The West is ablaze.
Yes, that’s a whopping overstatement, like Gov. Bill Owens’ 2002 remark, “All of Colorado is on fire,” or Sen. Ken Salazar’s comment last week that “I look at Colorado as the Katrina of the West” in terms of federal disaster preparation.
But, a little yelling may be necessary to get people’s attention, and we hope Salazar and other Western senators will continue raising the alarm about forest safety.
For decades the government acted like a patient who doesn’t see a doctor for preventive care and then ends up in a very expensive emergency room.
By shorting funds to reduce fire risk on public lands, the government had to spend much more to fight the resulting wildfires. The price tag came to more than $200 million during Colorado’s big fire season in 2002.
This year looks like it could be expensive, too. The National Fire Information Center says there have been more than 66,000 wildfires reported in the U.S. so far in 2006, covering more than 4.8 million acres. For the same period in 2005, about 35,000 fires blackened 3.9 million acres. Colorado has had nearly 1,000 wildfires this year, consuming 78,000 acres.
The fact that few get really big and make the headlines is a testimony to the skill and quick response of local, state and federal firefighting crews.
The administration and Congress have started to get the prevention message – spending on fuels reduction is up dramatically since 2000, but a huge amount of work remains to be done.
Take Colorado. About $26 million has been allocated to thin overcrowded and insect-damaged trees on 87,000 acres of national forest across the state this year, according to Paul Langowski of the U.S. Forest Service office in Lakewood.
About 3.6 million of the service’s 11.1 million acres in Colorado are high-risk, although some areas can’t be treated because they are inaccessible or for other reasons. Langowski says the service would like to treat 140,000 acres a year for a decade. So, we’re falling behind by more than 50,000 acres just this year.
A fire, of course, doesn’t care if it burns the public’s trees or the ones behind your cabin, so mountain property owners need to take their own preventive measures.
