California Wildfires Blamed On Government Failures

One of the biggest problems is the overcrowding of Western forests with dead trees, and the areas between stand with dry, flammable grasses. Part of the problem is that logging and grazing have been discontinued or discouraged in too many places. To most Westerners, who have watched the severity of forest fires grow dramatically since the late 1980s, this is both common sense and the common wisdom.

“There are some places where there may be four times as many trees as there should be,” Krystal Beckham of the Little Hoover Commission told the Washington Examiner’s Josh Siegel. “When you have trees that close together, they can’t get the water they need, so they are more susceptible to drought, insects, and disease. And when they start dying, they become a terrible fire threat.”

Instead of clearing out fuel and conducting controlled burns in order to moderate wildfires before they happen, the government puts its money toward suppressing active wildfires. This is done on the theory that it’s more natural to let forests grow on their own than to let fires rage except in areas where structures are threatened.

And yes, fire is part of nature (even if many of the fires are man-made) and that approach to forestry is indeed more natural, but that doesn’t make it the best approach for people, for whose sake governments exist. This year in California, nearly two dozen people are dead and hundreds more are homeless thanks in part to failed forest management. Nor is it good for people anywhere who pay taxes that more than half of the U.S. Forest Service’s budget is now spent on suppressing active wildfires instead of managing forests.

Congress has now given the Forest Service more funding for prevention, and the Trump administration is finally taking forest treatment and mitigation more seriously. But according to the Property and Environment Research Center, the backlog of restoration work could take decades to complete.

Forest management is not a panacea. Fires will happen either way. But they don’t have to be quite so intense or destructive. And the prevention and moderation of wildfires is a much more attainable goal than changing the entire planet’s climate. The Western fires that rage and drive people from their homes should serve as a reminder of this every summer.

Alabama officials have done much better with forestry management and prevention than what has been reported about the West Coast. For this article we talked with officials of the Alabama Forestry Commission including Sammy Holdsambeck of Bibb County, Brad Lang of Tuscaloosa County, Ethan Barrett of Hale County, Ronnie Turner of Tuscaloosa County and Scott Hallman of Hale County.

The mission of the Alabama Forestry Commission is prevention of wildfires, education, and mitigation of pest infestations. In Bibb County there are only 2 employees and that seems to be the case in every county. There are only 132 employees statewide for 67 counties. They only have 2 airplanes on contract to fly the entire state for beetle and fire spotting. This means they must rely on local fire departments as first responders to react to forest or grass fires. If they cannot control then they are able to call neighboring counties for help but there are time delays to get equipment in. Even though the State and Bibb County have very limited resources because they have had an active forestry management and prevention program for many years they have been fortunate enough not to have the kind of wildfire problems that California has been experiencing this year.

One recent year the weather was quite different and unusually dry. In the example of 24 Nov 2016 according to Sammy Holdsambeck there were 5 unattended fires in Bibb County raging due to the extreme dry conditions when weather intervened and the fires were extinguished by fortuitous rain. No other help was available at that time because fires were also ongoing in neighboring counties. A near catastrophe was averted.

Holdsambeck says that his department conducts controlled burnings for landowners in Bibb County at a small cost to the landowner. These planned burnings help to control wildfires. In addition most of Bibb County land is within 10 miles of the National Forest and landowners are eligible for a Stephens Grant (Federal). This grant will provide funds to perform clearing, grading and controlled burning for eligible landowners. The National Forest Service also conducts controlled burnings on a regular basis in the federal controlled areas.

Ethan Barrett of Hale County discussed a Forestry Service publication called 50 Ways to make your Woodland Home Firewise . This free booklet contains some great tips on how you can do simple things to make your home safer from wildfires for very little or no money at all. You can click on the highlighted link above to access this publication on your computer or you can visit all of the publications that are available from the Forestry Commission by going to their website at http://www.forestry.alabama.gov

You will find lots of good information on this website.