CHRIS MERRILL Star-Tribune environment reporter | Posted: Friday, August 8, 2008 12:00 am
LANDER - While the U.S. Forest Service throws every possible resource at fighting wildfires this summer, its ability to suppress future fires might be diminishing by the day.
Fighting wildfires will cost about $400 million more this fiscal year than was appropriated in the federal budget, the chief of the U.S. Forest Service predicted this week.
The agency will have to take funds from forests throughout the country - in part because of California's raging fire season - to help pay for the shortfall, officials said this week.
The movement of dollars will postpone numerous projects at least until the next fiscal year, they said.
In a letter to agency personnel this week, U.S. Forest Service Chief Abigail Kimbell outlined a plan to transfer money into the firefighting kitty, in four increments of $100 million each.
The money will be diverted from projects such as brush disposal, fire fuels reduction, trail maintenance, logging ventures, road maintenance and forest health research.
The federal government appropriated $1.2 billion in the 2008 budget for the Forest Service to manage wildfires. Kimbell projected the cost of her agency's firefighting activities will actually reach $1.6 billion.
Unlike other federal departments that deal with disaster mitigation, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Forest Service cannot exceed its budget in times of crisis, then go back to congress for reimbursement.
This year's shortfall is just the latest signal that a new reality has emerged, especially in the West, for a department that 10 years ago spent about 12 percent of its total budget on fire suppression, said Frank Carroll, spokesman for the Black Hills National Forest.
Today the Forest Service is creeping up on spending 50 percent of its total budget trying to protect homes and communities from wildfires.
Throughout the West, millions of houses have been built in recent decades, the pace accelerating this century, at the edges of forests - at what's called the wildland-urban interface. And most of these structures are not "fire-worthy," Carroll said.
They often have highly flammable roofs, and there is usually no attempt at making the homes resistant to fire, he said.
It can be impossible to protect these houses and communities when a wildfire rips through the forest, but the Forest Service is obligated to try to save every one of them, he said. The cost is huge and is growing, and firefighters are more often being put in harm's way.
Homeowners will, typically, rebuild their burned-down houses in the same spot - where periodic fires are natural and inevitable.
"Unless we can, as a culture and a nation, shift our approach, we have to look at these costs as unavoidable," Carroll said. "We have not faced this issue. We're like alcoholics: We keep taking a drink from the same whiskey bottle thinking we're going to get a different result."
Given extensive development at the urban-wildland interface, and the natural cycle of forest fires, local communities must either require that homes at the edges of wildlands be "fire-wise," or citizens must simply be prepared to spend hundreds of millions, and even billions of dollars every year attempting to protect them, he said.
Shifting an ever greater portion of the Forest Service's budget into firefighting diminishes the agency's ability to keep the forests as healthy as possible, Carroll acknowledged.
Some of the projects that will be put off this year, for example, have been planned to help undo problems associated with nearly a century of all-out fire suppression on federal lands.
Fires are natural and good for forests, they thin and prune them, and keep them healthy in the long run, Carroll said. Forests that burn with a natural frequency, burn "cooler," and they thrive, he said.
"People need to build their homes in a fire area in a certain way," he said. "Fires are going to come. The objectives should be to have both fire-worthy forests and fire-worthy communities. That's how we reduce costs."
One component of a fire-resistant home is the use of non-burning, heat-resistant materials for the roof, such as asphalt, metal or concrete, according to the nonprofit organization, Firewise Communities.
The walls can be constructed with brick, cement, plaster, stucco or concrete masonry, and double-pane glass windows can also help resist heat, and make homes less likely to burn, the organization advises.
And it is important to surround houses with landscaping that acts as a natural firebreak, Carroll said.
Because the federal policy of total fire suppression began around 1910, there are now thousands of trees per acre in many Western forests, where there used to be hundreds per acre, he said.
Add nearly a decade of drought in many places, and there has been inadequate water to supply all of these trees. The dry trees, which are mostly pine, are then unable to produce sufficient sap - a natural insecticide - and many of these previously healthy trees have been unable to fend off insect attacks, especially bark beetles, he said.
As insects kill the trees, the amount of highly flammable fuels increases. Add even more development at the edges of these forests, and the situation becomes a "double whammy" for the Forest Service and for taxpayers, Carroll said.
Environment reporter Chris Merrill can be reached at chris.merrill@trib.com or at (307) 267-6722.