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Comment by hcurtiss | Hacker News Reader

Fire is a natural part of the landscape. We are seeing today the consequence of 100 years of aggressive suppression combined with forty years of failed management. There are those arguing today that we should accommodate fire, harden our homes, and live with the consequences, including terrible air quality. But there's another way. We can actively manage our forests. Mechanical thinning combined with fire in the shoulder seasons can return our overstocked forests to healthy condition. While we could let nature run its course, it will take decades of catastrophic wildfire to get there, with the attendant loss of life and livability. We should support active management of our federal forests to produce better outcomes more quickly.

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> We can actively manage our forests.

Most of the fires in CA are not forest fires. Most of the atmospheric CO2 contributions are from what most refer to as "brush" fires. Take several mountains and valleys covered with dry vegetation of all types (yes, trees included) and burn them. That's what we have here.

Yes, forest management is important. Difficult, and maybe even practically impossible, yet important. However, this will not have the effect most commenters on this thread seem to think it will. Brush fires are nearly impossible to control. The best we can do is protect property and let them have their way with the hills an valleys they consume.

I live in this area. My neighborhood has been affected by and even surrounded by brush fires multiple times. I know how they fight them. You can't control them. If the winds are blowing in the wrong direction there's almost nothing you can do to prevent a catastrophe.

I have seen half a dozen air-dropping helicopters, a couple of Canadian fire fighting aircraft and a couple of DC-10's (or whatever they are) mount a combined attack on a massive brush fire north of my town multiple times in the decades I have lived here. All they can hope to do is protect property when the conditions allow. Nothing more.

Forest management is a very small part of the problem (or solution, depending on your take on the matter).

Don't ask what I think the solution might be. I don't think anyone knows. It's like asking how to plug a volcano or stop a hurricane. Sometimes you have to accept that things are the way they are and we just don't have the power to control any of it.

It is, however what's been happening in CA is a direct result of poor forest management and planning

Actively managed forests sound good, but be rational. Are you willing to risk several hundred years of the region's health on the government doing something right? We know that natural fire works. It ain't pretty, and it can be dangerous, but at least it's more likely to resolve the problem than "40 years of failed management" is to not turn into another "40 years of failed management."

I live near the towns of Detroit and Gates in Oregon, both burned to the ground in the 2020 labor day fires. Many people died. Hundreds of homes destroyed. I think it's worth trying better management.

Natural fire is incompatible with houses built with sticks. Either you figure out how to build fireproof houses, or you manage the forests in the Wildland-urban interface [0].

[0] https://www.usfa.fema.gov/wui/

> Actively managed forests sound good, but be rational.

It can work. The U.S. Forest Service does a pretty good job of managing the forests around my part of Northern Arizona. 20 years ago a fire got out of control and we lost a few homes, but they've been diligently mowing the underbrush ever since.

~5 years ago a fire started. I went to their briefing. They were honest: "this is a worst-case-scenario location for a fire", because it was burning in an area that hadn't been burned or treated in 40+ years.

They contract for companies with brush mowers to shred the underbrush, and keep track of when each section of the forest gets mowed.

No fires this summer, on account of a crazy amount of rain. It'll be 10 years before this summer's growth dies out and becomes a fire hazard.

I just don't trust the assumption that the world's leading forestry science experts and a perfectly run government could manage a forest.

There are unknown unknowns. It's an ecosystem that's way more complicated than we realized 40 years ago, so thinking "yeah we just do these 5 things and problem solved" is hubris that could end up be called mismanagement in 40 years, because it created an even bigger problem when we failed to consider an unknown.

If people need to evacuate the area for a few decades, so be it. It sucks, but not as badly as another 100 years of dealing with problems.

Or just live in places that don't require active management to such a high degree. It's also very energy intensive and completely preventable since humans merely would have to move to safer places.

It's like people who like to live on a cliff by the water and then are bailed out when few years later the cliff is in risk of collapsing. Just avoid it in the first place.

Edit: some governments are already realizing this. It's impossible economicly to properly protect all people who live in remote locations surrounded by forest. At some point we just have to understand that the outsized costs to overall society of keeping small towns with dozens of people safe is not smart when they can move to somewhere safe. I'm just being honest. Governments are doing this implicitly by doing the bare minimum that will fly in the press, while demonstrating through actions that the more time goes on the more you're at your own risk if you live in a small town in a fire zone.

Putting aside the profound ethical implications of shuttering rural towns (and the political hurdles to doing so), this strategy does not address carbon emissions, much less the profound air quality impacts associated with catastrophic wildfire, including impacts in urban areas like Portland Oregon right now.

If there's no people or power lines going through those forest areas, the fires will go down by a lot.

I do suggest a slow transition away from remote / dangerous places, unless people are willing to deal with the fact that nobody will come to help if bad things happen. It's a bit rich to expect all of society to contribute such a big effort just so small minorities can stay in places where it's not safe or economical to live, once you factor in the fact that Nature exists, and doesn't care about the fact your parents lived there.

And by the way, this is how it works in countries that can't afford this already. Even in Portugal after the last round of fires, the prime Minister said that the country cannot afford to protect every remote village in case of fire, and that people should reconsider where they live. More countries will follow.

The consequences are vast. Would you abandon much of the American West?

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