Best-laid plans are no match for US wildfires

America is one of the few countries in the world with a professional forest firefighting force (10,000 strong) and a coordinated national wildfire strategy. But it’s not working.

California’s Park Fire is already one of the state’s largest ever, consuming close to 700 square miles since it was deliberately started on 24 July. 78 other wildfires are burning across Colorado, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Idaho and Utah.

The number of fires so far this year is below the 10-year average, but flames have burned over a million more acres than usual and their annual monetary cost is put at $400-900 billion. In theory, this shouldn’t be happening.

The country has had some form of national wildfire management in place since 1876. But climate change is drying the fuel and fanning the flames and the system is at breaking point.

Low pay and poor equipment mean a high turnover of crews; prison reform and the pandemic have shrunk the pool of inmates available to be drafted in to fight fires – as many as 4,250 prisoners battled blazes in California in 2005 – and the warming atmosphere is reducing the number of safe days for controlled burns – fires lit to help clear away excess dry plant matter.

The Biden administration has allocated $2.5 billion to fire reduction, but fire crews prefer the heroic hose to careful ecology, so fire reduction has actually reduced. A 2014 strategy document from the Wildfire Leadership Council was largely ignored, according to its 2023 update.

“We no longer have the luxury of waiting to see what happens,” the Council warned.

And what happened was the Park Fire.