5
votes
California may be underutilizing its smokejumpers claims veteran firefighter
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- Title
- Are we ignoring the smokejumpers? - Wildfire Today
- Authors
- Kelly Andersson
- Published
- Jul 12 2023
- Word count
- 481 words
I see the comments he made in the article and all I can think is, we're underutilizing the jumpers until a few of them have accidents and get burned up. Then it's a tragedy that could've and should've been prevented. The comment about 'putting fire back on the land' came as particularly abrasive to me because if we have effective (and, frankly, that's harder and harder every day) fire policies we wouldn't need smoke jumpers at all.
This article read to me as "why don't we use more infantry lines in the face of all this guerrilla warfare?" Do we need another "Lost Crew" memorial after we drop a crew in less than ideal conditions?
I mean, he himself was a smoke jumper? Maybe he just personally is into badass heroics and he survived right? I don't claim that the main point of view is 100 percent correct, but the contrast with Oregon was interesting. Personally I think PGandE should be pressured /required to do effective brush clearing but I'm not sure what you do about lightning in the back country.
Edit. I don't want to be insensitive re people risking their lives. It is possible that this is the equivalent of someone saying 'Well we always rode in the back of the pickup truck and were fine'. But it is also possible that he is correct about the capabilities of smoke jumpers. Or the answer might be somewhere in the middle. idk.
I'm certain that Smoke Jumping in a thrill when everything goes right. Imagine sky diving, rappelling and fire fighting all in one? Sounds awesome to me...
However, it's a direct reflection of the 10am policy that caused this mess in the first place. I hate to put it this way the at this point the 'Wildlands' require direct human intervention and management unless we want the ecosystems to change on their own. That means getting out there and removing the underbrush either by prescribed fire (unlikely) or saw. That means building roads into the forest and bringing people out there.
Humans, with the 10am policy, already changed the ecosystem over the last 100 years. That's it. It's done. We intervened. We can't just suddenly stop intervening and expect it to all go back to normal. His suggestion is status quo though and just builds up the fire debt for the next how many years?
Pyroecologists aren't a big lobbying group but I don't see how the Civilian Conservation Core 2.0 would pass on a federal level at this point, so since it's in California I guess the state should start up the program.
And PG&E should absolutely be on the hook for their negligence. That's a different story altogether though.
Re 10 AM policy, since not everyone will be familiar... https://foresthistory.org/research-explore/us-forest-service-history/policy-and-law/fire-u-s-forest-service/u-s-forest-service-fire-suppression/
The Rogue River–Siskiyou National Forest in southern Oregon has taken a more aggressive approach to putting fires out when small. In the last three seasons they’ve had 192 fires and burned only 50 acres. This was achieved by pre-positioning jumpers during lightning storms, better utilization of rappellers, and contract fire resources.