Fighting Fire With Fire: A Soldier’s Story

by Timothy Ingalsbee, Ph.D.

FOR NEARLY A CENTURY THE FOREST SERVICE HAS BEEN WAGING WAR ON THE WILD . Nowhere is the war metaphor more applicable than in describing the agency’s methods of “fighting” forest fires. In its mission to search and destroy all forest fires, the agency commands a vast army of firefighters, backed up by an armada of vehicles and an arsenal of tools and equipment. The agency has built up the worldÕs largest, most technologically-advanced, most expensive firefighting organization in the world, waging a never-ending war on wildfire.

AFTER FIFTY YEARS OF SMOKEY BEAR PROPAGANDA, it seems almost instinctual that we humans should fight forest fires. The media reinforces our subconscious fears of fire, for they always villify wildfires as disasters and catastrophes, an evil enemy which kills trees and destroys forests. On the other hand, the media valorizes firefighters as tough, brave, patriotic heroes defending the NationÕs forests by Òbattling” blazes and “fighting” fires.

THE MEDIA LOVES A GOOD WAR, and buys into the agency’s militarization of fire management. The whole Western Enlightenment Conquest of Nature paradigm is played out to the fullest; meanwhile, the institutional and ideological causes of the conflict--the greed, arrogance, and power-hunger of Forest Service managers and their corporate clientele--are obscurred. But as the 1994 fire season enters the record books as the most deadly and destructive season in memory, we should ask ourselves, what does it mean to be eternally at war with Nature?

THE FOREST SERVICE HAS BIG STAKES IN THE PERPETUATION OF THE WAR. The agency reaps significant political and financial rewards from fighting forest fires. Forest managers tap into a huge emergency firefighting fund in Washington D.C., and have almost unlimited access to the publicÕs money to Òput outÓ a fire. Subsequent salvage logging sales are additional losses to the peopleÕs economic and ecological treasury: private timber companies can buy scorched trees at “fire sale” prices, and the individual National Forest can keep all the timber receipts. Firefighting costs are thus not expenditures, but investments that offer big revenues to government and business.

FIREFIGHTING HAS BECOME A BIG BUSINESS, AND BUSINESS IS BOOMING. Nearly $1 million (tax dollars) a day are spent on the average large fire. Now, private entrepeneurs and corporations want a bigger piece of this racket. A growing “fire-dependent” business clientele has emerged, from contract firefighting crews to local merchants and official government suppliers, all reaping windfall profits on the taxpayersÕ till. The Forest Service will not stop fighting fire because there are too many war profiteers with interests at stake--and too many bored bureaucrats getting their thrills playing with unlimited budgets while assuming a military mode of authority. A new face of the Corporate State’s military-industrial complex has developed around the Forest Service and its war on wildfire. And like all other war-related enterprises, the taxpayers make hardly a fuss about how the government spends their money.

I AM A VETERAN AND SURVIVOR OF THIS WAR. I began fighting fires 15 years ago as an eager and idealistic footsoldier, for it was more than a job--it was an adventure! In North Cascades National Park, I have cut fireline in ground so high that I could stare into the blue crevasses of glaciers plunging from the ridgeline across the valley. In the River of No Return Wilderness, I have cut fireline in ground so deep down the steep Salmon River Canyon that the smoke-filled sky blazed crimson red for hours after dawn, until the sun topped the ridge. In the North Kalmiopsis Roadless Area, I was paid to hike and camp in places few two-leggeds (other than Sasquatch) rarely see. I have been blessed with these and many more adventures, and witnessed some awesome displays of Nature’s power when a forest is afire.

I LOVED THE INCOME OF FIREFIGHTING, TOO. It felt like good pay for good, hard work. The pride I felt about my job was like that of a professional soldier for the Earth, an “eco-defender,” if you will. Most of my fellow firefighters, however, had the mentality of mercenaries, and were willing to do almost anything to get those fat paychecks. Even I was not immune to the Ògold feverÓ that afflicts firefighters. ÒThereÕs green where thereÕs black,Ó we used to say to ourselves, thinking deliriously about our future paychecks while toiling away in working conditions that violate EPA and OSHA rules for every other industrial occupation. It is scary for me to realize how well the wage-slavery system of delayed gratification sustained me through many hellish assignments.

IN THE MIDST OF FULFILLING MY ECO-DEFENDER FANTASIES, I adopted much of the militarist mentality that pervades firefighting. Firefighting operations are organized under an extremely hierarchical, military-style chain of command. I have seen weak, incompetent, uncharismatic technocrats who rarely get out of the office, swell up with the arrogance of military generals when they assumed a position of power on the pecking order of fire bosses. They often forced firefighters--most of whom were a lot stronger and smarter but of a lower bureaucratic rank--to do all kinds of stupid, futile tasks for no other reason than the sheer delight of exercising their power.

IF YOU ARE A GRUNT, YOUR JOB IS TO FOLLOW ORDERS, PERIOD. You dig a line, stand in line, hurry up and wait, or work your ass off according to the orders of your superiors. Your crewboss and foreman tell you when and where to eat, sleep, and shit. I tended to follow my orders with gusto and few gripes, and earned superior evaluations (but no medals) for my combat service. It is scary for me to look back now and see how years of playing with G.I. Joe dolls, and psychological training in school athletics, conditioned me with the ability to ignore my own anarchist instincts, pacifist principles, and anti-imperialist politics, and willingly enlist as a grunt in Uncle SamÕs firefighting army. Now I deeply regret doing the many aweful damn-stupid, dangerous, and destructive things that go on in firefighting.

OF THE MANY “WAR CRIMES” I AM ASHAMED TO HAVE PARTICIPATED IN, one stands out: the deliberate torching of scenic Sherman Pass on the Colville National Forest. Working on the White Mountain Complex Fire in 1988, we were ordered by a Type II (Òsecond stringerÓ) Incident Commander to set a huge backfire along Highway 20. Although those of us on the ground knew that the conditions were not right that night, we “just followed orders” and lit the woods anyway. The fire jumped the highway and surged into pristine, unburned old-growth forest.

WE SPENT A DESPERATE, TERROR-FILLED NIGHT TRYING TO CHASE DOWN THE FIRESTORM WE HAD CREATED. The next morning, the scene of devastation along the roadway was astounding. Hundreds of burnt trees had fallen across the road, and the intense heat of the blaze had destroyed the guardrail, leaving the metal twisted and blackened. The highway was closed for more than a week as trees continued to fall. The agencyÕs top fire bosses were forced to take over command of the firefighting operations in order to pacify an outraged local populace. The White Mountain Complex was renamed the Sherman Fire, not only because a brand new human-caused wildfire had been created at the top of Sherman Pass, but also, perhaps, because it appeared that we were using the same “Civil” War tactics as Sherman’s March to the Sea. The Forest Service later completed the destruction of this place by salvage logging this and other places where we had set backburns. Now, large black stumps line Highway 20Õs new Òob-scenicÓ corridor.

THOUGH WE ARE CALLED “FIRE” FIGHTERS, RARELY DO WE EVER DIRECTLY ATTACK FLAMES. Instead, we normally do “indirect attack” on the “fuels” (forest vegetation and soil), and ironically, fire is our prime tool. We cut and burn trees along every foot of fireline, and aim for 100% consumption of the understory vegetation. In fact, a significant portion of the burned acreage on every forest fire comes directly from the hands of firefighters. We essentially fight fire with fire, and cheerily chant the “mopshot” mantra, “First we light ‘em, then we fight ‘em,” as we put our torches to the greenery. It has gotten to the point that we should be renamed Òfire-lighters,” because that is what we are doing, firelighting not firefighting.

I HAVE COME TO SUSPECT THAT TIMBER BEASTS WORKING AS FIRE BOSSES are using firefighters to chart out new logging sites under the smokescreen of wildfire emergencies. Some of the huge backfires and aggressive burnouts we set--far away from the main fire, and far in excess of safety or suppression needs--also created large, profitable salvage logging units. As a matter of policy, every fire in the agency’s designated “general forest” zone is salvage logged--and the bigger the fire, the bigger the salvage sale! It has saddened and angered me to learn how many wild places me and my crewmembers worked our butts off to save--like the North Kalmiopsis Roadless Area, like Yellowstone National Park!--were salvage logged. The public should quickly dispel themselves of the myth that firefighting saves trees--they are ÒsavedÓ only for the salvage saws. Perhaps we should ask the agency why it needs to spend millions of tax dollars ÒfightingÓ forest fires if it intends to log off the trees anyway.

THE TRUTH IS WE DON’T FIGHT FIRES, WE FIGHT THE FOREST. For all the abuse we do to the trees--before, during, and after a wildfire--perhaps we should be called “fir-fighters.” In fact, we fell many trees cutting fireline. First we cut the young ones to make our fuelbreaks, then after burning out the fireline, we cut the old ones. After line cutting is completed, the tree cutting continues during Òmop-up.Ó This is the period where firefighters confront only smoldering embers and hotspots after a flame front has passed through. Some of the most valuable wildlife trees in the forest--the giant Douglas-fir broken-tops and snags, hollowed with the former homes of bats, squirrels, and owls--are usually ignited from our backburns and burnouts. For the sake of “safety” and suppression, these giant trees are systematically dropped to the ground by bored firefighters doing the bidding of their bosses. We fir-fighters (sic) on the firelines are thus on the frontlines of forest destruction, truly “eco-warriors” in a war against the forest...And the war goes on, from battle to battle, without end.

THE TRAGIC DEATHS OF THE FIREFIGHTERS ON STORM KING MOUNTAIN in Colorado has shocked the nation into awareness that the war on wildfire is not without its human casualties. As in every war, it is always the young who are sent to fight and die. This tragedy has severely shaken the normal arrogance and insularity of Forest Service fire generals, for the women and men who died on the mountain came from the most elite kinds of fire crews the agency commands. The Forest Service has been scrambling to reassure the public that its firefighting strategies and tactics are safe and sound. To that end, the agency cynically blamed the victims for their own deaths, claiming that the firefighters’ own “can do” attitudes made them take unnecessary risks in the face of known hazards. This belies the fact that the “can do” attitude originates at the top echelons of the agency, and is handed down the chain of command. This winter the Forest Service’s elite managers will evaluate firefighting policies and procedures. Do not be surprised if the massive new salvage and thinning projects coming ahead are presented as Òfire protectionÓ plans to facilitate Òfirefighter safetyÓ as well as Òforest health.Ó Do not be shocked if the agency shamelessly uses the tragedy to scare the public into supporting its aggressive new logging proposals.

AS THE CORPORATE STATE’S WAR MACHINE CONTINUES TO SPIN on a treadmill of its own making, the power-mongering and profiteering that feed this unnecessary and unwinnable war are never addressed. It is time that the American People end the government’s war against wildfire. Fire suppression and salvage are ravaging and pillaging the forest. There are alternative, Òlight-handÓ or minimal-impact techniques for suppressing firesÕ severity that does not sacrifice the trees. We must reject the State’s militarization of fire management, its warlike campaign to “fight” fires, and its scorched Earth tactics of firefighting. We must make peace with the planet, relearn to live with the Wild, and stop the eco-war. Now!

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LIGHT IT, FIGHT IT, LOG IT: Warner Creek and the New Fire Regime

by Timothy Ingalsbee

The Warner Creek Fire (1991), the Warner Fire Recovery Project (1991-1993), and (surprise!) the Warner Salvage Sale (1994?) provide a case study for the Forest Service's new modus operandi for salvage scams under Option 9. The agency's "forest health means fuel reduction for fire protection" ideology developed on the Warner Project will be applied to the massive thinning and salvage logging schemes planned for native forests throughout the West. In short, this sinister ploy is the system of Light it, Fight it, and Log it.

LIGHT IT

We might never have known the truth that Warner Creek Fire was started by arsonists if Forest Service law enforcement officers had not blurted out to the press details about the fire's origins. They stated that the fire was definitely intentionally-set, that the agency had numerous leads and physical evidence (i.e. incendiary devices), and that several fires had been set in the area over a 48 hour span. The officers further stated the agency suspected the Warner Creek Fire was started by the same arsonists who had been torching Eastside forests the previous four years. Indeed, there was not a moment's doubt that the Warner Creek Fire was ignited by arsonists.

After timber industry representatives fumed that "there was no evidence" that Warner Creek was started by arsonists, the Willamette Forest Supervisor made bizarre, absurd attempts to cover up the crime. First, he charged his public relations staff to call Warner Creek a "suspicious human-caused fire" (the agency's standard euphemism for arson). Second, he ordered that arson be excluded from the EIS analysis despite widespread public demand for it to be included as a significant issue. Third, he authorized false and deceptive language on the fire's origin to be published in the Draft EIS even though the fire investigator's final report had been handed to him three months earlier. This report stated conclusively that the Warner Creek fire was ignited by arsonists.

It was a full 14 months after the Warner Creek fire had been lit that the Supervisor was forced, under intense public pressure, to reveal the truth. He now claims that the fire's origin is irrelevant to his decision to salvage log. Meanwhile, arsonists continue to prey on Cascadia's forests, starting several arson fires this summer. Truth is the first casuality in warfare--and in wildfire--when the agency covers for arsonists.

FIGHT IT

Many environmental abuses occurred while fighting the Warner Creek Fire. Nearly eleven miles of dozerlines were carved into the Cornpatch Roadless Area. One of these new "cat" roads runs over a mile in length a mere fifty feet parallel to the Bunchgrass Ridge hiking trail. The agency's alleged reason for making a new cat-road instead of using the existing hiking trail for a fireline was its concern not to disturb archaeological sites along the trail corridor. Indeed, over 30 new sites were discovered after the fire. Nevertheless, proposed salvage units are now located on the ridgetop--one of these new clearcuts will be a half mile in length! (see photo p.3)--and logging will impact at least 7,800 feet of the trail. The dozerlines were never rehabilitated by the agency; hence, hundreds of trees lie "jackstrawed" where the bulldozer heaved them to the side (see photo p.2), creating a hideous visual scar and a severe fire hazard in the event of a reburn.

Firefighters were responsible for burning several thousand acres--an estimated 35% or more--of the total burned acreage in huge burnout and backfire operations. Firefighters had to pour hundreds of gallons of diesel fuel on the moist, moss-covered ground to get some of these burns going. Essentially, from start to finish, the Warner Creek Fire was an ongoing arson fire. Some of the areas that firefighters burned are now beautiful underburned green stands. Other areas burned hot; for example, along the ridgetop dozerline. Firefighters cut down hundreds of trees when the flames from their burnout started to "candlestick" (see photo p.3). Some of the areas deliberately burned by firefighters are now proposed salvage units! We must hold the agency's fire bosses accountable for their pyromaniacal actions.

LOG IT

Firefighters regularly had to do "the Three O' Clock Boogie," retreating from the firelines in the afternoon when the fire burned hottest. The areas that were most dangerous to fight fire were near existing plantations, where the dense thickets of even-aged "reprod" hurled the flames into adjacent old-growth canopies. These scorched old-growth stands are the very areas targeted for salvage logging. Like taking a jigsaw puzzle apart, piece by piece, the agency plans to add new clearcuts next to their old clearcuts, using old stumps to mark the salvage unit boundaries for new stumps (see photo p.2).

The agency's rationale for clearcutting is to reduce fuel loads and to facilitate efficient fireline construction. Yet, the 28 plantations that were vaporized by the Warner Creek Fire had all been roaded, clearcut and slashburned. These "fuel reduction" activities did nothing to slow the flames, and in fact young "reprod" carried the flames hotter and faster. The agency now plans to replicate this failed method of "fire protection" with an estimated 200 new clearcuts targeting the largest fire-killed trees, while ignoring the real fire hazards, the dead "dog-hair" thickets of flashy and ladder ground fuels.

Warner Creek has revealed the agency's new "ecosystems management" scheme of mimicking catastrophic fire disturbance to prevent catastrophic fire disturbance. It openly admits that it is "trading off" current and future owl habitat quality for its ability to fight wildfires. The agency has in fact defined spotted owl habitat recovery in terms of fire control. We need to be aware that the same twisted logic behind logging Warner Creek's most valuable wildlife trees to prevent them from reburning will be applied systematically throughout the burned forests of the West. Warner is a warning to forest activists everywhere: beware of a light it/fight it/log it scheme coming to a forest near you!!!

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Smokey the BearÕs Legacy on the West

by George Wuerthner

No single human modification of the environment has had more pervasive and widespread negative consequences for the ecological integrity of North America than the suppression of fire. Fire suppression has destroyed the natural balance of the land more than overgrazing, logging, or the elimination of predators. One could easily build a case that an Environmental Impact Statement should be prepared prior to any fire suppression activities by government agencies since control of wildfires greatly alters the natural environment. Yet, most people are oblivious to the many long-term consequences of fire suppression policies.

Those who study fire ecology are painfully aware of the wounded landscape resulting from fire suppression. Wandering through Cascadia’s eastside ponderosa pine forests and westside fir forests I see dying ecosystems. Old photos of these places show sunny, open and park-like cathedral stands of widely spaced large trees. Today these stands are choking on their own prodigy. With water, nutrients, and space divided among many more individuals, the overall health of the forest has declined. These forests are now more susceptible to disease and insects, and in some cases, to more intense burns than in the past.

Catastrophic fires are not abnormal, but rather, are ecologically important parts of the landscape. Indeed, while hundreds of small fires reduce fuels over many parts of the landscape, most of the acreage burned in forest fires occurs in a few very large fires. These might only visit a particular site once every couple of hundred years, when conditions of prolonged drought, wind, fuel loading, and ignition all unite to set the stage for significant fires. Large fires are not disasters, nor do they “damage” the land. Rather, they are an essential part of the ecological setting that no amount of suppression can ultimately prevent--nor should we want to.

Frequent fires have many ecological benefits for soils and plant fertility. Over much of the Pacific Northwest, wet winters are followed by predictable summer drought. Thus, the time of year when itÕs warmest and most conducive to bacterial and fungal decomposition, moisture is limited, and rapid decomposition of litter is precluded. There is usually only a short period of the year during the spring months when soils are both moist enough and warm enough to provide decomposing organisms the proper environment for composting litter. Without fires, dead material accumulates, locking up essential nutrients necessary for plant growth. Fires release these nutrients, and enhance the production of nitrogen-fixing plants that often revegetate recently burned areas. Fires are thus analogous to river floods which each year provide a new layer of life-giving soil for plant growth.

Fires also cleanse forests. Many tree pathogens are killed just by the smoke. In addition, insects and diseases are directly reduced by fires. Once a fire has burned through a forest, especially if it is a cool, slow burning fire, the younger trees are thinned out while leaving behind the more mature individuals. Some species like the Ponderosa pine, Douglas fir, western larch, jeffery pine, and sequoia are specifically adapted to survive fires by having a thick bark and tall limbless trunks which protect them from small, quick burns. These survivors experience increased viability due to reduced competition for nutrients, light and water. Hence their ability to resist forest insects and disease is increased. The increased occurrence of pine beetle, spruce budworm, and other forest pathogens we see today are the direct result of fire suppression which has weakened the overall ability of trees to resist infestation.

The public pays three ways for this policy of fire suppression. First, we pay the high cost of fire fighting, which is frequently the highest budgetary expenditure of public land agencies. One big fire will often cost five to ten million dollars for suppression Think of how much better it would be to spend the millions of dollars it costs to suppress fires each summer on endangered species research or the acquisition of private lands which hold important wildlife habitat. Fire research has shown that, in additions to being expensive, fire fighting frequently has nothing to do with putting out the fire. Fires usually donÕt stop until the weather changes or the fire encounters another recent burn and runs out of fuel. In essence, we often throw money away at fires just so we have the appearance of doing something. For example, the Forest Service spent over $10 million attempting to suppress the Warner Creek Fire, yet it burned uncontrolled until a snow shower fell on the blaze.

Second, we pay for the below-cost sales which result when the agencies attempt to correct the ecological imbalances they have created. For example, after factoring in the $11 million spent on suppression and an Environmental Impact Statement (ostensibly to ÒsaveÓ the trees for wildlife habitat recovery) the Warner salvage sales will result in an unprecedented $9 million deficit timber sale on the Willamette National Forest!

Third, because many of these proposed logging sales are in presently roadless, wild areas, we lose these precious wilderness resources. We do not need to cut down Habitat Conservation Areas and Late-Succession Reserves, such as Warner Creek’s native forest, to “protect” it from future wildfires. All we need to do is let natural fires burn.

Although many agencies are now experimenting with prescribed burns, their practices have several shortcomings. In the past, before fire suppression, the total acreage burned each summer in the western U.S. was in the millions of acres. Today, most prescribed burns are too small. Furthermore, most prescribed burns are set when the.forests are moist, usually in the spring. Under natural conditions fires burn in the drier months. Small mammals, birds, etc. have usually completed breeding by the time natural fire seasons begin. But human-induced prescribed burns occur at a time when wildlife is less able to cope with a fire, with an attendent cost in life not usually associated with wildfires. Smokey lied. Studies have shown that under natural fire conditions, few wildlife species or individuals are hurt. They simply fly, walk or burrow away from the flames.

The problem with our fire policy is that we are not emulating natural systems. An analogy would be cutting off a leg from a table and expecting it to still stand upright. In cutting out natural fires, we have cut off the leg of a table. We continue to expend energy in the form of fire fighting, below-cost timber sales, etc. to hold up this table or ecosystem which wants to fall over. As more litter accumulates, the heavier the load piled on the table becomes and the more energy we must expend to keep it from falling over.

The western U.S. is sitting on a powderkeg. One of these summers the West will burn down. Fuel loading is so high, a fire-storm of incredible proportions will overwhelm our suppression capabilities. We also face greater possibilities of loss of human life and property as people continue to build houses in forested areas. This is analagous to building on the flood plain of a river. Sooner or later you pay the consequences. Communities have not recognized this problem and thus have not faced it with zoning restrictions.

What needs to be done? To begin, we must realize that fires are a natural and a needed part of our environment. Instead of spending money to put out fires everywhere they occur, we need a massive public education program to promote the merits of fire. We should replace statements like Òa forest fire DAMAGED 100 acres of land todayÓ with statements like Òa forest fire CREATED 100 acres of new wildlife habitat and fire break today.” Fire fighters, instead of being viewed as heroes, should be called what they are: money grubbing mercenaries out to kill fires. Fires have as much right to exist as grizzlies and wolves. Just as predator control has upset natural balances, fire control has had the same consequences. We must come to the realization that fire suppression, except in specific locations needed to protect human habitation and life, is a direct affront to the ecological balance of this continent. Smokey the Bear policies have done more to destroy the wildlife habitat and forest health of the western U.S. than any other human intrusion.

Many foresters and politicians argue that the decline in the forest’s ecological health should be dealt with by surgery--“salvage” logging they call it. But logging a burned area like Warner Creek would be a grievous ecological affront. Fires are, like disease and insects, natural processes in forest ecosystems. We should not think of a forest as ÒrecoveringÓ from a fire, and hence, we do not need to fix such landscapes. Forests do not need to recover from a burn--they can only recover from abnormal or unusual events like timber harvests. Do not confuse forestry--which is an economic activity--with forest ecology. Never forget that foresters are trained to manipulate forests, not understand them.

I hesitate to prescribe any management options other than allowing Nature to reach whatever equilibrium or disequilibrium it chooses. On the whole, the best policy we could follow is to let Nature take its course. Protect our dwellings and human life when necessary, but let the bulk of the forests live and die from insects, disease, and even catastrophic fire. We can never emulate natural forests, and it is pure arrogance to assume that we know enough about how a forest works to presume that we can “manage” it at all.