Homes on edge of wilderness complicate wildfire efforts
SANTA CLARITA, Calif.—When Pat Telleria saw the wind-driven flames sweeping across the grass foothills toward his dream home, he picked up the phone.
In the middle of the night, he called 911. “I’m next. It’s coming right at me!’ he told dispatchers. “And they said, ‘You’re out of luck. All the resources are allocated.’” That’s when the wall of fire came at them “and it was humming.”
Telleria’s home near Boise stands on the edge of the wilderness in a landscape that offers pastoral serenity but is also susceptible to wildfires. Some 44 million homes have been built in similar areas of the lower 48 states, making the properties expensive to protect from flames and draining resources that might otherwise be used to defend forests, rangeland and wildlife habitat.
“I fly back and forth across the country and I see it,” Interior Secretary Sally Jewell told the nation’s top wildfire managers during a meeting in May at the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise. “We should be holding these people accountable, and we’re not.”
Most of the homes have been erected in recent decades. More examples can be found in Santa Clarita, California, where a wildfire in mountains north of Los Angeles recently forced 20,000 people from their homes. Most residents were cleared to return on Tuesday, but the flames kept burning in the rugged terrain where many houses are tucked into canyon lands.
Laurent Lacore evacuated on Saturday, the last of his family to leave.
“The flames were right behind our backyard,” he said.
He returned Monday to find the house and everything around it had been saved. He could see a line of red fire retardant that had been dropped from the air to halt the fire’s approach.
“Everything is fine,” he said. “Even all of the trees are there.”
Firefighters saved about 2,000 homes in the fire’s first three days, Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief John Tripp said.
In 2015, the U.S. Forest Service set aside more than half of its budget for fire suppression. In one week in August, it spent $243 million fighting fires, much of it to protect homes. By September, all the firefighting money had been spent, and the agency began using money initially intended for recreation and other projects.
Besides the financial burden, there’s also a human cost. Three firefighters died in Washington state last year and 19 perished in Arizona in 2013 while battling fires in the area that scientists call the wildland-urban interface.
“We find that funerals for firefighters are always well attended,” said Larry Sutton, assistant director of operations for the Forest Service at the fire center. “To me, the best tribute to firefighters is a fire-adapted community.”
What he mostly sees is the opposite, he said, including areas destroyed by wildfire that get rebuilt with little regard for the next blaze. V