As ashes cool on a sequence of wildfires — Delta, Carr, Mendocino Complex and so many more — there’s a statewide sigh of relief, a collective sense of gratitude as real as the hand-painted signs thanking the firefighters who contain those dangerous blazes.
But a different sentiment is stirring among many experts: California is a place forged by fire, they say, and our fierce fire-fighting policies are, paradoxically, creating a fuel-filled landscape that burns hotter and faster than ever.
Now it’s time, many say, to try a different approach: Focus efforts in the places of greatest risk, such as communities, while allowing fires to burn elsewhere, and adapting our lives to them. Fire can be managed, even made useful, they say. It can restore, revitalize, and renew
“Unless we change course, we’ll never work our way out of this dilemma,” said Scott Stephens, who leads UC Berkeley’s Fire Science Laboratory. “Unless we can get ahead of it, it’ll never get better.”
This year alone, we’ve already had 4,000 fires, claiming seven lives, nearly 2,000 homes and $320 million out of the state’s emergency fund. Climate change is making us hotter and drier, expanding California’s first season by two months. And our ever-growing population is causing more ignitions.
Living with fire means finding alternatives to constant suppression, in a state where almost two-thirds of the landscape is covered by flammable vegetation, from chaparral to dense forest. Each ecosystem calls for its own approach, tailoring tactics to California’s diverse landscapes.
In oak woodlands, for example, simple tools like grazing, mowing and small prescribed burns can reduce the tall grasses that act like candle wicks under ancient trees.
In dense and dry evergreen forests of the lower Sierra, Klamath or northwest Coastal Range, thoughtful logging and larger burns are needed, scientists say.
In pristine and remote alpine wilderness, none of these strategies fit. There, where lighting naturally ignites fires, it’s often best to be patient, just directing the blaze. Let rain or snow extinguish it.
And around our homes and communities — located, typically, in shrubby chaparral — it might mean building “fuel breaks,” where tall brush is trimmed, slowing fire’s progress and giving firefighters a safe place to work. In chaparral, prescribed burns don’t reduce risk; brush grows back quickly. With too many fires, it perishes.
“Start with the community, and work outwards,” said Jon Keeley, a fire scientist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Ecological Research Center in Sequoia National Park. “Focus on where the real risks are.”
A saved town
As last month’s fierce Cranston Fire raced up Southern California’s San Jacinto Mountains, the little mountain town of Idyllwild was directly in its path.
But then it hit the community’s “fuel break,” a 100- to 250-foot wide swath where chaparral and trees had been trimmed, chipped, stacked into piles and burned. Chastened by three recent fire threats, the community and property owners such as the famed Idyllwild Arts Academy had prepared, clearing wide areas of “defensible space.”
There, the fire’s progress slowed.
“The ‘break’ didn’t put it out. The fire didn’t lay down immediately. But it kept it on the ground, where it was manageable,” when followed by retardant air drops, engines and hand crews, said Patrick Reitz, chief of the Idyllwild Fire Protection District. Fuel breaks aren’t clear-cuts; they simply limit fire severity by keeping flames out of treetops.
Fuel breaks aren’t perfect: They stop fires less than half the time – and only if firefighters can reach them, according to a 2011 study of four Southern California forests. In high winds, embers fly right over a break. And breaks introduce invasive species.
“They must be in the right place — strategically located,” said fire ecologist Marti Witter of the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area, where a simple hiking trail served as a fuel break for firefighters during the 2013 Springs Fire.
But it worked for Idyllwild, which is back open for business.
Grazing, to reduce severity
The Mendocino Complex Fire — which quickly spread to four Northern California counties — ignited in rolling oak woodlands and chaparral, landscapes that co-evolved with fire and grazing but are now overgrown. Native Americans used fires as a land management tool for thousands of years. And while frequent, these old fires were rarely severe; grasses and shrubs were kept tidy by wild animals.
On the night of the fire, director John Bailey stayed on site at UC’s Hopland Research and Extension Center, doing his best to save anything he could find. He grabbed laptops and computers, closed windows and helped move 500 grazing sheep away from danger. About 3,000 acres of the 5,300-acre center burned.
This is what he’s learned: In pastures where sheep grazed, the center’s elegant oaks are intact. Their leaves are still green. But in pastures not grazed since the 1950s, undergrowth provided a ladder for flames to reach oak canopies – and the trees are damaged.
Grazing only works when animals are concentrated. And it has opponents; in public parks, critics say animals scour the land, pollute creeks, create manure and can be dangerous.
But UC’s research center is bouncing back, and Bailey is a believer.
“The fire was less intense. It skipped around more. It wasn’t as complete a burn,” said Bailey. “Having animals on the land reduced the hazard.”
Thinning and prescribed burns
The conifers of our mountains also evolved with fire. Now, without it, they’ve grown crowded and thirsty, stressed by the drought. Bark beetle populations surged. Tens of millions of matchsticks, these trees stand ready to burn.
Around the Sierra Nevada, various research projects by U.S. Forest Service ecologists show a way forward. Wielding chain saws, axes and wood chippers, loggers thinned parts of Sierra National Forest and Stanislaus National Forest to create a more natural state, creating clusters of trees that mimic fire’s natural burn patterns.
Then, when the weather was perfect, sections of forest were ignited. Because trees are thinned and conditions are damp and cool, these fires burned cooler. Prescribed fires don’t necessarily shrink the size of a fire, especially in extreme hot high-wind conditions, but limit its severity.
“Prescribed burns are a really powerful and underused tool,” said UC Davis ecologist Malcolm North. When a wildfire hits burned areas, “it just putzes along.”
To be sure, this strategy faces challenges. Commercial logging has fallen by about two-thirds in the past 30 years, so there aren’t enough workers to thin forests, drive trucks or saw wood. There are too few biomass plants to take the low-value trees, which are smaller and crowd larger, older trees. Nor is lighting a fire easy. You can’t burn near homes. It requires environmental assessments, approval of air quality regulators and perfect soil and weather conditions. There’s risk of liability, if the burn escapes control.
These regulatory, logistical and legal hurdles, intended to protect the environment, are themselves hurting it, said Jim Branham of the Sierra Nevada Conservancy. While we delay, major megafires race through forests, sterilizing vast acreages with extreme heat.
“If our society doesn’t like the outcomes from recent fires and extensive drought-induced tree mortality in forests, then we collectively need to move beyond the status quo,” according to a major research paper published this year in the journal BioScience by UC’s Stephens and USFS’s North, Eric Knapp and others.
“Working to increase the pace and scale of beneficial fire and mechanical treatments, rather than focusing on continued fire suppression, would be an important step forward,” they concluded.
Let it burn, if safe
There was nothing prescribed about this June’s lighting strike to a 8,000-foot Lions Point summit in the Sierra’s Ansel Adams Wilderness, a spectacular high alpine landscape in Inyo and Sierra national forests. But because it was so cool and damp, experts like Sierra National Forest district ranger Denise Tolmie recognized an opportunity.
Fire was badly needed in this place, where half of all trees have been killed by insects and 1,500 acres are covered by downed trees toppled by a 2011 wind storm, she said. There’s decades of accumulated duff litter on the forest floor. Because it’s a wilderness, it can’t be logged.
So rather than suppressing the Lions Fire, crews crafted a natural containment line of boulders and creeks to keep it where they wanted it – and then let it just putter along, using crews to push and pull it where it was needed. A successful strategy, this burned many of the downed trees and cleaned the granitic forest floor.
“We knew it would offer a benefit, a restoration avenue,” said Tolmie. “We recognize fire as an important part of the ecosystem puzzle here.”
But then a surprise thunderstorm popped up in Nevada, and fierce mountain downdrafts caused the blaze to explode from 27 to 1,000 acres overnight. And it turned up the heat, incinerating the forest.
The fire slipped its containment line and headed towards the valuable San Joaquin River’s North Fork. Spring turned to summer, with hotter and drier weather. Flames spread to steep and rugged terrain, a dangerous place for firefighters.
Smoke billowed into this “Class 1 Airshed,” considered the most pristine air in America, as well as town of Mammoth Lakes, causing teary eyes, coughs, ashen hikes and cancelled vacations.
So the strategy changed. Instead of letting the forest burn, we suppressed it, doing what we’ve always done. Containment is expected by Oct. 7, with burning to continue until winter’s rain and snow.
“This fire is doing a lot of things we didn’t expect,” sighed Deb Schweizer of Inyo National Forest. “It has pushed our hand. This fire has a mind of its own.”
Fires are getting more complicated, in a state that is increasingly hot, crowded and flammable, said UC’s North. Yet our policies and practices aren’t keeping pace.
“We have the best fire-fighting force in the world. And we’ve done a pretty effective job of suppressing most fires. But the problem has come back to bite us,” he said.
“No matter how much you try in this business,” he said, “you cannot keep fire out of the forest.”
