I think the article (unintentionally) makes a better argument that these companies are trying to create megafires?

It presents a bunch of startups, most about detecting forest fires earlier, coordinating faster fire department responses, preventing ignition sources, etc. Then it goes on to explain how Megafires are largely caused by a buildup of fuel because we extinguish every small fire and prevented people from doing what we now call prescribed burns.

Of course any tool can be used for good or evil, but aren't most of the described startups more likely to make the situation worse, giving people more tools to prevent fires until so much fuel builds up that an uncontrollable fire develops?

Such a beautiful article and really covers the root of the issue. I know we skim a lot of articles but this one really deserves to be read in full.

The issue being that natural fires have been suppressed for so long that when they do burn there is so much fuel available that they get way hotter than is natural and end up sterilizing the soil so nothing grows for years. Prescribed burns and thinning are the answer to prevention. Let nature happen, and even encourage it so it can be controlled.

One thing I find frustrating in the discussion of wildfire is that it frequently dumbs down to one thing vs another, usually "We must treat the landscape with thinning and prescribed fire" vs "We need better firefighting resources and equipment". This is a false choice and we need both.

The principle of Defense in Depth in infosec is illustrative. No one would debate whether or not you need secure passwords vs role-based permissions. You obviously need both and they reinforce each other.

The same is true in fire. To end megafires, we need: 1) Landscape Management 2) Community Resilience 3) Fast & aggressive suppression

Better technology can help play a role at all three levels.

I guess it takes a lifetime of wisdom to truly realize companies will never 'end' anything, as their whole existence depends on the thing happening at least enough to keep selling the cure.

Fire is a natural part of the forest lifecycle. We shouldn't try to end it, we should build our housing and infrastructure to minimize the effects of fire on us.

I'm curious, with such giant swathes of forest being burnt off annually, and large contiguous chunks being burnt up, leaving only smaller contiguous areas;

1) given the average size of a megafire, how many more megafires can happen (assuming regrowth to current fuel levels takes 50 years)

2) what is the largest megafire that could still happen, given the forested area unburnt for at least 50 years

The chronicle has a map somewhere that lists all the wildfires that have happened in the last 30-40 years, at a casual glance it is looking like any forest areas that haven't burnt yet, are getting increasingly smaller. According to the USDA california has about 101 million acres of forest[1], and the august complex (2020) alone burnt 1 million acres, almost 1%, dixie fire was also almost 1%. The next 18 largest fires burnt another 5% (4.7%) [2]. Since 2001 We've burnt up 22% of all the forests in california [3]

7% in ~12 years seems like a lot, but it takes a long time to grow that much fuel, also the space in between those burnt spaces is going to be increasingly smaller and smaller, or at least so it would seem.

[1] https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/fsm8_037652.h...

[2] https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/4jandlhh/top20_acres.pdf

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_California_wildfires#A...

For those who are (truly) interested in the topic, bothered to read this whole article, and want to know more - the seminal work on the subject is https://megafirebook.com/

This is a peeve of mine that I see absolutely everywhere, none of our recent fires hold a candle (so to speak) to what was going on before humans started managing forests. Take a look at this chart from the UN[1], specifically pre-1960.

I guarantee every chart of wildfires you'll see on a major news site will begin after 1960. Typically they want to push the narrative that climate change is causing wildfires when in fact wildfires have everything to do with forest management and nothing to do with climate change. They are of course also ignoring the fact that climate models predict a _wetter_ planet, not a drier one, if current trends continue.

[1] https://www.fao.org/3/ai412e/ai412e09.jpg

Wait, I thought most of the mega fires had been caused by un/badly maintained electrical infrastructure?

Are they advocating for intentional burns? Because if not they're doing it wrong.

Betteridge’s law of headlines…

There are fires, and there are megafires. They are NOT the same.

The Western landscapes are evolved for regular normal fires. But decades of fire suppression have left us with a massive amount of fuel, so now fires come with a heat and size that the landscape is not evolved to handle. So, for example, trees with thick bark designed to survive fires, instead succumb to the intense heat and burn.

Yes, we need to get back to having regular fires. But we also need to end the artificially created danger of megafires.

NO

First, we are not the only players here, and second, the more care we take to keep the natural cycle as normal as possible, the better the natural system will take care of us.

Megafires are an entirely different kind of fire, and merely expecting and avoiding them is insufficient. Managing the forest a little bit, and using controlled fires both almost eliminates the danger of megafires, and reduces the damage of fires on the ecosystem and on the human systems. Just one paragraph in the article encapsulates that nicely.

Please re-think your human-centric approach to problems with nature. At least read this one paragraph.

>>In Southern Oregon in 2021, when the massive Bootleg Fire reached a 30,000-acre nature preserve managed by the Nature Conservancy, flames were shooting 200 feet in the air. But when the fire got to an area that had been carefully managed, it suddenly changed. The flames dropped down and moved more slowly. For years, researchers in the area had been testing different “treatments” for the forest, thinning out trees in some areas and conducting prescribed burns. When the fire came through, it demonstrated what worked: In photos taken a few months after the fire, trees were still alive in the area that had been both thinned and treated with controlled burns. Across a road, in an untreated area, nearly everything had burned. (When a fire is so extreme, it can also sterilize the soil in some cases, making it hard for any new trees to grow back.)

I remember when we had the huge wildfires in the Santa Cruz mountains in the 80s, and they said if they did the same practices afterwards as they had prior, there would be similar fires in 40 years. I don't live there anymore, but what are the fire prospects in the Santa Cruz mountains? It's about exactly the time those forestry guys said fires would become a thing again as I am pretty sure nothing was changed, and that even worse more risky housing was added.

> Fire is a natural part of the forest lifecycle.

Apart from ecosystems with Eucalyptus trees, I can't think of another environment where fire is a natural part of the forest lifecycle.

I think it's a false assumption that when something burns in a high severity fire, it returns to a healthy state afterwards. Historically, natural fire was low severity because it was high frequency, burning through once a decade (or even more frequently). This left large trees and soil intact, and so dense regrowth was limited, since there was still shade.

With high severity fire, two things can happen. Trees can be totally wiped out (called a stand-replacing fire) which causes extremely dense, brushy regrowth (prone to another high severity fire). Or in really bad conditions, the soil can be damage so no regrowth happens, causing strange moonscape-like forests that are completely dead. This affects watersheds, causes mudslides, etc. Neither is good.

If we could burn large swaths of landscape with low severity fire, that would be a huge step in the right direction but is extremely difficult. We are treating only a small fraction of the acreage in that manner.

Note: This varies from landscape to landscape but is directionally correct. For example, in some climates, stand-replacing fires are healthy and normal. But in most climates, bad.

I suggest you read this. It's the seminal work on the subject. https://megafirebook.com/