Wildfires have already broken out in Texas and Florida, and agencies are scrambling to finish plans for a new approach.
In light of the “unprecedented challenge” of the pandemic, Forest Service resources will be used “only when there is a reasonable expectation of success in protecting life and critical property and infrastructure,” says Forest Service Chief Victoria Christiansen.
A suck-it-up and tough-it-out culture doesn’t help either, said Jessica Gardetto, spokeswoman for the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho. The center coordinates logistics for 14,000 federal firefighters and thousands more state, local and private crews.” Four hundred and fifty people were killed in an area that spanned 1,500 square miles . There were 21,000 injuries and 52,000 displaced people, said Curt Brown, a journalist and the author of “Minnesota, 1918.” The aftermath made it easy to spread disease.“It was the perfect situation to spread the flu — if you were lucky enough to survive the wildfire, you were crammed into evacuee housing,” he said. At least 100 people died of the flu in evacuee housing, an estimate Brown called conservative.
“The biggest issue I see right now is that the prescribed burns aren’t getting done,” says Casey Judd, the president of the Federal Wildland Fire Services Association, which advocates on behalf of federal firefighters in 42 states. “That’s going to increase the fire load.” Like many, fire managers are to some extent flying blind. “Some of the things we’re probably going to have to learn as we go,” Greene said.
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