A Call to Action

What more will it take? The death toll in this year’s wildfires in California has exceeded 40 persons, including a woman a news report said was killed simply trying to save her beloved dogs.  The tragic stories go on and on, as the fires continue to burn. And where blazes are waning, others are erupting to take their place.   An NBCnews interactive photo (shown below) depicts the same neighborhood before and after the fire passed through.

The events of the past few weeks beg the question:  How many must die and how many homes and livelihoods must be lost before our society embraces their responsibility to adapt and plan to prevent it?

In an earlier post, I mentioned the work the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) is doing to help improve the future prospects for wildfire safety.  In 2013, NFPA announced a new guide for planners called Community Wildfire Safety Through Regulation.   The guide can be accessed, free of charge, from their web page here.  On their web page, NFPA says:

“The guide is designed to help planners and regulators considering wildfire regulations to understand their options and implement a successful public process for adoption effective wildland/urban interface (WUI) tools that match local needs.

"Wildfire hazard is a growing threat to communities around the United States. According to the National Association of State Foresters (NASF), more than 72,000 communities are at risk. While living closer to nature offers many benefits, the risk of brush, grass or forest fires often gets overlooked. Recent research on global climate change indicates that losses as a result of wildfire will only increase in the coming decades.

NFPA’s publication reviews a number of planning tools that can be used to protect communities from wildfires, including land use planning, subdivision design and zoning.  The guide also discusses:

• Sound technical and legal justifications for adoption of wildfire regulations for planners and public officials
• Tips on what planners should do before the community embarks on a formal wildfire safety regulation adoption process
• Guidance for communities to evaluate their wildfire safety needs and choose tools that fit those needs
• A summary of best practices used around the country to address wildfire risk in the WUI

 The answers seem simple enough.  NFPA's guide (page 1) argues that

“…wildfire is a hazard that we can address through a variety of tools, including regulations. By modifying the “fuels” available to a wildfire during an event – that is, ensuring that buildings are flame- and ember-resistant and reducing the amount of vegetation in a flame’s path, there is a tremendous amount of risk we can reduce within our communities.”

So why does it seem that these tools and regulations aren’t being applied as broadly or as quickly as they should to save lives and property?  NFPA says that part of the problem may be a lack of a sense of urgency on the part of planners. Or perhaps the key role of planners is sometimes overlooked, in deference to first responders (e.g., fire officials).  The perennial loss of life in places like California, however, should be a clear signal to all that, as NFPA's guide (page 2) puts it,

“Planners… can and should have a more significant role in protecting communities from wildfire. Planners are uniquely qualified to assist their communities in creating a more comprehensive approach to wildfire risk — one that goes beyond structure and site design to fundamentally change the location, design, and type of development in high wildfire risk zones. The rising toll of fire losses in the wildland/urban interface reflects not just a wildfire problem but a problem of poorly planned development, and planners can change that.

“To make matters worse, research on global climate change indicates that losses due to wildfire are going to get worse in coming decades, with some models predicting that the total number of trees and other vegetation consumed by wildfire will at least double in the western United States over this century. To reduce those losses we need to expand our understanding of fire risk to include site, subdivision, and even community design – and that is what planners are uniquely trained to do.”

Which brings me back to my original question:  How many must die and how many homes and livelihoods must be lost before our society embraces their responsibility to adapt and plan to prevent it?  Or, as NFPA put it, “Why don’t more communities have wildfire regulations?”  The 2013 community guide (page 2) says there are a number of reasons communities are still at risk—none of which, in my opinion, excuse the inaction.

“First, the seriousness of these threats is not always clear and present to the average citizen. Wildfires may affect a community only once every decade — or even less — so the threat seems remote. It can be hard to convince residents that the cherished forest in their backyard may someday threaten their homes and lives.

“Second, discussions about regulations to address future wildfire risk can quickly become politicized and controversial. For example, requirements to cut or thin trees and other vegetation can generate considerable opposition from full-time and second-homeowners who want to preserve the greenery and privacy on their property. Some landowners also worry that their property’s value will be reduced by the loss of trees or that the costs for compliance will be burdensome. These concerns create fertile ground for the spread of misinformation regarding the true cost of proposed wildfire regulations and erode support for those new regulations.

“It is important to remind skeptics that wildfire regulations are similar to other hazard-related land use requirements. For example, many communities restrict the size and location of structures in floodplains and strictly limit modifications to the floodplain itself, but the public has generally come to accept such restrictions as reasonable and necessary. Wildfire regulations based on accurate mapping and risk assessment should gain a similar level of credibility and acceptance in communities that adopt them…”

In the perceptual hierarchy of natural hazards, wildfires tend to fall to the bottom.  As NFPA so eloquently put it, development restrictions to mitigate flooding and, I might add, seismic hazards—particularly in California—are easily defended.  So why not wildfires?   

It’s possible that the sheer magnitude of the devastation of 2017 may finally be the impetus for communities and the state to take action.  Sadly, however, I don’t know if even what we’ve seen this year will be enough. I hope it is.