The Fire This Time · Episode 6 of 8 · 22 min
The Fire Deficit: How a Century of Suppression Built Megafires
For a century America won its war on wildfire, and every year it won, the fuel got deeper. Frequent low fires once thinned the forest; suppression removed them, so fires that used to creep now explode into the canopy. A warming climate that roughly doubled Western forest fire area, bark-beetle die-offs and millions of homes in the wildland-urban interface compound the problem.
Where it happens
- Spokane, Washington+3 more episodesRed-flag night that opens the series' story
- Sierra Nevada, California+6 more episodesSite of the 2013 Rim Fire, over 250,000 acres
- Western United States+2 more episodesRegion where forest fire area roughly doubled since the 1980s
Timeline
- 1935Forest Service commits to controlling every fire by 10 a.m. the next day
- 1978Federal policy abandons blanket suppression as the only goal
- 1984-2015Climate change adds about 4.2 million hectares of Western forest fire area
- 1990-2010Wildland-urban interface grows from 30.8 to 43.4 million houses
- 2013Rim Fire burns over 250,000 acres in California
Still debated
Scientists and managers argue over how much of the megafire problem is fuels, how much is climate and how much is where people build. The honest answer is all three, in proportions that vary by place.
← PreviousThe Big Burn of 1910 and the War on All WildfireNext →Good Fire: The Hard Return to Prescribed and Managed Burning
