U.S. Forest Service: We do not have a ‘let it burn’ wildfire policy. We never have

17 November 2021

USA – Over the past two years of historic fire seasons in California, U.S. Forest Service employees and partners have acted bravely and professionally to protect people, communities and landscapes from large, catastrophic wildfires.

Forest Service firefighters, in cooperation with other federal agencies, tribes, state agencies and local governments, suppress over 98% of all wildfires during initial attack with aggressive firefighting techniques that use all available resources. In California this year, we suppressed over 1,100 wildfires in areas where the Forest Service has jurisdictional responsibility.

Even with our high success rate in catching fires early, the 1% to 2% of wildfires that escape initial attack move faster, grow larger and do even more harm to communities and resources than in previous years. As a result, California residents are frustrated by the increasing threat of catastrophic fire to lives, communities and natural resources. As part of this frustration, some have raised concerns about our approach to suppressing wildfires.

There continues to be a misconception that the Forest Service has a “let it burn” policy. We do not have a “let it burn” policy, nor have we ever had one in the past. We develop a suppression strategy for each wildfire based on environmental conditions; risks to communities, infrastructure and firefighter safety; and available resources.

This year, it was especially important we put fires out immediately due to the exceptional drought conditions across the state and strained firefighting resources across the country.

For those very few fires that do escape our initial attack, we mobilize resources from across the country — including air tankers, helicopters, hand crews, incident management teams and others — to suppress fires with every resource we can spare.

I am incredibly proud of the hardworking firefighters serving at the Forest Service and of all the wildland firefighters across our many partner organizations. They are heroic, humble, dynamic and resilient.

It is true that firefighters from different agencies can have different perspectives on the best tactics to suppress any given wildfire. We build this into our incident management strategy and use it as a strength. The diversity of perspective and expertise across different fire organizations in California makes us stronger. This established mutual aid system in California is second to none in the world and ensures that all levels of government can respond together to protect life, property and natural resources.

However, despite the hundreds of millions of dollars annually the Forest Service mobilizes to fight wildfire in California, the most important work we can do to reduce the threat of catastrophic fire is before the fires even start.

Forests across California depend on fire to maintain their resiliency. After more than a century of suppressing fires, our forests are more dense and tightly packed than ever, creating receptive conditions for large, catastrophic fires.

Although overly dense forest conditions have been with us for several decades, the impacts of climate change are increasing — warmer temperatures, drier conditions, extreme fire weather, drought, erratic weather patterns and broader insect and disease outbreaks.

Wildfires are burning as they never have before, often year-round, and are more difficult to suppress.

We know more proactive work needs to be done to care for our forests. The Forest Service stands ready to move forward with our partners to meet our wildland fire mission in California under the collective motto of “One Team, One Fight,” engaging in the critical work needed to improve forest health and resiliency, reduce the potential for catastrophic wildfires and protect communities and natural resources.

Jennifer Eberlien is regional forester of the Pacific Southwest Region for the U.S. Forest Service.

17. November 2021/by GFMCadmin