Fire crews are busier than ever, yet their toolkit no longer seems sufficient
THE TACTICS used to fight wildfires are much the same the world over, and have changed little in the past several decades. How do firefighters tackle these blazes? And what could they do differently?A daily email with the best of our journalismFires can be sparked by lightning, though more often they have a human cause, such as downed power lines, carelessly discarded cigarettes, campfires or arson.
Once they reach a certain size, fires simply release too much energy to be fought, explains Alexander Held, a fire ecologist at the European Forest Institute. Water evaporates before it reaches the flames and it becomes impossible to get near enough to contain the blaze. In these cases, there is often little to do but wait for changes in weather, wind or topography which might make the fire controllable once more.
. Although the proportion of fires that become large and difficult to contain each year—2-3% in America—is not increasing, those that do get big are doing more damage. Six of the 20 largest blazes ever seen in California ignited in 2020. This year, with months of the fire season left to run, some 3m acres across America have already burned, almost 1m more than in the same period last year, according to the National Interagency Fire Centre.
Fire suppression is a relatively modern policy but it is one that is increasingly being questioned. Trying to put out every fire results in greater stores of unburned fuel—including dried grass, shrub, trees, leaves and forest matter—to feed subsequent fires. Before the early 20th century indigenous and agricultural societies started fires deliberately or allowed smaller wildfires to burn. This got rid of fuel and lowered the risk of a larger, uncontrollable fire later on.
Starting controlled fires or selectively letting small wildfires burn might be the right strategy but it can be a hard sell. The public sees fire as dangerous and expects firefighters to put them out if they possibly can. Few decision-makers are specialists in wildfires and the priorities of fire-fighting forces and those who control land are not necessarily aligned. Better understanding of fires’ behaviour would help those on the ground decide which can be left alone.
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