Book Review by Brian Ballou
Running Out of Time: Wildfires and Our Imperiled Forests
David L. Auchterlonie and Jeffrey A. Lehman
When I was asked to review a new book, Running Out of Time, by David Auchterlonie and Jeffrey Lehman, I was underwhelmed. First, I had to set aside the book I was already reading, The Complete Works of P.G. Wodehouse, and then dive into something that looked like it was penned by the Government Accounting Office, something Congress orders when it wants to give one of the federal government’s agencies a good spanking.
Instead, it turned out to be a surprisingly thorough and readable book written by two high-level business troubleshooters who are genuinely concerned about climate change and the role of wildfires in making the planet considerably hotter than it used to be.
Wildfires have come to dominate the news in the past 30 or more years since they have become larger and harder to stop, and the destruction caused by them has reached epic proportions. And this is not just a Western United States problem. Wildfires have plagued the planet — in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida, in Australia and South Africa, southern Europe, and the northernmost forests of Canada and Russia. (If I’ve left anyone out, just wait; your turn is coming.)
Efforts have been made to stop the Big Wildfire problem by a number of agencies in the U.S. However, in the authors’ analysis, the money spent on the cure is way, way short of what is needed.
“A put-the-fire-out-first strategy should be fundamental.”
“[T]he DOI, USDA, Homeland Security, Defense/Energy and others will spend approximately $16.8 billion [in FY2021-22] on forest maintenance and wildfire management. This figure represents only 0.28 percent of the total federal budget. Despite $8.5 billion of increased allocations since 2000, the number of burned acres of forestland also increased by more than 75 percent during the same period. Even with the most recent ten-year funding from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the federal funding commitment is not keeping pace. It is, quite frankly, an embarrassment, considering the stated priorities of preserving our forests. Americans impacted by wildfires each year (212 million or nearly 65 percent of the country’s population) deserve better.”
Call me old-fashioned, but $22.6 billion sounds like a lot of money. But so does 65 percent of the United States’ population being affected by wildfire.
Scarier yet is the number of homes, subdivisions, even whole towns burned to cinders by wildfires. In the past 30-plus years, that number has skyrocketed. And it’s expected to get worse.
“Under current federal agencies’ practices,” say Auchterlonie and Lehman, “wildfires now place 46 million residences in 70,000 communities at risk. Two-thirds of the country face the threat of large, long-duration wildfires. As the wildland-urban interface (WUI) expands due to expected population growth in the next twenty-five years, some experts predict a 50 percent increase in wildfire acreage consumed by 2050.”
To which they add: “[T]he last update to federal interagency wildfire fighting was in 2009. It excludes any mention of prioritizing early wildfire extinguishment.” Instead it focuses on thinning and prescribed burning. The authors say, “A put-the-fire-out-first strategy should be fundamental.”
“Annual devastation from wildfires requires an immediate, laser-focused, and warlike response. Study after study shows aggressive wildfire initial response within the first few hours of ignition minimizes the likelihood of more devastating and intensive wildfires.”
Then there’s the smoke problem. Wildfires in the United States produce approximately 10 percent of the global wildfire greenhouse gas emissions each year, say the authors. “Wildfires across the globe produce twice the CO2 as all commercial airline flights in the world in 2019, and about 60 percent of emissions from automobiles. While the economic cost to the environment caused by wildfires has not been ‘quantified,’ it is substantial and ‘one more reason to expeditiously extinguish them.'”
Therein lies a very old problem: How to quickly and completely extinguish a wildfire after it has escaped initial attack and burned thousands, or tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of acres of wildland. It soon emerges in Running Out of Time that the answer is to have more airtankers. A lot more. “[T]he government should purchase a fleet of 200 SEATs, 75 to 125 large airtankers (LATs), and 30 to 50 very large airtankers (VLATs).” And more helicopters and bulldozers, too.
Oh, and another thing: “Fight wildfire twenty-four hours a day.” While this poke in the eye is primarily for the U.S. Forest Service, the authors also note that quite a few state and municipal firefighting agencies engage fires quickly and work as productively as possible around the clock. Some even own night-flying helicopters — but they also have trouble with a small number of their fires, which too often become landscape-gobbling, home-wrecking wildfires.
While their airtanker buying recommendation is an alarming, blow-your-hair-back shopping list, Messrs. Auchterlonie and Lehman go into considerable detail to illustrate their position on how to pull this off. They propose a top-to-bottom reconfiguration of many (perhaps all) federal agencies to make them more efficient. The authors are, after all, business consultants who have helped large corporations with turnarounds and mergers, and were consultants to the likes of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas. They have 80 years of combined experience in the private sector and government. They know how to strip large corporations down to the bone and build them back better.
An admirable amount of research went into this book, and it is notable that the focus is on finding a better way for keeping that small percentage of wildfires that escape initial attack from becoming destructive megafires. Granted, working firefighters and managers may not be the target audience — although many could benefit from reading the book. I suspect city planners, homebuilders, elected officials, and members of the news media could learn a great deal from Running out of Time. It’s also a good book for the public — the people who know or suspect that they live in a wildfire-prone area.
Wildfire remains a dizzying, frightening mystery to millions of people. This book may not assuage their fears, but at least they’ll understand considerably better what they’re up against — and maybe take away some small hope that two guys who have never dug an inch of fireline do know how to fix it.
Published by Amplify Publishing Group
Copyright ©2023 by the authors and Crowbar Research Insights LLC
Edition reviewed: Hardcover (publisher-supplied) 403 pages. $34.95
The book is also available in paperback and kindle editions.
Royal Burnett,
As others have said here, this assertion that meaningful night shifts are not happening does not ring true to those of us still working on the line. Night shifts are part of normal operations. If crews are turning down night missions for safety concerns (e.g. snag patches in the dark), they are justified and well within their rights to do so. We are not properly incentivized to take on that risk and nobody trusts OWCP to do right by injured employees. And the recent widespread increase in tree mortality is raising that risk year after year.
As far as crews not working nights due to overtime restrictions – they aren’t volunteers. Before the current retention incentive, forestry technicians relied on H and OT more than ever before. If someone told me my crew had to flex hours to avoid charging OT to a fire that would be a major problem.
I second what Ken Kerr and Mike Beasley said. Those two hit the nail on the head. Read what they said and then reread it again and again until it sinks in.
In Northern California, USFS unmans station and engines at night on regular basis. We’ve had several major fires result from crews pulling off the line or simply not responding to fires at night. Eiler fire LNF 2014…crews left the fire for overtime restrictions….SHF Hirz Fire 2018 crews did not respond to a fire reported at 0100 until 0930… SKF Lava Fire 2021… crews pulled off the line at 1800 and did not respond to reported flareups until next morning. Night shifts on major fires happen occasionally, but not the norm… The nights shifts I’ve observed are many times minimal patrol actions, put in place to satisfy public demands for night shift
Smashing every fire isn’t the answer, some absolutely need to be suppressed quickly and others should be allowed to burn. Aircraft alone would not be a solution – I would not order mud unless boots are going to follow it up to secure the edge…you could make an argument that in grass depending on a few things you could get away without having the edge walked but 9 times out of 10 you’re going to have to have people follow up what aircraft do.
A skycrane at night would be very effective, I wouldn’t recommend any bucket work – tanked helicopters only. Nobody could be on the ground even remotely close to where they’re working, I’ve seen these guys drop way off mark during the day. Smoke and terrain + darkness = a helluva high risk..better be worth it.
Yes like others commenting, the crew I’m on works at night regularly – every single year for the last 10 years…at least one or two rolls a season, not sure how you came to the conclusion that people don’t work at night on wildfires? – we go direct, prep and usually are tasked with burning at night. The IMT doesn’t make a difference…neither does the region..
We’ve had drones fly at night but so far I’ve yet to be on a fire where any water drops were occurring after sunset. Heads up big time if they do!
“not sure how you came to the conclusion that people don’t work at night on wildfires?”
To Schmo and others here, perhaps it was a paper that Dick Mangan wrote back in 2002. I’m sure that was not the only source for my (outdated) info on this topic, and I am really glad to find out that the regular use of night-shift crews has been revitalized since then. Thanks to all of you for updating me on this.
When I started working for the US Forest Service in the mid 80s,the “Big Green Machine” was the largest and best organized wildland firefighting organization in the world. Every forest had a robust fire and fuels management organization, everyone was expected to contribute when multiple fires happened on your forest (surge capacity), and fires on Forest Service protected lands rarely exceeded 5,000 acres in size. Megafires were virtually non-existent. Forests in the western US had ample surge resources to respond to multiple fires in a very short time frame. The BLM, BIA, Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Service and state agencies were also major contributors, but it was always the Forest Service who drove the fire bus. Under Reagan, and continuing through Bush 1, Clinton, and Bush 2, downsizing and outsourcing became the new buzzwords for Forest Service fire management. Large-scale fire contracting became the norm, and we gradually became less capable at controlling forest fires. The current Forest Service is a hollowed out shell of it’s former self. Today, the Forest Service can only muster about 1/4 of the firefighting resources they had in the 70s and 80s, and that includes contract resources. Fighting large wildland fires today is mostly a profit-making business; most of the Forest Service wildland fire budget presently goes to fire and aviation contractors, not federal employees. The current federal wildland fire workforce is, sadly, just not big enough to provide a decent surge capacity, so fires that escape initial and extended attack now become expensive long-term slogs. Yet Forest Service leadership somehow determined around 2009 that climate change, wildland urban interface, and fuels buildup are the prime causes of megafires, and that megafires are inevitable. Instead of a robust fuels management program, and a sufficiently sized fire management organization, we nuke giant holes in our national forests, burn thousands of homes, and spend billions of dollars in a fruitless chase and call it good. I believe that Congress and senior Forest Service leaders have willfully disregarded what is obvious and right and instead settled on supporting a process that is devastating our national forests and surrounding communities. There is another way forward; rebuild a large federal firefighting workforce, do away with contracting fire and aviation resources, conduct greatly increased prescribed burning on national forests during the shoulder seasons, and restore balance to our national forests. One thing is certain; as long as we permit long-term large-scale fires on the landscape during the western fire season, we will continue to have destructive megafires in this country.
I understand that the idea of night time air ops sounds like some silver bullet to the uninitiated, but I promise it isn’t. Our lack of aircraft flying at night is not what is losing fires. Since CA and CO started standing up night time operations, I have railed against that effort. Fire Aviation is already riddled with risk, efforts to fly past civil dusk just amplify that already present layer of risk. Between visibility, pilot fatigue, and mountainous terrain, night time aviation missions are suicide missions. Maybe not the first time. Maybe not the second. But it will increase the number of fatalities within the industry. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
“don’t know when you last saw hand crews out on night shift, ”
I’m pretty sure each of the last 7 years in North Ops and Oregon. Swing shifts in 2020 and 2021 too.
“the 1964 Wilderness Act makes it very difficult to use anything other than hand tools on fires in designated Wilderness and bureaucrats have extended that prohibition to National Monuments”
I don’t know what you mean by hand tools, but I’ve never had a issue using powersaws, pumps, or aircraft in the wilderness. I believe all the jurisdictions I’ve worked in have had policies where the ranger or supervisor effectively signed off in advance on the use of that stuff in the event of a wildfire. I suppose we could have used more dozers, but they usually would have had to spend quite a while building their own access routes and there were higher-priority values at risk elsewhere.
Suppression will always be a necessary in wildland fire management, and it’s important that it be properly funded, staffed, and organized if that effort is to perform as needed. The problem with the approach championed by the authors is that it might actually achieve short-term tactical success. If that happens, freckles politicians, casual leaders, cautionary policy makers, and the general public will think that long-term success has been achieved and lose focus. The authors emphasis on suppression, regardless of the resource mix, is neither strategic nor sustainable. The more money put into suppression (at the expense of prevention, preparedness, and hazard mitigation) means that more money will be required for suppression every year moving forward. We can’t suppress our way out of our current situation. We simply can’t.
In the book review.
Early detection isn’t even mentioned.
Staff all of those empty fire towers with well-trained, alert humans AND WILDFIRE ALERT cameras, with detection mode always activated.
HI VI,
Not mentioned in the book? Or in the book review?
https://alertcalifornia.org/
Treating any fire service like a business will only make the problems worse. Firefighting is a service, not a money making industry. The scale of our western landscapes and a lack of polticial will to provide appropriate compensation to our firefighters means we will always be understaffed with low morale.
The 10AM policy was done away for a reason. Those hwo think biringing logging back will make things better convinently forget that logging the reason for the 10AM policy which then lead to the choked out forests we have today.
Sad to see WildfireToday succumbing to nonsense book publisherrs sponsoring poorly thought out publications and positng and amplifying pseudoscience and armchair land management by venture capatalists and former, ill-reputed firefighters trying to make a buck by having ridiculous hot takes.
I mean no personal offense to any commenters in here on this story, but I think that “arrogance” is thinking that we can use the same land management/Fire management policies used in the 20th century over and over again expecting different results as climate changes to drier and warmer from other influences (some possibly human induced);
and vegetation changes caused directly by human influences (10 AM policy/logging/human encroachment on Wildland fuels).
We can’t “ buy” our way out of this problem with more air tankers, engines, hand crews or smokejumpers.
We’re having a hard time filling positions with people now. Our country is deep in debt right now with uninterested and inadequate leadership at the highest levels.
We need to quit harping on each other in determining the best ways to deal with the problems we have made for ourselves. Suppressing some fires before 10:00 AM is the right tool at some times and places while managing fires over long term while assessing their risks realistically and allowing fire to do what it’s always done are the right tools at other times and places. RX Fire is another tool that has a time and place.
These are the strategies and tactics I saw over 35 years of Wildland firefighting in 6 geographic areas. It wasn’t a success all the time, but I saw many, many leaders and workers doing everything they could to make success out of often very difficult circumstances.
Our current problems need more nuanced strategies snd tactics than whether or not you’re gonna hammer every fire with the 1000 policy, or complain about wilderness areas, or that we don’t have 100 VLATS flying the latest fire bust out of Placerville today.
Maybe these venture capitalists have a few ideas we can look at….
My money is on good, experienced fire hands though.
They’re the real problem solvers.
We all need to be open to realistic, actionable strategies and tactics that address current issues and deal with those things that may limit or restrict the actions we can take.
Trying to relive a past that doesn’t exist anymore is a waste of our time.
Royal, Chukar and Capt LD, yeah lets make fire great again!
Armchair quarterbacking businessmen..coolcoolcool
I think I’ll keep listening to professional fire managers.
The USFS currently has 12 large and very large air tankers under exclusive use contracts for the entire country, down from 18 in 2022.
Bill Gabbert’s 2020 editorial on contracting for federal aircraft.
How British Columbia does it:
https://fireaviation.com/2023/08/03/british-columbias-world-class-fleet/
Royal, I can say it no better than you have !!!!! Today’s Fed fire policies are a failure, just the facts.
I am constantly amazed by the arrogance of those who say we will just have to learn to live with the smoke. They simply don’t understand that the smoke from these summer long wildfires is harmful to the elderly and other segments of our population. They ignore the hundreds possibly thousands of homes that have burned in rxfire escapes. They refuse to acknowledge that current fire management practices have resulted in the burning of 98% of the Mendocino NF, more that 90% of Whiskeytown NRA , 70% of Lassen NP…. it has resulted in the loss of hundreds of Big Trees in Sequoia NF on the Castle fire and thousands of Big Trees in the KNF Complex. Our NorCal forests have hundreds of thousands of acres of standing snags…just waiting for the next lightning storm.
They blame all of the forest woes on the cancellation of the 10 O’clock rule. Let’s list a few other factors that contributed to the fuel loads…the 1964 Wilderness Act makes it very difficult to use anything other than hand tools on fires in designated Wilderness and bureaucrats have extended that prohibition to National Monuments. Environmental Organizations were successful in lobbying the EPA to protect the Spotted owl and USFS cooperated, shutting down logging in almost all Government land in Northern California. the economy was ruined and drug cartels moved in. Standing timber which was once a valued commodity became a (fire) hazard.
The culture in the USFS changed from an organization where “Timber is King” to an organization that seems to flounder looking for purpose…recreation? preservation? Forests used to take pride in being “The Land of Many Uses”
Its been 50 years since the 10 O’Clock rule was rescinded and I’ve watched organizations try to use “Let Burn and Managed fire ” with disastrous results. I watched in horror as the prescribed fires in New Mexico burned homes and ranches. I am appalled that as we speak the Joshua Trees are burning as fire managers practice “light hand on the land” suppression tactics.
When logging was curtailed we allowed the infrastructure that supported the industry to deteriorate. We closed the mills, trucking companies went out of business and loggers took other jobs. We need to stimulate the economy… restore those jobs and create new uses for forest products…we need to recognize our mistakes and look to the future. Use the resources that God gave us wisely … don’t use it to pollute.
Kelly Anderson,
Currently on a large fire for the last couple of weeks. There is a night shift that is staffed with engines and crews and will continue to be for quite a while. Yeah, there are a couple of places that fly helicopters at night, some of that is based on values at risk such as communities and structures, but if we weigh the values at risk on a fire in the middle of nowhere, it doesn’t pencil out to fly helicopters at night.
RE: Mike Haasken
I’m not aware of anyone writing a book about the 2020 fires in Oregon. It was certainly a notable couple of days unlike anything the state has seen since the 1933 Tillamook Fire or the 1902 fires in northern Oregon and SW Washington. I’d like to say it is on my to-do list but that’s already a long list.
Ok, ok, ok, Smokey is wrong and we all need to get with the modern times.(sarc)
I’ve been in this business a long time. There’s no way to treat fuels across all of the land that will reduce wildfire risks to infrastructure successfully with blanket rx fire. Depending on the fuel type they grow back thicker than before. I’m looking at you, R3. But, many will certainly continue to try, and use new starts as the excuse for massive burnout operations (under the guise of safety) which is basically an “unplanned” p-burn using wildfire funds to do it. Looking at you…umm everywhere? (cough…tnc…cough state parks and wildlife agencies, cough).
The same hubris of man that lead to the concept of man-made c-change (what happened to global warming?) is the same one that is at the core of the belief that we can reduce fuel loads in the long term across the nation by p-burns.
Smokey wasn’t and isn’t wrong. We can’t just let it burn.
First they eliminated loggers and a vigorous timber harvesting program…and closed access roads. Now Smokey is the bad guy. This latest fad will fail and people along with nature will suffer. We owe the public better service in the care of their land.
Throw the world at it and keep it small is what got us into the situation we are in, all the air tankers in the world are not going to change that fact. What is required now is forward thinking management that leads us to an environment conducive to living with fire and smoke, reducing fuels and thereby potential impacts to human infrastructure and communities. 100 years of well intentioned, but misguided policy has failed us, our constituencies, and our ecosystems and it’s only going to get worse if we double down on what got us here. I for one am proud to associate myself with the previous comment from Kelly Martin, Mike Beasley and Ken Kerr, and I am even more proud to call them colleagues and friends.
>>> Hey Brian, is anyone writing a book about the historic fires in September of 2020 in Oregon? That really needs to be written about.
There’s a woman who works at the local hardware store in Grants Pass, who lost her home in the 2020 fire.
From talking with her and other folks, I answered one question I had about the wind.
I have 2x 15 foot tall trees in my front yard, in 30 gallon pots, that act as functional wind meters on a summer day.
Wind is NORMAL in the summers in Southwest Oregon. It sometimes blows over 1 or both trees.
BUT what happened on September 8, 2020, was EXTRA- high wind speeds. Factor #1.
Factor #2, possible Arson.
You’re going to catch hell with that comment Mr Beasley, so will those of us who support your thoughts, but thanks for putting in words exactly what I feel and think. Git after it!!
Hey Brian, is anyone writing a book about the historic fires in September of 2020 in Oregon? That really needs to be written about.
Kelly Andersson,
That one was not a large incident but I have been on handcrews for the majority of the last ten years and crews not working nights does not ring true for me. I have worked plenty of night shifts on small and large fires in multiple regions. Certainly things are less aggressive at night but if there’s pressing work to do it gets done. Especially burning.
Sheesh, why didn’t we think of THAT? It obviously requires no actual expertise to write a book, particularly about wildland fire. The quote by HL Mencken comes to mind: “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong”.
Kelly Andersson
I am currently on a handcrew and was on night shifts last week.
Which IMT? Did you also have nighttime air ops?
“Fight wildfire twenty-four hours a day.” So these jokers think we just clock out at 18:00 every day…..
Sorry you’re ANGRY, but try reading that line without taking it out of context. I don’t know when you last saw hand crews out on night shift, but last time I was on a fire with crews on night shift was about 20 years ago on the Umpqua, and they talked at the morning briefing about the cougar that was paralleling them on a steep slope. And when’s the last time you heard about a helicopter on a USFS contract flying at night? It actually happens in some places, y’know.
Well I guess we can go back to the 10 AM policy and other practices that got us into this mess in the first place.
As is in vogue today, business experts are allowed to pose as experts in any and all things. While the authors, David Auchterlonie and Jeffrey Lehman, do get some things right, like the need to restrict development in fire prone areas, they mostly miss the mark. But hey, these are business guys for whom growth is sacred. They tried to acquire a highly profitable aerial firefighting company, as part of their vulture capitalism, but were unsuccessful. This book seems to be an ill-informed vindictive response to their inability to jump on the wildfire profiteering gravy train a la Haliburton. With no experience whatsoever in fire ecology or even wildland firefighting, they decry a culture that dares to consider ecosystem health and, instead, double down on suppression – the dominant, albeit failed, policy that has driven all the land management agencies since their inception. For the authors, an all-out reliance on technology and heavy equipment – privately owned, of course – is the only answer to the growing wildfire problem. This is disaster capitalism at its finest. They also reinforce the dominant belief in the industry-captured U.S. legislature that only more “forest management” (a.k.a. logging) can solve the wildfire problem. This process of thinning mature trees can only influence crown fire propagation, but does nothing to treat the surface fuels, the very thing that prescribed fire does eliminate. The “service work” of thinning non-merchantable materials and pruning lower limbs today comes only on the heels of a successful timber sale. Removing the slash, burning the piles, conducting understory burns all comes as an afterthought, using the proceeds from timber sales to get the work done. No timber sale often means no actual wildfire risk reduction. That is beginning to change under the new U.S. Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy. Of course, more logging is proposed, but an increased emphasis on prescribed burning, putting it on par with the open checkbook always available for suppression, is also in the works. And don’t get me wrong. Removing merchantable sized trees has a place in forest restoration, for instance to protect ancient groves of Giant Sequoias or to restore oak woodlands, but this should all be done with the interest of returning fire as a process to these fire-adapted landscapes. If you live near a forest, it is not reasonable to expect you will never experience smoke. It is not the job of wildland firefighters to die protecting people’s stuff or to prevent the public from being inconvenienced by smoke. If you think that is their job, I would invite you to get out there and give it a whirl, yourself. With today’s climate-charged wildfires, it’s all firefighters can do just to get people out of the way. No amount of airtankers or bulldozers will put the fire out. Only a break in the weather does the trick. In the meantime, wildland firefighters have to contend with the likes of the authors and others who have permanently ensconced into the MAGAsphere of conspiracy thinking that “the government doesn’t put out fires anymore.” Their remedy is to remove all barriers to private for-profit wildfire suppression. How is that going on the war-fighting front? For a sound and well-reasoned look at where money could best be spent to reduce the loss of homes and lives to wildfires, I would direct NC readers to this report, entitled Missing the Mark: Effectiveness and Funding in Community Wildfire Risk Reduction by the Headwaters Economics and the Columbia Climate School. We need to focus on zoning, building materials and fuel reduction in and around communities. Suppression is purely reactive, though it always elicits the “hopes and prayers” politicians so crave. It’s time to get behind proactive measures, rather than villifiying those same brave firefighters who conduct prescribed fires when one of the fewer than 1% of prescribed fires go awry. Away from communities in the wildlands we need to learn to live with fire, rather than continuing the hubris of believing all fires can or should be extinguished. The growing technology of fire behavior prediction and risk management should be fully put to those ends, rather than standing up more airtankers and bulldozers.
Thank you for your honest and non judgmental review of this book. I know you’ll take some heat for your remarks, but we’ve got to admit the Federal LMAs’ attempts to manage our lands have resulted in more air and water pollution, the loss of thousands of homes and tragic loss of life, both firefighters and civilians. Some National Forests in California, Oregon, Arizona and New Mexico will take generations to recover from the misguided attempts to restore fire into the wildland during times of extreme drought.
James Petersen also wrote of this in his excellent book “First Put Out the Fire ” published by Evergreen Press.
Kinda reminds me of ole quips like “how do you define an expert? Someone from out of town’. You do know fire ecology 101 right? Fire has always played a necessary and vital role in perpetuating healthy landscapes and watersheds for millennia until we began persecuting indigenous fire practitioners; ran a successful ad campaign ’Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires’; and our successful but short sighted 10am policy. Now somehow we think 100% aggressive fire exclusion will get us out of this crisis? Think again. It’s only going to get worse before it gets better. We need authors who are willing to write about our existential need to learn to ‘Live WITH Fire and Smoke’