thedesertsun.com | Esperanza fire spurs debate on priorities
An excellent article addressing the politics of wildland fires.
RIVERSIDE - A blaze that killed five federal firefighters last year has emboldened those who question the cost of saving the ever expanding number of homes on the fringe of wilderness.
...Firefighters' attitudes also are an issue in protecting homes.
Public expectations can sometimes lead to bravado and a cavalier mind-set among firefighters, experts say. A recent investigative report in the five deaths listed overconfidence, excessive motivation and risk-taking as contributing factors.
"One of the standard fire orders states: 'Fight the fire aggressively having provided for safety first,"' said Peter Leschak, a 26-year firefighter and a commander for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources' Division of Forestry. "There has been an argument recently to change that because we don't need to encourage firefighters to be more aggressive - half the time we're holding them back."
Federal firefighters could scale back structural protection without too much political fallout, but that would not be easy for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, which answers to the governor, said John Maclean, a federally certified firefighter and the author of several books on wildfire disasters.
Danger zone
The Forest Service spends 44 percent of its budget on wildfire suppression annually, he said, and much of that work means protecting homes where suburbs collide with wilderness.
More than 6 million homes in California stand in wildfire "red zones" - areas defined in part by their thick brush and steep slopes - and that number is expected to grow by 20 percent in the next decade, according to a recently released insurance report.
"There is an expectation on the part of a lot of people that somebody better get in there and do or die for their house," Maclean said. "If you stop doing that and you stop taking reasonable risk to protect structures, you'd have a new governor in about five minutes."
