-Caveat Lector-
http://www.fire-ecology.org/research/soldiers_story.htm
Fighting Forests With Fire: A Soldier's Story
by Timothy Ingalsbee, Ph.D.
Director, Western Fire Ecology Center
[Published in "Wildfire!: an endangered ecosystem process." Vol. 1,
Cascadia Fire Ecology Education Project, 1994.]
FOR NEARLY A CENTURY THE FOREST SERVICE HAS BEEN WAGING WAR ON THE
WILD . Nowhere is the war metaphor more applicable than in
describing the agency's methods of "fighting" forest fires. In its
mission to search and destroy all forest fires, the agency commands
a vast army of firefighters, backed up by an armada of vehicles and
an arsenal of tools and equipment. The agency has built up the
world's largest, most technologically-advanced, most expensive
firefighting organization in the world, waging a never-ending war
on wildfire.
AFTER FIFTY YEARS OF SMOKEY BEAR PROPAGANDA, it seems almost
instinctual that we humans should fight forest fires. The media
reinforces our subconscious fears of fire, for they always villify
wildfires as disasters and catastrophes, an evil enemy which kills
trees and destroys forests. On the other hand, the media valorizes
firefighters as tough, brave, patriotic heroes defending the
Nation's forests by "battling" blazes and "fighting" fires.
THE MEDIA LOVES A GOOD WAR, and buys into the agency's
militarization of fire management. The whole Western Enlightenment
Conquest of Nature paradigm is played out to the fullest;
meanwhile, the institutional and ideological causes of the
conflict--the greed, arrogance, and power-hunger of Forest Service
managers and their corporate clientele--are obscurred. But as the
1994 fire season enters the record books as the most deadly and
destructive season in memory, we should ask ourselves, what does it
mean to be eternally at war with Nature?
THE FOREST SERVICE HAS BIG STAKES IN THE PERPETUATION OF THE WAR.
The agency reaps significant political and financial rewards from
fighting forest fires. Forest managers tap into a huge emergency
firefighting fund in Washington D.C., and have almost unlimited
access to the public's money to "put out" a fire. Subsequent
salvage logging sales are additional losses to the people's
economic and ecological treasury: private timber companies can buy
scorched trees at "fire sale" prices, and the individual National
Forest can keep all the timber receipts. Firefighting costs are
thus not expenditures, but investments that offer big revenues to
government and business.
FIREFIGHTING HAS BECOME A BIG BUSINESS, AND BUSINESS IS BOOMING.
Nearly $1 million (tax dollars) a day are spent on the average
large fire. Now, private entrepeneurs and corporations want a
bigger piece of this racket. A growing "fire-dependent" business
clientele has emerged, from contract firefighting crews to local
merchants and official government suppliers, all reaping windfall
profits on the taxpayers' till. The Forest Service will not stop
fighting fire because there are too many war profiteers with
interests at stake--and too many bored bureaucrats getting their
thrills playing with unlimited budgets while assuming a military
mode of authority. A new face of the Corporate State's
military-industrial complex has developed around the Forest Service
and its war on wildfire. And like all other war-related
enterprises, the taxpayers make hardly a fuss about how the
government spends their money.
I AM A VETERAN AND SURVIVOR OF THIS WAR. I began fighting fires 15
years ago as an eager and idealistic footsoldier, for it was more
than a job--it was an adventure! In North Cascades National Park, I
have cut fireline in ground so high that I could stare into the
blue crevasses of glaciers plunging from the ridgeline across the
valley. In the River of No Return Wilderness, I have cut fireline
in ground so deep down the steep Salmon River Canyon that the
smoke-filled sky blazed crimson red for hours after dawn, until the
sun topped the ridge. In the North Kalmiopsis Roadless Area, I was
paid to hike and camp in places few two-leggeds (other than
Sasquatch) rarely see. I have been blessed with these and many more
adventures, and witnessed some awesome displays of Nature's power
when a forest is afire.
I LOVED THE INCOME OF FIREFIGHTING, TOO. It felt like good pay for
good, hard work. The pride I felt about my job was like that of a
professional soldier for the Earth, an "eco-defender," if you will.
Most of my fellow firefighters, however, had the mentality of
mercenaries, and were willing to do almost anything to get those
fat paychecks. Even I was not immune to the "gold fever" that
afflicts firefighters. "There's green where there's black," we used
to say to ourselves, thinking deliriously about our future
paychecks while toiling away in working conditions that violate EPA
and OSHA rules for every other industrial occupation. It is scary
for me to realize how well the wage-slavery system of delayed
gratification sustained me through many hellish assignments.
IN THE MIDST OF FULFILLING MY ECO-DEFENDER FANTASIES, I adopted
much of the militarist mentality that pervades firefighting.
Firefighting operations are organized under an extremely
hierarchical, military-style chain of command. I have seen weak,
incompetent, uncharismatic technocrats who rarely get out of the
office, swell up with the arrogance of military generals when they
assumed a position of power on the pecking order of fire bosses.
They often forced firefighters--most of whom were a lot stronger
and smarter but of a lower bureaucratic rank--to do all kinds of
stupid, futile tasks for no other reason than the sheer delight of
exercising their power.
IF YOU ARE A GRUNT, YOUR JOB IS TO FOLLOW ORDERS, PERIOD. You dig a
line, stand in line, hurry up and wait, or work your ass off
according to the orders of your superiors. Your crewboss and
foreman tell you when and where to eat, sleep, and shit. I tended
to follow my orders with gusto and few gripes, and earned superior
evaluations (but no medals) for my combat service. It is scary for
me to look back now and see how years of playing with G.I. Joe
dolls, and psychological training in school athletics, conditioned
me with the ability to ignore my own anarchist instincts, pacifist
principles, and anti-imperialist politics, and willingly enlist as
a grunt in Uncle Sam's firefighting army. Now I deeply regret doing
the many aweful damn-stupid, dangerous, and destructive things that
go on in firefighting.
OF THE MANY "WAR CRIMES" I AM ASHAMED TO HAVE PARTICIPATED IN, one
stands out: the deliberate torching of scenic Sherman Pass on the
Colville National Forest. Working on the White Mountain Complex
Fire in 1988, we were ordered by a Type II ("second stringer")
Incident Commander to set a huge backfire along Highway 20.
Although those of us on the ground knew that the conditions were
not right that night, we "just followed orders" and lit the woods
anyway. The fire jumped the highway and surged into pristine,
unburned old-growth forest.
WE SPENT A DESPERATE, TERROR-FILLED NIGHT TRYING TO CHASE DOWN THE
FIRESTORM WE HAD CREATED. The next morning, the scene of
devastation along the roadway was astounding. Hundreds of burnt
trees had fallen across the road, and the intense heat of the blaze
had destroyed the guardrail, leaving the metal twisted and
blackened. The highway was closed for more than a week as trees
continued to fall. The agency's top fire bosses were forced to take
over command of the firefighting operations in order to pacify an
outraged local populace. The White Mountain Complex was renamed the
Sherman Fire, not only because a brand new human-caused wildfire
had been created at the top of Sherman Pass, but also, perhaps,
because it appeared that we were using the same "Civil" War tactics
as Sherman's March to the Sea. The Forest Service later completed
the destruction of this place by salvage logging this and other
places where we had set backburns. Now, large black stumps line
Highway 20's new "ob-scenic" corridor.
THOUGH WE ARE CALLED "FIRE" FIGHTERS, RARELY DO WE EVER DIRECTLY
ATTACK FLAMES. Instead, we normally do "indirect attack" on the
"fuels" (forest vegetation and soil), and ironically, fire is our
prime tool. We cut and burn trees along every foot of fireline, and
aim for 100% consumption of the understory vegetation. In fact, a
significant portion of the burned acreage on every forest fire
comes directly from the hands of firefighters. We essentially fight
fire with fire, and cheerily chant the "mopshot" mantra, "First we
light 'em, then we fight 'em," as we put our torches to the
greenery. It has gotten to the point that we should be renamed
"fire-lighters," because that is what we are doing, firelighting
not firefighting.
I HAVE COME TO SUSPECT THAT TIMBER BEASTS WORKING AS FIRE BOSSES
are using firefighters to chart out new logging sites under the
smokescreen of wildfire emergencies. Some of the huge backfires and
aggressive burnouts we set--far away from the main fire, and far in
excess of safety or suppression needs--also created large,
profitable salvage logging units. As a matter of policy, every fire
in the agency's designated "general forest" zone is salvage
logged--and the bigger the fire, the bigger the salvage sale! It
has saddened and angered me to learn how many wild places me and my
crewmembers worked our butts off to save--like the North Kalmiopsis
Roadless Area, like Yellowstone National Park!--were salvage
logged. The public should quickly dispel themselves of the myth
that firefighting saves trees--they are "saved" only for the
salvage saws. Perhaps we should ask the agency why it needs to
spend millions of tax dollars "fighting" forest fires if it intends
to log off the trees anyway.
THE TRUTH IS WE DON'T FIGHT FIRES, WE FIGHT THE FOREST. For all the
abuse we do to the trees--before, during, and after a
wildfire--perhaps we should be called "fir-fighters." In fact, we
fell many trees cutting fireline. First we cut the young ones to
make our fuelbreaks, then after burning out the fireline, we cut
the old ones. After line cutting is completed, the tree cutting
continues during "mop-up." This is the period where firefighters
confront only smoldering embers and hotspots after a flame front
has passed through. Some of the most valuable wildlife trees in the
forest--the giant Douglas-fir broken-tops and snags, hollowed with
the former homes of bats, squirrels, and owls--are usually ignited
from our backburns and burnouts. For the sake of "safety" and
suppression, these giant trees are systematically dropped to the
ground by bored firefighters doing the bidding of their bosses. We
fir-fighters (sic) on the firelines are thus on the frontlines of
forest destruction, truly "eco-warriors" in a war against the
forest...And the war goes on, from battle to battle, without end.
THE TRAGIC DEATHS OF THE FIREFIGHTERS ON STORM KING MOUNTAIN in
Colorado has shocked the nation into awareness that the war on
wildfire is not without its human casualties. As in every war, it
is always the young who are sent to fight and die. This tragedy has
severely shaken the normal arrogance and insularity of Forest
Service fire generals, for the women and men who died on the
mountain came from the most elite kinds of fire crews the agency
commands. The Forest Service has been scrambling to reassure the
public that its firefighting strategies and tactics are safe and
sound. To that end, the agency cynically blamed the victims for
their own deaths, claiming that the firefighters' own "can do"
attitudes made them take unnecessary risks in the face of known
hazards. This belies the fact that the "can do" attitude originates
at the top echelons of the agency, and is handed down the chain of
command. This winter the Forest Service's elite managers will
evaluate firefighting policies and procedures. Do not be surprised
if the massive new salvage and thinning projects coming ahead are
presented as "fire protection" plans to facilitate "firefighter
safety" as well as "forest health." Do not be shocked if the agency
shamelessly uses the tragedy to scare the public into supporting
its aggressive new logging proposals.
AS THE CORPORATE STATE'S WAR MACHINE CONTINUES TO SPIN on a
treadmill of its own making, the power-mongering and profiteering
that feed this unnecessary and unwinnable war are never addressed.
It is time that the American People end the government's war
against wildfire. Fire suppression and salvage are ravaging and
pillaging the forest. There are alternative, "light-hand" or
minimal-impact techniques for suppressing fires' severity that does
not sacrifice the trees. We must reject the State's militarization
of fire management, its warlike campaign to "fight" fires, and its
scorched Earth tactics of firefighting. We must make peace with the
planet, relearn to live with the Wild, and stop the eco-war. Now!
http://www.wildrockiesalliance.org/issues/wildfire/wildfire.html
http://www.wildcalifornia.org/projects/natlforest/reports/reports.html
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