Arizona fire deaths prove no one should die for a house
Arizona fire deaths prove no one should die for a house
05 July 2013
published by www.washingtonpost.com
USA — Crystal A. Kolden, a fire ecologist and former U.S. Forest Service firefighter, is an assistant professor of geography at the University of Idaho, where she heads the pyrogeography lab.
No one should ever die to save a house.
The 19 firefighters killed in Arizona this past week should be honored as the fallen heroes they are. Members of an elite unit, they were trained to hike for miles across remote, difficult terrain with 40 pounds of gear and clear vegetation to keep fires from spreading. The Granite Mountain Hotshots were caught by an advancing wildfire near Yarnell, Ariz., the town they were trying to save, when they were overrun by flames.
They should never have been put in that position. Since Yarnell had already been evacuated, these men were lost trying to save not lives but houses. Homeowners who live in wildfire-prone areas shouldnt expect their highly flammable property to be rescued during extreme fires.
Wildland firefighters those who fight vegetation fires instead of house fires are trained to protect human life, property and natural resources, in that order. For most of the 20th century, the amount of property that needed protection from wildfires was fairly limited, and wildland firefighters focused mostly on protecting natural resources, particularly timber.
But since 1970, there has been an expansion of more than 50 percent in the rural and low-density housing communities that border state and federally owned wildlands. These communities are more concentrated in the western United States, where steep terrain and long, dry summers compound the problem. For example, more than a million new homes were built in high fire danger areas in California, Oregon and Washington since 1990. But homes are built amid dense, flammable vegetation everywhere from Florida to Michigan to Texas to New Jersey.
In parts of the country prone to earthquakes and flooding, owners and developers must purchase expensive hazard insurance homeowners in areas affected by Hurricane Sandy, for instance, have seen a 25 percent increase in rates. New construction often must meet specialized codes designed to mitigate potential catastrophe, such as requirements that homes in coastal areas be built on stilts.
Yet, for those who face wildfire, mitigation measures such as building with burn-resistant materials and clearing nearby vegetation are usually optional, making it nearly impossible for firefighters to safely defend communities. Meanwhile, since the federal government picks up most of the tab for firefighting, theres not much incentive for state and local agencies to regulate development.
This needs to change. We need to stop seeing wildfire as an enemy to be exterminated forever and instead accept it as inevitable. We need to recognize that communities built without wildfire-mitigation measures are tinderboxes waiting to burn and stop incentivizing homeowners to rebuild with kindling.We also need to ensure that our national fire policies, such as the Federal Wildland Fire Management Policy, reflect the best, most current science.
Over the past century, we have learned a lot about wildfire. Weve learned that climate change is producing more extreme weather, such as stronger storms and longer droughts, increasing the frequency and intensity of wildfires. Fire ecology has taught us that many ecosystems need fire, and that we can make forests healthier and reduce future risk by allowing some remote wildfires to burn. We can also improve forests and clear flammable vegetation around communities using thinning and prescribed burning, reducing the chance that fires will make the leap from wildlands to homes.
