History of Wildfire

THROUGHOUT EARTH’S HISTORY, life on earth and wildfires have closely co-existed. The first fires on earth burned 420 million years ago, shortly after the appearance of earth’s first terrestrial plants. From that point forward, wildfire and the evolution of earth’s ecosystems has occurred side-by-side. Fire is a natural and integral part of earth’s land-based environment, yet wildfire severity and frequency of high-intensity fires has increased around the world in recent years, and is likely to continue increasing based on recent projections (e.g. Swain, Langenbrunner, Neelin, & Hall, 2018; Abatzoglou, Larkin, Kolden, & Stocks, 2015; EPA, 2015; Williams et. al, 2014). In California—the most at-risk state in the US for wildfires—nine of the ten largest wildfires and nine of the ten of the most destructive wildfires in recorded California history have occurred since 2000. In 2018 alone, wildfires in California killed over 100 people, destroyed over 22,000 buildings—most of which were homes—and scorched 1,893,913 acres, which is approximately the same size as the state of New Jersey. Elsewhere in the world, the trend is the same. British Columbia experienced record-breaking fire seasons in 2017 and again in 2018. Australia is currently experiencing record-breaking conflagrations across much of the continent, which are estimated to have killed over a billion animals as of mid-January 2020, and have likely wiped out entire species of plants and animals. Human behavior has both directly and indirectly contributed to these escalating wildfire patterns in numerous ways.

  HUMANS HAVE BEEN a driving force behind much of the increase in fire severity and frequency around the world. According to an in-depth analysis of recent United States fire records, in the twenty years from 1992 to 2012, humans tripled the length of the wildfire season, were responsible for nearly half of all area that burned, and caused the vast majority of fires in most parts of the United States. Humans contribute to the increase in fire frequency and severity both directly, by causing the ignition of flames that become wildfires, and indirectly, by contributing to environmental conditions that support intense and rapidly spreading fire. 

HUMANS CAUSE BOTH ACCIDENTAL AND INTENTIONAL BLAZES 

In the United States, it is estimated that humans directly cause between 85 to 90% of all wildfires in the U.S.  Some human-caused wildfires are accidental—caused by a spark from a flat tire, a hammer, or a lawn mower striking a rock, for example—while others are intentional. Whether the initial spark is accidental or intentional, decisions about residential development and infrastructure, coupled with fire management and fire suppression practices, play a hugely influential role in determining how the fire unfolds.

Accidental Fires Are Caused by Individuals and by Corporations

Accidentally-ignited wildfires have been sparked by seemingly endless variety of mishaps. In 2018, the largest wildfire in California history—the Ranch Fire, which burned over 410,000 acres—was started by a spark created when someone hit a hammer against a metal stake next to dry, flammable grasses. That same summer, another highly destructive fire, the Carr fire, started when a flat tire on a trailer caused the wheel’s metal rim to spark on the asphalt, sending sparks into critically dry vegetation and causing an inferno that burned over 1,600 homes. In 2004, the Bear Fire burned down 60 houses in Northern California after a lawn mower struck a rock in dried grasses, sparking the explosive fire. (For additional examples, see the New York Times article titled Behind Most Wildfires, a Person and a Spark: ‘We Bring Fire With Us’.) The smallest mistake, given the wrong conditions—conditions that humans have contributed to in a variety of ways—can create the largest outcomes. 

A HISTORY OF choices and practices surrounding fire and fire suppression created the foundation for systemic accidental fires

While the sparks that ignited these wildfires were accidental, the broader conditions that allowed the fires to start—and rapidly spread—are an unsurprising outcome of our cultural practices around fire and fire suppression, and our placement of communities in wildland-urban interface zones (areas where human development zones and fire-prone wildlands meet). 

In many parts of the U.S., growing demand for housing is pushing suburbanization geographically outward, often into historically fire-prone land. Nationally, 80% of recent development has occurred in exurban and suburban areas that are more likely to be fire-prone, and this trend is expected to continue. In California alone—the state with the most houses in high to extreme fire danger—over 2 million homes are currently rated at high to extreme risk from wildfire. By 2050, it is expected that an additional 12 million acres of wild and agricultural lands in California will be replaced by exurban development. This human encroachment into fire-prone wildlands is driven by increasing populations, demand for less expensive housing (compared to urban housing costs), and by desire to live closer to nature. 

Rapid development into wild and agricultural lands in fire-prone areas presents multifaceted increases in wildfire risk to humans and ecosystems. When there are more people present, there are more potential sources of accidental fire ignition (recall the recent wildfires ignited from the strike of a hammer, the scrape of a flat tire against the pavement, the hitting of a rock with a lawn mower). Additionally, the presence of housing developments and other structures typically lead to fire suppression in the surrounding areas, with the goal of protecting nearby buildings. This paradoxically increases the risk of high intensity fires, as periodic fires are critical in maintaining normal amounts of vegetation and the lack of these regular fires results in hazardous accumulation of flammable vegetation. Human-built developments in the wildland-urban interface also exacerbate the risk to humans when fires inevitably do occur in fire-prone environments; what might otherwise be an innocuous wildland fire can quickly turn into a human tragedy when homes are located in the fire zone. 

  Rapidly expanding development also places increased demand on infrastructure, including electrical utilities. This brings its own fire-related dangers, such as the thousands of fires that have been caused by PG&E’s electrical equipment. In many instances, PG&E was aware of the need to update equipment and processes, but did nothing. For example, the New York Times reported that the PG&E electrical tower that caused the Camp Fire in 2018—the deadliest fire in California’s history, which killed at least 85 people and burned down almost 19,000 homes—was by PG&E’s own standards a quarter century beyond its intended lifespan. Further, company emails from 2014—four years before the Camp Fire—indicated that PG&E was aware that the risk of failure of that tower and others in the area was high. Yet in the four years between those emails and the Camp Fire, the tower remained, and not for lack of resources. According to a 2012 report by the California Public Utilities Commission, PG&E under-spent on capital expenditures, maintenance expenditures, and functional operations by about $137 million in the decade leading up to the report, during which time they simultaneously collected huge profits that exceeded authorized revenue requirements by $224 million dollars. PG&E has a history of valuing profits over investing in proper maintenance, and this has come at the cost of human life and property as well as the destruction of countless plant and animal lives. 

Intentional Fires Are Ignited With A Variety Of Intentions: Arson, Industry, and Revitalization of Ecosystems

When thinking of intentionally started wildfires, people often think first of arson. Arson, however, only accounts for a small portion of all wildfires. In California, for example, only 7% of all wildfires from 2013-2017 were attributed to arson (lagging behind wildfires sparked by debris-burning, electrical power, vehicles, and equipment use, which accounted for 13.8%, 9.4%, 8.8%, and 8.2% of all California wildfires in the same time span, respectively). Nationally, the percentage of wildfires attributed to arson is higher, with an estimated 21% of all fires across the US caused by arson, though this still lags behind accidentally caused human-caused fires. 

Beyond arson, intentional fires are sometimes ignited to sustain economies and industries maladapted to the surrounding ecosystem. In the Amazonian rainforest, for example—a place so wet that naturally occurring fires are virtually unheard of, with paleoecological fossil records revealing a frequency of 1 fire per 150,000,000 years in one part of the Amazonian rainforest—slash-and-burn land-clearing practices were responsible for burning more than 3,500 square miles of Amazonian forests in 2019 alone. That is an area approximately the same size as Portugal. These fires were set with the goal of creating more room for cattle ranching, farming, and illegal mining.

While the 2019 wildfire season in the Amazon received much attention in the news, it was actually typical (and even more moderate) compared to other fire seasons in the past couple of decades in that region, though the number of wildfires in the Amazon each year depend greatly on the deforestation regulations, which have recently been relaxed in parts of the Amazon. 

Fires Are Caused By Business Practices That Value Profit Over Life: A Legacy of Colonialism and Capitalism

While the fires caused by farmers and ranchers in the Amazon were started intentionally and the fires caused by PG&E were started inadvertently, they share many commonalities. In both cases, the fires arose out of business practices that value profit over life. In both cases, economic pressures—for cheaper housing and infrastructure, for more land for industries incongruent with surrounding ecosystems—have resulted in wildfires that have caused devastation to human and more-than-human communities. In both cases, the damage to human and more-than-human communities were predictable and ignored.

It is important, though, to recognize that the human-caused fires in the Amazon are markedly different from the ones caused by PG&E in California. PG&E is an enormous and well-resourced utility company that for years has made immense profits while failing to invest adequately in safety and infrastructure. In the Amazon, on the other hand, the wildfires caused by slash-and-burn deforestation practices are caused primarily by small-scale ranchers who are trying to support themselves and their families. For many families, cattle-ranching is the most viable option to sustain themselves. 

Though often criticized in academia and in the news for its destructive effects on the Amazonian rainforests, the history of deforestation for agribusiness in the Amazon is complex and largely tied to the region’s colonization. Many European and North American leaders have decried the fires in the Amazon in the past year, citing the region’s importance for the world’s oxygen supply. (For example, see comments by the President of France and the Secretary-General of the United Nations.) While the Amazon is undoubtedly a very important region for the global environment’s health, these statements oversimplify the contributions of the Amazonian forests, and can be interpreted as conveying a sense of entitlement to the benefits of the region—a hallmark of colonialism. Additionally, there has also been little acknowledgement that these fires are created in order to support the quickly growing demand from around the world—particularly from countries in the northern hemisphere—for Brazilian beef. It is easy—though misguided—to overlook the ways in which residents of the northern hemisphere share responsibility the Amazonian fires, and instead place the blame on the mostly dark-skinned farmers and cattle-ranchers living in the Amazon. However, until we recognize and address the complex forces of capitalism and colonialism—in the Amazon as well as the U.S. and around most of the globe—no real change will occur. 

For a deeper look into the complexity of cattle ranching and deforestation in the Amazon, consider reading this paper on Cattle Ranching in the Amazon by Veiga, Tourrand, Poccard-Chapuis, and Piketty.

Prescribed Fires & Cultural Fires: Utilizing Fires to Mitigate Wildfire Risk and Revitalize Ecosystems

Another category of intentional fire is prescribed burning and cultural burning. Prescribed and cultural fires are ignited intentionally by fire practitioners around the world with the goal of reducing risk of damaging high-intensity wildfires and promoting the health of the overall ecosystem. Indiginous people in fire-prone environments around the globe have spent thousands of years developing and refining highly effective cultural burning techniques that benefit both humans and ecosystems. These sophisticated cultural burning techniques mitigate risk of larger, more hazardous fires; renew food and medicinal resources; create habitat for animals; maintain balance between plant species; and facilitate more fire-resilient environments. 

Fire management professionals in colonial cultures around the world conduct prescribed burns, also called controlled burns, with similar goals. Like cultural burns, prescribed burns are planned and intentional fires that are started by people with the goal of creating more fire-resilient landscapes by reducing fuels and restoring ecological function of fire-adapted environments. Though prescribed burns have generally not reached the level of effectiveness of cultural burns, and have decreased in utilization over the past 20 years, prescribed and cultural burns are widely considered to be one of the most effective ways of reducing hazardous wildfire risk and maintaining healthy ecosystems.

Anthropogenic Climate Change

 Human-driven climate change has played a huge role in the worsening of fires. Anthropogenic climate change has resulted in the compression of the rainy season in California and other parts of the world. This means less precipitation falls during autumn and spring, and slightly more precipitation falls during peak winter months, a trend that is expected to intensify in future years. While this may sound like an insignificant shift—does it really matter matter what proportion of our annual rain falls in autumn and spring, compared to winter?—its ramifications on wildfires are enormous. The first few inches of rain in the fall bring the end of that area’s fire season, and the last rain in spring begins the length of the dry season. When the interval between these two points increase, the impact on fire seasons can be disproportionately catastrophic. 

Fire seasons have also lengthened and intensified due to snowpack melting earlier in the season  as a result of warming temperatures. The slow release of water from snowpacks throughout late spring and early summer is historically an important source of soil moisture in many parts of the world, which can help to moderate both the duration and intensity of fire seasons. The premature melting of snowpacks results in longer, drier summers, which lengthens and intensifies the fire season. 

Warming temperatures from climate change also dry out soils and fuels directly, resulting in higher levels of flammability and thus increased risk of wildfire ignition and spread.

 Additional Indirect Impacts

There are likely additional ways that humans indirectly affect wildfire regimes (the pattern of wildfires in a given area over a long span of time), which have yet to be fully explored. For example, a 2014 study found a potential increase in lightning strikes (the primary source of “natural” wildfire ignition) in some parts of the world due to anthropogenic climate change. While lightning strikes are considered a natural ignition source of wildfires, human-caused changes to global climate and atmospheric systems may be disturbing these natural processes. 

Humans influence fire behavior both locally and globally. We do this intentionally and unintentionally, as individuals, communities, and corporations. It is important to consider how we hold ourselves and one another accountable for destructive wildfires. Currently there is very little consistency to how responsibility and consequences are assigned, particularly with fires sparked by individuals. In some cases, inadvertent fire-starters are sentenced to jail time and made to pay large fines, as in the case of the person who ignited the Bear Fire when his lawnmower hit a rock in dry grass, who consequently served 2 years in prison and now owes the victims of the fire nearly 3 million dollars. In other cases, such as with the couple who started the Carr Fire when their flat tire sparked a deadly blaze, no charges have been filed, and hundreds of members of the affected community have written supportive notes to the accidental fire-starters. 

In some instances, attributing responsibility to the individuals—like in the case of the teenager whose use of fireworks in a tinder-dry forest started the massive Eagle Creek fire in Oregon’s Columbia Gorge, and who was consequently sentenced to pay $36 million in restitution—may serve as a strong deterrent against others considering similar choices. But does sentencing a person to jail time and $3 million dollars in damages for striking a rock with their lawnmower act productively shift the ways other people engage in wildfire safety? Perhaps it does, if more people will be aware that they should avoid mowing their lawn in the height of summer heat and dryness. But perhaps it is a way of deflecting responsibility from the land managers, governing bodies, and developers who are largely responsible for decisions to build in fire-prone wildlands, and who are responsible for fire suppression policies that may benefit themselves (look how beautiful and wooded our parks are! look what a beautiful neighborhood this is, right next to this beautiful overgrown forest!) while in the long run harming our ecosystems and residents living in those areas.

In instances where it is not an individual that sparks a blaze, but rather a corporation—as in the case of PG&E’s thousands of wildfires—it is also essential to look at who benefits from business practices that value profit over life, and who pays the price. Almost invariably it is individual people—thousands of them—who pay the price, as well as our natural landscapes and ecosystems. It is also worth questioning the extent to which these chronic PG&E-caused fires can be considered accidents. When an entity has caused 1,500 wildfires in 3.5 years, and still did not take steps to fix equipment that was known to be 25 years past its shelf life in an area of extreme fire danger—all the while collecting enormous profits—it seems that “accident” is an insufficient descriptor. What can be done to hold such a massive utility responsible? According to the Wall Street Journal, from 1996 to 2018 PG&E paid $2.6 billion in penalties and lawsuit settlements. And then in December 2019, PG&E agreed to pay a $1.68 billion settlement—more than two thirds the amount they were fined in the entire preceding 22 years—for its role in the deadly 2017 and 2018 fires that killed over 100 people and burned thousands of homes. The company is also under criminal investigation by the state of California and by Butte County, where the deadly Camp Fire occurred. Now, PG&E leadership says they will change. “We have heard the calls for change and are committed to taking action by focusing our resources on reducing risk and improving safety throughout our system,” said the interim chief executive of PG&E in a 2019 statement. PG&E’s vice president for community wildfire safety has said that the company will adopt many of the successful practices that San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) implemented after a deadly 2007 wildfire, such as utilization of weather monitoring systems and helicopter inspections of electrical poles and towers. These practices implemented by SDG&E have been effective in reducing the frequency of inadvertent wildfires.

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FIRE-RESILIENT CULTURES BUILD FIRE RESILIENT ECOSYSTEMS WHICH LEAD TO SAFER COMMUNITIES