Mike Dubrasich

10. Let It Burn Has Significant National Economic Impact

The effects of the changes over the last five years to federal wildfire policies have resulted in our land management agencies allowing unspecified lightning-ignited fires to burn in megafires. The changes include AMR (appropriate management response), WFU (wildland fires used for “resource benefit”), and ACMS (accountable cost management strategy). Those programs were set in place not by Congress but by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council, the federal advisory board that oversees the National Fire Plan.

The Wildland Fire Leadership Council has been taken over by radical non-governmental organizations, wealthy (though allegedly non-profit) multi-national corporations with anti-American agendas. Our national fire policies are set by foreigners and a political elite that is more interested in fomenting economic collapse in this country than with our environmental health and economic well-being.

This week Congress adjourns to go on recess without dealing with the collapse of the USFS budget due to wildfire costs. Not only did Congress fail to address rising energy costs, they abandoned the FLAME Act in a desperate hour of need. The 2008 fire funding is used up, the budget spent, and the USFS is forced to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars from other programs to the fire budget.

Where did the money go? Some for instances:

The Basin/Indians Fire has cost over $120 million while burning unnecessarily 244,000 acres [here]. It has become MOST EXPENSIVE fire in California history, and the 2nd most expensive in U.S. history (the Biscuit Fire in Oregon in 2002 cost $150,000,000). Most of the dollars and acres burned up were due to backfires set by firefighters. Fire managers announced proudly at the onset that they were applying the “accountable cost management strategy” and proceeded to break the bank. When the Basin Fire reached homes dozens of miles from the ignition point, the firefighters fled and homeowners fought the fire themselves. Yet the homeowners are being blamed for the fire “suppression” costs. At no time during the last 30 years did the USFS initiate any fuels management or fire road construction in the area, because Congress designated the area a wilderness, even though human beings have been living there for 10,000 years.

The Clover Fire began with a lightning strike May 31 that fizzled in a few acres. It could have been extinguished for a few thousand dollars. But because it was in a designated wilderness the Inyo NF declared the Clover Fire a WFU (wildland fire used for alleged resource benefit). The Clover Fire was “monitored” until it blew up into a 15,000 acre wildfire that burned all the way to Hwy 395 and threatened homes in Kennedy Meadows. It eventually cost over $8 million to suppress. Homeowners dozens of miles from the ignition point are being blamed.

The Unokom Fire began June 21 from lightning on the Six Rivers NF. It is still burning, having consumed 40,000 unkempt and untended acres and nearly $20 million to date.

The Siskiyou Fire also began June 21 from lightning on the Klamath NF. It is still burning, having consumed 60,000 unkempt and untended acres and nearly $25 million to date. Fire managers promulgated a plan early on to allow the Siskiyou Fire to burn 40,000 acres. Then they backtracked and reset the goal at 80,000 acres. Recreation along the Klamath River has been shut down all summer.

The Lime Fires began June 21 on the Shasta-Trinity NF. Together with the Yolla Bolly Fires (which have been split off for “statistical” purposes) over 154,000 acres have been burned at a cost of over $52 million. It is the largest fire in the history of Northern California. A Strategic Implementation Plan for the Yolla Bolly Fire was presented yesterday after a month of burning.

One portion of this fire complex was under the purview of CalFire. They contained their area three weeks ago. In contrast three weeks ago the Feds called in the National Guard. The Guardsmen have departed now, with pomp and ceremony. Both the Lime and Yolla Bolly Fires continue to burn uncontained. The town of Hayfork has been threatened all summer. No doubt, the town’s residents will be blamed for everything.

The Iron Fires began June 21 near Weaverville, also on the Shasta-Trinity NF. They have consumed over 80,000 acres, $40 million, one firefighter’s life, and continue to burn uncontained.

The Shasta-Trinity Lightning Fires partially on the Shasta-Trinity NF) were contained last week at 86,500 acres and a cost of over $56 million. Thankfully those fires were not completely on the Feds or they would still be burning acres and dollars.

The list goes on and on. The Bear Wallow Fire also began over a month ago. It is now over 10,000 acres and still zero percent contained. A Type I Incident Management Team was called in yesterday. New Let It Burn Fires have been declared on the Payette NF, Bitterroot NF, and the Caribou-Targhee NF. A Let It Burn Fire on the Shoshone NF has blown up in the last two days to over 5,000 acres as predictable Palouse winds fan the flames.

All these fires will end up costing many $millions because Let It Burn Fires are not free. Many eventually threaten towns and then all stops must pulled and thousands of firefighters called in to avert major disasters to private property and human lives.

All these fires are burning on unkempt, uncared for, untended USFS lands that receive no management in order to keep them “wild.” In modern America “wild” is now synonymous with charred wasteland and scorched earth, with denuded slopes and rivers full of eroded mud, with ravaged habitat and incinerated wildlife, with dead and blackened old-growth trees, with massive and lengthy closures of public land to the public, and with terrible threats of disaster and catastrophe to towns, cities, and rural neighborhoods across the West.

Has money been saved by eliminating stewardship on the Federal Estate? No, budgets have been drained and land management agencies are insolvent. And Congress whistles a merry tune and goes on yet another spate of junkets while America’s priceless heritage forests burn.

There has been no “cost containment” of fire suppression costs. But what is worse and apparently completely misunderstood (at least by Congress) is that our public forests are not worthless piles of trash fuels waiting to be incinerated but instead are extremely valuable assets to the Nation.

The costs of forest fires are much more than fire suppression expenses. The losses of valuable natural resources exceed fire suppression costs ten-fold or more. For every million dollars in fire fighting expenses, ten million dollars, or more, in natural resources are destroyed.

Almost since the founding of the US Forest Service in 1905, analysts have evaluated fire costs as suppression expenses plus the capital value of the resources destroyed. The cost of firefighting plus the lost value of whatever burned down is known as cost-plus-loss and is (or used to be) the standard parameter of forest fire cost accounting.

Federal fire suppression expenses were nearly $2 billion in 2006, and again that much in 2007, but an estimated 100 billion board feet of merchantable timber with an economic value of $40 billion were destroyed. Therefore total federal forest fire cost-plus-loss was approximately $44 billion in 2006 and 2007.

That valuation does not account for the loss of habitat, wildlife, watershed, airshed, and aesthetic values. In many locations the U.S. Congress has deemed that those so-called non-commodity values exceed the timber values. Therefore the 2006 and 2007 losses in non-commodities exceeded $44 billion, because those forests that were catastrophically incinerated also suffered huge degradation of habitat, wildlife populations, water quality and quantity, air quality, and attractiveness and opportunities for recreation.

Nor does that valuation include the losses incurred on private property in the form of tree farms, ranches, rural homes, urban homes, and other private property destroyed by federal fires emanating from federal lands.

Nor does that valuation include greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to something like 300 million autos driven all year. Congress wants to cap-and-trade private business but burns 10 million acres a year with no thought whatsoever to the smoke produced.

Nor does that valuation include the lives of over 30 forest firefighters lost in the line of duty.

Thus the $44 billion cost-plus-loss figure for 2006-2007 underestimates the true losses, which were so far in excess of that number as to be deemed priceless and irreplaceable.

And once again in 2008, the losses of valuable resources, public and private, and the loss of firefighters’ lives, continues unabated.

Government accounting agencies such as the Office of Management and Budget recommend the reduction of fire suppression costs per acre. That is illogical and incompetent in the accounting sense. Total costs, not costs per acre, are the problem. A small fire may be expensive to suppress per acre, and megafire suppression costs may be much less per acre, but overall megafires extract magnitudes more money from taxpayers and the Federal Treasury.

Similarly, the cost-plus-loss economic utility of firefighting and of land stewardship must be calculated as total cost-plus-loss, not cost-plus-loss per acre.

Allowing fires to burn unchecked in ever expanding acreages may reduce suppression costs per acre, but all the while total costs and total cost-plus-losses increase exponentially. The fiduciary logic of Let It Burn is thus fatally flawed.

Fire managers are being instructed by the Wildland Fire Leadership Council to let fires grow as large as possible to minimize costs per acre of fire suppression. That policy leads directly to larger fires, increased total fire suppression expenses, increased resource losses, exploding budgets, and government insolvency. At the root of that irrational policy is a fiducially incompetent methodology so short-sighted as to be deemed criminal treason. Even Enron did not squander hundreds of $billions in money and resource values in the manner of the US Government and their failed and failing forest un-stewardship policies.

To Be Continued …