Tag: u s forest service
The Odd Politics Of Fighting Wildfires

The Odd Politics Of Fighting Wildfires

As wildfires plague much of the American West, one must ask, Who is paying to put them out? The answer is largely the American taxpayer. By that, we mean the taxpayers of Maryland, Tennessee and New Jersey — as well as those in California, Oregon, Washington and Montana, the states where the worst fires now rage.

Given this reality, we can also wonder at Western conservatives’ passion for transferring federal lands to the states or into private hands. Do they really want the cost of protecting this considerable acreage placed on the shoulders of their locals?

Some Western politicians, such as Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, have thought this through. His state owns 5.2 million acres — the size of Massachusetts — and a good part of it is in flames.

“I could spend $40 million on fires alone,” Bullock, a Democrat, recently told me.

Western conservatives should know that other conservatives are asking why U.S. taxpayers are spending so darn much money putting out their fires. And they are joined by environmentalists, who argue that the federal government’s enthusiasm for suppressing wildfires encourages bad land planning and unnecessary tree removal.

About two-thirds of the cost of fighting wildfires comes out of the federal coffers, and the U.S. Forest Service accounts for the lion’s share. Its fire suppression activities include both firefighting and fire prevention. For the first time this year, the Forest Service will devote over half its budget to wildfire suppression. By 2025, large wildfires could consume two-thirds of that budget, according to a new report by the Department of Agriculture, which oversees the agency.

A warming climate is adding size and intensity to the blazes — making them more expensive to put out. And there’s a stiff human price: Three Forest Service firefighters died recently trying to contain a wildfire in north-central Washington.

But much of the Forest Service’s fattening bill for suppressing wildfires comes from the rising costs of protecting isolated residences in the so-called wildland-urban interface. About 10 million houses were built in fire-prone rural areas over the last decade — on top of 6 million in the 1990s.

The building continues apace because of a growing desire for homes with nice views and proximity to national forests. And because the feds deal with the worst fires, the state and local governments approving this development have little incentive to curb it.

The federal government also has a variety of post-fire rehab programs. One helps rebuild the homes, 75 percent of which are uninsured or underinsured.

“Many say the insurance companies should be creating a moral hazard when they insure homes on the interface,” Sue Stewart, a scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who was formerly with the Forest Service, told me. Homeowners in fire-prone zones should bear the costs of the added risk, not unlike those on flood plains.

Local governments can also assume more responsibility, writes Randal O’Toole at the conservative Cato Institute. One suggestion is “turning firefighting over to the states and paying the states the same fixed annual amounts per acre that private forest land owners pay.”

O’Toole speaks approvingly of the federal Bureau of Land Management’s policy of letting enormous wildfires in Alaska burn largely unattended.

In Berkeley, California, meanwhile, angry environmentalists are protesting a plan to lessen fire hazards by leveling over 400,000 eucalyptus and other trees in the East Bay hills. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has offered to write the check.

In assessing federal fire suppression programs, one must distinguish between mindless budget cutting and thoughtless spending. As we can see, not always an easy call.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Photo: Firefighters work to dig a fire line on the Rocky Fire in Lake County, California July 30, 2015. REUTERS/Max Whittaker

U.S. Forest Service Says Spending More Than Half Of Budget On Fires

U.S. Forest Service Says Spending More Than Half Of Budget On Fires

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Forest Service for the first time is spending more than half its budget to fight wildfires like those now ravaging the western United States, the agency said on Wednesday.

With the growing threat from climate change and other factors, firefighting costs are estimated to soar to two-thirds of the agency’s budget within a decade and divert hundreds of millions of dollars from programs that help prevent fires, the Forest Service said in a report.

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, whose department includes the Forest Service, said the method for funding firefighting has not changed in generations even as catastrophic wildfires are on the rise.

“The time has come for Congress to change the way it funds the Forest Service,” he said in a statement.

The Forest Service, which oversees more than 190 million acres (77 million hectares) of federal forests and grasslands, will spend about $1.2 billion in the current fiscal year on firefighting efforts, or 52 percent of its budget, the report said.

The spending has soared from about 16 percent of the agency’s budget in fiscal 1995. By 2025, firefighting costs are estimated to hit $1.8 billion, or 67 percent of the Forest Service budget.

Fire seasons today are 78 days longer than in the 1970s. Since 2000, at least 10 states have had their largest fires on record, the agency said.

Increasing development near forests also drives up costs. More than 46 million homes and more than 70,000 communities are at risk from U.S. wildfires, the report said.

The Forest Service’s firefighting costs now are funded from within the agency’s budget and are based on a 10-year rolling average. But the soaring costs of fighting fires means that the agency has relied increasingly on transferring funds from non-fire accounts.

The report said legislation before Congress, the Wildfire Disaster Funding Act, would be a partial solution. The proposal would treat wildfires more like other natural disasters, end fire transfers and partly help protect forests from fire outbreaks.

In California, where more than 10,000 firefighters are battling 24 fires, dry conditions and higher temperatures are expected to return on Wednesday, a CalFire spokesman said. Lower temperatures and higher humidity had helped firefighters make progress on Tuesday.

Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska also have experienced intense wildfire activity this summer.

(Reporting by Ian Simpson and Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Bill Trott)

Photo: A fire fighter monitors a backfire during the Rocky Fire near Clearlake, California, August 3, 2015. REUTERS/Stephen Lam

Firefighter Dies Battling Northern California Wildfire

Firefighter Dies Battling Northern California Wildfire

By Joseph Serna, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency Friday for Northern California counties hit by wildfires, and officials announced that a U.S. Forest Service firefighter had died on the front lines in Modoc County.

David Ruhl, a South Dakota firefighter who had been working in California for several weeks, died Thursday while fighting the Frog fire, according to a statement on InciWeb. Few details were immediately provided, but the statement said Ruhl’s body was found by search and rescue personnel.

“This loss of life is tragic and heartbreaking,” Forest Supervisor Amanda McAdams said in the statement. “Please keep the family and all of our Forest Service employees in your thoughts and prayers during this difficult time.”

Officials are investigating how Ruhl died.

Late Friday, Brown issued a statement from himself and wife, Anne, saying they “were saddened to learn of the tragic death” of Ruhl, “who left his home state to help protect one of California’s majestic forests…. We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and colleagues with the U.S. Forest Service.”

The Frog fire has burned 800 acres near Adin, California, in the northeast corner of the state.

The U.S. Forest Service said it was lowering its flags to half-staff in Ruhl’s memory. The announcement came shortly after Brown declared the state of emergency.

“California’s severe drought and extreme weather have turned much of the state into a tinderbox,” Brown said in a statement. “Our courageous firefighters are on the front lines and we’ll do everything we can to help them.”

The declaration will allow faster deployment of resources to the fire zones, including the National Guard, if that is deemed necessary.

The state of emergency came as a fast-moving fire north of Napa Valley continued to grow Friday and new evacuations were ordered for residents in a nearby rural town, authorities said.

The Rocky fire grew to 18,000 acres and was 5 percent contained, according to a tweet from Daniel Berlant, a spokesman for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection. The Lake County Sheriff’s Department issued a mandatory evacuation for Jerusalem Valley residents before 10 a.m., after the blaze moved north and jumped a road.

About 650 residents have fled their homes since the blaze began Wednesday afternoon.

Water-dropping aircraft and firefighters on the ground have been working around the clock to douse the flames and dig a containment line around the blaze, according to Cal Fire. The Rocky fire began at 4:10 p.m. Wednesday near Morgan Valley and Rocky Creek roads, 62 miles north of Napa, and traveled quickly, spreading into heavy brush and woodlands, Cal Fire said.

Firefighters were still assessing the damage caused by the massive blaze, but officials said the flames have so far destroyed three structures and multiple outbuildings.

The blaze is one of 18 large wildfires burning in California, requiring the deployment of nearly 8,000 firefighters.

In response to the wildfires, the National Guard mobilized nine helicopters to help state firefighters. Authorities are worried that thunderstorms forecast for the weekend could trigger dry-lightning strikes and more blazes.

On Thursday, a fire swept through an Isleton mobile home park, destroying seven mobile homes and forcing residents to flee. A small vegetation fire in the Solano County delta town got out of control and reached the homes before firefighters could quell the flames.

“We don’t have a hydrant system out here, so once our apparatus runs out of water, we have to rely on water from river drafting, which takes up a little bit of effort setting that up,” Assistant Chief of the River Delta Fire Department Jessie Rosewall told Fox 40.

Photo: Los Angeles county firefighters battle wild land fire in Wrightwood, California, July 17, 2015. REUTERS/Gene Blevins 

Wilderness Photo Plan Draws More Fire

Wilderness Photo Plan Draws More Fire

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration has put the brakes on a plan to charge hundreds of dollars in fees for commercial filming and photography on U.S. forest lands, but critics are far from satisfied.
“There is no doubt, as you look at this, that there is way too much confusion over what the Forest Service is trying to do here,” said Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., whose district includes nearly a million acres in the Olympic National Forest.
While the Forest Service said the new rule would not apply to journalists, Kilmer said the agency still needs to clarify what’s at stake for all wilderness visitors. And he said the agency should be encouraging more visitors, not creating more bureaucratic hurdles to keep them away.
“Putting people through a bunch of unnecessary hassles, like paying hundreds of dollars and requiring them to get a permit, doesn’t in my view make a lot of sense,” Kilmer said in an interview.
The plan sparked plenty of outrage on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.
Among the critics:
––Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, called the proposal an example of “federal overreach.”
––Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., responded on Twitter, urging the Forest Service to “think again.”
––Rep. Steve Daines, R-Mont., said he wants a “detailed clarification” of what the Forest Service intends to do.
––Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., chairman of the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee’s Subcommittee on National Parks, said the rule is misguided and “defies common sense.”

Seeking to head off the firestorm, U.S. Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell said the proposal would not apply to either the news media or recreational photographers.
And because of the high level of interest in the issue, he said the agency would give the public another month to respond to the photo plan, extending the official comment period to Dec. 3.
(EDITORS: BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM)
“We’re looking forward to talking with journalists and concerned citizens to help allay some of the concerns we’ve been hearing and clarify what’s covered by this proposed directive,” Tidwell said.
The American Civil Liberties Union joined the critics, saying the agency’s plan is flawed because it “needlessly picks on photography” instead of imposing limits on all commercial activity.
“That it’s being singled out here is a problem,” the ACLU said in a statement.

Kilmer, a first-term congressman, said he’s happy that the Forest Service “is acknowledging that they need to do a better job of providing clarity.”
He called it a particularly important issue for the tourism industry in the Pacific Northwest, noting that the Olympic National Forest had 3 million visitors last year alone.
“Listen, I represent a region that has had millions of visitors because people are captivated by our natural resources,” Kilmer said.
Tidwell called the plan an attempt to protect public land by creating consistent criteria to evaluate requests for commercial filming on wilderness sites.
The uproar began after the federal agency published a notice in the Federal Register on Sept. 4, seeking public comment on its plan.
After critics immediately accused the agency of trying to violate the First Amendment by forcing journalists to pay fees, Tidwell issued a statement saying that the new plan would not apply to any news-gathering activities.
“The U.S. Forest Service remains committed to the First Amendment,” he said.

Kilmer said he’s glad the Forest Service moved quickly to exempt the news media from its plan, but he said the agency has a history of poor dealings with the press. He said the agency has even forced some public television outlets to pay fees for filming.
“If you look at the history here, there’s been a tendency to have a kind of an overmanagement of the media,” Kilmer said.
But Kilmer’s satisfied with the delay, saying it will give the public more time to respond to the rule’s shortcomings while giving the agency more time to fine-tune its proposal.
“If we have a clear, transparent process, the hope is that we can end with a solution that can protect these areas without trampling on peoples’ rights,” Kilmer said.

Photo via Gwillhickers via Wikicommons

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