fossil Fuels researches and disseminates effective strategies and tactics to halt fossil fuel combustion as fast as possible. Learn more at https://stopfossilfuels.org

CHAPTERS
0:00 The Great Fire
2:59 Intro
6:48 The Forest Service
9:38 Hurry Up and Wait?
10:26 Engine Work
12:05 Dangers
13:44 Hand Crews vs Engine Crews
14:42 Setting Fires?
15:39 Prescribed Fires
16:59 Fire is Unpredictable
20:16 Too Much Development?
23:21 What Should People do?
25:45 Fire as a Natural Disaster
26:18 Education?
27:24 Rescuing the Governor
28:23 Send in the Calvary?
30:59 Why Should We Care?
35:34 Send Off
38:21How Did We Get Here?
40:24 Climate Change
44:23 Fire is Good
46:40 Overcrowded Forests
48:46 California
51:49 Slave Labor
53:42 An Investment that Really Caught Fire
55:41 Worldwide
59:58 Climate Feedback
1:01:23 What can we do?
1:05:33 Wrap Up

TRANSCRIPT EXCERPT
Tyler Marlow: From the creation of the Forest Service and the creation of massive industrialized wildland firefighting, we got really good at it, and decided that any fire that starts we’re going to put out, and disrupted a natural cycle that would be great to go back to, but at this point there's just too many houses, too many people, too much threat to property and loss of life, that we don't really have the option to just let fires return to a natural cycle without harming a lot of people and a lot of property. 

Tommy Nease: In a perfect world thought it’d be nice to only fight human caused fires and let the natural ones just run their cycle, but at the same time I’m in the process of buying a house and I'd want someone to stop a fire if it was going to burn it down. So I’m guilty as well.

David: We're seeing less rain & water, and greater and longer droughts in the West & northwest where these fires are getting bad, and these dry periods end up cooking the forest. Of taking all this extra scrub that isn't supposed to be there that is there now, because of the way these forests have changed over the past hundred plus years, and turning that scrub from scrub into fuel.

Once this tinder builds up because it’s been dried out from the droughts, it just needs a spark, whether from lightening or human activities like camping or more intentional things. Once that spark gets out this fuel which is now everywhere—which is now dryer than it's ever been—goes up all at once.

Daniel: Not only are these forests becoming dryer, but the fire season itself has extended. The increased heat is causing snow from mountains to melt off months earlier than they used to, so less water is filling streams with snowmelt at times when forests need the water the most.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, the warming and drying climate has expanded fire seasons in the western US by 78 days between 1970 and 2015.

David: It's not just about droughts, but greater variability in the weather, in the climate in general. You might have droughts for a few years, and then suddenly one year where it pours. Where it constantly, because of el nino or la nina or whatever weather phenomenon that’s happening more frequently because of this increased variability; jet streams, whatever it is, more energy is being pumped into this system—that’s what this heat is measuring in terms of global warming—as the temperatures go up, that’s more energy in the system and more energy in the system encourages more variability.

When you have a wet year following years of drought, you see an explosion of life. All these sprouts, all these plants, these seedlings, that were waiting for that chance to get a little bit of water pop out of the ground, and it’s beautiful. Just absolutely gorgeous. But what happens when that rain disappears? When that drought returns?

All this beautiful new growth turns back into more fuel than there's been in a long time. With no fires to burn it because you just had a wet rainy season, the fires that happen then are bigger, faster, and stronger than any before. You get cyclical, disastrous fire seasons because you have these variability in the climate because of climate change.

Daniel: 60% of all new homes built are in these flammable areas, and 1/4th of homes in the US are within Wildland Urban Interface boundaries.