I like before and after photos. The images below show the community of Silver City, South Dakota (map) before and after a fuel treatment which qualified them for official recognition from the National Firewise Communities Program.
Silver City beforeSilver City after
A recognition ceremony will be held at the Silver City Community Hall on Saturday, June 8 at 7:00 p.m in which community members will be presented an award.
Silver City worked with the South Dakota Wildland Fire Division, the Black Hills National Forest, Pennington County Fire Administration and the Silver City Volunteer Fire Department to conduct a wildfire hazard assessment and develop a plan to address safety concerns. Residents then worked together to implement a detailed plan.
The photos are from The South Dakota Wildland Fire Division’s Twitter account, @SDWildlandFire.
On National Public Radio’s Talk of the Nation program this week the host, Ari Shapiro, interviewed Grist staff writer Susie Cagle about living in wildfire country, and took calls from listeners. Reading the transcript or listening to the recording is interesting. The “saw and slaw” described below could be a model that would work in other communities.
Below is a excerpt. We’re taking a call from Dave who lives in Colorado between Boulder and Golden.
****
(DAVE IS SPEAKING:) …”So we decided in our canyon here to do something about it as far as fire mitigation, and we started a program called saws and slaws.
(LAUGHTER)
SHAPIRO: What does that involve?
DAVE: And we have – we get together as a community and we work in the morning. And then everybody brings a potluck…
SHAPIRO: So you saw down the trees and then you eat coleslaw?
DAVE: Exactly. That’s the idea. Everybody brings a potluck lunch and we just have a great time. But we have – we offer chainsaw safety training classes. And this is our third season. And we’ve done I don’t know how many acres total, but it’s made a significant difference in our canyon and just helped to build community also (unintelligible).
SHAPIRO: Are you specifically trying to get rid of the invasive trees, or are you just clear-cutting whatever you can so there’s not much more to burn?
DAVE: Well, we have a forester that comes out to the property, and usually there’s a few households that get together, a few property owners. And then we have a forester come out and mark the trees. We do have pine beetle effects here…”
Oregon Senator Ron Wyden, Chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is criticizing the federal land management agencies for not accomplishing enough hazardous fuel treatment projects, saying “the federal government can’t get this right”, and:
The message has not gotten through with respect to the choice: You can spend more modest amounts on the front end, with preventive kinds of efforts, or you can spend your time investing substantially more money trying to play catch-up as these infernos rip their way through the West.
The Senator is right, in that money spent up front to remove or reduce hazardous fuels can reduce the amount of money spent on fire suppression and minimize damage done to private property and infrastructure. It can also save lives.
In Colorado alone last year, six people were killed by wildfires, an issue we rarely hear being discussed as wildfire budgets are debated. When we’re talking about saving money and acres, how many dollars is a human life worth? Is it the Forest Service’s or BLM’s mission to manage fuels and fire management organizations with a primary objective being to prevent lives being lost in wildfires? It is a complex question, with plenty of responsibility and blame to be distributed to federal, state, and local agencies… and Congress.
The federal agencies know that fuel treatments can save money and help protect private property. And the Senator knows they know this. He should look in the mirror to discover part of the problem. The Senate and the House establish funding levels for the federal government, and the President signs the legislation. The agencies would love to accomplish more fuel reduction projects, but as the amount of money approved by Congress decreases, the first things to fall off the table are fire prevention and hazardous fuel treatments. After those are cut to the bone then the agencies have to start looking at furloughs, reductions in force, staffing fewer fire engines, and cutting back on the number of seasonal firefighters — some of which are occurring this year.
I don’t have any patience with politicians who issue strongly worded press releases (probably written by an intern) that blame an agency for cutting back on services while the politicians cut the budgets that caused the reduction in services.
The video below shows 16 minutes of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s June 4 hearing about wildland fire management. It features Senator Wyden and Chief of the Forest Service Tom Tidwell discussing budgets, fuel treatments, and next generation air tankers. It was edited to highlight Senator Wyden’s participation in the hearing. A video of the complete almost two-hour hearing can viewed on the Committee’s web site.
A report has been released that had the objective of determining if fuel reduction treatments are effective in reducing the severity and cost of wildland fires. It was prepared for the U.S. Department of Interior’s Office of Wildland Fire by the Ecological Restoration Institute at Northern Arizona University. The reason it was written is interesting, according to the report: (emphasis added)
The Office of Management and Budget, Government Accountability O ffice and the United States Congress have repeatedly asked the Offi ce of Wildland Fire in the Department of Interior and the United States Forest Service to critically examine and demonstrate the role and eff ectiveness of fuel reduction treatments for addressing the increasing severity and cost of wildland fi re. Federal budget analysts want to know if and when investments in fuel reduction treatments will reduce federal wildland fire suppression costs, decrease fi re risk to communities, and avert resource damage.
The report has a catchy title: The efficacy of hazardous fuel treatments: A rapid assessment of the economic and ecologic consequences of alternative hazardous fuel treatments: A summary document for policy makers.
Here are a few of the conclusions reached by the 12 authors and researchers:
Studies that use the avoided cost approach to examine the cost of fire demonstrate that treatments result in suppression cost savings.
Modeling studies that evaluate the effectiveness of fuels treatments in terms of changes in wildland fi re size, burn probabilities, and fi re behavior demonstrate that fuel treatments applied at the proper scale can influence the risk, size, and behavior of fire therefore reducing suppression cost.
Modeling demonstrates that fuel reduction treatments are effective at reducing fire behavior (severity) where implemented, and can successfully reduce fire risk to communities.
Although few studies exist on the topic, fuel reduction treatments significantly enhance the price of adjacent real estate, whereas homes in close proximity to a wildfire experience lower property values.
Steve Smith told us about this video that he created with Walter Gallacher. It is very well done, with good images and a thoughtful narrative. It summarizes the state of wildfire and fuel management, or the lack thereof, in the United States.
Below is the description of the video, from VIMEO:
An environmental multimedia story on forest fires in the American West.
Ever since we seized fire from nature at the dawn of our civilization it has defined us. We have prided ourselves on our ability to control it and shape it to our needs. But the same fire that fuels our internal combustion engines and powers are industry is overheating our planet. Earth’s rising temperature is stressing our forests and our wildlands and spawning catastrophic wildfires around the globe.
In our effort to tame fire it seems we have made it more feral. Rising spring and summer temperatures in the West have created a fire season that lasts ten weeks longer than in the 1970’s and results in larger and more frequent blazes.
These new blazes known as “megafires” are erupting at a rate seven times greater each year in the past decade and are burning upward of 10,000 acres and sterilizing the earth with their intensity.
Utilizing powerful images of these megafires this film reflects on our relationship with fire, past and present, and wonders how fire will define our future.
Script and narration by Walter Gallacher
Produced and photographed by Steven G. Smith
We asked Mr. Smith about his involvement with fire and his motivation for making the film. Here is his response:
I began to photograph wildfires as a staff photojournalist about fifteen years ago, I was stunned by the devastation and power of these disasters. Last year I decided that I wanted to do more than just document these as individual events. I teamed up with Walter Gallacher to create an educational multimedia piece. Our goal was to create a short film designed to increase awareness and hopefully effect change.
Over the years I have been truly overwhelmed by the commitment and dedication of the many wildland firefighters that I worked with. This story is dedicated in their honor.
At least two agencies have filed criticisms of a draft Environmental Impact Report developed by California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The plan for the California Statewide Vegetation Treatment Program determines how vegetation would be managed to lower the risk of catastrophic wildfires on 38 million acres of state responsibility land. After it is approved, individual thinning, herbicide, or prescribed fire projects would not have to obtain separate approvals under the California Environmental Quality Act.
…For all its length, though, the report is disturbingly vague about what the state proposes to do and where. Many wildfire experts say the study is outdated on the science of fire ecology and treats very different natural landscapes as though they were the same. The state’s Department of Fish and Wildlife responded to the report with serious criticisms, saying among other things that the plan could cause substantial environmental damage. A letter from the National Park Service is downright scathing, slamming the report for numerous inaccuracies, accusing Cal Fire of ignoring important scientific studies and openly questioning whether the plan even meets the legal requirements for this type of EIR.
“If implemented, the proposed program would cause significant, irreversible and unmitigable environmental impacts to natural resources in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area on a large scale, while producing few if any of the fire safety benefits stated as goals of the program. As such, it would represent a very poor use of public funds,” wrote Robert S. Taylor Jr., a fire specialist with the Park Service. “I strongly recommend that Cal Fire withdraw the current proposal and produce a new one based on best available science.”
