Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Politics, public pressure keep firefighting costs high
As the Northern Rockies prepares to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Big Blowup, the fire season is looking pretty tame. It's the second year in a row that the region, which has been burned hard and often since 1988, has had a relatively easy year. That has allowed firefighters to let fires burn to help reduce fuels and restore the ecological integrity of the forests. Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology, an organization that has pushed for a shift in fire policy from suppression to letting more fires burn, has released a report by its executive director, Timothy Ingalsbee: "Getting Burned: A Taxpayer's Guide to Wildfire Suppression Costs." It lays out the economic case for reduced suppression in the backcountry in the face of larger fires and increasingly costly and long fire seasons. You may not agree with his conclusions, but the report is filled with good data about what is going on in our forests both near our homes and out in the wilderness...more
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Fire fighting costs are high because nobody knows how to fight fire anymore. If you can't hit it with a retardant drop then its either too big or too small to attack. If you attack you have to withdraw if it is too steep, too hot, too windy, too smoky, too far from the computer, too dark, etc, etc. .
Consider also, that logging which once opened up the canopy and help stop crown fires has been dormant for the past 25+years.
Then the Great Unwashed decided fire was good for the environment.
I say let the greens fight fires, they don't know anything anyway.
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