Please, we need an honest discussion about the contributions of geoengineering to wildfires. Even if lightning or arson or hikers in the Canadian woods lights the sparks, could injecting chemicals into the atmosphere be making fuels drier and more volatile?
Lee Zeldin, head of EPA, has finally said the quiet part out loud: that governments are involved and are playing God globally.
“Aggressive initial attack was never a bad idea.” - Smokey Bear.
With that said, here in southwest Oregon, especially on the Rogue-Siskiyou NF - the aggressive IA STRATEGY seems to be working well this season.
This Forest is keeping lightning starts small. It’s using the full array of our diverse, inclusive, and expansive IA tools. Its cooperative partners are all tied in. Not yet this year have we had a long duration, multi-season, extraordinary expensive fire.
It should be noted however, that this strategy (policy?) was enacted prior to the current administration.
For the last several years - especially since most of this Forest’s lands have burned - it became obvious that in this area - you have got to get them quickly and when they are small (what a novel idea!)
Anyway - I see a difference here.
It’s great not having to breathe smoke all summer long.
Ironically and presently, there does seem to be a lot of slash fuels (both public and private) that still needs to be treated; fuels from logging mega fires, and fuels on private lands that are rapidly being cut … due to fear of large fires. Go figure.
One outcome of the shift back toward aggressive initial attack is that risk management decisions are now being placed back in the hands of firefighters, smokejumpers, and IHC superintendents, rather than defaulting to uniformed district rangers or administrators. In previous years, we often saw risk-averse decisions (frequently informed by experimental models ) made from behind desks by agency administrators with limited operational experience. The default position was often, “It’s too dangerous to send people in.”
Today, at least, firefighters are being allowed to engage, conduct on-the-ground risk assessments, and make informed determinations about whether and how to safely take action. I firmly believe that in prior years, many June and early July fires would have been managed under overly cautious strategies, allowed to gain traction on the landscape, and ultimately tied up resources through the end of the season. This in turn required continuous IMT rotations until snowfall, with incident management teams being used more to achieve long-term land management objectives than to resolve immediate incidents. The reduced number of IMT mobilizations this summer compared to last year is one clear reflection of the benefits of decisive early response. Simply put: we succeeded in containing the fires early that needed to be contained, which then allowed us to prioritize the more complex incidents later in the season that were never realistically “catchable” in the first place.
There is absolutely a time and place to manage fire for broader objectives, but we are not yet proficient enough to do so without accounting for risk, costs, and consequences.
Finally, some of the complaints from contractors are a byproduct of successful initial attack. Many business models in the private sector have been built around supporting long-duration incidents. When aggressive initial attack is effective, fires are contained, system stress is reduced, and the demand for extended support contracts naturally declines.
Good article on the current state of affairs regarding the US’s wildfire numbers-and acreage burned to date. I agree, September is often a look out here it comes again wildfire month in America. Also, much of Canada is still smoldering and experiencing new starts as well. Here in Western MT Canadian smoke is once again infiltrating the mountain valleys. Record heat alerts are also predicted once again today for most of Montana. Obviously too be continued. Keep the conversations fresh, honest and enlightening as you have to date…….
I.A. and full suppression all day otherwise you end up with the Dragon Bravo. We absolutely need to treat more acres but that is a separate conversation on how to put more fire on the ground in the off season and treat more acres.
Good report, and solid data and statistic driven information. Respected and accurate... Still, to me, too many unknowns and intangibles to draw conclusions that a briefly worded directive is the variable that would be making a significant difference ?? AND it's only the first week in September.
In my experience the single biggest factor in an incident escaping IA and going big is - weather/fuel conditions at the time of ignition. And the availability and access of IA resources. Plus throw in a little "luck". A one paragraph directive from the Secretary or Chief falls much further down the list of factor in determining a responses outcome.
As for the contractors - Can you remember a season there wasn't complaints about not enough assignments, or debate about how the dispatch centers call out list were working ?? The market may finally be saturated with providers, and like your post points to, demand has been modest to this point. Consolidation, preferential treatment, gaming the system in attempts to monopolize is everywhere in the private sector these days. Doesn't make it right, just common.... I feel, but only for the Mom & Pop operations with one or a handful of pieces of equipment signed up.
100% suppression of all wildfires?! What a great brilliant idea that's never been thought of before. Can't image how this has never been thought of before or could possibly backfire on us.
I was a skeptical that initial attack policy changes could have that large of an impact. I figured fuel conditions would pretty easily explain why fires were not going big this year, so I checked the drought monitor. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/ComparisonSlider.aspx
This is just one piece of the fire risk puzzle, but I was sure surprised. Go take a look for yourself and compare the same dates for 2017-2024 to 2025. At least on the rainfall side of the equation, we should likely be seeing more acres burned. There will be plenty of time this winter for arm-chair quarterbacking, and lots of ways to compare "past years", but 2025 numbers are pretty interesting so far. https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires
Thanks for the article Tim. It's a good question... has aggressive initial attack reduced the number of acres burned this year (assuming we have actually changed our IA strategy). Looking at the fire numbers vs acres burned seems like a logical strategy to examine this. Is there any correlation between these two things? If you take the NIFC data (www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires) it doesn't show much correlation, meaning there doesn't seem to be much of a relation between the number of wildfires in the US per year to the number of acres burned in the US per year. Here's a quick plot I made showing this:
*note that I removed the first 2 years, 1983 and 1984 because the numbers seemed abnormally low, not sure if this is valid or not
I think in reality, of course, there are a lot of factors that go into this relation of fire numbers vs. acres burned. Weather, especially big wind events, are probably important. One thing that seemed a little abnormal this year compared to other years was that it seemed like the large fires were more evenly spread out across the country at any given time. Like each region would only have 1 or 2 CIMT fires at a time, but this would be the case in 4 or 5 regions simultaneously. Seems like it's more common in past years that one or two regions is overwhelmed with many CIMT fires at once. Maybe the more even load of CIMT fires across the country this year also impacted the contractors...? The gov resources were first called in the region and that in-region supply wasn't exhausted as easily as having many CIMT fires in one region?
Another big recent change I am seeing is that, with the switch from IMT1 and IMT2 to CIMT, there are way more large fires being managed by local IMT3s than there used to be. The old type 2 fires are now managed by IMT3s.
Just a personal experience, but the air quality in Western Washington has been pretty good this summer compared to some previous years when we got heavily smoked out. There haven't been any days - yet - where we could smell smoke all day long and our eyes were stinging.
Please, we need an honest discussion about the contributions of geoengineering to wildfires. Even if lightning or arson or hikers in the Canadian woods lights the sparks, could injecting chemicals into the atmosphere be making fuels drier and more volatile?
Lee Zeldin, head of EPA, has finally said the quiet part out loud: that governments are involved and are playing God globally.
Two good places to begin research are https://zerogeoengineering.com/ and https://geoengineeringwatch.org/
“Aggressive initial attack was never a bad idea.” - Smokey Bear.
With that said, here in southwest Oregon, especially on the Rogue-Siskiyou NF - the aggressive IA STRATEGY seems to be working well this season.
This Forest is keeping lightning starts small. It’s using the full array of our diverse, inclusive, and expansive IA tools. Its cooperative partners are all tied in. Not yet this year have we had a long duration, multi-season, extraordinary expensive fire.
It should be noted however, that this strategy (policy?) was enacted prior to the current administration.
For the last several years - especially since most of this Forest’s lands have burned - it became obvious that in this area - you have got to get them quickly and when they are small (what a novel idea!)
Anyway - I see a difference here.
It’s great not having to breathe smoke all summer long.
Ironically and presently, there does seem to be a lot of slash fuels (both public and private) that still needs to be treated; fuels from logging mega fires, and fuels on private lands that are rapidly being cut … due to fear of large fires. Go figure.
One outcome of the shift back toward aggressive initial attack is that risk management decisions are now being placed back in the hands of firefighters, smokejumpers, and IHC superintendents, rather than defaulting to uniformed district rangers or administrators. In previous years, we often saw risk-averse decisions (frequently informed by experimental models ) made from behind desks by agency administrators with limited operational experience. The default position was often, “It’s too dangerous to send people in.”
Today, at least, firefighters are being allowed to engage, conduct on-the-ground risk assessments, and make informed determinations about whether and how to safely take action. I firmly believe that in prior years, many June and early July fires would have been managed under overly cautious strategies, allowed to gain traction on the landscape, and ultimately tied up resources through the end of the season. This in turn required continuous IMT rotations until snowfall, with incident management teams being used more to achieve long-term land management objectives than to resolve immediate incidents. The reduced number of IMT mobilizations this summer compared to last year is one clear reflection of the benefits of decisive early response. Simply put: we succeeded in containing the fires early that needed to be contained, which then allowed us to prioritize the more complex incidents later in the season that were never realistically “catchable” in the first place.
There is absolutely a time and place to manage fire for broader objectives, but we are not yet proficient enough to do so without accounting for risk, costs, and consequences.
Finally, some of the complaints from contractors are a byproduct of successful initial attack. Many business models in the private sector have been built around supporting long-duration incidents. When aggressive initial attack is effective, fires are contained, system stress is reduced, and the demand for extended support contracts naturally declines.
Good article on the current state of affairs regarding the US’s wildfire numbers-and acreage burned to date. I agree, September is often a look out here it comes again wildfire month in America. Also, much of Canada is still smoldering and experiencing new starts as well. Here in Western MT Canadian smoke is once again infiltrating the mountain valleys. Record heat alerts are also predicted once again today for most of Montana. Obviously too be continued. Keep the conversations fresh, honest and enlightening as you have to date…….
I.A. and full suppression all day otherwise you end up with the Dragon Bravo. We absolutely need to treat more acres but that is a separate conversation on how to put more fire on the ground in the off season and treat more acres.
USFS R3
Good report, and solid data and statistic driven information. Respected and accurate... Still, to me, too many unknowns and intangibles to draw conclusions that a briefly worded directive is the variable that would be making a significant difference ?? AND it's only the first week in September.
In my experience the single biggest factor in an incident escaping IA and going big is - weather/fuel conditions at the time of ignition. And the availability and access of IA resources. Plus throw in a little "luck". A one paragraph directive from the Secretary or Chief falls much further down the list of factor in determining a responses outcome.
As for the contractors - Can you remember a season there wasn't complaints about not enough assignments, or debate about how the dispatch centers call out list were working ?? The market may finally be saturated with providers, and like your post points to, demand has been modest to this point. Consolidation, preferential treatment, gaming the system in attempts to monopolize is everywhere in the private sector these days. Doesn't make it right, just common.... I feel, but only for the Mom & Pop operations with one or a handful of pieces of equipment signed up.
100% suppression of all wildfires?! What a great brilliant idea that's never been thought of before. Can't image how this has never been thought of before or could possibly backfire on us.
Just buying time ,
Building up fuel for “the big one “
I was a skeptical that initial attack policy changes could have that large of an impact. I figured fuel conditions would pretty easily explain why fires were not going big this year, so I checked the drought monitor. https://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/Maps/ComparisonSlider.aspx
This is just one piece of the fire risk puzzle, but I was sure surprised. Go take a look for yourself and compare the same dates for 2017-2024 to 2025. At least on the rainfall side of the equation, we should likely be seeing more acres burned. There will be plenty of time this winter for arm-chair quarterbacking, and lots of ways to compare "past years", but 2025 numbers are pretty interesting so far. https://www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires
Thanks for all your hard work Tim!
Thanks for the article Tim. It's a good question... has aggressive initial attack reduced the number of acres burned this year (assuming we have actually changed our IA strategy). Looking at the fire numbers vs acres burned seems like a logical strategy to examine this. Is there any correlation between these two things? If you take the NIFC data (www.nifc.gov/fire-information/statistics/wildfires) it doesn't show much correlation, meaning there doesn't seem to be much of a relation between the number of wildfires in the US per year to the number of acres burned in the US per year. Here's a quick plot I made showing this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1SV8pUmaug6Th5sAQ7W2UKO73O4Hi9ONk/view?usp=drive_link
*note that I removed the first 2 years, 1983 and 1984 because the numbers seemed abnormally low, not sure if this is valid or not
I think in reality, of course, there are a lot of factors that go into this relation of fire numbers vs. acres burned. Weather, especially big wind events, are probably important. One thing that seemed a little abnormal this year compared to other years was that it seemed like the large fires were more evenly spread out across the country at any given time. Like each region would only have 1 or 2 CIMT fires at a time, but this would be the case in 4 or 5 regions simultaneously. Seems like it's more common in past years that one or two regions is overwhelmed with many CIMT fires at once. Maybe the more even load of CIMT fires across the country this year also impacted the contractors...? The gov resources were first called in the region and that in-region supply wasn't exhausted as easily as having many CIMT fires in one region?
Another big recent change I am seeing is that, with the switch from IMT1 and IMT2 to CIMT, there are way more large fires being managed by local IMT3s than there used to be. The old type 2 fires are now managed by IMT3s.
Just a personal experience, but the air quality in Western Washington has been pretty good this summer compared to some previous years when we got heavily smoked out. There haven't been any days - yet - where we could smell smoke all day long and our eyes were stinging.