NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 30
BUILD.
BURN.
REPEAT?
of 400 residences were destroyed in
large wildfires. From 2001 to 2011, the
number jumped to 1,354, and during
the five years from 2012 to 2016, an
annual average of 3,456 residences
were destroyed by wildfire. With more
than 6,000 homes destroyed last October in California alone, 2017 will again
boost the annual averages.
Reasons for the sharp increases are
multifaceted. A history of aggressively
suppressing naturally occurring wildfires has resulted in a surplus of fuel
ready to burn in the environment. A
warming climate is drying out that
excess fuel, prompting fires to start
easier and spread faster while making
them tougher to extinguish. Meanwhile,
people are building more and more
structures in fire-prone areas, often
referred to as the wildland/urban interface (WUI).
Building trends suggest that finding
and enacting strategies for reducing
wildfire loss is especially critical. The
U.S. Forest Service has estimated that
there were about 45 million homes
in the WUI in 2005, and projects that
figure will increase by 40 percent by
2030. Headwaters Economics, a Montana-based research group that studies
wildfire and land development, has
reported that vast amounts of developable land in the U.S. are also fire-prone
areas, meaning the potential exists for a
further escalation of the impact of wildfire on the WUI. It all indicates that if we
don't correct our present trajectory, we
could have a much bigger problem on
our hands in the not-so-distant future.
TROUBLING TRENDS
More homes
are being lost
to wildfire...
...as the cost of
wildfire suppression
increases.
400
t 1985 to
2000 u
1,354
t 2001 to
2011 u
3,456
t 2012 to
2016 u
6,831
t 2017 u
ESTIMATED NUMBER OF
HOMES DESTROYED BY
MAJOR WILDFIRES
(ANNUAL AVERAGE)
$487.6m
AVERAGE ANNUAL COST OF FEDERAL
WILDFIRE SUPPRESSION EFFORTS
ESTIMATED NUMBER OF
HOMES DESTROYED BY
MAJOR WILDFIRES
(ANNUAL AVERAGE)
$1.25b
AVERAGE ANNUAL COST OF FEDERAL
WILDFIRE SUPPRESSION EFFORTS
ESTIMATED NUMBER OF
HOMES DESTROYED BY
MAJOR WILDFIRES
(ANNUAL AVERAGE)
$1.85b
AVERAGE ANNUAL COST OF FEDERAL
WILDFIRE SUPPRESSION EFFORTS
ESTIMATED HOMES DESTROYED
BY THE FIVE LARGEST
CALIFORNIA WILDFIRES OF 2017
(AS OF DECEMBER 14)
$2.7b
FEDERAL WILDFIRE SUPPRESSION
COSTS FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 2017,
WHICH ENDED SEPTEMBER 30-
AN ALL-TIME RECORD
Source: National Interagency Fire Center, news reports
30 | NFPA JOURNAL * J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8
How it plays out will depend largely
on local communities, which are the
primary regulators of development
and land use in the WUI, according to
Ray Rasker, the executive director of
Headwaters. In addition to research,
the group also manages the federally
funded Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire program, which
offers free wildfire-related land-use
planning assistance to selected communities. Rasker thinks that one of the
biggest factors keeping smarter land
management practices from taking
hold-"the fundamental flaw in the
entire system," as he describes it-is a
disconnect between the decisions made
by municipal governments regarding
land development and the consequences of those decisions.
"There is a strong incentive for local
county commissioners to rubber-stamp
just about every subdivision-even ones
proposed in very dangerous fire-prone
areas-to increase property tax revenues," he explained. "When things go
wrong, it's the firefighters who pay for
it, sometimes with their lives, and it's
the federal and state taxpayers who pay
the millions of dollars it takes to defend
these homes. There has to be some
direct link between local governments
deciding to permit homes in fire-prone
areas, and those local governments
paying for at least part of the consequences of those decisions. There is no
silver bullet [for instilling smarter landuse policies in communities], but that
one comes close. If you can fix that, you
could fix many of these problems."
Rasker doesn't think that there's
much legislative appetite to punish
communities that have just suffered
wildfire losses by making them fork
over yet more money, but he does think
the federal government could start
making grant money contingent on
complying with land-use rules, similar
to how it regulates hospitals, housing
grants, and highway funds. "Montana
didn't used to have a speed limit, and
you could have an open alcoholic container in your car," he said. "Then the
federal government threatened to cut
off our federal highway funds. Now
we have an open container law and a
speed limit. We were kicked in line. Are
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NFPA Journal - January/February 2018
Contents
NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - Cover1
NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - Cover2
NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 1
NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - Contents
NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 3
NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 4
NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 5
NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 6
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NFPA Journal - January/February 2018 - 8
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