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| It should be obvoius to all by
now that doing nothing about fire risks will not preserve the
forest's status quo |
By Sherry Devlin
for Headwaters News |
| One community
at a time, Westerners are learning about wildfires and their
inevitability in a landscape shaped by fire.
Every summer, another dozen communities learn the consequences
of society's systematic elimination of wildfires from –
and subsequent development of – the West's predominantly
dry, low-elevation forests.
Say their names and you conjure up pictures of the wildfires
that ran roughshod over their forested neighborhoods: Los
Alamos. Show Low. Salmon. Tucson. Darby.
A
This fall, the list of newly educated communities
includes the city where I live and write about forest fires
for the local newspaper: Missoula, Montana.
And while Missoula should have known everything about fire –
it is home to thousands of current and former Forest Service
firefighters and foresters, and is the training ground for tens
of thousands more – it simply was not so until Saturday
afternoon, Aug. 16.
The Black Mountain fire began with a single lightning strike,
one of hundreds that hit the mountains surrounding Missoula
on the night of Aug. 8. The fire itself wasn't noticed until
90-plus-degree heat and single-digit humidity brought dozens
of wildfires to life a few afternoons later, stressing rural
fire departments and initial-attack crews beyond their ability
to respond.
At nightfall on Sunday, Aug. 10, residents of Missoula's west
side got their first good look at the fire. Darkness stripped
away the distances and seemed to bring Black Mountain closer
to town. As neighbors watched and worried on street corners,
burning logs rolled down the mountain, spreading the fire to
trees that quickly torched and sent flames back up the hill.
Darkness had not quelled the fire's appetite.
By Monday afternoon, a fire management team from southern California
was in Missoula and assigned to Black Mountain. The team's leader,
incident commander Mike Dietrich, wasted no time in warning
of the danger.
There were 650 homes within two miles of the fire, he said.
One windstorm blowing out of the west could send flames straight
into the houses, and no number of firefighters or engines would
be able to stop them.
In fact, the Black Mountain fire was near enough to town that
Dietrich had trouble finding a big enough – and undeveloped
enough – piece of ground on which to establish his base
camp. Finally, he found an unused hayfield a few miles east
of the mountain – equidistant from the fire and Wal-Mart.
And then Black Mountain did what so many other wildfires have
done to communities in recent years. Tricked them. Skunked around,
backing down hillsides during the afternoon, quieting at night,
burning a hundred acres at a time, but staying away from the
houses. It lulled people into believing the worst-case couldn't
happen here.
A few families, especially those who lived deepest in O'Brien
Canyon, carted a few belongings to the homes of friends and
relatives in town. A few others talked about what they would
take should the need arise. Still others watched the growing
fire camp and daily parade of firefighters into the woods and
decided there was no need.
On Saturday afternoon, Aug. 16, Dietrich called a neighborhood
meeting. He began by showing residents the fire's perimeter
and describing his approach to the fire fight.
"I am guardedly optimistic," Dietrich said. The hottest
part of the fire was along a little unnamed tributary of O'Brien
Creek he nicknamed "Hopeful Creek." If firefighters
could keep the fire out of the main drainage despite the forecast
of high winds, everyone would be breathing easier by Sunday.
But forest fires don't play fair, Dietrich warned. If the winds
came and carried the fire across O'Brien Creek and onto Cedar
Ridge, "we'll be off to the races." And he handed
the microphone to Jack Cohen, a scientist at the Forest Service's
Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula and an expert on how –
and why – houses burn in wildfires.
Almost immediately, Dietrich's cell phone rang. It was the division
superintendent whose crews were in the little tributary drainage.
The wind was blowing. Hard. The fire was on the move. Dietrich
folded his cell phone and motioned to the man and wife whose
home was deepest in the canyon.
"You need to get home and pack your things," he whispered.
"There's fire in the top of O'Brien Creek."
What happened over the next three hours was, quite literally,
Missoula's baptism by fire. The series of evacuation alerts,
warnings and orders that sheriff's deputies had earlier described
as 24-hour and 8-hour notices changed in half-hour increments
that Saturday afternoon in O'Brien Creek.
A few residents midway up a nearly vertical slope on the south
side of the canyon had but moments to leave when the fire began
its run through the forest's crown. People frantically called
for missing cats and dogs, some to no avail. One woman took
a dozen last-minute snapshots of her house and its interior,
hoping she wouldn't need to develop the film. Her neighbor cried
that she had not thought to pack the stuffed animals her now-grown
children had loved as toddlers.
Lives were reduced to the photo albums and needlepoint rocking
chairs that can be stuffed into sedans and piled into the back
of pickups in 15 minutes. Homeowners at the mouth of the canyon
who assumed all week that the fire could never – not possibly
– reach them suddenly found themselves en route to an
evacuation center as chunks of burning bark landed in their
yards.
"What did I pack?" one woman asked. "I never
even thought about that fire until 10 minutes ago."
Three homes and nearly 7,000 acres burned when the Black Mountain
fire "went to the races," just as Dietrich had warned.
A dozen or more other landowners returned to find their homes
untouched, but surrounded by hundreds of blackened acres. Another
dozen realized they would likely join the list of victims after
the first flooding rainstorm this fall or next spring.
And everyone who was in Missoula that afternoon knew –
because they had seen it happen, because the 30,000-foot-high
column created by the blowup sent wildfire confetti into every
yard in town – what can and will happen when drought,
summertime temperatures and lightning combine with gale-force
winds and long years of fire suppression in fire-prone forests.
Four helicopters were parked within a mile of the blowup, but
could do nothing to stop the flames. A retardant plane tried
to make a drop, but its pilot could not see through the smoke.
Hundreds of firefighters and dozens of engines were powerless.
When, a little before noon the next day, one of the homeowners
who lost everything cried out in anger and frustration and sadness
as she ran up the driveway that once led to her mountainside
home, she cried for everyone in town. This is not how things
are supposed to be, she said. This just isn't fair.
Six weeks later, the blackened hillsides left by the blowup
provide Missoula residents with a daily reminder of the problem
facing communities throughout the West. A million people live
in or on the edge of these fire-dependent forests; eventually,
every one of them will look out the window and find a wildfire
in their back yard.
Eventually, too, every one of them will wonder – or ask
or demand – what can be done to prevent the inevitable.
How many houses must burn? How many communities must learn the
lesson firsthand?
Sadly, though, the 2003 fire season has ended in much the same
way that the 2002 season ended and 2001 and 2000: with fingers
pointing in statehouses and on Capitol Hill, with lawsuits intended
to stop the logging of burned trees, with threats of mill closures,
with more money spent on firefighting than anyone budgeted for,
with communities that came together during the fire fight quickly
splitting apart for the post-fire fight.
In Washington, D.C., Western senators and the Bush administration
have reached a compromise on legislation that would hasten the
thinning of national forests – both those near communities
and those in the backcountry.
Critics say the Healthy Forests Restoration Act is a trick intended
to bring industrial forestry back to the national forests. Proponents
say the act will reduce the wildfire danger in the West by reducing
the amount of fuel available to wildfires on the run. Neither
side seems likely to listen to the other, guaranteeing more
lawsuits, more protests, lost jobs and communities ever more
rancorous and, frankly, dysfunctional.
If Missoula and Show Low and Darby and Denver learned nothing
else these past few summers, it should have been this: Doing
nothing will not preserve the status quo. Because fire is reclaiming
its historic place in Western forests, one neighborhood at a
time. And there's little anyone can do but get out of the way.
Will logging the national forests stop the march of wildfires
into communities? Not always. This summer's fires around Missoula
burned more intensely on industrial timberland than anywhere
else. A post-fire assessment by the Forest Service showed that
all 9,400 acres of Plum Creek Timber Co. land in the Eightmile
drainage southeast of Missoula burned at high-severity. And
in upper Gold Creek, a much-logged tributary of the Blackfoot
River, firefighters dubbed Plum Creek's land "the black
desert" so intensely did the Mineral-Primm fire burn through
the forest.
Will thinning and brush clearing help protect homes from wildfires?
Sometimes. Several homes probably did survive the Black Mountain
fire because their owners had cleared a "defensible space."
Several others, though, survived in spite of their owners' lack
of stewardship.
Do we know how to "fix" the wildfire problem? Not
entirely. We've got a lot left to learn about fire and how best
to live with it in these dry, made-to-burn mountains, but we're
not going to learn a thing if we spend all our time fighting
one another.
We will almost certainly have to cut some trees, but we can
also demand that they be cut responsibly, without abusing the
land or water. Certainly, too, we'll build thousands more homes
in the forest, but homeowners who do so must take more responsibility
for their own property. And those who shirk their duties shouldn't
expect firefighters to risk their lives to make up for their
laziness.
It's time to recognize that fire and smoke are part of the landscape
on which we've chosen to live. It was ill advised to ever take
fire so completely out of nature's equation; to get things back
in balance, flames must again be allowed in our forests.
More than anything, it's time to stop blaming one another. Let
the scientists do their work, so they can help us understand
what's happened to our forests. Let the loggers preserve a way
of life that has sustained so many families for generations.
Let the environmentalists preserve life itself in a place all
of us have too long taken for granted.
Better yet, let's do it together. So no one even knows who's
a logger and who's an environmentalist. So we're all just Westerners
trying like hell to hold onto something good.
Sherry Devlin is the environmental reporter
at the Missoulian in Missoula, Mont. |
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Common
ground
is one place to start |
By Greg Lakes, editor
Headwaters News
Oct. 15, 2003 |
The debate over forest fire policy is so
polarized no one notices when both sides say much the same thing.
On Monday, in a story by Missoulian reporter and this week's
columnist, Sherry Devlin, a group representing 12,000 Forest
Service employees promised to sue to force the agency to re-evaluate
its firefighting program.
On Tuesday, in another Devlin story, Assistant Secretary of
the Interior Rebecca Watson dug in her heels and vowed the federal
government will never stop fighting forest fires.
Opposing sides immediately staked out opposite
ends of the spectrum. But in a few more paragraphs, both sound
remarkably similar, despite their posturing:
"It is time to evaluate which fires should be fought and
which should not be fought; It's time to focus on making communities
and homes more fire resistant," said Andy Stahl, executive
director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.
"Is fire appropriate everywhere? No. You do not want a
fire around communities and important infrastructures,"
said Watson.
Stahl's group wants an environmental impact statement on firefighting
policy and practice -- a review of the social and environmental
costs: the use of 15 million to 40 million gallons of fire retardant
a year; the loss of 26 lives this year and more than 900 since
1910; and the spending
of $1 billion a year, the Forest Service's most expensive budget
item.
Stahl admitted the suit is to force the agency into a pardigm
shift on fire policy.
What he doesn't say is how to let nature burn off a century
of built-up fuel without catastrophic results.
Watson deftly spun her defense into a platform for the Bush
administration's Healthy Forests Initiative. Clearly, homeowners
on the forest fringe would never agree to let fires burn, she
said.
Yes, fire is a critical tool in forest
management, officials see that now, but logging and thinning
is necessary to allow managers to reintroduce fire safely, Watson
said.
She said federal agencies have allowed more acreage to burn
in recent years, and federal managers have and will continue
to evaluate the pros and cons of firefighting.
And of course, no piece of property
is worth a firefighter's life, she said.
Left in doubt is the administration's insistence on logging
commercially viable trees in far-removed forests.
Both Stahl and Watson say communities need protected. Both say
some fires must be suppressed, and both say more should -- or
at least probably could -- be allowed to burn.
If the agencies would conduct those promised reviews in full
view of the public, something this administration has not made
standard practice, and if both sides started with their common
ground, more time and effort might be spent on developing a
visionary fire policy than in talking past each other. |
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your comments
I’d like to comment on the process
rather than content of this debate and pick up on several
allusions to face-to-face engagement made by both Sherry Devlin
and Alex Dunn.
Yesterday an image from a radio interview caught my attention.
Two men – an Israeli and a Palestinian, working on a
plan for peace – remarked that sometimes it is necessary
to leap into the future.
In the controversy over fire in the West, a leap would mean
all sides dedicating themselves to imagining a desired outcome.
I’m interested in a point made by those who study creativity.
It is in the tension between the envisioned future and current
reality that innovative possibilities emerge. Just what would
a healthy forest and a wise response to fire look like? How
can useful policy be developed without such a vision?
Sherry Devlin notes that parties on all sides are “honorable,
sincere, and dedicated human beings.” What prevents
honorable, sincere and dedicated human beings from struggling
together to define a best future forest and wise response
to fire?
Models for facilitated conversation (not the same as mediation)
with specific guidelines – the National Conversation
Project and Conversation Café among them – provide
needed structure. What about all sides taking an honorable
leap towards envisioning future Western forests?
Marianne Spitzform
Author's blog:
For 30 years since the National Environmental
Policy Act required the writing of environmental impact statements
for major federal undertakings, the U.S. Forest Service has
considered not only the environmental consequences of proposed
projects, but of a host of alternatives as well. Including
“no action.”
I thought of the no-action alternative Sunday night as I watched
television news reports from Southern California, where wildfires
burned hundreds of homes and hundreds of thousands of acres
over the weekend.
Again and again, the footage showed people in anguish over
their lost homes, their lost family members even, all the
while the fires merging and growing into another neighborhood,
and another.
Whether in San Diego or Denver or Missoula, no-action is simply
not an alternative anymore in the debate over wildfires and
forests in the West. That’s because “no action”
was never “no action” when it came to this country’s
response to wildfires.
For nearly a century now, we have done everything but nothing.
In 1910, when dozens of backcountry fires merged to blacken
3 million acres in western Montana and northern Idaho, the
firestorm had barely quieted before the finger-pointing began.
The Use Book that had guided Forest Service rangers from the
agency’s birth in 1905 envisioned small fires in a forest
patrolled by solitary guards on horseback.
“Ride as far as the Almighty will let you and get control
of the forest fire situation in as much of the mountain country
as possible,” the guidebook said. “And as to what
you should do first, well, just get up there as soon as possible
and put them out.”
On Aug. 20 and 21, 1910, fire guards couldn’t even save
themselves, much less the forests or the towns downwind. And
Congress, of course, wanted an explanation. And assurances.
Timber baron F.E. Weyerhaeuser was among the first to testify
at the post-fire hearings on Capitol Hill. His message: “To
save the forests, the main thing is to make laws to prevent
fires.”
Forest Service Chief Henry Graves wasn’t far behind.
“The necessity of preventing losses from forest fires
requires no discusison,” he said. “It is the fundamental
obligation of the Forest Service and takes precedence over
all other duties and activities.”
And so this country has, since 1910, done everything it could
to stop virtually all wildfires. We invented wildland firefighting:
smokejumpers, slurry bombers, the incident command system
– what critics now call “the wildfire industrial
complex.” And that is not a “no action”
alternative.
All these years later, all that firefighting later, the forests
have changed because of our intervention – and now the
fires themselves are changing.
Largely because of fire suppression, millions of acres of
Western forests are even-aged and like-sized. So when a fire
starts at Point A, there is nothing to interrupt its progression
for tens of miles – until it reaches Point B. Historically,
that landscape-level continuity simply did not exist.
Forests were burning all the time, a little here, a whole
lot there, a little more somewhere else. So the landscape
was a patchwork of burned, unburned and soon-to-be burned
forests.
We created the continuity by inventing wildland firefighting.
And now the continuity fuels the firestorms that plow into
Western neighborhoods every summer.
Yes, there were gigantic, landscape-level fires in 1910. But
there were other, smaller fires as well – the kind of
fires that we can and do suppress nowadays.
Ninety years ago, wildfires came in all shapes, sizes and
intensities. We’ve squeezed out the little fires, even
the medium-sized ones, by so successfully extinguishing them.
Now the only kind of fires we get are precisely the kind of
fires we don’t want: the ones that burn tens of thousands
or hundreds of thousands of acres, hundreds of homes and –
this week in Southern California – kill people who can’t
get out of the way quickly enough.
Absolutely, fire is a natural and needed part of Western forests.
But in its historic, natural condition, fire was not like
what we see in our backyards today.
It’s time for an “action alternative.” It’s
time to put just as much energy and ingenuity – and,
yes, money – into understanding how best to restore
fire to our forests as we put into ridding those forests of
fire.
We simply cannot continue spending $1 billion a year on wildland
firefighting. We can’t continue watching all those homes
and trees and people disappear in the smoke.
“No action” isn’t working, because of course,
no action was never the alternative.
- Sherry Devlin
It's important to remember that "he
who defines the argument will win the argument."
This is poignantly true of the ongoing debate over forest
fires and how to fight them.
The whole notion of fighting forest fires began not as an
altruistic notion to save the forest but was promulgated by
captains of industry like Weyerhauser to save the trees so
they could be cut by timber companies.
Even in the early part of the last century, firefighting policy
wasn't attempting to save structures but to save trees on
railroad, or Potlatch or Weyerhauser lands in and around national
forest.
Follow the money... when Ms Devlin quotes timber baron F.E.
Weyerhaeuser at the post-fire hearings on Capitol Hill. --
his message: "To save the forests, the main thing is
to make laws to prevent fires" -- he wasn't speaking
from his heart but from his pocketbook.
Firefighting started out as "win-win-lose" corporate
welfare and the "'wildfire industrial complex"'
are the winners and the rest of us aren't doing nearly so
well.
By defining both the terms and the argument, industry has
framed fire as "bad" and public funding of fire
suppression as a societal "good"' that must be implemented.
The timber industry employs a cycle of arguments for sustaining
and justifiying increased harvest and we are in the "fire
phase" (while our neighbors to the north are in the "bug
infestation"' phase).
The rationale goes something like this: "We need to log
the forest to prevent it from burning away which we simply
can't tolerate if we are to log these trees."
Consider too, that forest fires originating in wilderness
areas are left to burn. While the spin tells us that this
is the natural state of affairs (true) the real reasons are
economic.
If we make decisions to continue to throw tankers of money
at firefighting efforts that have negligible effect on the
outcome and aren't intended to save structures, then we have
to do it with our eyes wide open and acknowledge that we aren't
saving the forest but improving the eventual condition of
the trees so they can be cut by timber companies. Alec
Sutherland
Hamilton, MT
The title placed atop
my earlier response was over-simple.
That is, the idea of "collaboration" must stop being
framed as a panacea. This conception of the idea is under constant
attack from those who would criticize it as an effort to convince
all sides (to use the now common cliché) "to sing
Kum Bah Yah around the campfire."
Alternatively, I draw attention to an altogether different political
context and scale that exists among the human communities of
the West and suggest that "common ground" can be fostered,
at the local level, through increased civic discourse and engagement
of which Community Fire Management Planning is an example.
This ideal has been made more difficult as newsprint dailies
have become less equipped to engage in the in-depth, investigative
reporting that could provide readers with a working understanding
of the issues in question, not just the positional arguments
that advocates of certain policies would espouse as the truth.
I think Sherry Devlin does very well to point out that, regardless
of the influence of money and politics, tradeoffs will need
to be made among citizens of the West.
My point is that we must be more sophisticated, issue- and context-specific,
in our demands for tradeoffs, and realize when "compromise"
is even possible.
I am an ardent supporter of "respectful, civil discourse"
as Sherry plainly states is necessary, in certain contexts.
As I stated in the previous response, there is no planning process
happening through which to "compromise."
The nebulousness of the wildland fire-fighting policy-making
process contributes a great deal to the problem of even knowing
how to discuss the issues. Is it the demands of Western constituents
driving continued suppression or the "fire industrial complex,"
or both, or neither?
Who do we hold accountable for the failed policy of suppression,
for example? Is it Congress or the agencies that implement their
mandates?
It is certainly impossible to hold private interests accountable
in this case. I hope that demanding accountability of our government
isn't somehow considered "obstructionist" these days.
One recent example of how the newsprint media continues to under-serve
readers is exemplified in the recent coverage of the FSEEE lawsuit
in the Missoulian. On 10/13/03 the Missoulian's top story was
"Group to Sue Over Firefighting." This piece basically
summarized the arguments of the FSEEE's Executive Director Andy
Stahl as to why the Forest Service should take the "hard
look" at their wildland firefighting policy that NEPA requires.
On 10/14/03, the next day, the Missoulian's top story was "Firefighting
Policy Defended." This piece basically summarizes the Bush
administration's appointee to Undersecretary of Interior Rebecca
Watson's defense of the status quo wildland firefighting policy.
Both of these pieces are available for perusal via links provided
on the left column of the Western Perspectives page. Since the
time that these pieces were printed, now almost two weeks ago,
there has been no further coverage that I am aware of that attempts
to give readers of the Missoulian a more in-depth understanding
of Stahl and Watson's positions (there was one short piece that
summarized the proceedings from the 'Wildland Fire Leadership
Council').
As Michael Karlberg writes in a journal article titled News
and Conflict, adversarial news frames tend not to do the hard
work of "probing and clarifying [interest group representative's]
underlying interests and motives."
On a national level debate like this one, we should not expect
the participants in a public relations campaign to throw down
their weapons. It is the responsibility of journalists to sift
through the "rhetoric" (as if it were an inherently
negative concept) and dig a little deeper.
Karlberg also makes the point that it is not necessarily that
we might believe everything that interest group representatives
have to say, but rather he points out that other voices are
often left out of the mix such as scholars and other affected
citizens.
Contextual reporting may empower readers rather than de-habilitating
them as is so often the case after reading about another lawsuit,
continued lack of scientific agreement, etc. This ongoing stream
of shallow investigation engenders more feelings of apathy and
powerlessness.
Perhaps I am too optimistic about the role the newsprint media
can play in empowering people to engage in civic (not necessarily
civil) discourse. We'll see.
I sincerely agree with Sherry that folks on all sides generally
don't talk with one another enough, however. The distinction
must be made among venues.
At the national level where Stahl and Watson are operating,
there is no attempt or desire to talk face to face. At the local
level we need more face-to-face dialogue.
What I find disturbing is what seems to be going on at the national
level to stymie local common ground seeking through divisive
tactics such as the Healthy Forests Initiative.
As I said in my earlier response, the HFI is the antithesis
to localized planning and the learning and creative discourse
that can result from communities coming together to plan their
future. This statement is not just a simple shot at the Bushies.
The political use of "divide and conquer" tactics
will continue to limit the average citizens' ability to meaningfully
participate in democratic processes.
We'll simply keep arguing and never become the majority voice
that is needed to vote national level politicians into office
who will implement policies that are in the public interest,
as opposed to the private, corporate interests such as those
who have contributed $100 million to get Bush re-elected.
As long as corporate-minded politicians can keep the numbers
in their favor, they're going to win at the expense of us Westerners
who can't get together to vote them out.
These co-opted pork barrelers are not political representatives
of the likes of statesmen such as Mike Mansfield. These politicians
will distort facts and consciously divide the public to get
re-elected, leaving in their wake a string of shattered communities,
budgetary deficits, and bewildered citizens.
The Bush administration's defense of fire suppression is one
good example of this. As Rebecca Watson cries out that the people
aren't ready for progressive fire policy, those very people's
homes burn. Spin doctoring at it's finest.
Building common ground is essential at the local level, but
let's embrace the fact that the national level debate is important
too. This game is being played on a much bigger field, with
the fans on the sidelines too busy arguing for their "team"
to realize that the players have co-opted the referee and there
really aren’t even two teams anymore, just the "players
on the field" holding the ball and the referee's whistle
and the "fans on the sidelines," drinking beer and
eating nachos, slipping further into complacency.
- Alex Dunn,
Missoula, MT
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