1/13/2023 0 Comments Joyce gesundheit![]() It was a heroic undertaking, with a side effect. Voiceover: Over 1,000 engine strike teams were summoned to protect life and property from an inferno.įor decades, Forest Service crews tried to put out every fire by the next morning. For three-and-a-half years, he oversaw the Forest Service – the country's largest firefighting agency. Department of Agriculture during the Obama administration. Robert Bonnie was under secretary for Natural Resources and Environment at the U.S. ![]() Robert Bonnie: Fire has always been part of the landscape. But they're the ones that burn the most land, destroy the most homes, and cost the most in often futile efforts to fight them. Of the tens of thousands of wildfires that break out each year. history.Ĭhopper pilot: This is a lot of homes here and they're really close to this fire. In Northern California, the year before, this fire burned more than a thousand homes, helping to make 2015 the most destructive and costly year of wildfires in U.S. Last November, wind-driven wildfires near Gatlinburg, Tennessee, killed 14 people and damaged or destroyed more than 2,400 homes and businesses. Fifty years ago, wildfires destroyed a few hundred structures per year across the United States. And we are fighting wild land fires in the middle of these neighborhoods.Īs more houses are built near wildlands, more of them burn. This entire community here is the urban interface. It's called the "wildland urban interface" where people can live close to nature and to the fires that burn there.īrian Marshall: These homes are part of the urban interface. Neighborhoods amid forests and grasslands are now so common, they have their own special name. There are now 43 million homes in or near wildlands. More houses than ever lie within the reach of such fires. Steve Inskeep: Is there something the public doesn't get about the really big, fast-moving, dangerous fires?īrian Marshall: When you have the extreme fire behavior, when the weather, fuel, and topography sets up there may not be anything that we can do. It kept burning despite the efforts of firefighters who spent $22 million trying to stop it. Hot, dry conditions on a summer day in the Kern River Valley, and all we needed was a spark and there was no stopping that fire.
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