Fighting fire with fire

How bad is the problem?

Wildfires of astonishing size and intensity are raging throughout the west. In Colorado, firefighters faced a fire larger than the city of Denver. In Arizona, two huge fires merged, presenting a 50-mile wall of flames that has consumed more than 400,000 acres. Hundreds of homes have burned; thousands of people have been evacuated. In these two major fires, and smaller blazes in other western states, more than 2.7 million acres of forest have burned. And the summer fire season has barely begun.

Is this a new dilemma?

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No and yes. Forest fires are as natural as rain. They occur wherever seasons fluctuate; wet conditions allow trees and underbrush to grow, and dry conditions cause them to dry out and be ignited by lightning. (There are 10 million lightning strikes in the world every day, producing 1 million ignitions, author Mike Davis says in the book World Fire.) Experts estimate that before the arrival of the Europeans, 100 million acres of North America burned every year. By 1960, however, only 2 million to 5 million acres a year were being lost to wildfires. Between 1996 and 2000, the average was 5.3 million acres a year.

Why the big decline?

The change can be traced to the fire season of 1910, dubbed the Big Burn, when millions of acres in Montana and Idaho burned, and dozens of firefighters died. After that, fire suppression became official federal policy. The stated goal was not only to respond to but contain any and all fires one day after they were reported. The nation’s official approach to wildfire became embodied in Smokey Bear—prevent fire, fight fire, extinguish fire.

Isn’t that a good thing?

Yes, if you’re a rancher or a property owner. But removing fire from an ecology for the better part of a century created an unnatural buildup of fuel—underbrush, deadwood, little trees, and shrubs. Scientists examining 300-year-old trees have found in their rings signs of fire scarring every 12 to 15 years. These fires opened the dense forest canopy to light, released nutrients into the soil, heated seed cones so that they burst open, propagated biodiversity, and, not incidentally, burned up accumulated fuel on the forest floor. Suppressing fires allowed that fuel to accumulate. Combine decades of fuel with this year’s drought, and you have the wildfire equivalent of “the perfect storm,” says Stephen Pyne, an Arizona State University professor and author who has spent his life studying fires.

Should federal policy change?

It already has, at least in theory. Last year, under a plan approved by both Presidents Clinton and Bush, the U.S. Forest Service was supposed to start letting natural fires burn—unless settlements were threatened, or drought conditions like this year’s made a wildfire likely.

Will the new policy work?

The problem with the new policy is the old policy: Today, what goes up in flames is not 12 to 15 years’ worth of fuel, but 80 or 90 years’ worth. One possible solution is prescribed burning—deliberately starting a controlled burn. But igniting a fuel-choked forest that hasn’t burned for nearly a century “is really playing Russian roulette,” forester Doak Nickerson tells the Omaha World-Telegram. In May 2000, a prescribed burn in Bandelier National Park in New Mexico got out of control. It destroyed 4,000 homes and threatened the Los Alamos nuclear facility. Given this danger, residents and government officials and some environmentalists tend to like prescribed burning in theory, but oppose it in fact. The town of Show Low, Ariz. (pop. 7,800), gained attention for being deeply endangered by last week’s Chediski-Rodeo blaze. But earlier this year, a prescribed burn near Show Low was called off because residents didn’t want to be blanketed with smoke and ash.

What else could we do?

Many western governors want to open these forests to logging. They believe this would reduce fire in the back country while helping the economy. But environmentalists object. “Logging exacerbates the problem, because the loggers take the largest, most fire-resistant trees, which encourages the growth of underbrush, making fires hotter, more intense, and faster-spreading,” Mike Dombeck, professor at the University of Wisconsin, tells New Scientist. Another choice is thinning. In a 1998 experiment, the government “thinned” 300 acres of dense pine near Flagstaff, Ariz. Shrubby trees and logs were removed, leaving the taller, stronger trees. When a wildfire later ignited, the process was credited with having helped minimize the blaze. But thinning is costly: To do all of the Forest Service’s 40 million acres would take 15 years and cost $825 million a year. Fire expert Stephen Pyne favors “a more complex approach” that combines controlled burning and selective logging.

What about human settlements?

The steady influx of people into remote areas is definitely complicating the problem. Many of these new residents bring suburban expectations of protection, demanding that firefighters respond to small forest fires they might otherwise let burn. Some communities have proposed barring home-builders from hazardous areas. In other places, like the fire-prone canyons north of Los Angeles, residents are required to take their own fire-prevention measures—keeping lawns green and free of brush, pruning trees, clearing gutters, and covering roofs in nonflammable material. “Humans are the only species to have gained the power of fire,” says Pyne. “We can’t put the torch aside because we find the ecology complicated or its legacy vexing. Fire is more an ecological process than an environmental problem. It is a relationship.”

The psychology of arson

Both the Arizona and Colorado fires apparently began with acts of arson. Terry Barton, a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, is charged with setting the gigantic Hayman fire in Colorado; officials say she wanted to take credit for putting out the fire, which then raced out of control. Leonard Gregg, a part-time firefighter for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, is charged with igniting the even bigger Arizona fire, so that he would be paid to help fight it. Though unprecedented among federal firefighters, arson is a well-known phenomenon at volunteer fire departments throughout the country. Firefighters who start fires “seem to act from a combination of urges,” Kenneth Fineman, a psychologist at the University of California–Irvine, tells The Philadelphia Inquirer. Some are firebugs who are fascinated with fire itself. Others act out of resentment or grudges. Most often, Fineman says, firefighters start fires “so they can be Johnny-on-the-spot and get credit for putting it out.” But these arsonists usually set fire to buildings; they seldom set fire in the wild. Barton is unusual in at least one other respect: Most people who deliberately set fires are men.