Transcript:

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ambience: fire

Unless we clear out brush and deadwood from our forests, parks and backyards, these areas become especially prone to fire. Today, some officials are recommending the use of controlled fires to remove the debris and prevent future disasters. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

“Over the years we have done an excellent job of stopping wildfires, in 98% of the cases now. But the brush is now growing freely instead of being burned out on a regular basis, which was the way it happened before we interfered. So fire does have a role, and it is natural, and it is needed. The problem today is with property values and human presence is we have a more difficult time using fire as a tool. We can’t accept uncontrolled fire. So we’ve started to use controlled fire, and we’ve had programs for quite a few years to burn brush to try to get the fuels modified so that they’re less of a risk to the homeowners, to the resident. And you have less destructive fires in your watershed.”

Richard Schell is a Deputy Chief of Fire Prevention Engineering for California’s Department of Forestry. He says that efforts have been made to use controlled fire to clear brush, but not in the areas that need it.

“Where we can have controlled fire to help as a management tool, we’re out in the wilderness areas. And yet the area that we really need to deal with are those areas around the perimeter of cities and communities and neighborhoods. And they’re the most difficult to manage. So, we would like to be able to continue to use natural fire, which some agencies do to create more natural conditions. And then in the more urban areas, we use prescribed or controlled fire done on a very stringent parameter and criteria of safety. And we try to simulate what nature’s done over the years but we can only do it in small blocks at a time.”

Pulse of the Planet is presented by the National Science Foundation.

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