Environmental Dogma Goes Up in Flames

By Micah Morrison
Copyright 2000 Wall Street Journal
May 16, 2000

At last report, the Los Alamos wildfire has swept across 44,000 acres in New Mexico, destroying 260 homes, forcing 20,000 people to flee and damaging the town's nuclear-weapons lab. While firefighters scramble to control the blaze, government officials are working almost as hard at damage control. Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is defending the "prescribed burn" policy that led the National Park Service to deliberately set the fire and has already selected the fall guy for the disaster: Bandelier National Monument Superintendent Roy Weaver was suspended last week pending an investigation.

But Washington's first steps shouldn't be the lynching of a park superintendent. What's needed now is a suspension of government fire policies, a beefing up of fire suppression personnel and equipment, and public education on how to survive a wildland fire.

In Los Alamos, N.M., on Friday, Mr. Babbitt backed the Park Service's prescribed-fire program, the practice of setting controlled fires to clear heavy buildups of dead timber and underbrush in the nation's parks. The other stewards of national lands -- primarily the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management -- have similar programs. "This program is solidly conceived and is a very important part of Western land management," said Mr. Babbitt, who nonetheless announced a 30-day ban on prescribed fire.

The theory of prescribed burns is that eliminating the "fuel" for forest fires prevents future catastrophic blazes. Environmentalists encourage the practice because it is thought to clear diseased trees, add to wildlife diversity and help restore "natural conditions." Mr. Babbitt is keeping quiet about the other half of the prescribed-burn program -- a policy called "prescribed natural fire," or the practice of letting lightning-caused fires burn, for which he has not issued a ban.

But the history of prescribed fires shows it is a largely failed policy. Over the years, prescribed burns gone wrong have caused hundreds of millions of dollars of damages to property and proved impossible to contain in the face of shifting weather conditions. Restrictions on logging have contributed to the buildup of heavy fuels, increasing fire danger. And a growing population means that mismanaged wildfires engulf homes and take lives.

Every year as fire season approaches, Park Service officials seek to put the best possible gloss on these controversial programs. Widely circulated claims by fire officials over the weekend that only 38 out of 3,700 have gone wrong since 1968 ignore the amount of damage "wrong" fires cause.

In 1980, for instance, a prescribed burn set by the Forest Service in Michigan to improve habitat for the Kirtland warbler decimated over 50,000 acres, destroyed homes and killed one person. In 1988, prescribed natural fires in and around Yellowstone National Park raged 1.2 million acres. Los Alamos itself is not yet past such severe fire danger.

In truth, it is extremely difficult to manage controlled burns. One of the problems is that while dry conditions are best for burning -- thus advancing current land-management goals -- they also are the most dangerous times for "escaped fires." In a drought year, which is what most of the nation currently faces, prescribed-fire policies are a recipe for disaster.

Los Alamos is a perfect example. It was set as a controlled burn in the Bandelier National Monument on May 4. Mr. Weaver's "burn plan" was standard operating procedure: take advantage of dry conditions to ignite a 300-acre blaze to eliminate underbrush. Yet while man prescribes, nature often defies. An abrupt 60-mile-per-hour wind hit the controlled burn with explosive force and blew it out of control.

Los Alamos also shows the dangers of setting fires near urban areas. As in virtually all catastrophic fires, the primary culprits are high winds and dry conditions. Homes built deep in the forest on narrow roads -- what the fire community calls the "rural-urban interface" -- raise the likelihood that fires will cause fatalities and destroy structures. In 1991, a catastrophic fire in the hills around Oakland, Calif., though not prescribed, killed 25 people and destroyed over 700 homes.

Meanwhile, officials at Los Alamos National Laboratory have gone to unprecedented lengths to reassure the public that none of the nuclear weapons facilities or waste areas were seriously damaged by the fires. No reports have emerged indicating unusual radiation leaks from the lab. But Los Alamos is surrounded by deep ravines filled with juniper and heavy brush -- excellent fuel and terrain for intense fire. Drought conditions persist and high winds are likely.

To be sure, the dangers of a radiation disaster at Los Alamos are slim. But the Los Alamos blaze is a long way from over and the fire season has only just begun. Rather than defending the beneficial effects of fire, government officials and the media should be taking Los Alamos as a wake-up call for the dangers posed to life and property by fire during a season of drought.

More planning and training is needed to deploy additional crack firefighting teams. More aircraft and bulldozers should be provided for the kind of quick action required to stop a small fire from becoming a big one. And information efforts should be directed at reducing fire danger to homes and planning escape routes.

It's not too late to start educating the public on how to survive a wildland fire. But the best way to do that is by not letting it start.

Mr. Morrison is a Journal senior writer and the author of "Fire in Paradise: The Yellowstone Fires and the Politics of Environmentalism."