NFPA Journal - September/October 2019 - 8

Editor's Note by Scott Sutherland

Executive Editor, NFPA Journal

OK Go
n its August 26 edition, the
New Yorker magazine ran a
story, headlined "Trailblazers,"
about a pilot program using
prescribed burns to restore
forest health in California's Sierra Nevada
and reduce the threat of cataclysmic wildfires
that have laid waste to land and communities
throughout the state. As a former member
of the mainstream media, I'm encouraged
when the more thoughtful outposts of contemporary journalism cover fire problems,
deploying their considerable reporting and
distribution resources to present these issues
to new audiences. For the most part, the
New Yorker got it right, even if its focus on
prescribed burns deep in national forest land
might seem quaint considering the events
of the past couple of years. Perhaps the next
time the magazine tackles the subject, it
will take the form of a deep dive into the
phenomenon of the wildland/urban conflagration, the type that has decimated built
landscapes from California to Tennessee.
For audiences new to the subject, though,
the New Yorker offered a fair bit to chew
on. After decades of official policy bent on
eradicating fire from the landscape-driven
in part by a fundamentally flawed vision
of what we believe the woods should look
like-forests and other wildlands are primed

EXECUTIVE EDITOR

Scott Sutherland
ssutherland@nfpa.org

to erupt into megafires at the slightest provocation. Six of the 10 worst fires in California
history have occurred in the past 18 months.
Prescribed burns used to thin undergrowth
and consume dead vegetation can help make
wildlands more resilient to fire, but the need
to embrace and execute the practice is vastly
greater than our capacity. According to a
source in the story, prescribed burns should
be applied to a million acres annually in the
Sierra Nevada alone; last year, the US Forest
Service conducted burns on about 60,000
acres in the Sierra Nevada. The Forest Service project that is the focus of the article
took nearly a decade to plan.
The New Yorker underscored what many
in the fire community have articulated for
years, which is that we need to act now. We
do not have a decade to devise and carry out
experiments on controlled burns. The fire
historian Stephen Pyne has argued that, as
part of a healthier landscape, many more
millions of acres of forest, grasslands, and
other habitats need to burn each year, a sea
change in our relationship with fire that
will take time for us to embrace-time we
don't have. If Paradise, Santa Rosa, Bastrop,
Gatlinburg, and many other ravaged communities have taught us anything, it's that our
new reality demands a new sense of urgency.
Moving fast is our only remaining option.

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8 | NFPA JOURNAL * S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 9

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NFPA Journal - September/October 2019

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