Advocates of fire risk reduction in Marin are creating a false sense of security, suggesting that increased funding for “fuel reduction” will avert disaster from wildfires.
As a community, we need to have a discussion about the effectiveness of fuel reduction treatments. New scientific findings suggest that the increased use of fuel treatments that remove too much vegetation can have the opposite effect and can actually increase fire intensity by opening up forests to higher wind speeds, adding more oxygen that drives fires. A recent letter to Congress signed by more than 200 scientists admonished that, “Removing trees can alter a forest’s microclimate, and can often increase fire intensity.”
Examples of overzealous vegetation removal can now be witnessed locally along the Marin Municipal Water District’s Madrone Trail (removal of the entire understory), as well as the Laurel Avenue Fire Road in San Anselmo (removal of medium and large oaks, bays and buckeyes).
After the tragic Camp Fire in Paradise, which burned more than 14,000 homes and killed 86 people, the Los Angeles Times published a detailed article with timelines and maps, in which it described the circumstances of that wildfire and several other fires that burned through communities, even though the forests surrounding those communities had substantial logging activity under the rubric of “fuel reduction.”
As discussed in the article, the forests around Paradise had been recently thinned by the Forest Service to reduce fuels and create fire breaks. But the great majority of homes were already on fire before the flames even reached the neighborhoods. How is this possible? Most homes that do not survive wildfires are ignited by flaming embers, or firebrands, driven by the wind a mile or two in advance of the flames.
These embers land by the thousands, entering houses through unprotected exterior vents, such as in attics, and start fires inside dwellings. Many of those burning houses then ignite neighboring houses in a cascading fashion, similar to what occurred in the Tubbs Fire in the Coffee Park neighborhood of Santa Rosa.
Aerial photographs of that fire reveal entire neighborhoods burned to the ground but still surrounded by standing green trees. The thinned forest, which was opened up, removed much of the wind drag, allowing in more oxygen and faster winds to drive the embers into the community, despite significant removal of vegetation.
If we can learn anything from the tragedy in Paradise, it’s that fuel reduction, at distances greater than the immediate 100 feet from the edge of home and other structures, cannot protect communities from fire.
Instead, we must increase our investment in real community protection by hardening homes and their immediate surrounding — a proven and highly effective approach. There are simple, cost-effective measures that can dramatically reduce the chance of a home burning in a wildfire. And while the Marin Wildfire Prevention Authority provides matching grants for residents who want to harden their homes, we need to greatly increase or redirect funding for that program to make our communities safer.
We all need to accept that these large fires are fundamentally weather and climate events, similar to tornadoes and hurricanes, which under many conditions can’t be stopped. We have learned to build or retrofit our homes to better withstand these weather events, and we need to do the same with our homes in response to weather-driven wildfires.
In a recent discussion with a Marin County Parks and Open Space manager, we learned that their current direction supports the “home out to 100 feet” approach. But what if that outlook is changed with pressure from increases in fuel reduction funding?
These are difficult and controversial subjects. But, as a community, we need to have a broader discussion about where best to invest our limited funds to protect our homes and communities.
René Voss, of San Anselmo, is a natural resources attorney and member of the San Anselmo Open Space Committee. Southern California resident Chad Hanson is a forest and fire ecologist with the John Muir Project of Earth Island Institute.
