Dangerous blazes more common in western U.S.
Arizona tragedy highlights worrying trend
Volatile weather patterns marked by shortened winters, stif ling heat waves and prolonged droughts. New housing developments encroaching on fire-prone lands. Shrinking budgets for fire prevention.
That dangerous combination helps explain the increasingly voracious wildfires that have ripped through the western United States in recent years, say scientists, lawmakers and historians. While the deaths of 19 firefighters Sunday in Arizona marked the most lethal firefighting incident in generations, the 8,400-acre blaze that led to the tragedy has become more the norm than the exception.
“On average, wildfires burn twice as many acres each year as compared to 40 years ago. Last year, the fires were massive in size, coinciding with increased temperatures and early snowmelt in the West,” U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell told lawmakers on Capitol Hill last month, adding, “The last two decades have seen fires that are extraordinary in their size, intensity and impacts.”
Broad agreement exists that climate change, coupled with economic development and state and federal policies on fire prevention, has played a significant role.
“This is the cost of how we live today,” said Stephen Pyne, a professor at Arizona State University and a well-known fire historian. “Context does matter. Everything that’s out there, fire reacts to. How we develop things, what kind of vegetation we have, how we live on the land, what fire protection measures we take.”
The paradox of destructive wildfires of recent years is that the West actually suffers from a “fire deficit,” Pyne said.
“We’re getting large, high-intensity fires where they shouldn’t be,” he said. “In an ideal world, we would get three or four times more fires than we’re getting, but they would be on a smaller scale. More landscape, but less intensity. We have too many of the wrong kind of fires.”
The trend seems unlikely to change. The Quadrennial Fire Review, a wildfire forecast that comes out every four years, predicted in 2009 that the effects of climate change would lead to “greater probability of longer and bigger fire seasons, in more regions in the nation.” The report also foresaw strained fire budgets at all levels of government.
Just days before the fatal fire in Yarnell, Ariz., a group of Western sena- tors raised alarms after the Obama administration proposed sharp cuts to fire-prevention programs.
The National Interagency Coordination Center, comprised of representatives from various federal agencies, said that nearly two dozen other uncontained wildfires are burning throughout the country this week.
Michael Kodas, who is writing a book about the global increase in wildfires, said there’s only so much humans can do to intervene. He said that while it’s possible for governments to take some meaningful prevention measures and for residents to build homes with features such as metal roofs and buried propane tanks, that new wildfire reality is probably here to stay.