What the Dutch Can Teach Us About Wildfires

16 November 2018

Published by https://www.nytimes.com/


USA – MOSCOW, Idaho — In one of his first public statements about the forest fires devastating California, President Trump tweeted that “there is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor.”

His comment reveals something pervasive and dangerous about how Americans have treated wildfire for more than 100 years: not as the natural hazard that it is, but as something we humans can control.

It’s an understandable mentality, the product of considerable success at putting out fires for decades. But because it has created an abundance of fuel scattered across many of our forests, that mentality is also making the fires that do rage out of control — like the Camp Fire in Northern California and the Woolsey Fire near Los Angeles — much deadlier. At last count 63 people have died in the Camp Fire, and it is only a matter of time before we have our first three-digit fatality wildfire since the 1918 Cloquet Fires in Minnesota killed hundreds.

With hotter and drier weather on the way, forest fires will be a part of life for tens of millions of Americans for the foreseeable future. We need a new way to deal with them — not just better management, as the president suggests, but an entirely different approach to where and how we live in fire-prone areas.

The most common call, especially right after a major fire, is to restrict growth entirely in fire-prone areas. Practically speaking, that won’t work: In the United States, we build and rebuild on earthquake faults, in tsunami zones, in Tornado Alley, along the hurricane-plagued Gulf Coast and in floodplains. New Orleans sits below sea level and it’s not going anywhere.

California is already one of the most expensive states in the country because of a housing shortage, and restricting growth in fire-prone areas — which includes most of the state — will only exacerbate that shortage, raise prices and further marginalize the most vulnerable populations. Many residents of Paradise, the town at the center of the Camp Fire, lived there specifically because they had been priced out of nearby cities.

Instead, we should take a cue from the Dutch. Much of the Netherlands sits below sea level and is therefore prone to flooding, but the Dutch can’t exactly move en masse next door to Germany. So they have learned over the centuries that the solution is to stop fighting the sea, and build their cities and towns to maximize saving lives through smarter planning and infrastructure. We could do the same with wildfire.

Some parts of the country already follow the Dutch model, intentionally or not. The southeastern United States has not lost significant numbers of homes or lives to fire, despite its vast expanse of the “wildland-urban interface” — the mixture of rural homes and towns with wild vegetation. That’s not because the region is immune to fire. It’s because, in part, the Southeast uses prescribed fire across millions of acres each year to reduce how much vegetation is left to burn, effectively using intentional fires to limit out-of-control wildfire.

In California, some communities aggressively prepare residents for the eventuality of wildfire. Montecito, a community east of Santa Barbara, saw the need to address wildfire risk following the 1990 Painted Cave Fire nearby, which killed one person and consumed 427 homes. The Montecito Fire Protection District works with residents to reduce vegetative fuels along roadsides, create “fuel breaks” — essentially areas where native shrubs have been thinned or removed — at strategic locations on private property, and harden homes against embers by putting screens over vents and replacing siding and roofs with less flammable materials.

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Fire personnel help residents create “defensible space” around their homes by removing brush and dead trees. (As the name suggests, defensible space is an area where a home can be defended by firefighters.) The district also set up a neighborhood chipping program to help residents dispose of excess logs and branches.

It created a robust evacuation plan and educated residents on how it worked. And it changed certain codes, requiring new driveways to be wider and with enough turnaround space for large fire engines. Those things make it safer and easier for residents to evacuate and firefighters to get in to protect lives and homes.

All of this preparation was tested in the Thomas Fire last December. The ongoing drought had primed the vegetation for explosive growth. Downhill winds developed, gusting over 60 miles per hour, pushing the fire into the community and raining embers down on homes. It was the worst-case scenario imaginable. Fire-behavior models projected that hundreds of homes could be lost in such conditions. When it was over, however, Montecito emerged with no fatalities, no injuries and only seven homes lost.

I was part of a team that reviewed how Montecito’s preparation paid off, and I saw how well the multipronged approach had worked. Yes, firefighters still had to protect homes. But they were able to do so safely, and many homes withstood the flames without any firefighter support. A lot of things went right, and there is no question that the changes Montecito made over many years contributed to the outcome. As a former wildland firefighter, what I saw in Montecito was a community that prioritized life safety and made sure firefighters could do their jobs safely and effectively, and it made all the difference.

Other communities in the West are implementing their own strategies. In San Diego, new subdivisions are being built with fire-resistant designs and materials so residents can stay safe in their homes while the fire burns around them, instead of risking evacuation and the perils of clogged roads. San Diego Gas and Electric has also focused on strategic blackouts during high wind events to reduce the risk of power line ignitions.


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