Thousands of Southern Californians fled
their homes in October as smoke billowed from buildings
and 70 mile-an-hour Santa Ana winds whipped flames across the
landscape. Residents took up shovels and garden hoses to fend off
the flames until fire crews arrived from across the state, the rest
of the West and even Mexico. Seven people were killed, more than
2,000 homes burned and more than 300,000 were ordered to evacuate
before the winds died down and firefighters could control the
flames.
The catastrophic California blazes put an
exclamation point on another severe fire season: This year’s fires
fried 3 million more acres than the 10-year average. Dramatic
though it was, it’s not a record-breaker – 2006 was worse – and,
judging by the past five years, big fire seasons like this one
appear to be the new norm.
Blame decades of fire
suppression, combined with drought and changes in weather patterns
linked to climate change. “Fires are behaving much more
aggressively much earlier in the year,” says Neal Hitchcock, deputy
director of operations for the Forest Service. “And the last five
years in particular were a lot more severe in terms of acres
burned.”
Homes sprouting up all over the wildland-urban
interface are giving fire crews even more to worry about. Last
year, the USDA reported that the Forest Service spends a huge chunk
of its firefighting budget protecting private property at the edge
of public lands while local governments and homeowners often take a
free ride.
Overall, the cost of responding to wildland
fires has ballooned for federal agencies. During the last decade,
Congress has upped total appropriations to prepare for and fight
fires from an average of $1.1 billion annually to an average of
$2.9 billion annually.
But even with Congress doling out
more dough, the agencies are coming up short. This year, the feds
have already spent $1.8 billion battling fires, and Western
legislators are requesting another billion dollars in supplemental
fire funds. For the Forest Service, wildland fire management has
grown from 13 percent of the agency’s budget in 1991, to an
estimated 45 percent in the agency’s 2008 budget request. “That’s a
remarkable change,” says Hitchcock, who notes that the agency has
to borrow money from other programs to cover emergency costs. “The
suppression part of our budget is based on the 10-year average, and
particularly with these last few expensive fire seasons, that does
affect other programs.”
In response to the growing pile
of kindling on federal lands, the Forest Service and BLM created a
new fire category in the mid-’90s called “wildland use fires.”
These fires start naturally and are not suppressed because they
benefit the ecosystem and don’t threaten buildings or people.
This year, federal agencies stood by while 329 fires
engulfed 415,971 acres nationally – 247 of those fires raged freely
across 284,550 acres in the West. “In some places, it’s a fit, and
in some places it will never work,” Hitchcock says of efforts to
embrace wildland use fires. “I think as we get better at managing
those fires, we’ll save money.”
As usual, the majority of
acres torched were in the West. Idaho topped the list with nearly 2
million burned acres, and California came in second nationally with
over 1 million. Meanwhile, Wyoming and Colorado got a reprieve,
with wildland fires claiming only 76,139 and 16,046 acres
respectively.
Hitchcock expects the busy fire seasons to
continue. “We seem to be in a mode where we’re going to have very
severe fire seasons,” he says, “especially in the West.”
Up in flames
Each year, federal
agencies fork out billions to fight fires, and a big chunk of that
cash goes to blazes in the Wildland Urban Interface (WUI), areas
where public land meets up with forested private land.
$1.3 billion Average annual cost to fight fires
on public lands from 2000-2005.
80
Percentage of that used to protect homes.
$14.54 Amount each taxpayer forked out to
protect homes in 2006, compared to $7.65 in 2003.
3,290 Square miles in the Western WUI.
915,072 Number of homes in the Western WUI.
1 in 5 Ratio of those homes that are
second homes or vacation properties, compared to 1 in 25 on all
other Western private lands.
$1 billion ‘$1.5
billion Amount that the October San Diego wildfires cost
insurance companies.
$835 Average
insurance premium for California homeowners, seventh-highest in the
nation.
14 Percentage of Western WUI
that currently has homes.
$3.3 billion
Projected annual cost to protect homes if half of the Western WUI
was developed.
-James
Yearling
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Two weeks in the West.
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