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Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

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Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#201

Post by MrVandemar »

prvc wrote: post #162
DannyBee wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? Just because a process sometimes fails does not mean the solution is to change the process, and if you do, it doesn't mean the result will end up better overall. Expected value and all that.

Also, it's not clear why burning should be used instead of, say, selective logging, or some other manual method of moving the material somewhere other than into the atmosphere.

Many ecosystems require fire. Fire is natural and plants and animals are adapted to it. So much so, that if you don't burn (or equally you burn too often) you can wind up making some species extinct.

"Selective logging" I'm afraid is not remotely an effective way to control fire. The fuel loads are often not the trees, but the leaf litter, shrubs, bushes and so on.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#202

Post by toofy »

joe_the_user wrote: post #145

The fundamental problem that controlled burns face today is that there has been a huge and irresponsible increase in development on "Urban-wildland border". Here in the California Sierras, you have a uniform peppering of (often luxury) houses outside of the various small urban areas. Those forests naturally burn on a regular basis but with this situation, any controlled burn is going to threaten some number of houses…

I just want to chime in not to disagree with anything you’re saying (for the record I think your post is thoughtful. I don’t know enough about the nuances to agree or disagree) and it isn’t even directed at you but to all of us and our discussion styles. I really hope that the collective We shift to saying something like “One of the many complications…” rather than “The problem” or “The biggest problem”.

When it comes to very large and very complicated problems we often get stuck arguing over which one piece is The problem or The cause or The singular thing. Over and over and over we get stuck arguing over which is the biggest or the only cause/solution.

A ton of the issues that we confront here are some of the most complicated issues that interweave technology, economy, ecology, humans, weird borders, power/influence, money, etc…

I know this is just semantics but I really do believe that for complex issues we’d get a lot further in discussions if we weren’t limiting ourselves to a silver bullet solution or the one cause.

I know it’s “just a casual internet forum” and i know we can’t (and shouldn’t) expect intense rigor on our comments, but i think the hn community has some good minds to discuss some of this and it pokes at me every time i see us (i do the same shit too) get bogged down with “well acksually the biggest cause” or “THE solution is…”

Sorry for the tangent poster and readers, but this minor quibble seems important.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#203

Post by dreamcompiler »

Firefighter here. I support controlled burns because they're the only sensible way to manage large amounts of excess fuel in the western U.S. The problem is that there have been several occasions where frankly stupid mistakes were made by burn personnel and planners (e.g. not completely extinguishing previous fires [1] and going forward with a burn when the wind was clearly too high [2]) resulting in huge amounts of property damage and in some cases loss of life.

This is why we now have to deal with a ton of regulations. Some wildfires will always happen when controlled burns get out of control and it's nobody's fault, but we need to decrease the number of them that are the direct result of somebody doing something very stupid.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calf_Canyon/Hermits_Peak_Fire

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cerro_Grande_Fire

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#204

Post by MrVandemar »

pvaldes wrote: post #133

We should put in the air as many CO2 as possible, yep. What could go wrong?. This valuable fertile soil that need 200 years to build and all the CO2 accumulated must be released... because religious thinking. Or we could try something different and jail the arsonists. Respect the soil and let the forest accumulate water and include thousands of new species.

While it seems wildly counter-intuitive, burning, done properly is usually a net carbon increase.

Many, many ecosystems require fire for their life-cycles. Without reasonably regular fires, some species can go extinct.

The soil fertility, for example, in Australia is so poor, and there's not enough moisture for fungi etc to break down the leaf-litter, that unless there is a fire valuable nutrients remain unavailable and it impedes growth.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#205

Post by xp84 »

anonporridge wrote: post #17

This illustrates a more generic problem with our legal system. When the option for positive action to mitigate a problem exists, we often don't do it because the action creates legal liability for any and all negative externalities of the action, even if the negative externalities as a whole are drastically less than what would happen doing nothing. We resist permitting prescribed burns because when they cause uninte…

This sounds like a problem to be solved by the insurance industry, who can measure risk because it's their money on the line. Insurers should refuse to renew fire coverage in areas where they can see that the authorities have been derelict in doing prescribed burns. Don't like it? Risk losing your house, or move.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#206

Post by henearkr »

Because of some careless or stupid humans, throwing cig butts and whatnot, the forests are endangered, and the burden of avoiding fires should be by the forest itself? I don't like it.

What about surveil forests with drones. I'm sure that will help people hold their sh*t together and be responsible of their actions. I'm sure wildfires will drop drastically.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#207

Post by baryphonic »

joe_the_user wrote: post #145

The fundamental problem that controlled burns face today is that there has been a huge and irresponsible increase in development on "Urban-wildland border". Here in the California Sierras, you have a uniform peppering of (often luxury) houses outside of the various small urban areas. Those forests naturally burn on a regular basis but with this situation, any controlled burn is going to threaten some number of houses…

The wildland-urban interface (that's what I've heard foresters call it, also "WUI") is a problem, and it's amplified by the fact that the US Forest Service and various state foresters will more or less subsidize those people living in the WUI. They nearly have a blank check. Rather than having some sort of extra tax or additional insurance requirement for living in the WUI, the USFS simply lobbies for (and usually receives) more money every year.

Even though there is this WUI problem, there's also the problem of past poor forest management, where fuel coats the bottom layer of many forests in the West. The forests are denser than the natural equilibrium, and they are primed to become wildfires because so much fuel has built up. That's a serious problem even without encroaching the WUI.

It's a complex problem, though various jurisdictions could probably implement more controlled burns than happen today and make the entire ecosystem a bit stronger.

I worry about the places where poor management leads wildfires to be so hot that they essentially sterilize the soil, preventing quick regrowth. At scale, that makes climate change worse.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#208

Post by henearkr »

pvaldes wrote: post #133

We should put in the air as many CO2 as possible, yep. What could go wrong?. This valuable fertile soil that need 200 years to build and all the CO2 accumulated must be released... because religious thinking. Or we could try something different and jail the arsonists. Respect the soil and let the forest accumulate water and include thousands of new species.

Completely agree.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#209

Post by Sakos »

jwie wrote: post #187
putnambr wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not Colorado's land to burn, though. Most of the issue is fuels load on federally-managed land.

This quirk of the west should really be addressed. The feds “own” far too much of the western US.

The federal government is infinitely better than some local government selling it off to pad their budget for a year or two. Tragedy of the commons.

Re: Controlled burns can prevent wildfires; regulations make them nearly impossible

#210

Post by cma »

CydeWeys wrote: post #192
stcroixx wrote: post #12

The only federal regulation I saw referenced in the article were clean air regulations. Otherwise, it appears states and their residents are imposing additional barriers. And public opinion is a local issue of course as well. I don't know if it's really possible to change public ignorance, particularly if the strong opinions are political, so this might be a case where it makes sense for the federal government to ste…

It's something even more fundamental than all that. If someone does a prescribed burn (say, a local government), and it gets even slightly out of control and accidentally burns down a few homes, they will immediately face a huge amount of blame and consequences and probably get run out on a rail. But if they don't do a prescribed burn and then the inevitable wildfire burns down a bunch of homes, well then, tough luck…

Controlled burns are optimal, but not Pareto optimal.
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