Fighting all wildfires questioned

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — U.S. Forest Service investigators blamed human errors for the July deaths of four firefighters in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. Their report never questioned whether the crew should have been there in the first place.

But now some conservation, fire ecology and taxpayer watchdog groups say it’s time to ask whether the agency is spending costly resources — and putting people in danger — to fight wildfires that are too remote to threaten life and property.

Chris Wood, a senior aide to former Forest Service chief Mike Dombeck, said he’s doesn’t think the agency should adopt a "let it burn" philosophy, but a more thoughtful, conservative one.

"The fire threats are far too pervasive to not let this tragedy give us pause," said Wood, now the watershed programs director at Trout Unlimited. "Given the magnitude of the fire threat across the West — and it could get worse before it gets better — we need to be thinking very seriously about when we put people in harm’s way."

The issue is not an easy one. The Forest Service says actions are taken based on unique conditions of each fire, and top officials typically defend those decisions.

Jim Furnish, the agency’s lead investigator of the deadly fire in Washington, said managers made the right call. Steep terrain, dry conditions caused by drought and the fire’s cause — a campfire, not nature — meant the agency didn’t have a choice but to fight the fire.

"If you don’t do something, (the fire) is going to roll," Furnish said. "Then there will be endless speculation and there will be tremendous Monday morning quarterbacking."

But some broadly argue the practice of fighting all fires, in all places, must stop.

"That was a completely preventable tragedy," said Timothy Ingalsbee, director of the Western Fire Ecology Center in Eugene, Ore. "Basically, the Forest Service spends nine months of the year saying we need to put fire back in the ecosystem and the other three months of the year contradicting that."

The Forest Service and its critics generally agree wildfires are a natural part of an ecosystem’s evolution. For instance, some pines need a fire’s heat to free their seeds to regenerate the forest. Others need fire to weed out competing species.

Even so, as of early this month, the Forest Service let only about 1 percent of fires this year burn, according to daily reports from the National Interagency Coordination Center, a national disaster coordination hub. That report is not an exact count, but the center’s best estimates.

National Fire Plan coordinator Lyle Laverty said the low number stems from the agency’s decision, through much of its 96-year history, to spend significant energy putting fires out and allowing hazardous fuels to build up.

"The real key is that you have to look at every situation on its own," he said. "In many cases, the right decision is to suppress those fires. … It’s a delicate, delicate balance."

The Forest Service has been working since 1995 on plans for its 191 million acres of forest and grasslands to allow fires — in certain places and conditions — to be used as a land management tool. Those fire plans are about 43 percent complete, according to testimony in July from congressional investigators, and the agency wants to be done by 2004.

In the future, Laverty said the agency will be allowing more wildfires to burn, while monitored, once all of the fire plans are in place.

But first he and the timber industry agree work must be done to remove hazardous fuels by cutting smaller trees, removing brush and other projects.

"We need to return things to a more balanced regime," said Chris West, vice president of the American Forest Resource Council in Portland, Ore.

Forest Service critics, meanwhile, point to a host of expensive fires in remote places such as congressionally designated wilderness areas as proof that the agency is missing opportunities to let fires go.

Take the Dog Creek fire, they say, in a wilderness area near Mount Rainier that burned 540 acres and cost roughly $2.1 million to fight, as of a July 24 incident report from the National Interagency Coordination Center. Or the Craggie fire, also in a wilderness area, in southern Oregon’s Siskiyou National Forest that burned 275 acres and cost about $1.8 million, according to the center’s Sept. 25 report.

"The more we put out fires, the more we should expect subsequent fires to be harder to deal with," said Nathaniel Lawrence, Natural Resources Defense Council senior attorney. "There is nothing the Forest Service finds it easier to get money for than fighting fires."

Congress historically has spent liberally on firefighting efforts, including last year’s National Fire Plan that allotted substantially more than $1 billion to the agency to rehabilitate burned land, fight fires and remove fuels.

"Fighting fire is big business, and business is booming," Ingalsbee said.

Some say remote fires, in particular, are a hefty firefighting expense because they must be fought with aircraft, rather than using roads.

"Aircraft is one of the largest issues that will play a determining factor in the cost of a fire," said Robin DeMario, spokeswoman for Okanogan-Wenatchee national forests. "Aircraft are the big-ticket items."

Jonathan Oppenheimer, Taxpayers for Common Sense forest campaign director, said the fight against fire is a futile one, like trying to put up giant fans to blow tornadoes away.

"We really need to realize the error in our ways," he said. "It would be cost effective and save firefighters lives."

On the Net:

National Interagency Fire Center: www.nifc.gov

Western Fire Ecology Center: www.fire-ecology.org

American Forest Resource Council: www.afrc.ws

Trout Unlimited: www.tu.org

Taxpayers for Common Sense: www.taxpayer.net