About six years ago, Jack Cohen, a wildfire expert from Missoula, Montana, traveled to the Pacific Palisades to teach firefighters and property owners how to protect their homes from wildfires.
Three days of training, including a tour of the community, gave Cohen hope, but that feeling faded when it became clear that the lessons would not be fully implemented. This week’s tragedy has left him deeply saddened.
From his home in suburban Phoenix, fire historian Stephen Pyne watches the history of destruction unfold this week in Los Angeles.
“The fires could be comparable to a Category 5 hurricane,” said Professor Emeritus Pine of Arizona State University.
The siege left 11 people dead, more than 12,000 structures destroyed or damaged, and 150,000 residents under evacuation orders, the worst in U.S. history, according to UCLA climatologist Daniel Swain. It is said that there is a possibility of a wildfire disaster causing severe damage.
Mr. Cohen and Mr. Pine, who are respected by fire departments across the country, have found that their candid advice is often ignored or ignored. Both men, sensitive to loss and suffering, said they were motivated by the belief that the scale of destruction that will occur this week in Los Angeles and Altadena is unpredictable.
“We have no choice but to keep pursuing this problem because it’s a problem we can solve if we decide to do it,” Cohen said.
The two experts spoke to the Times in 2017, when wildfires were ravaging Northern California, and spoke again this week as the disaster unfolded. They have long argued that to prevent fires, we need to change our understanding and relationship with fire.
While Pine focuses on our cultural relationship with fire, Cohen looks at fire from a scientific perspective. Both suggest that we have more control over fire disasters than we realize, and both start by redefining the problem.
Forget about the “wilderness-urban line”
When catastrophic fires occur, experts often blame vulnerable areas at the so-called wildland-urban interface, the fringes of cities and suburbs where rich vegetation in rugged terrain makes them more flammable.
But the fire disasters we’re seeing today are more urban fires than wildland fires, Cohen said. Changing this understanding could lead to more effective prevention strategies.
He said “the assumption is constantly being made that it is large fires that cause widespread community destruction, when in reality wildfires are primarily just lofted embers that ignite communities.” said.
Experts believe the widespread damage was caused by wind-driven embers igniting two to three miles from where the fire started. A map of the Eaton Fire shows seemingly random ignitions throughout Altadena.
“When you study the destruction of the Pacific Palisades and Altadena, look at what didn’t burn: the unburned tree canopy next to the destroyed homes,” he says. “While the cascade of destruction is commonly thought to occur in some kind of organically spreading flame front, a tsunami of super-hot gas, that’s not how it actually happens.
A home was completely engulfed in flames Wednesday at the Eaton Fire in Altadena.
(Gina Ferrazzi/Los Angeles Times)
“In high-density developments, scattered burning houses can spread to neighbors and others. Ignition downwind or across the street is usually due to a shower of embers from burning structures.”
This fundamental misunderstanding led to a similar misunderstanding of prevention. It’s no longer a matter of preventing wildfires, but preventing ignition points within the community by employing “home hardening” strategies such as proper landscaping and fire-resistant siding, and inviting neighbors to collaborate on tasks such as clearing brush. has become important.
“If we think of it as wildfire, we tend to think of wildfire as the primary problem and wildfire control as the solution,” Cohen said. “However, there is no evidence to suggest that wildfire control is a reliable approach in extreme wildfire situations when regional disasters occur.”
don’t forget chicago
In the aftermath of the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 – which destroyed 17,000 structures and left more than 100,000 residents homeless – city planners and local governments focused on fire protection engineering as a way to keep cities safe. I started.
“The goal wasn’t to catch the arsonist or the mythical cow that kicked the lanterns out of Chicago,” Cohen said. “Experts have begun to consider the role our buildings played in causing the problem.”
As a result, Pine said, “cities began to brace themselves against these terrible conflagrations, and they succeeded. Probably the last major urban fire in the United States was San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.”
However, as the city grew, those defenses were lost. Building codes failed to address the requirements of specific environments, and infrastructure was placed without regard to potential hazards.
Pine, who has written more than 30 books on the cultural and social impact of wildland and rural fires around the world, argues that many of the most devastating fires of the past 30 years have been urban fires. .
It was believed that urban fires no longer exist, but they have occurred again. “It’s like watching polio come back,” he says. “It’s been happening over and over again.”
The Bel Air Fire of 1961, which destroyed 484 homes, and the Mandeville Canyon Fire of 1978, which destroyed 230 homes, are often cited as examples of the scale of the fires, but the Oakland Hills and Berkeley Hills Fires of 1991 It started with a tunnel fire. 2,843 homes were destroyed in the modern urban fire.
Fires recently devastated Gatlinburg, Tennessee in 2016, Superior and Louisville, Colorado in 2021, and Lahaina, Hawaii two years ago.
“This is more than just a California quirk,” Pine said. “I think California will get there first in an exaggerated way, but this is a national issue. And in fact, it’s becoming an international issue.”
think beyond conventional wisdom
Southern California has always been affected by drought and Santa Ana winds, which are the main drivers of today’s wildfires. And while climate change is increasing in frequency and severity, societies dependent on fossil fuels are playing an equally important role, Pine argues.
“Fossil fuel societies also reshape landscapes, influencing how humans organize agriculture, urban development, and the placement of roads and power lines,” he says.
Pine said the conventional wisdom is that “fires happen once in a while. They’re seasonal. It’s not something we have to invest in strategically. This is truly an emergency, and we need to be prepared.” We need to prepare ourselves and then respond.”
“I think we’re beyond that,” he said.
Pyne said most people know about fire, but few think it’s a year-round phenomenon. “We need to rebuild our lives based on this fact,” he says. “It’s not just about having a carry-on bag, it’s about recognizing that this is the world today and all this fuss is just part of something bigger.”
For Cohen, it’s important to shift the conversation away from climate change. This gives us more control over the fire environment and ultimately reduces our vulnerability to these disasters.
“We don’t need to solve climate change to solve local wildfire risk problems,” he says.
be realistic
Cohen said the most unpleasant truth of the past four days is how quickly firefighting efforts were overwhelmed and succumbed to extreme fire conditions. Los Angeles County Fire Chief Anthony Malone acknowledged that there simply aren’t enough people to handle the emergency.
But the problem goes beyond staffing, Cohen said.
“Our fire department continually tells us that they will protect us when they cannot, in extreme wildfire situations,” he said. It’s time to recognize the reality and start questioning why we haven’t been able to prevent this disaster. ”
Cohen calls it “a sense of entitlement to be protected,” a feeling that is reinforced by the fire service, even if it is unrealistic.
The National Fire Protection Association, a national nonprofit organization that sets standards for firefighting, requires a minimum of three engines or 15 firefighters for a single-family fire; It is unattainable in this case. Palisades and Eaton Fire.
“We don’t recognize, analyze and question how we’re failing,” Cohen says. “We think we need more planes and helicopters that fly 24 hours a day.”
The CL-415 Super Scooper and Firehawk helicopters are useless when wind gusts of 60 miles per hour are dropping water.
“We don’t necessarily need a trillion-dollar program or a fire czar to control the fire problem,” Pine said. “What we need is a thousand things that adjust the environment in a favorable way so that we can prevent these eruptions.”
For example, local governments and fire departments must provide advance and ongoing warning to property owners to remove dead vegetation and to wet dry brush within 10 feet of their homes with regular, prolonged watering. there is.
“We’ve always had fire as a companion, and it’s been our best friend,” Pine said. And now, because we don’t care about that relationship, it has become our biggest enemy. ”
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