Wild firesFirefighting experts calling for easing environmental restrictions on prescribed burns

In the aftermath of the Arizona wildfire which killed nineteen firefighters in Yarnell, Arizona, there are growing calls for easing environmental restrictions which currently limit brush clearing and prescribed burns.

President Barack Obama, responding to the deadly Arizona fire, said the incident “will force government leaders to answer broader questions about how they handle increasingly destructive and deadly wildfires.”

USA Todayreports that firefighters argue that relaxing certain environmental restrictions and allocating more funds to clearing brush and small burns will prevent wildfires from raging out of control and causing millions of dollars of damage and, often, death.

“If I had a magic wand, I’d be burning 100,000 acres a year in Arizona. Until we do that, we will never get out of this problem,” Dugger Hughes, an Arizona battalion commander told USA Today.

“You have to get someone at the political level to say: ‘We’re fixing the forests.’ That’s what it will take to stop towns burning and to stop killing people,” Hughes added.

Hughes said it typically costs $5 per acre to conduct a prescribed burn in the wilderness, and about $50 per acre near residential areas. Thinning an area with chain saws and other equipment can cost around $500 per acre. These figures are small when compared to the $1,200 per acre cost of fighting the wildfire in Arizona.

Rem Hawes, who manages land in Arizona for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, said that authorities knew the town of Yarnell was vulnerable to wildfires.

“We always envisioned that we’d face a catastrophic fire from the southeast of Yarnell,” Hawes told USA Today.

The Arizona Republic submitted a public-records request for copies of the land and fire-management plans for state holdings managed by the Arizona State Forestry Division near Yarnell, along with a log of any fuel-reduction work done. The state said it would release documents once the fire was under control.

The agency’s Web site says the agency it issued $1.5 million in grants statewide to reduce hazardous fuels in order to prevent “large catastrophic wildfires from threatening communities.”

Paul Broyles, who retired in 2009 as chief of fire operations for the National Park Service, says the issue goes deeper than money. Regulators often have to deal with protecting habitats, endangered species, and clean air initiatives, which often get in the way of clearing brush.

“The reality is … there are not enough money or people or resources to go around to make a dent,” Broyles said.

It can also take years to get approval to conduct a burn, which must take place in a three-month window during the fall. Even when they get approval, crews are often restricted to burning a few hundred acres at a time. The backlog of acreage needing to be burned is in the millions.

Hughes says that one in every five burns is stopped at some point by state regulators.

Hughes and other firefighting experts say the following changes will reduce the likelihood of fire tragedies:

• Loosen restrictions in the Clean Air Act to exempt prescribed burns, or at least make it easier for firefighters to conduct burns.
• Loosen restrictions protecting endangered species in the National Environmental Act, particularly when their native habitats rely on periodic fires.
• Direct environmental regulators to follow policies uniformly.
• Increase federal and state budgets for fire prevention.
• Convince environmental activists that improving forest health is better, not worse, for the environment, and convince the public in fire-threatened areas that controlled burns are vital.
• Pass and enforce stricter laws requiring property owners to clear dangerous fuels on their land and create “defensive space” from structures.
• Hire more “hotshots” or specially-trained crews to do brush clearance and prescribed burns.
• Promote volunteer crews to clear fuel.