New fire-fighting strategy: light more
LOS ANGELES — California’s seemingly endless cycle of wildfires is prompting authorities to make plans to set more “controlled burns” to thin forests choked with dead trees and withered underbrush that serves as kindling to feed monster blazes that force entire communities to flee, destroy homes and take lives.
Fighting wildfires that burn out of control is extremely expensive and even when authorities make mammoth efforts to put out the blazes, they can still cause expensive property and infrastructure losses when the flames reach populated areas. In October, thousands of California homes burned and 44 people died from wildfires in the state’s most renowned wine region north of San Francisco.
This week, while a fire northwest of Los Angeles still raged after destroying more than 700 homes, the U.S. Forest Service and the state fire agency warned that the threat will remain high even after that blaze is put out because of an estimated 129 million trees that died in California over the last year from drought and beetle infestation.
“It’s fuel just waiting to go up in flames,” said Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
The agencies are planning more aggressive use of so-called prescribed burns, when fire prevention experts identify areas with bone dry “surface fuels” and send in crews to burn it or clear it away using chain saws and heavy equipment.
The state since July 1 has burned 37 square kilometres of surface fuels such as dry needles, leaves and bark that accumulated over the years and can easily ignite, turning forests into powder kegs, Berlant said. That’s more than double the amount cleared three years ago.
The goal for 2018 is to burn at least 80 square kilometres and for the clearing crews to clean up the same amount. To protect population centres, state and local authorities are also increasing inspections to make sure residential and commercial property owners are maintaining cleared spaces required by law between their properties and forestland.
But the 160 square kilometres that would be cleared is far smaller than the 4,040 kilometres of land that have been burned by California’s wildfires so far this year.