The wildfire season still has a month or so to go and the Forest Service says that it is running out of money for fire suppression. Having already spent about a billion dollars, it is “diverting $600 million from timber, recreation and other areas to fill the gap.”
So far, about 3.4 million acres have burned, which isn’t a lot by recent standards. According to the National Interagency Fire Center, more than 8 million acres burned in every year from 2004 through 2007, as well as 2011 and 2012. Yet the Forest Service spent less than $1 billion on fire suppression in 2005 and just over a billion in 2004.
This has the obvious advantage that it need buy cialis from india not be because of erectile dysfunction. Write a Good Resource Box After writing ten or more articles, you might be cheapest viagra supplementprofessors.com tempted to blow off the author’s resource box. If you notice soft tabs cialis that you’re just getting a nervous laughter or half-smile from your mate or friend, you should make a list of things you want from it ?if color is important, add this to the people writing your posts for you. 5. This is a GHRH, a uk viagra online see my pharmacy shop growth hormone releasing hormone made us of thirty amino acids. Spending in the other years was closer to $2 billion, but in most years it was still a lot less per acre burned than in 2013. I know “dollars per acres burned” is not a great measure of productivity, but it’s all we have. So far this year, it has been $283, while the average for the previous ten years was around $200.
The Antiplanner’s concern, of course, is that the Forest Service has few constraints on its spending, so it has little reason to be careful in how it spends money on suppression. Although it is “running out,” being able to draw upon $600 million of other money safe in the knowledge that Congress will reimburse those funds is not much of a constraint.
In 2009, Congress passed a law known as the FLAME Act that would supposedly solve this problem by creating a reserve fund that federal agencies could draw on in serious fire years so they wouldn’t have to borrow from other parts of their budgets. “The Forest Service, when it lobbied for the FLAME Act, said, ‘Look, if you give us this reserve fund for large fires, we won’t need to raid other parts of our budget,'” Andy Stahl told the Associated Press. “The Forest Service instead used up the FLAME money and is now using other parts of its budget. That is giving the agency a blank check and it just keeps putting more zeros on it.”
The Forest Service frets that its budget for thinnings and other fuel treatments has been cut, but I am not convinced that a larger thinnings budget would make any different to fire suppression costs. The agency spends what it has to spend. It seems like, after more than a century of dealing with this, someone would figure out that giving a federal agency a blank check isn’t a good idea.
Cue big government apologists who will point out that a billion dollars in a $3.5 trillion budget is small potatoes. And considering Social Security, Medicare, MIC, and the Dept. Of Ag’s SNAP, they’re correct. However, it doesn’t disprove that federal fire suppression is ripe with waste. Pork is pork whether it’s a single strip of bacon or an entire loin.
There are different forms of waste. In this case the biggest problem is there is little incentive for the Forest Service to do anything other than focus on the squeaky wheel. And the squeaky wheel in this case are home owners building in fire prone areas, demanding full protection.
Here is video of a recent fire in Alaska, including a “firenado”. There were only about 30-40 people fighting it, which means they just protect cabins, bridges and power lines and let everything else burn until rain might put it out.
http://youtu.be/lh67J4TNPKE
I’m sure there is a use for auditors and inspectors following fire battalions around. But western fires are not going to go away, likely will continue to worsen, and nothing will be done about homebuilding in the WUI.
DS
Sandy Teal wrote:
Here is video of a recent fire in Alaska, including a “firenado”. There were only about 30-40 people fighting it, which means they just protect cabins, bridges and power lines and let everything else burn until rain might put it out.
Impressive-looking fire! Not something that this Easterner associates with Alaska! When I think of fire in the wildlands, I think first about California and some of the other states in the West (of the “Lower 48”).
Do you know owns the land on which that fire was burning? Was it the U.S. Forest Service?
The Antiplanner wrote:
The Forest Service frets that its budget for thinnings and other fuel treatments has been cut, but I am not convinced that a larger thinnings budget would make any different to fire suppression costs. The agency spends what it has to spend. It seems like, after more than a century of dealing with this, someone would figure out that giving a federal agency a blank check isn’t a good idea.
If the U.S. Forest Service does not have the money for thinning trees and removal of fuel for wildland fires, then maybe letting nature take its course and burn out the fuel is the better (as in less-expensive) approach? As long as the fires do not threaten urbanized areas or other critical assets? Note that I am of the opinion that high-voltage transmission lines are usually assets that should be considered critical, though they usually have most large vegetation removed in their corridors.
prk166 wrote:
And the squeaky wheel in this case are home owners building in fire prone areas, demanding full protection.
Maybe they should be asked to pay for fire protection (and fire insurance) if they want to live in such areas?
CPZ – The fire is in the interior Alaska and all the national forests are on the southern coast. The fire is probably on BLM land, with maybe some state forest land mixed in.
Here is more info on the fire… http://www.alaskadispatch.com/video/video-raging-firenado-swirls-alaska-forest-fire
The fire is on Alaska Division of Forestry land. Info here. Fires are managed by an interagency fire center, and you can check out maps here. Wildfires are quite common in Alaska. Fire whirls are not uncommon, and I saw a few small ones during my seasons as a wildland firefighter.
Just let the fires burn. Then send everyone affected a post card with “Your tax cuts not at work” written over images of torched homes.
We have the third lowest overall taxes in the OECD, and are not getting what we are not paying for.
“We have the third lowest overall taxes in the OECD, and are not getting what we are not paying for.”
It’s not like we’re not spending money. Of OECD nations, we are in the top ten for debt/GDP ratio, and we’re number one for total nominal debt. Our debt/GDP ratio from 2000 to 2010 nearly doubled, while the top two countries with the highest ratio increased at a slower rate. (Greece increased 50%; Italy increased less than 5%.) Household debt as a percentage of gross disposable income is also over 100%. We have the highest nominal national budget and the highest nominal military spending.
Your stats are also dubious. According to the OECD, the US has the 12th lowest net personal tax rate. We also have 12th lowest when comparing average income tax rate and Social Security contribution. Using both metrics, we’re not far from the OECD average. (These numbers are for a single person making 100% of the average rate with no children. The rankings rise for a single person without children making 167% of the average rate.) Taxation in the US might be slightly below the average, but we’re sure not at the bottom.
WE could, of course, harvest trees. Reduce the fire danger. Re-plant. Provide jobs, and additional revenue for the Forestry Service. We could.
But the Science is Settled.
.
WE could, of course, harvest trees. Reduce the fire danger. Re-plant.
If only there were a market for small-diameter stems. If only loggers and millers wanted billions of small-diameter stems. If only we could get in there without grading over everything in a logging road. If only…if only…if onnnnlyyyyy…
Best,
D
Dan is absolutely correct. Additionally, older and larger trees–those with economic value–are generally more fire resistant, and low-value smaller diameter trees, which were historically thinned by natural and human-ignited fires, serve as fuel ladders and lead to stand-replacing crown fires. Replanting after fire is often unnecessary and even detrimental as monoculture is employed and trees are planted too close together, leading to a lack of biodiversity and subverting the natural succession process.
Frank wrote:
Dan is absolutely correct. Additionally, older and larger trees–those with economic value–are generally more fire resistant, and low-value smaller diameter trees, which were historically thinned by natural and human-ignited fires, serve as fuel ladders and lead to stand-replacing crown fires. Replanting after fire is often unnecessary and even detrimental as monoculture is employed and trees are planted too close together, leading to a lack of biodiversity and subverting the natural succession process.
Monoculture sounds bad. The forests in the East (which I know much better than those in the West) seem to be reasonably diverse. I have visited parts of the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests and the Monongahela National Forest during the past several months, and the trees growing there seem reasonably diverse (though it would be very nice to see blight-resistant American Chestnut back in those forests).
The central-southern Appalachian region has some of the highest species richness/diversity on the planet. Just to their south are some of the largest tree plantations as well, vast monocultures of slash, longleaf, etc pine for fiber. Aside but relevant, these plantations used to hold the wealth of the Hearst family, who started a campaign against marihuana partially to eliminate hemp, which is a far better yield/ac for fiber than trees.
DS