As the U.S. Fire Administrator and fire leaders tour the East Coast this week there are two key goals — to honor those who died in fires this past year, and to promote an updated national fire strategy. On January 12 in Washington, D.C., Fire Administrator Dr. Lori Moore-Merrell and a range of national fire leaders will close out the week’s events by remembering those killed in fires while also highlighting key strategies and efforts needed to address the fire problem in the United States.
The national strategy grew from an October 2022 Summit on Fire Prevention and Control — a regular summit launched in 1947 by President Harry Truman. The current conclusions, based on a gathering of fire-science panelists, includes key wildlife components.
While many of the recommendations apply to fire wherever it occurs — “to invest in a national apprenticeship program to address the firefighter shortage” that also supports a more diverse and inclusive workforce; to establish a comprehensive firefighter cancer strategy; and to support behavioral health and suicide prevention — two in particular focus on wildfire concerns:
Prepare all firefighters for the climate-driven increase in wildfires in the wildland urban interface (WUI) by providing them with the proper training and equipment.
Create safer communities by implementing and enforcing codes and standards, especially in the WUI and underserved and vulnerable populations, and provide affordable and fire-safe housing.
The USFA web pages focused on the Summit on Fire Prevention and Control develops the science and the strategies — https://www.usfa.fema.gov/about/fire-administrators-summit/ — and we’ll continue our coverage this week on how the strategies may help us address the firefighter cancer issue and find their way to the colleagues, fireground and communities we serve.
December 2022 in Chile was marked by record hot temperatures, with wildfires burning around the capital city of Santiago and producing persistent smoke and public health impacts. On December 22, a fire in a forested canyon of Tranque Sur burned into the coastal resort city of Viña Del Mar (north of Valparaiso), resulting in one death, many injured, and more than 100 homes destroyed. Chile’s president declared a state of emergency and catastrophe. A week later and 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of Viña Del Mar, firefighters responded to a fire in the Galvarino commune where a single-engine air tanker crashed on December 31, killing the pilot, Luis Sevillano Moreno, a Spanish national.
For the early months of 2023, the forecast for Chile continues for hot, dry conditions.
Here is what he witnessed in 2022 in Viña Del Mar, with captions drawn from his notes.
Viña del Mar – Alto Forestry Sector. The remaining fires are being controlled on Day 2 (December 23, 2022). Displaced residents look on from the burned Tranque Sur urban sector of “autoconstrucción viviendas” — homes that were self-constructed, built by the residents and community members, sometimes referred to as “mutual aid” — more at https://infoinvi.uchilefau.cl/glosario/autoconstruccion/. The burned houses bordered along real estate and resort complexes. Photo: Carlos Vera Mancilla.Authorities and local citizens work in solidarity as they remove debris from burned buildings and provide humanitarian assistance. Photo: Carlos Vera Mancilla.Because of negative situations that occurred recently with the national press, I did not dare to consult his name — his sorrow collapsing with the Tranque Sur’s destructive fire. Photo: Carlos Vera Mancilla.A forest and urban fire. With the desolation of nature and the inhabiting community, there is no convincing explanation for the community of what happened, nor resignation to the disaster as recovery begins. Photo: Carlos Vera Mancilla.
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Photos of fire damages from January 2017 in Valparaiso, Chile, by Carlos Vera Mancilla, from the January-February 2017 issue of Wildfire Magazine.
In Boulder, Colorado, Democratic State Rep. Judy Amabile says people are having difficulty finding affordable home insurance. “It seems like across broad areas certain companies have decided we are not going to insure in this area,” she told 9News-TV. “They are having to make a lot of calls and the prices have gone up a lot and they are having difficulty finding anything.”
Amabile plans to introduce legislation to create a “last-resort” insurance plan provided by the state of Colorado. “The plans on that program are going to be really bare-bones and they are going to be very expensive.” She said at least 30 other states now have last-resort homeowners’ insurance programs like this, as more companies are increasing rates or even refusing to insure wildland/interface homeowners at all.
“Across the board, we are seeing 20 to up to 50 percent increases in renewals,” said independent insurance agent Morgan Lloyd.
Homeowners have moved into and built homes in wildland/urban interface areas for decades with little regard for the multiplying fire risk (and evacuation dangers) posed by increased development and neglected fire-safety mitigation. In some areas of the West, homeowners (along with homeowners’ associations, insurance companies, and local governments) are now facing the realities of paying for this development. NBC Los Angeles reported that more and more homeowners in southern California are being dropped by insurance companies because of wildfire risk. They talked with homeowners near Pomona whose insurance companies canceled their policies even though no wildfires have burned near their homes for years. Others’ premiums increased by 800 percent.
Interface photo from Great Basin Coordination Center
The Insurance Journal reported last month that California, Florida, and Texas are the states with the highest number of homes at risk of wildfire, but that other states also are faced with large and increasing risk. Colorado and New Mexico, for example, have fewer homes overall, but project fires can wreak tragedy on a much larger proportion of their populations. New Mexico’s Santa Fe County counts nearly 34,000 properties at risk of wildfire, but the county housed a population of only 155,000 in 2020. This ratio of vulnerable homes to the overall population underscores the magnitude of population displacement assistance, reconstruction resources, and economic recovery expense required after a major wildfire.
With wildfire danger threatening the liquidity and solvency of insurers, the California Department of Insurance has proposed new regulations to incentivize risk reduction on covered properties and neighborhoods. In October, the state Insurance Department issued regulations to recognize and reward wildfire safety and mitigation efforts by homeowners and businesses. The InsuranceNewsNet reported that California’s “Mitigation in rating plans and wildfire risk models” regulation is the first in the nation requiring insurance companies to provide homeowner discounts under the “Safer from Wildfires framework,” which the California Department of Insurance and state emergency preparedness agencies created last year. The regulation requires insurance companies to submit new rate filings incorporating wildfire safety standards. The new rates must recognize the benefit of safety measures such as upgraded roofs and windows, defensible space, and community programs such as Firewise USA and the Fire Risk Reduction Community designation developed by CAL-FIRE.
::: UPDATE: Highway to the Danger Zone :::
Matt Simon recently wrote an eye-opening piece for WIRED about a study examining numbers of residents moving into and out of fire danger zones (and hurricane regions) across the country. Wildfires in the West have grown increasingly devastating in part because of climate change, but also because more humans are moving deeper into areas that once were intact or contiguous forests. That overlap between development and wildlands, Simon noted, now exposes more people to fires and provides more opportunities to ignite them.
Americans are “flocking to fire,” say the authors of a study published last month in the journal Frontiers in Human Dynamics. Using census data, the researchers found that people are increasingly moving to areas that are more prone to catastrophic wildfires or plagued by extreme heat. And though some affluent Americans are seeking the beauty of forested areas, economic pressures are forcing others there, too: Skyrocketing housing prices and cost of living are pushing people toward more rural places where homes are cheaper.
“As temperatures increase — as things get drier and hotter and prices for housing get more unaffordable — it’s definitely going to push people into these rural areas,” says Kaitlyn Trudeau, a data analyst at the nonprofit Climate Central. “Some people don’t have a choice.”
Increases in the number of people living in wildfire zones come at a huge cost: the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed Paradise, California, resulted in an estimated $16.5 billion in losses.
It wouldn’t be a new year (or a new month) for US firefighters without the release of the monthly National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook. For January 2023, from winter into spring, the outlook reflects the series of strong winter storms that have crossed the country west to east and a resulting reduction in fire potential. And with La Niña conditions continuing as the dominant weather influence through February, we will likely see a stormy winter and some moderation of drought … though a transition to neutral El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) conditions are expected to return in spring (with a 71% chance for neutral), when we may see other teleconnection patterns shaping spring and summer.
For January 2023, significant fire activity is limited to far southern Texas, northeast Florida and southeast Georgia.
Significant fire activity for February and March is expected to expand from these areas … but by April, with typical spring green-up expected, the entire US can look for normal fire activity.
What is normal for January? While the Outlook doesn’t infer fire size or intensity in these outlook-maps, the monthly fire density maps do convey the expansion of what we often think of as prescribed-fire season — with normal fire activity typically focused in the south and southeast in mid-winter and expanding west and north as we move into April.
January is Firefighter Cancer Awareness Month, and the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) says that cancer is the leading cause of death among firefighters. Annual deaths from various forms of cancer account for more than 74 percent of the line-of-duty deaths added to the IAFF fallen firefighter memorial wall of honor each year.
The National Firefighter Registry program is finalizing its enrollment web portal, a voluntary registry of firefighters that collects occupational, lifestyle, and health information on firefighters to evaluate cancer rates and cancer risk factors in the U.S. fire service. The NFR was created by the Firefighter Cancer Registry Act of 2018 in response to growing evidence of carcinogenic exposures and increased risk for cancer faced by firefighters. The NFR is maintained by the U.S. National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH).
All U.S. firefighters, no matter their length of service, can participate in the Registry, including:
Active, former, and retired firefighters
Career, paid-on-call, and volunteer firefighters
Structural firefighters
Wildland firefighters
Industrial firefighters
Military firefighters
Instructors
Fire investigators
Other fire service members
The Firefighter Cancer Support Network (FCSN) provides public education on the issue of cancer risk for firefighters. For more than 16 years the FCSN has provided support for firefighters and EMS members who have been diagnosed with cancer. The firefightercancersupport.org website includes information to educate firefighters and raise awareness about why cancer cases are on the rise in the fire service and how to limit day-to-day exposures to carcinogens. Resources are available for firefighters diagnosed with cancer.
Since 2005, the nonprofit FCSN has provided assistance and one-on-one mentoring to thousands of cancer-stricken firefighters and their families. FCSN also delivers extensive firefighter cancer awareness and prevention training nationwide.
When local residents who aren’t firefighters see summertime haze or clouds on the horizon, they often guess it’s smoke. Mid-summer they often think it’s wildfire smoke, and in the fall they suspect it’s a prescribed burn. This is a “common experience” with wildfire smoke, according to attorneys with Oregon OSHA, who successfully argued last week that it’s fairly easy to determine when the air is smoky and affecting air quality.
On Tuesday, according to the Salem Statesman Journal, a federal magistrate dismissed a lawsuit against Oregon OSHA in which plaintiffs claimed the state agency’s new heat and smoke rules somehow violated the 14th amendment of the U.S. Constitution and were unenforceable. Lawyers for Oregon Manufacturers and Commerce, Associated Oregon Loggers, and Oregon Forest Industries Council claimed that air quality fluctuations are caused by many factors, and not just wildfire smoke.
“Most times, it’s not obvious,” attorney James Anderson declared. “There’s no method to determine that air quality is due to wildfire smoke, or prescribed burn smoke, or other things that make up particulates.”
Magistrate Mark D. Clarke was not persuaded. “Why is it that complicated?” he asked. He said Oregonians are quite familiar with wildfire smoke. “I’m not sure any of us have any trouble knowing when wildfire smoke rolls in. I’m having trouble with that, factually.”
The lawsuit also claimed that OSHA’s rules to protect workers against extreme heat and smoke were too vague to be enforced. The new rules, as KGW-TV reported last July, took effect after recent heat waves in Oregon resulted in medical problems and deaths, prompting new requirements for employers to protect employees from heat-related illnesses. The new OSHA rules require, when the heat index hits or exceeds 80 °F, that employers provide shaded areas for workers to rest, more break time, and access to plenty of water. When temperatures exceed 90 then breaks must be longer, communication must be more frequent, and workers must be monitored more closely.
Dangerous heat exposure is risky especially for farm workers, according to Ira Cuello Martinez, policy director for Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste (PCUN), Oregon’s farm worker union. “You’re constantly moving and doing repetitive motions, having to bend down, and there aren’t many shaded structures when it comes to the field or doing work in agriculture,” he said.
EMS members who have been diagnosed with cancer. The 