Environmental Dogma Goes Up in Flames
By Micah Morrison
Copyright 2000 Wall Street Journal
May 16, 2000
At last report, the Los Alamos
wildfire has swept across 44,000 acres in New Mexico, destroying 260 homes,
forcing 20,000 people to flee and damaging the town's nuclear-weapons lab.
While firefighters scramble to control the blaze, government officials are
working almost as hard at damage control. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt
is defending the "prescribed burn" policy that led the National Park
Service to deliberately set the fire and has already selected the fall guy
for the disaster: Bandelier National Monument Superintendent Roy Weaver was
suspended last week pending an investigation.
But Washington's first steps shouldn't be the lynching of a park
superintendent. What's needed now is a suspension of government fire
policies, a beefing up of fire suppression personnel and equipment, and
public education on how to survive a wildland fire.
In Los Alamos, N.M., on Friday, Mr. Babbitt backed the Park Service's
prescribed-fire program, the practice of setting controlled fires to clear
heavy buildups of dead timber and underbrush in the nation's parks. The
other stewards of national lands -- primarily the U.S. Forest Service and
the Bureau of Land Management -- have similar programs. "This program is
solidly conceived and is a very important part of Western land management,"
said Mr. Babbitt, who nonetheless announced a 30-day ban on prescribed
fire.
The theory of prescribed burns is that eliminating the "fuel" for forest
fires prevents future catastrophic blazes. Environmentalists encourage the
practice because it is thought to clear diseased trees, add to wildlife
diversity and help restore "natural conditions." Mr. Babbitt is keeping
quiet about the other half of the prescribed-burn program -- a policy
called "prescribed natural fire," or the practice of letting
lightning-caused fires burn, for which he has not issued a ban.
But the history of prescribed fires shows it is a largely failed policy.
Over the years, prescribed burns gone wrong have caused hundreds of
millions of dollars of damages to property and proved impossible to contain
in the face of shifting weather conditions. Restrictions on logging have
contributed to the buildup of heavy fuels, increasing fire danger. And a
growing population means that mismanaged wildfires engulf homes and take
lives.
Every year as fire season approaches, Park Service officials seek to put
the best possible gloss on these controversial programs. Widely circulated
claims by fire officials over the weekend that only 38 out of 3,700 have
gone wrong since 1968 ignore the amount of damage "wrong" fires cause.
In 1980, for instance, a prescribed burn set by the Forest Service in
Michigan to improve habitat for the Kirtland warbler decimated over 50,000
acres, destroyed homes and killed one person. In 1988, prescribed natural
fires in and around Yellowstone National Park raged 1.2 million acres. Los
Alamos itself is not yet past such severe fire danger.
In truth, it is extremely difficult to manage controlled burns. One of
the problems is that while dry conditions are best for burning -- thus
advancing current land-management goals -- they also are the most dangerous
times for "escaped fires." In a drought year, which is what most of the
nation currently faces, prescribed-fire policies are a recipe for
disaster.
Los Alamos is a perfect example. It was set as a controlled burn in the
Bandelier National Monument on May 4. Mr. Weaver's "burn plan" was standard
operating procedure: take advantage of dry conditions to ignite a 300-acre
blaze to eliminate underbrush. Yet while man prescribes, nature often
defies. An abrupt 60-mile-per-hour wind hit the controlled burn with
explosive force and blew it out of control.
Los Alamos also shows the dangers of setting fires near urban areas. As
in virtually all catastrophic fires, the primary culprits are high winds
and dry conditions. Homes built deep in the forest on narrow roads -- what
the fire community calls the "rural-urban interface" -- raise the
likelihood that fires will cause fatalities and destroy structures. In
1991, a catastrophic fire in the hills around Oakland, Calif., though not
prescribed, killed 25 people and destroyed over 700 homes.
Meanwhile, officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory have gone to
unprecedented lengths to reassure the public that none of the nuclear
weapons facilities or waste areas were seriously damaged by the fires. No
reports have emerged indicating unusual radiation leaks from the lab. But
Los Alamos is surrounded by deep ravines filled with juniper and heavy
brush -- excellent fuel and terrain for intense fire. Drought conditions
persist and high winds are likely.
To be sure, the dangers of a radiation disaster at Los Alamos are slim.
But the Los Alamos blaze is a long way from over and the fire season has
only just begun. Rather than defending the beneficial effects of fire,
government officials and the media should be taking Los Alamos as a wake-up
call for the dangers posed to life and property by fire during a season of
drought.
More planning and training is needed to deploy additional crack
firefighting teams. More aircraft and bulldozers should be provided for the
kind of quick action required to stop a small fire from becoming a big one.
And information efforts should be directed at reducing fire danger to homes
and planning escape routes.
It's not too late to start educating the public on how to survive a
wildland fire. But the best way to do that is by not letting it start.
Mr. Morrison is a Journal senior writer and the author of "Fire in Paradise: The Yellowstone Fires
and the Politics of Environmentalism."
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