One After the Other

Watching Everything Burn

Yesterday I went on a long bike ride along the Burke Gilman Trail in Seattle. The sky was so clear and so blue it appeared infinite and empty. It was windy, the kind of windy I know stokes fires, and I wondered why we weren’t getting any smoke, either from California or Eastern Washington, where fires are burning. The leaves on many of the trees were turning for fall, but many were already browned, dried crisp by the sun. Fennel stalks, always hardy, looked starved of water. The grass stuck up like gelled strands of overbleached hair.

I worry every summer. I’m past my days of longing to be out there on the fireline- my knee is broken, and it’s been nearly ten years since I had my last year in Alaska. Still, I worry. I worry for communities, for firefighters and their families, and for clueless people who will pick up the narrative of “fire is bad” and run with it (this includes the media).

While riding my bike yesterday I thought of the campers on the Sierra who are being evacuated. How scared they must be; how scary it is to be around wildfire, up close, when you aren’t used to being exposed to the smoke, the red sky, the way the sun shifts its hue from orange to red to black. I remember being scared sometimes as a firefighter, during burning operations, or during hot line in Southern California, where we worked up against the fire, its heat reddening my cheeks and chapping my lips.

I want to say: don’t let this terror control you.

Yes, these fires are catastrophic. They are unprecedented. That word is overused, but it applies here. Was the Camp Fire unprecedented? No. But these fires are, on the heels of so many other terrible fire seasons, and 2020 has now proved itself to be the worst season California has ever seen. 2018, only two years ago, when Paradise burned, we thought that was the worst season. It’s likely the 2020 fire season in California could last until October. November. There’s no rain in sight.

How much worse can it get?

Riding my bike along the trail, thoughts cycled through my head. I’ve been doing a lot of research for my forthcoming book, and I keep thinking about the Big Burn, a catastrophic fire in the Northern Rockies that occurred in 1910. The fire solidified the power and presence of the Forest Service as well as the toxic narrative that all fires must be suppressed. Within 25 years, it was policy that all fires had to be out by 10am the following day.

My biggest fear is that the result of these fires will be increased suppression, when we need to allow for more fire.

It seems crazy, I know. Why would we introduce more fire, when fires are causing so much damage right now?

Late winter, when Covid hit, it affected everyone, including employees of agencies like the Forest Service and nonprofits like the Nature Conservancy. The Nature Conservancy and its partner program, TREX, conducts small burns throughout the United States, and these weren’t done this year because of Covid. Same with the Forest Service and Park Service. All the prescribed burns, burns that could have made some landscapes safer during fire season, were cancelled.

I’m not saying that this is the cause of these fires. Unfortunately, because of regulations and funding issues, we don’t even get to a quarter of the volume of prescribed burns we need to conduct in the off-season.

(photo by Marcio Jose Sanchez, Associated Press)

I think the gut reaction to these fires will be suppression, and I think that reaction is wrong. We’ve tried that. It’s clearly not the answer. When this fire season is over, we must advocate for more prescribed fire. Not only for firefighters, but communities. It’s my goal, as we navigate these catastrophic fires and the losses they’ll cause, to help make that possible. How does the layperson, someone who lives in a city or small town, advocate for more prescribed fire in their community?

It involves education. How can people advocate for more prescribed fire if they don’t know that one of the reasons for these catastrophic fires is the inability to implement “good” fire? If the only time the media engages with fire at all is when it’s “catastrophic?” The media doesn’t report on successful prescribed burns. The media tends not to report on the positive implications of fire at all.

I’ll admit, writing this newsletter is hard, both because I have another unrelated job, and also because I am taking a break from my book after being immersed in research for over a year, but I’m trying. And I want to help create some good out of these catastrophes. While climate change absolutely has a hand in these large fires, it’s not the entire story, and to say this is all a result of climate change is a disservice to the public and the land itself.

We need to change our relationship with fire. It needs to be a part of our lives throughout the year, not just in the summer. That would solve the problem of these fires, even in the midst of climate change. But I’m not sure we’ll be able to adapt fast enough.

Warmly,

Stacy