Some of the largest wildfires ever recorded are
raging across the west.
Millions of acres have burned in California,
already 10 times more than an average fire
season. Dozens are dead.
Firefighters like Michael Seaton, who lost his
home in the deadly 2013 Camp Fire, have worked
more than a month straight this year because of
the short staffing. We were doing 48 hour shifts.
I've seen people be standing up and with their
eyes closed and they're basically asleep.
Whole neighborhoods are gone in Oregon, where 10
percent of the state's population has faced
evacuation orders.
The sky turned orange and dangerous methane
filled smoke has reached as far as Europe.
Colorado's Pine Gulch fire is the largest in
state history, while an area 15 times the size of
Seattle has burned in Washington.
This is also a wildfire year with record burning
in other parts of the planet.
Fires that are burning north of the Arctic Circle
in regions we've never mapped fires before.
All of this is on the heels of wildfire
emergencies in 2019, 2018, 2017 points to the
pattern of how climate warming is predisposing
large landscapes to unprecedented fire activity.
Climate change has brought record-breaking heat
waves and drought, leaving dried out vegetation
easily sparked by lightning and by people.
From downed power lines to cars backfiring,
cigarette butts flicked out car windows and
gender reveal parties gone wrong, nearly 85
percent of wildland fires in the U.S.
are caused by people. Every year we map more than
a million large wildfires, fires larger than one
hundred acres. Almost all of those large
wildfires are started by people.
At the same time, humans are moving to wildfire
prone areas in droves.
Some of the people that lost their house in the
campfire relocated to areas that are now they've
lost their house for a second time.
How as a country are we spending our money?
Are we going to have an F-35 dogfight with the
Russians or the Chinese?
Maybe. But the more likely thing is we're going
to continue to burn our citizens over as
devastating fires become the norm year after
year. What are the ways we're scrambling to get
them under control from massive spending?
That's not enough to attacking from both land and
air. How has the way we fight forest fires
changed over the decades?
And will fire prevention and detection technology
ever catch up with the rapid rate at which the
West is burning? In the 1800's, wildland
firefighting was primarily focused on protecting
resources like timber from burning.
Now, as the population booms and moves farther
into wilderness areas, firefighting is about
protecting people's lives, homes and businesses.
But one thing has remained constant.
Big fires mean big financial losses.
Ultimately, everybody's risking a lot of
resiliency in the US economy by not dealing with
this problem. Fire suppression costs the federal
government upwards of three billion dollars each
year, with state agencies spending billions more.
And the economic toll after a fire has ravaged an
area is far greater.
Australia's record wildfires last year cost the
continent more than $110 billion dollars in
losses. And with wildfires nearly five times more
frequent in the western U.S.
since the 1970s. And what was once a four month
fire season now lasting six or even eight months,
the costs are only growing.
You have the homes going down.
You have the infrastructure going down.
You have the habitat going down.
Who's going to go to these places anymore?
The money for firefighting comes from city, state
and federal funds. There has to be good, strong
forest management, which I've been talking about
for three years with the state.
So hopefully they'll start doing that.
But the federal government also carries
responsibility for forest management.
We acknowledge our role and responsibility to do
more in that space.
But one thing is fundamental 57 percent of the
land in this state is federal forest land.
Three percent is California.
So we really do need that support.
In practice, forest management has become a
complicated game of catch up.
For years, the money set aside for it ends up
being used to fight active fires that are far
larger than budgets accounted for.
And further cuts to those budgets in the face of
the global pandemic adds extra strain.
California, for example, was poised to spend more
than one billion dollars to prepare for future
fires. But its $54 billion dollar budget deficit
means that spending is on hold.
And amid concerns over a high rate of Covid
infection in prisons, California released
hundreds of inmates in August who normally serve
as firefighter hand crews that clear vegetation
from a line that helps contain a fire.
The decrease in manpower adds more strain to fire
crews already pushed to the limit.
I've been on shift for going on 35 days now to
about 40 plus days.
It's just been a very, very long, difficult fire
season. They're sleeping in dirt .
They're without food.
They get stuff in their eyes and their lungs.
It's miserable. It wears out your body.
It really does. And with this season's fires
burning within miles of Silicon Valley, home to
the world's tech giants and some of their
billionaire leaders, some are calling for more
money and ideas to stop the trend.
They should be involved in wide scale fuel
reduction program, donating more to the local
fire services.
There is no place on the planet where there is a
greater disconnect between high tech and climate
change is where the titans of Silicon Valley
live. It's scary.
While some wealthy homeowners can afford private
firefighting crews, the vast majority of
firefighters work for the government.
There are local city and county fire departments,
state agencies like Cal Fire and federal
firefighters from the U.S.
Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management and
the National Park Service.
Hundreds of agencies can work together on the
biggest fires, although it's not always all hands
on deck. So it's finding that balance where we
can send as much help as they can to others, but
also kind of keep in her back pocket people in
case we get a fire locally.
So our initial gear pack is probably right around
20 to 30 pounds. And then you throw in another
40, 45 pounds hose on top of that, that you're
moving back and forth all day long.
It's a very physically demanding job.
The tools are nothing new.
Axes, shovels, rakes, chainsaws to help them
clear brush and control which way a fire burns.
Crews also fight fire with fire, burning ahead of
a blaze so there's no unburnt kindling to catch.
Intentional fires are also used to prevent future
fires. Native American tribes used to hold annual
controlled burns, but with tribes displaced,
these largely stopped and California adopted a
standard policy of total fire suppression.
Decades later, this has left a thick buildup of
vegetation that dries out every summer and
ignites easily. Now some governments are
partnering with tribal leaders to restore
cultural burns when a fire does get out of
control. There are many types of vehicles that
can be deployed. Bulldozers remove brush to
create a big dirt containment line.
Fire engines carry at least 500 gallons of water
with wildland engines built specifically for
rough terrain and to pump water on a fire while
driving. When it comes to very hard to reach
trails and backcountry, sometimes the Forest
Service sends supplies in on a team of mules.
We're very, very slow to change.
Why can Elon Musk do what he's doing?
Because people will buy thousands of cars, but
fire departments will buy one fire engine every
seven years. One new type of vehicle is a remote
controlled robot called Colossus, used to fight
last year's fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral when
it got too dangerous for humans to venture in
safely. In the forest,
we're dealing with miles and miles of fire line
that's changing locations all the time, whereas
the colossus has to be set up with a huge support
structure, a huge water supply and a giant pump
to make it all work.
Some rural areas don't have fire hydrants at all
here. Fire crews drive in water on big tankers or
water tenders. In rural areas, it's
often faster to drop large amounts of water from
aircraft, some as small as single seaters with
100 gallon buckets to a 747 supertanker that can
drop 19,000 gallons from four pressurized tubes
in the bottom of the plane built in 1992.
This largest of the firefighting aircraft was
originally a Japan Airlines passenger Boeing 747.
Now it's deployed up to five times a day with a
drop that can fill a swimming pool in eight
seconds. Keep in mind, though, all those air
resources, they can be grounded due to high
winds. They could be grounded due to smoke.
They could be grounded due to visibility.
And sometimes the public is like, what are you
guys doing? And it's like, well, they're not
dying. That's what they're doing.
Helicopters were introduced to the fire service in
the 60s. They can do emergency rescues or drop
water on a fire after using a large bucket or
snorkel to suck it out of a nearby source or from
a portable tank. We only had one helicopter.
So he has to fly all the way down to get water at
this other location where he can get water and
then come all the way back up the hill and then
make another drop. By the time that happened, the
fire had gotten away from us.
That's why I retired. Fire Battalion Chief Mark
Whaling developed the heli-hydrant, a stationary
tank that rapidly fills with water at the push of
a button from a helicopter pilot above.
Some have been installed in Orange County and
he's working with water agencies to get them in
other areas. Soon we would be saving that
helicopter so much time flying down to find
water. And if we place these around a city, we
could change the dynamics of how we suppress
fires. Aircraft also drop substances besides
water, an area that's seen a flurry of recent
innovation. Stanford developed a gel-like
treatment it claims is environmentally benign.
Popular retardant Phos-Chek is bright pink so
pilots can see where they already dropped it.
Blaze tamer is a new chemical agent added to
water so the molecules adhere together instead of
turning into mist when dropped.
There are foams that break down water so it can
soak in better. Although exposure to these can
increase the risk of thyroid disease and cancer,
they have impacts on the soil also.
So we have to not drop them your streams or not
put them in areas where we have problems, because
what does it matter if we stop the fire but we
kill off the last species that has been there for
a million years? And then there's aerial
firefighters. Federal agencies employ around 300
smokejumpers, experienced firefighters who
parachute into remote areas with enough gear to
make them self-sufficient for at least 48 hours.
There's also crews trained specifically to repel
out of helicopters. Some fire agencies send
drones to map fire perimeters or even drop small
balls of fire to burn up dry brush where they
don't want to fire to go. Fire is an integral
part of that whole process.
That rebirth that happens after the fire is
critical and the cleansing that happens during
the fire is critical.
In June, PG&E and pleaded guilty to 84 counts of
involuntary manslaughter for the role its power
lines played in starting the 2018 Camp Fire that
destroyed almost 19,000 structures, including
Seaton's home. Now it will deploy drones to spot
equipment issues before they spark a fire.
This was a historic moment and hopefully historic
moment for corporate America to know that
prosecutors wherever will not allow them to get
away with recklessly endangering the lives of the
citizens that they serve.
The biggest innovations in fire management
recently are in how data is used for better
mapping and earlier detection.
Two NOAA-operated geostationary satellites can
take pictures every 30 seconds from 22,000
kilometers above Earth.
Higher resolution images are taken twice a day by
four NASA satellites orbiting the poles, these
satellites have heat sensors that detect fire
activity while aircraft collect nighttime
infrared imagery and are experimenting with
faster daytime detection around the world.
Those data are transmitted in real time to people
who need to make decisions, oftentimes in the
form of a text message for a forest manager or a
park ranger about the location of a new fire
detection somewhere within the boundaries of
their management to make decisions about
firefighting tactics.
Crews often need a closer view.
There's a growing network of hundreds of remotely
controlled pan-and-tilt cameras in fire prone
areas run by a group of seismologists led by
Graham Kent. What this really allows dispatch to
do in about a minute or two is to take the 911
call, point the camera and then scale their
response. More than a dozen of the cameras have
been burned over so far this season, but the vast
majority are still operational.
One successful story of their use was during San
Diego's Lilac Fire in 2017.
They literally had the camera on it within a
minute. That shows you how fast people call
things in. And the Chief Mecham from Cal Fire
made a decision he would normally not make.
He put all 43 trucks out in three minutes.
That halted the fire at 4,000 acres.
The public can access these live camera views and
those satellite images, too.
But satellite data is not easy for everyone to
read. Now Google is integrating it into maps,
adding fire perimeters to the world's most widely
used navigation app.
It's also added quick stats in search like
location, size and road closures.
In 2017 and before, we would show a map of the
affected area b ut we could only drop a pin
showing that a fire was happening somewhere
there. And a pin wasn't super helpful for users
who are trying to figure out, well, how close am
I to that fire is it going to come in, affect me
and my town, whether it comes from Google or
public officials, it's never been more important
or more difficult to make sure the information
being communicated during an emergency is
accurate. One really, really terrible mistake is,
counties will only map their own evacuations.
And so the evacuation stops at the county line.
And if you live on the other side of that county
line and you look at that county's map, you may
think you're safe, but really you just not
looking at the right map. Some who misread U.S.
fire maps, which only show U.S.
data turn to Twitter and Facebook to call the
fires and climate change a hoax.
And false rumors that antifascist activists
deliberately set fires led some to ignore
evacuation orders for fear of looting.
While I think the government agencies are doing a
great job promoting preparedness when the
incident actually occurs, if you don't know if
it's near you and you don't know where to get
more information, none of that really matters.
Evacuation alerts are typically sent out by
emergency operation centers that partner with
various providers now, including Google.
Being able to tell the public what they need to
tell them in those critical moments is hugely
impactful in terms of saving lives.
Google is testing out a new S.O.S alert system for
users who opt in to have their location tracked.
The ability for firefighters to communicate
immediate orders in person is also key.
Evacuation orders are often still given by
firefighters on foot going door to door.
One better solution is offered by the long range
acoustic devices that can give exceptionally loud
announcements audibly over helicopter noise.
This is only a test.
Communication between firefighters is also
difficult and can be deadly.
19 firefighters died in a 2013 fire in Arizona,
in part because heavy radio traffic made it hard
to locate them. Now some agencies are using game
changing software called Tablet Command.
You can see our folks, where they're at, access
GPS with our satellite view or street view or the
fire hydrants are at. The benefit of that is that
when things are pretty crazy out there and folks
are taking action, is that I know exactly where
each engine is via the AVL and GPS locator so
that if something we can't get a hold of them.
I know exactly where they're at.
But for now, simple calls to 911 are the fastest
way most fires are caught.
So opening the door for the public to share
information directly with fire agencies may be
the key for more targeted responses to stop a
fire from getting out of control.
The end user can submit road closure information,
but I think there are so many more ways in which
we can have that two way communication happen.
If people could communicate back to their first
responders, or back to their, you know, sheriff's
department or fire department, hey, I've
evacuated. I'm now over here.
It would help close those gaps and reduce some of
those inefficiencies.
Google's involvement is one big example of how
innovation in publicly funded firefighting is
coming primarily from the private sector.
Yet startups in the fire space have difficulty
raising funds because products likely won't make
much money since they need to be sold to fire
agencies already strapped for cash.
Money is always an issue, and firefighters are
always trying to get better equipment, more
equipment. And so it's a constant struggle.
I've never worked for a fire department that had
loads of surplus with nothing to spend it on.
For big innovations to be tested and adopted, more
money is key. But recent fire spending bills have
had a hard time making it out of Congress.
When it happens all at once, it creates such a
draw down on the state as far as the equipment
personnel. So it's been very challenging.
While I think federal funding is really important,
maybe communities need to invest more in their
own wildfire preparedness and maybe that's where
the private sector can kick in.
But there is something for the public to do beyond
throwing money at the worsening problem, anyone
living in wildfire prone areas should clear a
defensible space around their house.
There's innovations here, too, like an anti
flammable coating that's been sprayed on
celebrity homes like Neverland Ranch.
If you asked to evacuate, do it, do it.
What we're finding is fires are burning faster and
hotter than ever before, and the time for people
to get out is less and less.
And it's more dangerous. Having lost my house and
the materials, things of that, they're all
replaceable. So having a grab bag to go of the
sentimental stuff that you can't replace is very
critical. Think twice about moving to dangerous
areas. Sign up for emergency alerts in your
region. If you see a fire, call 911 immediately.
And big picture cutting back on carbon emissions
can make a dent in the long term trend of
worsening fires around the globe.
This problem is bad today.
It's going to get worse as our planet warms.
And so part of our action has to be attention to
greenhouse gases to work on the problem of
wildfires and the growing threat the wildfires
pose to our communities.
We need to work on the threat of climate change.