Mega-Fires are Becoming the Norm — And it Should Scare the Sh*t Out of You
What you need to know. What you can do.
PLEASE NOTE: lack of access to water, as our esteemed President suggested, is not even close to being a reason for the size or devastation of these fires.
Don’t be an ignoramus. Be an adult. Read up on this stuff and educate yourself.
These fires raging out of control have nothing to do with the amount of water we can or cannot access to put them out. That’s a child’s way of thinking.
Please read on so that you can speak on these issues with a modicum of intelligence, like big girls and boys.
The New Normal?
Unfortunately, wildfires have become an all too common sight not only during the summer, but other parts of the year as the fire season is stretching further and further into the fall and in some parts of the country, the winter.
It’s typical for this time of year; the end of summer is when wildfires are most prevalent.
But what isn’t typical is the size and the speed of these fires.
Whether it’s from videos on social media or mega-fires making headline news, its beginning to feel like a normal occurrence. We’re starting to get desensitized. So much so, that we need to remind ourselves:
This isn’t normal.
This is scary.
We can’t allow ourselves to simply say, “oh my, that’s horrible,” before shrugging our shoulders and getting right back to scrolling through our Instagram feeds.
So What Gives? Why Is This Happening?
Well there’s a lot of reasons and as is often the case, this is a complex issue with many facets. There isn’t just one reason and there certainly isn’t just one solution.
Some of the typical factors are certainly at play here such as weather, wind, and human activity that often bring about wildfires in the west and northwest regions of the U.S.
Residents of these areas, especially in and around parts of California, have had to accept that these fires are a part of life, but do they have to accept the sheer magnitude of devastation?
Its not uncommon for fires to be caused by Mother Nature herself in the form of like lightning strikes in dry areas. It’s like a torch to a giant pile of kindling.
But what might not be known, is that most fires are caused by human activity.
In fact, as many as 90 percent of wildfires in the U.S. are caused by humans. (Source: National Park Service).
So, what sort of human activity cause wildfires?
Human-caused wildfires can start out as merely a campfire that was left unattended, the burning of debris, negligently discarded cigarettes, and intentional acts of arson.
Sadly and most recently, authorities in Southern California arrested a 32-year-old man on arson charges in connection with five fires, including one blaze that is threatening about 600 homes in the San Jacinto Mountains east of Los Angeles.
It truly is a tragedy that our great outdoor spaces are threatened by such careless and disastrous human activity!
Climate Change
Don’t let the majority of the Republican party fool you.
Climate Change is real.
It’s happening right now.
It’s most-likely caused by human activity or at the very, very least exacerbated by it.
And it is most certainly playing a large role in the mega-fires we are witnessing in the northwestern part of the country and other areas.
Climate Change is by no means the only factor or even necessarily the main culprit, but it matters and must be part of the conversation.
These facts must be acknowledge before any kind of constructive dialogue can happen.
So while it may come as a surprise to many, it remains an indisputable fact that our earth’s climate plays an ever-increasing role in wildfires.
Though human activity is likely the culprit most of the time for what started the fire in the first place, the impacts of climate change are what compounds the damage.
“Evidence is becoming more and more overwhelming, that climate change is spreading fires around the world.”
— Mike Flannigan, Director of the Western Partnership for Wildland Fire Science at the University of Alberta.
Globally, the length of the fire weather season increased by nearly 19 percent between 1978 and 2013, thanks to longer seasons of warm, dry weather in one-quarter of the planet’s forests.
In the western region of the United States, for example, the wildfire season has grown from 5 months in the 1970s, to 7 months today. (Source: U.S. Forest Service Research & Development Division).
Flannigan says that the data shows an increased risk for fire on nearly every continent, though most of this research has focused on the western region of North America, where there is a more concentrated area of wildfires every year.
In the western part of the U.S., where fires ravaged Oregon this summer, the annual burned area has, on average, gone from less than 250,000 acres in 1985 to more than 1.2 million acres in 2015; human-caused climate change has been blamed for doubling the total area burned over that time.
Problems & Misconceptions
There are several misconceptions shared by much of the public about wildfires.
One of the most common myths about wildfires is that all of them are detrimental and should be stopped whenever possible. The forest service even adopted this stance for years.
However, fire has played an important role in forests for thousands of years, and fire can actually play an important role in a forest’s natural equilibrium.
It was discovered through decades of wildfire prevention, but fire actually is a positive factor in the life cycles of trees and forests.
Furthermore, some species of plants depend on periodic wildfires as part of the natural cycle of recovery, and many other species easily tolerate naturally-occurring, periodic fires.
Another myth is that all wildfires are natural and should be allowed to burn freely.
As noted above, recent research implicates climate change for approximately doubling the total area burned by wildfires across the western region of the U.S. in the last three decades. (Source: Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies).
A Brief History of Wildfire Management
Wildfire suppression in the western region of the U.S. has had a storied history.
When the U.S. Forest Service was established in 1905, it became the primary task of the Forest Service to suppress all fires on the forest reserves it administered.
For several decades after the formation of the Forest Service, complete fire suppression was the objective and primary policy of the agency.
However, this policy of putting out every small wildfire that had started to burn began to be questioned in the 1960s, when it was realized that no new giant sequoia had grown in the forests of California; fire is an essential part of the life cycle surrounding these majestic trees.
It was at this time that controlled burns were starting to be viewed as a natural and welcome occurrence, as long as these burns were not threatening other significant developments around them.
This theory of wildfires contributing to the life cycle of the forest’s ecosystem was seen in three events between 1978 and 1988 that precipitated a major fire use policy review in 1989:
- The Ouzel fire in Rocky Mountain National Park.
- The Yellowstone fires of 1988 in and around Yellowstone National Park.
- The Canyon Creek fire in the Bob Marshall Wilderness on the Lewis and Clark National Forest.
In all three cases, monitored fires burned until they threatened developed areas.
While none of the Yellowstone fires of 1988 were caused by controlled burns, later investigations proved the fire use policy was appropriate, though it still needed some improvement.
It was in this manner that the earlier methods of wildfire prevention were abandoned.
Those methods of quickly dispatching and extinguishing any fires that had started was actually causing bigger fires whenever fires broke out due to the fact that more brush and dense forests were not being burned naturally.
These fires were obviously harder to fight and had much more potential for widespread destruction. (Source: United States Department of the Interior)
The Secretaries of Agriculture and the Interior around this time actually convened a fire policy review team to evaluate the National Park Service and Forest Service wilderness fire policies.
This policy team reaffirmed the fundamental importance of fire’s natural role and appropriately administered controlled burns.
Eventually, the Forest Service and National Park Service programs began to grow naturally, as the number of fires and area burned annually increased. (Source: The Association for Fire Ecology (AFE)).
Conclusion
The sheer impact that these destructive wildfires can have may lull us into a state of complacency. The combination of climate change and human activity can make us believe that we can do nothing about the current state of our environment, and can make us feel helpless.
However, we can take action in preventing these tremendous forces of nature. One of the easiest and most obvious actions is to camp and start fires responsibly. That means in designated areas only and properly extinguishing the fire when finishes.
Check out our post on Leave No Trace for more information on how to enjoy wild places responsibly.
We also need to pull together to address climate change. The impacts are all around us and they are making themselves abundantly clear.
Get involved at a local level.
Vote.
Bike or walk to work.
Eat less meat. Shop local.
If even the most conservative projections are met, wildfires will only grow more frequent and more devastating.
That’s a scary thought.
It is also important to consider community empowerment that can play a significant role in prevention, especially when it comes to places around the western region of the U.S. that neighbor potential wildfire sites.
With the potential for these wildfires to involve more blackened acres and property loss, it is important that communities invest in proactive methods that fight wildfires before they even get a chance to start.
