
To Help Prevent the Next Big Wildfire, Let the Forest Burn - mcenedella
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/29/opinion/sunday/california-wildfires-forest-management.html
======
zaroth
How realistic is it for vastly improved monitoring and rapid response to be
able to snuff out a major fire before it develops?

For example, what if you had the surveillance coverage to detect a fire before
it covers, say, even 1 acre, and if you could respond with a tanker of Phos-
Chek (or whatever) within some number of minutes?

Aside from actually achieving the detection ability for alerting on a new
fire, and having the equipment and personale distributed and on-call for rapid
response, I am guessing the biggest challenge is “false positives” in the
sense that you detect a real fire which is relatively tiny, but have no way to
determine if it has the potential to develop into a catastrophic fire. In the
long tail of forest fires there are perhaps 100,000 detectable fires, so
that’s a lot of response.

This goes against precisely the thesis of TFA and perhaps the counter-argument
is that strictly controlling fires will just allow fuel to pile up to the
point where it is no longer controllable — like a dam holding back the
floodwaters until it is finally topped.

The biggest problem I have with the “let it burn” argument is just the macro
level stats. We have about the same number of fires, burning about 10x the
acreage as they did in the past. We are already letting these fires,
intentionally or not, burn a lot more acreage and the number of fires is
roughly constant.

~~~
bluGill
We don't actually have good records for the number of fires in the past. As
soon as white men came to North America they started putting out fires. The
natives here before then didn't keep detailed written records, though the
general verbal reports suggest they were actually lighting fires)

Letting the fires burns clears out the fuel. IF we go in next year and light
that area again there won't be much fuel, so the fire will burn much colder -
humans and wildlife caught in that second fire can easily leap over the flames
to relative safety (don't get me wrong, some will die in the attempt, but it
isn't a death sentence like the larger fires we have now).

That second fire has an additional benefit: carbon sequestration. The big
fires we have now turn all carbon to CO2. The smaller fires we could have
won't burn hot enough for that and so unburnt carbon will fall to the ground.

~~~
moultano
Given the rate at which these fires are happening and the size of the regions
they are burning, I'm not sure how "let it burn" is materially different from
what is currently happening, even with our best efforts to put them out.

~~~
bluGill
Let it burn includes intentionally lighting fires as well.

~~~
bfuller
My area used to do controlled burns but due to budget cuts hasn't in years,
it's a tinder box in some of the forests.

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bluGill
Note that the situation in California is VERY different from most of the US.

In California (this probably only applies to parts of California - it is a big
state) the trees are high oil and very flammable. When there is a fire after a
drought (which is common) it will be big and hot. The only way to deal with it
is to not build near these forests and let them burn naturally.

~~~
dfsegoat
Do you have any links to support such a broad statement? I've lived in
Northern CA almost my entire life, and I would not classify the Oaks etc. as
"high oil" or any more flammable than trees in the rest of the continental
united states.

In fact, looking at this study utilizing GIS data - it looks to me like the SE
US actually contains some of the largest concentrations of fuel / fire risk:

[https://eos.org/articles/assessing-u-s-fire-risks-using-
soil...](https://eos.org/articles/assessing-u-s-fire-risks-using-soil-
moisture-satellite-data)

~~~
bluGill
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Control_of_Nature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Control_of_Nature)
is where I read this. The types of timber in the area
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Gabriel_Mountains](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Gabriel_Mountains)
are known as high oil which means they burn hotter. Oaks are not high oil.
Cedar and Pine are though.

Note that current concentration of fuel/fire risk is NOT what I was talking
about. There are big problems all over the US because of mis-management.
Different areas need different management.

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deedubaya
Forest fires (used) to be a natural occurrence which was healthy for forests.

70 years of "put every fire out" has resulted in forests with excess fuel.
That coupled with dry spells and warmer temps = a powder keg instead of
natural burns.

~~~
moultano
The places these fires are burning have no natural sources to start fires.
California never gets lightning except in the Sierra's.

~~~
mannykannot
Rare, but it happens:

[https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lightning-
strik...](https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lightning-strikes-
southern-california-map-20140729-story.html)

The existence of adaptations to fire in the Californian ecology is good
evidence for it being a significant factor (and if these were in response to
human activity, then why not elsewhere?)

~~~
moultano
Native Americans had been setting fire to the whole landscape for 14 thousand
years. That is not evidence for natural sources of fire.

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pvaldes
There is a fact in wildfires that is often ignored. Often, (very often) this
is not a case of bad luck or neglected nature, is just a problem of sabotage.
A crime. Twenty five starting points in the same area the same night. People
keep blaming nature instead.

You can't stop criminals just removing combustible and cleaning. They can and
will provide their own combustible. A few gallons of gasoline is all that they
need.

We would need something like the ink companies do since years. A way to put a
fingerprint in the gasoline so, after a wildfire (or a home fire) some
harmless chemical compound could remain in X concentration and point to the
fuel station selling the combustible. Maybe a mix of several aditives in
different concentrations and different times could provide enough variability
to make a short code with station and month. Then you have the arsonists and
their vehicles filmed in camera. Still a lot of people to check but, as many
arsonists are recurrent, you can look for patterns. Could be silently
implemented only for conflictive areas by the government and fine tune it to
week or even day.

------
almost_usual
These fires are going to burn extensively no matter what at this point.
California does not have the money or resources to control it, Mother Nature
will run its course.

------
konschubert
Isn't the frequency of fires mostly caused by the drought, which in turn is
caused by climate change?

How do all of these policies matter of there is no more rain in California?

~~~
zaroth
There will never be “no more rain in California”. Also, fires are not becoming
more frequent, but roughly the same number of fires are burning more acreage.

Apparently any and all weather pattern changes are “caused by climate change”
whether that be drought or monsoon, heat or cold spells, increased or
decreased hurricanes, etc.

And interestingly, no matter which direction the change is said to be
occurring (e.g. more rain in the mid-west) it’s always predicted to lead to a
catastrophic outcome.

~~~
all2
This sounds like Marxism. Every social phenomena can be explained by Marxism
(ergo, it is not scientific).

A proper scientific theory is disprovable.

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ahmedalsudani
Does not seem like a valid argument at this point. The latest big wildfire in
California (Paradise) included portions of the forest that had burned a few
years prior and were mostly grassy at the time of the fire.

I can't find the source I had heard, but it was one of the firefighters giving
an interview and talking about forest management... Maybe I should have taken
what he said with a hint of salt though ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

~~~
SaintGhurka
I went through fire training for the CA Conservation Corps about 30 years ago
and they brought up the let-it-burn theory in a class about forest management.

As support for the theory, they had a map showing recent wild land fire
activity in California vs. Mexico. In CA the fires were growing larger over
the decades while in Mexico they were not.

A quick search for updated data didn't yield anything for me. I would like to
see if the comparison still holds up.

~~~
moultano
>As support for the theory, they had a map showing recent wild land fire
activity in California vs. Mexico. In CA the fires were growing larger over
the decades while in Mexico they were not.

That could just as easily be the result of climate change.

------
bamboozled
Some might find reading about a an Indigenous Australian practice known as
“fire stick farming” [1] to be relevant and interesting.

TL;DR version is tha by intentionally burning areas of bushland, Aboriginals
decreased the intensity of fires thus reducing damage to plant and animal life
which worked to their advantage of course.

I’ve personally witnessed this happening in North Western Australia where FSF
is still practiced in a rather traditional way and the scrub land looked
incredibly healthy It’s a place where I’ve never heard of out of control
wildfires occurring.

Since witnessing the practice I’ve always found it really fascinating.

[1] [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-
stick_farming](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming)

------
shower-curtain
Wouldn't it be better to practice proper forestry and harvest the timber,
rather than let it burn and release hundreds of kilotons more CO2 and
pollutants into the atmosphere?

~~~
clarkevans
_Stephen Pyne, an environmental historian who studies fire, emphasized that
logging would not keep wildfires at bay. “Logging takes the big trunks and
leaves the small stuff because there’s no market for it,” he said. “Fire burns
the little and leaves the big.”_

~~~
shower-curtain
Great quote, but that's just not true. I suggest you research modern logging
practices.

~~~
ceejayoz
Since you're the expert (contesting the named expert cited in the article),
why don't you point us in the right direction? Googling "modern logging
practices" brings up Wikipedia, some industry websites, and a variety of
random articles.

~~~
StephenConnell
Not the parent, but what I've recently seen in Northern California is all
underbrush and low branches gone. They were specifically prepping the area to
manage fire. Quincy area.

~~~
io_io
This would equate to forest management practices, not logging. They likely
chipped or burned the underbrush and low branches after removing them from the
forest, which wouldn't be a profitable business practice.

~~~
StephenConnell
True, it was forest management, not just commercial logging.

