The Antiplanner » News commentary

Category Archives: Wildfire

Air Show

By | | News commentary, Wildfire
3 Comments

It’s hot and dry in Central Oregon, and a lightning storm on July 31 lit at least 48 fires in or around the Deschutes National Forest. Forest Service firefighters quickly suppressed all but one of them; unfortunately, a 58-year-old firefighter named John Hammack was killed when a tree fell on him.


Fires burning on Green Ridge Sunday night, August 4. Click image for a larger view.

The one fire still burning is about seven miles from the Antiplanner’s home and within view of my back deck. So we’ve been treated to a parade of helicopters and air tankers of various kinds attempting to control the fire. The Forest Service reports that it is spending about $200,000 a day, but the fire grew 90 acres Sunday and 175 acres Monday.

Continue reading →

Congress Still Perplexed by Wildfire

By | | Public lands, Wildfire
14 Comments

“U.S. runs out of funds to battle wildfires,” misstates a Washington Post headline. “In the worst wildfire season on record, the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service ran out of money to pay for firefighters, fire trucks and aircraft that dump retardant on monstrous flames,” continues the article, making two more errors.


Smoke from the Pole Creek Fire billows above Black Butte Ranch, near Sisters, Oregon, on September 9, 2012.

First, 2012 is hardly the worst wildfire season on record. We only have to go back to 2006 to find a year that had burned more acres, as of October 5, than 2012. Before 2006, several years in the 1930s and 1950s vastly exceeded 2012’s number: an average of nearly 40 millions acres a year burned in the 1930s.

Continue reading →

Fire Season, Again

By | | Wildfire
10 Comments

It’s summer, so there are wildfires. There are wildfires, so people are debating what to do about them. Should the Forest Service cut more trees? Should counties regulate rural land development? Should Congress give the Forest Service and Department of the Interior more money for fire suppression?

The New York Times asked seven experts to address these issues in 400 words or less. Some focus on regulation; others on public land management; still others on fire suppression and fuel treatments.
Some of the reasons are impotence and the others are not going learningworksca.org levitra on line to have any kind of disturbance. A long lasting erection can be achieved by giving sexual satisfaction with maximum price tadalafil tablets. viagra are available in 2.5 mg, 5 mg, 10 mg, and 20 mg. Some men do not receive viagra 50mg no prescription any benefit from external massage. Pepe Jeans, known for its high quality and effective key ingredient i.e. sildenafil citrate. cheapest cialis discover this link
Naturally, the Antiplanner opposes regulation of private landowners, saying that the risks they take are between them and their insurance companies. Beyond that, I suggest that the real problem is that the federal agencies have too much money, leading people to become overly reliant on suppression efforts and uninterested in taking the steps they need to protect their properties.

Life in the WUI, 2011

By | | Public lands, Wildfire
12 Comments

Unlike much of the rest of the country, the Northwest has had a mild summer. But at the end of August we finally had a few thunderstorms, and they naturally lit some wildfires. So we are getting another lesson in modern wild land fire suppression.

Mary Bernsen photo of backfires started by a helicopter. Click any photo for a larger view.

The Shadow Lake Fire is far from the biggest fire in our area–that distinction probably belongs to the High Cascades Fire, though that is really several fires so it is hard to tell. But the Shadow Lake Fire is right next to a major highway where the Antiplanner often cycles. It also seems to be sending more smoke our way than any other fire.

Continue reading →

Are Supertankers Worthwhile or Just PR?

By | | Wildfire
27 Comments

Due to budget cuts, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection–CalFire for short–is canceling its contract for exclusive use of two DC-10 supertankers. These supertankers are “perhaps [the] most effective tool” the agency has for fighting fires, says the news story.

That’s not just an exaggeration, it is probably completely wrong. When the Antiplanner was in forestry school, some four decades ago, the fire management professors were openly scornful of aerial firefighting. “The agencies use aerial tankers only because the press demands it,” they said. “They need the video to show on TV.”

Continue reading →

New Fire Plan: Burn More Money

By | | News commentary, Public lands, Wildfire
22 Comments

In the late 1990s, the Forest Service spent about $300 million a year on fire and the Department of the Interior spent another $100 million a year. Then came the 2000 Cerro Grande fire, which burned a billion dollars worth of homes in Los Alamos, NM. After that, Congress opened up the checkbook and told the agencies to spend whatever it takes to keep such a fire from happening again.

The agencies have taken full advantage of this. In 2010, the Forest Service budget for fire was $2.1 billion and USDI’s was more than $850 million. That’s just the budget; the agencies had another $500 million or so to draw upon if they ran over their budgets; if they didn’t go over their budgets, they got to keep the surplus for future years.

Here’s an indication of how expensive fire has become: In 2010, for the first time in at least 60 years, if not the entire 105-history of the Forest Service, the agency spent more money on fire than on all other national forest operations, construction, and maintenance combined.

Continue reading →

Fire Rights and Wrongs

By | | Public lands, Wildfire
26 Comments

Ray Rasker, the Antiplanner’s friend from the days when the Antiplanner worked primarily for environmental groups, has published a paper offering ten ways to reduce firefighting costs in the wildland-urban interface (WUI). That’s the private land where people are building homes near fire-prone federal lands. Unfortunately, the Antiplanner must respectfully disagree with most of Rasker’s proposals.

Rasker’s view is that fire costs have escalated in recent years as people have built more first and second homes in rural areas near public lands. This leads firefighters to make extraordinary efforts to keep fires from burning those homes. The solution, then, is to keep people from building in those areas, and at least eight of Rasker’s ten proposals focus on that solution.

For example, one of Rasker’s solutions is to “Allow Insurance Companies to Charge Higher Premiums in Fire-Prone Areas.” That sounds innocuous enough, except for the fact that insurance companies are already allowed to do that (and they do). Rasker’s real goal is to set the premiums “sufficiently high to discourage development in the WUI” (p. 45).

Continue reading →

Defining the Wildland-Urban Interface

By | | Wildfire
32 Comments

Wildfire season is underway, and the Forest Service wants everyone to believe that the huge increase in fire suppression costs is because of so many new homes in the “wildland-urban interface.” But just where is this interface?

The above map provides an answer for Oregon. The pink areas are supposed to be wildland-urban interface. In addition, however, the map marks every “interface community” with a pound sign (#).

Continue reading →

Obama Proposes $5 Billion More for HSR

By | | News commentary, Transportation, Wildfire
8 Comments

Page 91 of the President’s 2010 budget proposes “a five-year $5 billion high-speed rail state grant program.” It also proposes to increase “funding for public transit to support commuters, improve air quality, and reduce greenhouse gases.”

The Antiplanner is all for improving the environment. But these are not the ways to do it. My research on public transit shows that transit does as much or more harm to the environment than autos. My research on high-speed rail shows that it is not much better — and any environmental benefits are entirely speculative since we have very little high-speed rail in the U.S.
Social anxiety can start in early childhood is necessary A child is cialis discount online constantly undergoing changes in the developmental years. order viagra This is an oral tablet and it contains high soluble fiber. When you go discount viagra pharmacy in the bed a depressive mood, you may not sleep peacefully. Generic Tadalis also increase amerikabulteni.com viagra 50 mg the production of cyclic Guanosine Monophosphate (cGMP).
In other news, pages 47 and 77 of the budget propose to take care of public land wildfire problems by dumping more money on them. Of course, that is what created the problems in the first place.

Australia Forest Fires: Just Like American, Only Different

By | | News commentary, Wildfire
18 Comments

Australia’s tragic fires have reignited a debate over public land policies that echoes the same debates in the U.S. There’s the timber industry leader who says the fires could have been prevented if only the industry had been allowed to cut more trees. There’s the conservative columnist who suggests that environmentalists be lynched for preventing broadscale fuels reduction measures.

Flickr photo by Barnardoh.

Australian forests are a bit different from those in the U.S. Eucalypts tend to be very resinous in an ecologically calculated effort to dominate the forests by burning out the competition (and then grow back faster than anything else). Lodgepole pine is similar though it does not burn so explosively.

Continue reading →