The United States has experienced yet another record wildfire year. Private property has burned. Lives have been lost. Natural resources of incalculable value have been damaged or, worse, incinerated. People living close to America's public wildlands have felt threatened in their persons and their homes.
While fires are burning, public health is menaced by smoke. After fires are out, municipal waters are polluted by erosion from areas where fire has stripped vegetation from vulnerable lands; as a result, communities expend scarce public dollars in water treatment when these monies could be put to other public benefit.
I'm convinced people want “quality” wildland fire fighting. If you are a Robert Persig fan (author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Lila), “quality” is a subjective matter. According to Persig, quality is an object or experience that is both “real” and “good.”
People want wildfires to be prevented or fought aggressively (the “real”) and with no loss of life, little or no damage to private property, and minimum cost (the “good”). In wild-land fire fighting, there are things that are good but not real, such as Smokey Bear, the fire prevention symbol. And there are things that are real but not good, such as the loss of life and property.
Fire requires three components: fuel, oxygen, and a spark. Oxygen is abundant. Sparks can appear randomly in the form of lightning or from a carelessly tossed match. Sometimes, they appear deliberately in the form of arson. Fuels in the form of natural material such as leaves, needles, twigs, branches, and downed logs are at record high levels across much of America's public wildlands. We can expect many more “record” years.
Fire fighting also requires three components: people, money, and time. All three components are scarce in record fire years like this year. Even with the best efforts of Congress, state legislatures, agencies, and firefighters themselves, we are likely to see more loss of life and property and damage to natural resources for many years to come. As never before, wildland firefighters are challenged to deliver aggressive, safe, and cost-efficient fire fighting.
I am the forest supervisor of the Umpqua National Forest in southwest Oregon. The Umpqua National Forest encompasses just under one million acres of land and waters; it is an irregularly shaped area of land roughly 80 miles long atop the southern Cascades Mountains. The forest represents key habitats managed to protect threatened and endangered species, both terrestrial and aquatic. The forest also supports many local communities commercially, recreationally, and spiritually.
In 2002, the Umpqua National Forest experienced a record fire year with the burning of nearly 10% of the forest—just under 90,000 acres. These fires resulted from hundreds of lightning strikes that occurred on July 12 and 13, 2002. Eventually, we received reports of about 126 “legal” fires (fires where smoke was observed). Some of these went out naturally and some of them burned together, making the actual numbers of fires somewhat hard to count. However, the number of fires we staffed was about 89, spread across hundreds of thousands of acres.
Over the course of 90 days, the Umpqua National Forest spent about $80,000,000 in fire suppression—the process of putting fires out. Our fire costs this year were four times our annual budget.
After the fires are controlled, we still conduct fire business. We are spending about $1,000,000 more to support burned area emergency recovery efforts. These efforts protect soils and key infrastructure such as culverts and roads.
Fire restoration such as replanting thousands of acres with tree seedlings will take many years and millions more. Fires are very costly over many years.
In fighting the fires, we worked with 14 “incident management teams.” An incident commander, seasoned in handling wildfire, flood, and other disasters, leads each team. The incident commander reports to the agency administrator. In the case of the Umpqua National Forest, that's me.
The Incident management teams are multiagency groups organized in a paramilitary manner and focused on fire suppression. These management teams have as many as 60 people and are often supported by thousands of people formed into crews and teams. You may have heard of “Hotshot” crews. They are highly trained firefighters who work for an incident management team and have a well-deserved reputation for aggressively fighting fire. Specialists such as meteorologists also support incident management teams.
Fires are also fought with fire engines (generally smaller than city engines because of the nature of remote roads and wildland fires), bulldozers, portable water pumps, miles of small-diameter hose, and helicopters or aerial bombers (which are often converted military or older commercial aircraft). They are also fought with communications and public relations. In addition, the fight involves timekeepers, procurement specialists, and accountants.
Over the last several years, crews, engines, helicopters, air tankers, and many other support services have been contracted or outsourced from the federal and state agencies responsible for fire fighting. Fire fighting is big business.
We met two of our quality objectives. We fought fire aggressively, just as the public wants. The majority of our fires were put out in the first week of fire suppression. We met objectives of protecting life and property first and other conditions and resources later. There were no losses of private structures, property, or lives. There was some loss of public property such as footbridges and toilets.
We also protected our firefighters, just as the public wants. Our lost-time injury rates were below national averages. We paid close attention to standards that protect firefighters—the “10 Standard Firefighting Orders” and the “18 Situations that Shout Watch Out.” We had only one unfortunate, permanently debilitating injury. We fell short of my often-stated goal of “zero injuries.”
I know that fire fighting is a hazardous activity and a zero-injury goal might be unattainable. Yet, that goal is the one we have to strive for: to send firefighters home whole and unharmed and to contain long-term medical and physical-rehabilitation costs for the American taxpayer.
We don't know if we met our objective of fighting fire in a cost-efficient way. This is the area of my greatest concern when I think about quality fire fighting today. Even though we put out the majority of our fires on the Umpqua National Forest in the first week, several of our fires grew large and expensive before they were suppressed. This reality causes us to question whether national and regional fire-suppression strategies are currently aimed at or capable of cost-efficient fire fighting.
Beyond considerations of fuels and weather, our fires grew large primarily because we lacked certain key resources that were dedicated to fighting huge fires elsewhere. We lacked helicopters in the early stages of fire fighting. We also lacked midlevel management for several weeks after teams arrived to staff the fires. Without key midlevel management, crews could not be safely dispatched from camp. In other cases, less-experienced crews and managers could not be placed on the fireline where more hazardous conditions prevailed because incident management teams were, appropriately, unwilling to place them at risk at their skill level.
Some people also questioned whether our emphasis on firefighter safety was limiting our fire-fighting tactics; in other words, people questioned whether we were being aggressive enough at any particular level of risk. In addition, while our fires were growing and people put their lives on the line fighting fire, changes in fire management over time were catching up with us. I am certain that no one set out to run up large costs. However, the duration of our event and the move from an agency-based fire-fighting force to a contract-based force outstripped the finance systems, including contract oversight. In the intense focus on putting the fires out, we seem to have spent too little time managing our costs and contracts.
I believe reviewing and improving contracting and accounting systems could produce significant cost savings. We must bring up-to-date accounting and time-management systems to the fireline. Technology can help here because most fire-fighting records are paper copy—bulky, unintegrated, vulnerable to damage or loss, and difficult to access.
Additional success in holding costs to a reasonable level could be had by training agency administrators in reasonable and effective cost-containment strategies. For example, we struggled early in the season in dialogue with incident management teams over cost savings between renting trailers or “yurts,” a form of tent. Each team has its own preferences, but we need to have information that will help us provide office and meeting space to incident management teams at reasonable cost. I believe that attention to cost containment should be addressed with the same intensity as safety.
Moreover, I believe cost-accountability measures should be developed for incident management teams, clearly communicated to incident commanders, added to training programs, and monitored for the next several years. Items such as beef jerky for supplemental firefighter foods would not be an issue as it is now if incident management teams had a guideline that limited them to $5 per day per firefighter and they were then allowed to manage to those standards.
Finally, I believe contract accounting and oversight have to be intensified with more frequent reviews conducted by well-trained and experienced auditors.
The Forest Service and our many fire-fighting partners want to deliver quality fire-fighting to the American people. Today, we are challenged not only by nature but also by our cost-management and cost-containment capabilities. We are doing the job reasonably well now—but we want to do it better.
James A. Caplan
Forest Supervisor
Umpqua National Forest
Roseburg, Oregon
Notes
#This Editorial Was Written by My Son at My Request After We Had Discussed His Experiences in Dealing with the Fire Problems in Southern Oregon in the Summer of 2002. I Thought You Might Find This of Interest Irrespective of Where You Live. —Frank Caplan.