Era of the Big Fire Is Kindled at West's Doors [Long Read]

This article was reported by Timothy Egan, Michael Janofsky, Andrew C. Revkin and James Sterngold and written by Mr. Egan.

The price of holding back nature has come home, fire officials say. A century-long policy of knocking down all fires has created fuel-filled forests that burn hotter and faster than ever. The era of big fires — and with it, the need for big government to contain them — is at hand, many firefighters say. Already, with 1.9 million acres burned by the first day of summer, wildfires across the West are burning twice the acreage of the 10-year average for this time of year.

A convergence of events — drier forests, higher temperatures, a yearslong drought and more people living in places where fire has long made a home — is likely to keep armies of yellow-shirted firefighters busier than ever, at a cost to taxpayers of $2 billion a year.

"We've got the equivalent of the perfect storm," said Stephen J. Pyne, an Arizona State University fire historian who has written many books on the subject.

Forest Service officials say 73 million acres, about 40 percent of all Forest Service land, are at risk of severe fires in coming years.

Since four firefighters choked to death on superheated gas in this Eastern Washington valley last year, government strategy for fighting fires has changed, with new rules that will slow response in the woods.

"Some citizens may resent any delay when they know there is a fire burning in the forest," said Sonny J. O'Neal, supervisor of the Okanogan and Wenatchee National Forests.

In Arizona on Friday, firefighters chose not to attack a blaze that destroyed 15 houses and forced 4,000 people from their homes near Pinedale, 110 miles from Phoenix.

"We're at the mercy of Mother Nature right now," said Larry Humphrey, incident commander of the Rodeo fire, Arizona's largest. "There's not a whole lot we can do."

Some say the fires are a harbinger. "These catastrophic fire seasons are going to become the norm," said Bruce Babbitt, the former Interior secretary and Arizona governor. "The question is, what are we going to do about it? Can we learn to live in the woods, when in most of these areas there aren't even building codes?"

One central question is whether the government should be more willing to start controlled fires, to burn off built-up fuels. But the policy is vexed, in part because some of the biggest recent fires were government-started blazes that got out of control — and because growing numbers of people and homes are in harm's way if controlled burns jump the rails.

The fires this time are also prompting calls to enact a new social contract. People living in fire zones would have to do preventive maintenance to expect government help when the woods catch fire. The insurance industry, which has forced a change among home developers by making it more costly to live in flood zones, is considering similar rules for fire areas.

In Alaska, where a half-million acres have burned this year and the fire season came earlier than anyone can remember, insurers have already stopped offering policies to homeowners who refuse to remove fire hazards from their houses in areas where dead spruce trees are likely to burn.

But changing fire policy is slow, subject to partisan fluctuations and interest-group pressure and fraught with technical questions. "Reinstating fire is like reinstating a lost species," Dr. Pyne said. Republicans blame environmentalists, arguing that stepped-up logging is the answer, to clear the forests of the trees most likely to burn. Democrats argue that the timber industry is using fire as an excuse to cut down trees.

The Bush administration has no plans to change fire policy, said Mark E. Rey, who oversees the Forest Service. It will try to reduce the "process paralysis" that has kept land agencies from taking big new steps to clear out fuel in the forests, he said, and to encourage people in fire zones to be aware of the constant threat.

On the fire front lines in Colorado and Arizona, the message is starting to get through. But for many, it is too late.

After deciding to leave Las Vegas, Nancy and Steve Smith looked at nearly 40 houses before finding the 3,200-square-foot home they bought last March in the Colorado Rockies.

"We knew this was the house we had been looking for," Mrs. Smith said. "It was on top of a wooded ridge overlooking a valley with horse ranches. To the west we had beautiful views of Thunder Butte. Our property bordered Pike National Forest on one side."

They came to the mountains, like most urban exiles, seeking clean air, solitude, a closeness to nature.

"I had no idea until mid-April that we were in an area that was considered high risk for fire," Mrs. Smith said. "When we moved in, there was snow on the ground. And it snowed every week for a month."

On May 19, barely a few weeks after that last snow, the Smith family was told to evacuate because of a growing wildfire. Then came the Hayman wildfire, Colorado's biggest blaze, which the authorities say was started by a seasonal Forest Service worker. In days, the fire covered 20 miles, spreading to within five miles of the Smiths' house.

Last Monday, the Smiths had two hours to retrieve more possessions. On Wednesday, their dream house was destroyed. "The fire was just an unbelievable force that evaporated our house," Mrs. Smith said. "I don't blame anybody. It was a natural disaster."

Whether the fire was natural or not will be debated for years. But the Smiths' story is more common across the West as more people move into what used to be wilderness.

Experts call the zone where homes meet forest the "urban-wildland interface." That is where most fires are being fought.

Ten times as many homes are now in areas prone to wildfire as there were 25 years ago, said Don Smurthwaite, a spokesman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho.

In Colorado, the number of people living in areas at risk of fire increased 30 percent during the 1990's, said James E. Hubbard, the state forester. Nearly a million people in Colorado now live in the fire zone, state and federal demographers said.

Demography and nature collided in Colorado this spring when wildfires broke out in the Rockies, where a drought meant there was little snowpack to provide moisture.

"Usually, the fires don't start until June in this part of the world," said Gordon Koenig, a pilot who has been dumping fire retardant on Colorado six days a week since April. Mr. Koenig said the season has doubled in length in the 13 years he has been fighting fires.

A half-century ago, the Forest Service strategy of fighting nearly every fire was easier. But the era when smoke jumpers would drop into uninhabited valleys is gone, Forest Service officials say. Its end is complicated because the new generation of Westerners has not figured out how to live in the red zone safely.

"While Westerners are getting more educated about fire, there is still a kind of dangerous independence, one that resists all zoning and regulation, that exists among people who live in the fire zone," said Pat Williams, a former Montana congressman.

Others agree. "I think the public has accepted the fact that fire has a natural place," said Dr. Pyne, the Arizona State fire historian. "People are starting to get it. But it will take another 10 years or so to work out. Unfortunately, that means the peak of wildfires and homes destroyed will be in the next five years."

Smokey Bear came of age in an era that was haunted by a single summer, 1910, a year that still hangs over all Forest Service decisions about fire. In that year, it seemed as if all of the West was on fire. Three million acres burned in Montana and Idaho alone, and 87 people died. "Thousands of people thought the world was coming to an end," wrote Norman Maclean, the author of "Young Men and Fire," a story of one the worst tragedies in the history of firefighting.

The deaths, and the apocalyptic images of valleys where daylight had turned to darkness, prompted the fledgling group of government foresters to adopt a new policy. From then on, every fire would be fought, quickly.

But even by midcentury, some foresters were beginning to argue that the policy was misguided and that by snuffing out all fires, the Forest Service was only delaying the inevitable big fires.

A 1999 report by the General Accounting Office ( news - web sites) blamed a century of putting out all fires for "an increasing number of large, intense, uncontrollable and catastrophically destructive wildfires." The agency said forests in the West would be at risk of big fires through 2015.

The government has made various attempts to change its policy. One of its most notable experiments was in 1988, when some natural fires that consumed more than half of Yellowstone National Park were allowed to burn.

Though the policy angered some Western senators at the time, the now-green park seems to vindicate the National Park Service's decision.

But the issue of allowing fires to burn becomes infinitely more complex when the fire is raging not in a park or a wilderness but near a neighborhood.

The government's ability to make the case for controlled burns has also been severely hampered by its own missteps. In 2000, for example, a fire started by the Park Service in New Mexico raged out of control and destroyed hundreds of houses and thousands of acres, ultimately costing the government far more than it ever would have paid to fight a natural fire in the area.

Fires become politicized, too. In 1988, some people blamed the Reagan administration for letting Yellowstone burn. In 2000, George W. Bush implied that President Bill Clinton's policies were to blame for Montana fires.

"The only thing that burns hotter than a wildfire in the West is the demagoguery of some politicians trying to take advantage of it," said Mr. Williams, the former Montana congressman.

The Clinton and Bush administrations have pushed for some logging of dead or dying forests in particularly vulnerable areas, but have been stymied by lawsuits and protests from environmental groups.

Last week, in testimony before Congress, Dale Bosworth, the chief of the Forest Service, said "analysis paralysis" from lawsuits and second-guessing by the land agencies had prevented the government from burning or logging some fire-prone areas.

But even in areas that have been logged, laced with roads or cleaned of excess brush, firestorms have raced through. In 2000, when 8 million acres burned, fires scorched the Bitterroot Valley in Montana, taking out ancient trees on one side of the mountains and homes and orchards on the other.

The other policy debate centers on firefighters and how much risk they should take to save property. When the Mann Gulch fire killed 12 young men in 1949, the Forest Service vowed to never repeat its mistakes.

But in 1994 in Colorado, 14 firefighters died in the South Canyon fire. The circumstances were hauntingly similar, except this time they were fighting to save houses in the urban interface. The Forest Service partly blamed gung-ho firefighters for the deaths.

Last year, after Congress met the call for more firefighters in response to the huge fires of 2000, four people died in the Thirty Mile Fire in the valley just north of here, trapped in fire shelters after a flame storm overwhelmed them. An investigation said numerous safety rules had been violated. Some people also blamed the rush to throw firefighters, some poorly trained, at fires.

All these deaths have had a humbling effect on the men and women who fight fires. As Mr. O'Neal, the forest supervisor, said in announcing new guidelines this week, firefighters are not going to die to save property.

"We will continue to attack and control fires that threaten life, property or important natural resources," Mr. O'Neal said. "But in every case, safety comes first."

No matter how many loads of retardant are dumped and fire lines cut, the threat to the Rockies will be eased only by moisture — in amounts vastly greater than can be carried in the bellies of airplanes.

The prime ingredients for conflagration remain abundant across much of the West, fire experts say: dry weather, frequent winds, sunken water tables and desiccated, fuel-laden stands of trees and brush, which one New Mexico wilderness expert called "dog-hair forest" because they are so overgrown.

As a result, when there is a source of ignition, whether a burning letter or a lightning strike, fires spring up explosively.

The Hayman fire and the Missionary Ridge fire near Durango were so broad and fierce last week that gusts of oven-hot air rising at superhighway speeds spawned thunderstorms and "fire whirls," short-lived little cousins of tornados generated by clashing hot and cool air.

"A fire whirl can sustain itself and hop right over fire lines," said Larry Van Bussum, the staff meteorologist at the National Interagency Fire Center. "They're carrying fire and debris and embers and are throwing them all over the place. You start seeing those on the fire line and you know things are getting pretty ugly."

Salvation, in the form of great pools of warm, moist air, sits hundreds of miles to the west and south, over the Pacific and the Gulf of Mexico.

That air, heavy with water vapor, will be drawn toward the country's scorched interior only when high pressure builds over Texas, as it does each summer, creating an atmospheric carousel.

Federal meteorologists say that moist air flow should begin in a few more weeks. Satellites have already measured some wisps filtering over Mexico. That would bring some relief to the southern Rockies, but it would do nothing to help the Pacific Northwest, which usually goes into a drought every summer until October.

Even after showers and downpours arrive in the Southwest, however, the fire threat will remain high, said John E. Jones Jr., deputy director of the National Weather Service ( news - web sites). This is the case, Mr. Jones said, even though federal meteorologists predict above-normal rainfall for Colorado and eastern Utah this summer. Part of the problem, he said, is that temperatures across the West are expected to be higher than normal through September.

Meanwhile, across broad stretches of the region where the worst drought in memory remains entrenched, farmers and homeowners kick at powdery soil and watch smoke rise.

In Santa Fe, where the reservoir is little more than a damp bowl, the community is trying to adapt to the longstanding absence of water.

At Plaza Resolana, a conference center there, managers have placed a bucket in each shower stall and asked guests to collect the first cold gush before the hot water kicks in. Guests tote the water into the gardens to keep a few favorite shrubs alive.

A pile of smoke from a 6,000-acre fire just over the bristly ridge east of town settles at night, then rises again each morning as winds energize the flames.

After a recent helicopter tour of wildfires across his state, Gov. Bill Owens declared, "It looks as if all of Colorado is burning." He was exaggerating, of course.

But the nine major wildfires crunching across Colorado made for an extraordinary start to a fire season. Wildfires have consumed almost 300,000 acres there, driving thousands of people from their homes.

Like other Western states where dry conditions and dense underbrush are fueling blazes, Colorado is learning a hard lesson.

It was a lesson residents of Malibu, Calif., learned in 1993, when a firestorm wiped out more than 350 homes.

After the blaze, wholesale changes were made in building codes, and even in the rules governing landscaping, to reduce the spread of fire. The changes are among the most stringent in the country.

Kathy and John Haag, who lost their house in 1993, have had to build their new home using an entirely different set of rules. "I even had to move the footprint of the house on the lot and build a retaining wall in a hillside for the driveway to accommodate fire trucks," said Mr. Haag, a lawyer.

The Haags can use only certain kinds of treated wood and fire-retardant materials, and they get constant reminders from the fire department to clear brush, or pay fines.

It makes a difference. Though fire officials are expecting one of the worst fire seasons ever in Southern California because of a drought and a heavy accumulation of brush, they also say that the lessons of 1993 have helped to reduce the risks.

P. Michael Freeman, the chief of the Los Angeles County Fire Department, said that a task force created after the 1993 fire eventually made 39 recommendations, virtually all of which have been put in place. "The changes in the building code and our brush clearance I would characterize as almost radical," Chief Freeman said. Among the most important, he said, were vigilance on brush clearance and an emphasis on attacking fires quickly from the air.

The Haags said they had just finished a two-year renovation of their home when the 1993 fire roared through. They escaped with only a few things thrown into the back of a car. Seeking to expand their home later, they ran into an array of tough new standards.

They have to leave a five-foot space around the house clear for access. Grass has to be mowed to three inches or less, and ground cover, which can start 20 feet from the house, must be 18 inches or lower. Trees must be 30 feet apart. Eaves must be covered, with few ventilation openings, to prevent embers from lodging there in a fire. New houses must have sprinkler systems.

Ann Stalcup, a schoolteacher, said she and her husband effectively replaced their wooden home, destroyed in the fire, with a stone house. The new roof is covered with terra cotta tiles, the wooden deck that juts out over the hillside is tiled in ceramic and the walls of the house are stucco. A sprinkler system has been installed, and, Ms. Stalcup said, she endures frequent visits from the fire department to ensure that the brush is cleared.

Ken Chiate, a lawyer, lost two adjacent houses. One was rented to a family that still had the moving van out front when the fire came. Mr. Chiate rebuilt using the new materials and even had to include stronger walls, without windows.

Asked why he stayed in a dangerous area, he said without hesitation: "You get coyote wandering in the yard, roadrunners across your driveway, deer eating the roses. My wife feeds about a hundred quail. It's what we like, and we accept the risk."

It remains to be seen whether communities in Colorado and throughout the West, not all as rich as Malibu, will follow its example.

Some experts are not optimistic. "We call ourselves a nation of pragmatists," said Dr. Pyne, the fire historian, who spends much of the year living in the fire-prone woods near Alpine, Ariz. "But you wouldn't know it by the way we deal with fire."

So far, there is little talk of requiring people who live in areas vulnerable to fire to do much differently.

Governor Owens of Colorado said in an interview that while state government could encourage people to take precautions against fire, changes in zoning laws and building codes are best left to local governments.

But local efforts seem to have yielded mixed results. Under a national fire plan put in place at the end of the Clinton administration, counties in high-risk areas are required to develop fire plans. They are also supposed to issue rules for construction, seeing to it that roads are wide enough to accommodate firefighting equipment, that buildings are made of fire-resistant materials and that buildings are a fixed distance from trees.

But meeting the requirements is daunting for many counties, and just 33 of Colorado's 64 counties have completed the task, said Larry Kallenberger, executive director of Colorado Counties Inc.

Mr. Williams, the former congressman, said the federal government should have a role, using a carrot-and-stick approach to the millions of people moving into the fire zone.

"I think you ought to be able to build anywhere you want in these mountains, but don't expect taxpayer-financed firefighters to bail you out unless you take certain preventive steps," he said.

Mr. Rey of the Forest Service said the Bush administration had no plans to require more fire prevention as a condition of government help. But he added, "People need to develop a better understanding of the risks associated with building in these areas."

That understanding includes acknowleding the costs. "The question is when do you want to pay," said Roger A. Pielke Jr., a professor of environmental studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "You can pay through government disaster assistance and higher insurance premiums after the fact, or pay in advance through changing land-use and forest-management policies."

But the latter option is not something an elected official will find very palatable, Professor Pielke said.

"Would you rather be looked at as a hero, bringing in aid after a disaster," he asked, "or a bad guy who doesn't allow you to build in the way you want and place you want?"

The question no official — in Colorado or elsewhere — can answer is whether even a succession of devastating fire seasons is enough to persuade people to live differently.

Mr. Hubbard, the Colorado forester, said big fires get people's attention — but only for so long. "After the flames have gone away and the fire season is only a memory, the sense of urgency wanes," he said.

He added that good intentions were often overrun by Western individualism, which is especially common in people who choose to live in remote settings, apart from crowded subdivisions. "You begin to see more resistance," Mr. Hubbard said.

Some people, though, are having second thoughts. Patricia and Charles Thomas moved from the earthquake ( news - web sites) country of California into the fire zones of the Colorado Rockies, thinking they were safer in the mountains. Their development, called Tranquil Acres, has proved to be anything but.

They have fled their house and are living hour by hour, waiting to see what happens as the Hayman fire bears down.

"It's a feeling in your gut like you're in war," Mrs. Thomas said. She would like to move back to California, but her husband prefers Colorado.

"We'll probably stay here and rebuild," she said. "It's either that or I leave my husband."

I lived very close to the Sierra Foothills some 12 years ago. The 1990 Tehama County Pine Creek Fire--the fifth largest wildfire in California history -- started as a pine tree blew against a PG&E high-tension power line, within sight of my backyard, and was out of control in minutes. It burned thousands of acres, some homes and cabins. It took 2 weeks to put it out.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily my own. I'm just the messenger.

Sir SuziQ and I were talking about this a couple of weeks ago. The best thing is for the undergrowth to burn off and kill some of the trees in order to thin the number of trees per acre. Folks don't like to hear that because so many have been building in those forests over the last 30 years or so. But if you keep putting the fires out and leave the undergrowth, they are actually the kindling for the really big fires!!

That's why the Forest Service tries to have controlled burns from time to time, to deny the big fire the fuel it needs.

People living in fire zones would have to do preventive maintenance

I have read many times here on FR about people being penalized and threatened for doing this very thing, clearing dead brush,cutting fire trenches, etc, around their own homes, especially in California.

Forest Service officials say 73 million acres, about 40 percent of all Forest Service land, are at risk of severe fires in coming years.

Does anyone have any idea how many protected animals and plants are in 73 million acres? Give the tree huggers and PETA a big hug when you see them.

Myself I'll give a whack in the crotch with my cane.

Dangerous independence? I like it. Dangerous to fat assed mealy mouthed politicans and may it ever be so!

-ccm

Dangerously Independent

Well it is NOT lost on me that the "era of big fires" comes directly on the heels of Clinton's Forestry policies NOT to allow the removal of dead and downed lumber from existing National Forest and BLM land.

We have been fighting fires in forests for decades now and it is only after fruition of the misguided idiotic Forestry policies of the Clinton administration that we are seeing the worst fires in US history.

The Clinton administration failed on so many levels it is incomprehensible.

I stopped reading after the second paragraph:

A century-long policy of knocking down all fires has created fuel-filled forests that burn hotter and faster than ever.

The NYT is now totally estranged from the truth. They should have written:

The anti-logging anti-road policies of the environmental fringe supported by the democrats in congress have created fuel-filled forests that burn hotter and faster than ever

A century-long policy of knocking down all fires has created fuel-filled forests that burn hotter and faster than ever.

We just visited several national parks in the SW (Ziion, Bryce, Grand Canyon) and attended a ranger talk about fires. For decades, the policy has been to have "prescribed fires" when underbrush piles up and conditions are very dry. While we were there we saw many prescribed fires occurring (from a distance). It was explained that not only is this practice a good prevention for fires getting out of control and threatening settled areas, it's also much healthier for the plants and animals to experience this process of regeneration. There are some cones (certain types of pine, e.g.) that do not release seeds unless under very high heat.

Fact is, the NPS and BLM catch a lot of "heat" for even these prescribed fires. Remember the one in NM last year that got out of control.

The conditions out west are very, very dry. Reservoirs are down 50 or more feet. And they're heading into the dry season.

Worse than that, the NYT's implied solution is to "let it burn."

The "century long problem" has been a succession of errors, ALL for the benefit of the Eastern Establishment. Whether is was 19th century clearcutting, or 20th century fire suppression, plantation tree-spacing, and restricted grazing of the understory that is the cause of this type of fuel load doesn't matter. It's a mess and "let it burn" won't fix it. In every case, the problems stem from government-owned land operated for the benefit of those who dominate Congress.

Who is going to fix it and how will it be paid for? Is government competent to supply efficient, creative, committed, and detailed management of every acre? Isn't that a touch too complex? Will we have the money if we "preserve" it all? I say it can't be done that way.

It's time for a new approach.

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