Busting Trump mythology on wildfires as more rage in California

Firefighters in California are counting the days until the end of the fire season, hoping for a much needed respite from an almost constant barrage of catastrophic fires over the last two years.

Smoke from the summer 2018 California wildfires. The Camp Fire, another dangerous and extremely fast-moving fire, is currently burning near Chico amidst record-dry vegetation conditions. The Hill and Woolsey fires are also gaining strength as residents continue to evacuate areas in Ventura and Los Angeles.

During that time, we’ve witnessed some of the largest and most costly fire seasons in history. Eight firefighters and 49 civilians lost their lives during the 2017 and 2018 wildfire seasons. The Carr fire alone cost more than $1.6 billion in insured losses and suppression costs.

The federal government has long played a productive role in partnering with Cal Fire, California’s state forestry and fire fighting agency, and local fire departments to combat fires and finance fire suppression and forest restoration. But President Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke have actively undermined this partnership over the last several months, pointing fingers and spreading misinformation.

Climate change will continue to increase fire risks in California and beyond in the coming years. Building resilient ecosystems and protecting lives and properties will require collaborative solutions that are grounded in reality.

Here are three wildfire myths sparked by Trump and Zinke that, just like fires, must be stopped before they spread.

“We’ve been held hostage by environmental terrorists.”

In August, while the Carr Fire was still burning outside of Redding, California, Secretary Zinke blamed the fires on “environmental terrorists” whom he claimed prevented fuel reduction by blocking timber harvesting.If we’re going to prevent the catastrophic loss of life and property associated with future fires, we need to get the facts straight. Share on X

It’s true that timber harvesting and other fuel reduction treatments like prescribed burns on federal and state land are subject to appeal and legal challenge, but appeals early in the fuel treatment era resulted in improvements in project design which have led to most current fuel treatment projects meeting the statutory requirements.

A much more significant barrier to fuel treatment is lack of funding.

Most wildfire “fuels” are comprised of small trees, shrubs, leaf litter and other vegetation that have little to no market value, so removing them via prescribed burns or heavy equipment is a pure cost with no economic return beyond the value of fire prevention. The gap between needed and actual fuel treatment costs is in the billions.

Environmental terrorists aren’t the ones adding fuel to the fires, but rather the policymakers who are not allocating sufficient funds for a variety of necessary fuel reduction treatments.

Photo Credit: Erick Pleitez

California’s wildfires are costing taxpayers “hundreds of billions of dollars.”

President Trump doubled down on claims that environmentalists were to blame for California wildfires, saying, “They don’t want to clean up their forests because they have environmental problems cleaning it up — it should be the opposite, you’re going to lose your forest, you’re going to lose it.”

In the same meeting, he also falsely stated that the federal government was spending “hundreds of billions of dollars” to put out fires in California, and threatened to withdraw federal financing if the state didn’t do more to combat fires.

In reality, the U.S. government has spent a sliver of that – approximately $1.4 billion – over the past two years dealing with wildfires in California. Much of that funding is to fight fires on federal land (45 percent of the state) for which California has no management authority or responsibility for fire suppression.

Water is “foolishly being diverted into the Pacific Ocean.”

Fire officials in California were dumbfounded by President Trump’s bizarre tweet claiming that officials were wasting water that could otherwise be used to put out fires.

To be clear, water is not a limiting factor in wildland fire suppression in California. Firefighters suppress wildland fires with a suite of tools that includes airdrops of water and fire retardant, cutting fire breaks by hand and with heavy equipment, and the use of backfires (fires that burn up fuel in front of advancing fires).

California officials were quick to respond to this nonsensical tweet.

Daniel Berlant, assistant deputy director of Cal Fire, said, “We have plenty of water to fight these wildfires, but let’s be clear: It’s our changing climate that is leading to more severe and destructive fires.”

The Carr Fire that was burning at the time of Trump’s tweet was fanned by hot temperatures, dry vegetation and unusually high winds – all conditions that are exacerbated by climate change.

If we’re going to prevent the catastrophic loss of life and property associated with future fires, we need to get the facts straight, first.

It would also help if our federal leaders stopped pointing fingers and instead offered some support to the states and local communities suffering from frequent fires. Then maybe we can shift away from focusing so much on fire suppression and do more to prevent fires from occurring in the first place.