[Vision2020] Why the Wildfires Still Rage

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>

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October 18, 2012
Why the Wildfires Still Rage By JOHN N. MACLEAN

Washington

THE cooler temperatures of fall may have arrived on the East Coast, but in
California and the Pacific Northwest, fire season burns on. There are six
large fires raging out West, and this year’s season is likely to burn 10
million acres of land, more than in any year since 1960, when federal
records began to be kept.

Explanations abound: global warming has provided consistently hotter
weather, and warmer winters have meant less snow melt during the spring.
Drought has plagued the country, and invasive beetles have killed millions
of trees, leaving mountains of ready-to-burn timber.

And yet a surprising number of fires in recent years haven’t been started
by, say, lightning or even the unattended campfire that Smokey Bear
persistently wags his finger against — but rather by far more surprising
human acts.

In 2000, for instance, workers from the Union Pacific Railroad Company were
welding tracks in Northern California when, authorities claim, sparks from
their machinery ignited nearby brush. The resulting fire burned 52,000
acres. In 2004, a man was mowing his lawn near Redding, Calif., when he ran
over some rocks, shooting sparks into the grass. That fire burned 11,000
acres, gutted 80 homes and caused $14.5 million in damages. *This year, at
least 21 wildfires in Utah, nearly a dozen in Idaho and several more in
Arizona, Nevada, Washington and New Mexico were set by the errant bullets
of target shooters flying into the brush.*

All of this represents a kind of negligence that smart laws help prevent.
And so fines are being assessed, and people are going to jail. Union
Pacific paid $102
million<http://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5305710.pdf>to
settle a civil lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice, while the
Redding yard worker was
sentenced<http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/downloads/newsreleases/2006archive/PrisonSentenceBearFire.pdf>to
four years in prison for “unlawfully causing a fire by negligent
operation of a riding lawn mower.”

The most recent — and most extreme — example is the case of a 31-year-old
man named Rickie Lee Fowler. In August, Mr. Fowler was found guilty of
setting what’s known as the Old Fire of 2003, one of the most destructive
blazes in the history of Southern California. It began when Mr. Fowler,
high on methamphetamines, tossed a lighted road flare into roadside scrub.
The subsequent blaze burned more than 90,000 acres and cost Californians
$40 million. Five elderly men died. Mr. Fowler’s jury has
recommended<http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/09/man-gets-deathlife-in-forest-fire-that-killed-5-people.html>that
he be put to death. A judge will sentence him next month.

Mr. Fowler’s act was no doubt “despicable” (to borrow an adjective used by
one of the arsonist’s own lawyers), yet those victims didn’t die from burns
or smoke inhalation. They were killed by heart attacks induced from the
stress of evacuation, some in locations far from the fire’s front lines. It
seemed not to matter to Californians, frustrated residents of a state
that’s experienced more than 400,000 wildfires since 1933.

Still, if all of these penalties reinforce one crucial idea — that reducing
the number of human-started fires is an absolute imperative — they
nonetheless remain generally far too weak, representing only a fraction of
the damage such fires wreak every year. Too often, federal, state and local
fire authorities choose to issue “advisories,” suggesting guidelines for
behavior in fire-prone areas rather than doing the tough business of
rewriting laws.

Admittedly, passing such legislation is not easy. The authorities who
sought to regulate those target shooters earlier this year encountered
aggressive opposition from gun rights advocates. A spokesman for a gun
rights group in Utah dismissed such legislation by saying, “To impugn all
shooters and the sport is to demonize an activity that is safely done by
tens of thousands of Utahans every week.”

But the Utah State forester wanted sportsmen only to swap their steel
bullets for lead ones, which don’t emit sparks when they strike rock. He
eventually got them to do so, through an emergency measure, but only on
state property, not federal land, where many fires raged. (Some practice
shooters fire at exploding targets — store-bought canisters that blow up
when pierced by a bullet. These are largely legal, but they should be
banned immediately.)

Officials have also struggled to curb the use of all-terrain vehicles in
the backcountry during fire season. Like the sparks from the Union Pacific
welding equipment, the mufflers of four-wheelers have been known to ignite
passing brush. And yet many outdoor enthusiasts refuse to keep them in the
garage for a few months every summer. Most states require A.T.V.’s to be
equipped with what are known as “spark arresters,” but enforcement is
minimal, and clearly, fires are still being ignited. Residents across the
country are often asked to reduce water usage during periods of hot weather
— why can’t we do the same with A.T.V.’s?

California and the Pacific Northwest will most likely be fighting wildfires
into November. By enacting some straightforward measures, the severity of
future wildfire seasons could well be lessened.

John N. Maclean <http://johnmacleanbooks.com/> is the author of the
forthcoming book “The Esperanza Fire: Arson, Murder and the Agony of Engine
57,” about a 2006 wildfire in California.




-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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