EDITORIAL – President Donald Trump has weighed in on the epidemic of tragic fires plaguing the state of California in the sensitive manner we have become accustomed to from him. He claims the fires are the fault of forest mismanagement and to steal a line from the movie Animal House, “Bluto's right. Psychotic, but absolutely right.”
Trump Tweeted, "There is no reason for these massive, deadly and costly forest fires in California except that forest management is so poor," He added, "Billions of dollars are given each year, with so many lives lost, all because of gross mismanagement of the forests. Remedy now, or no more Fed payments!"
This statement has irked many California politicians and firefighters who claim the blame for the fires is not that simple citing climate change which has caused parched vegetation, high winds, and low humidity as the major cause of this rash of devastating fires over the last few years.
The fact is however, a fact that the President has overlooked in his statements. The United States Forest Service, an agency of the Federal government that Trump leads, has not adequately adapted to climate change and cleaned out our forests of the dense overgrowth of fuels that has built up on the forest floors for over 30 years.
When fires break out in the state’s National Forests, the Federal government would rather let the fires burn out the dry brush than suppress the fire which is the mission of Cal-Fire. This is the reason the recent Ferguson Fire was not put out in two days but rather burned for over a month, scorching nearly 100,000 acres, killing two firefighters and injuring nineteen.
When the fire broke out on July 13th around 8:30 PM PDT in the Savage Trading Post area of the Sierra National Forest, firefighters with Cal-Fire attacked the fire and were successfully handling the blaze, then the U.S. Forest Service came in and took over the battle of the fire and the strategy went from Suppression to Containment.
Cal-Fire Bulldozer operator Braden Varney was killed while the firefighter was cutting a fire-break in a precarious ridge known as the Hites Cove Trail near Marble Point in Mariposa County, an effort to protect the tiny town of Jerseydale. On July 14th at 8:47 a.m. a pilot sent to fly over Varney’s last known location spotted his 42,000-pound bulldozer at the bottom of a 220-foot drop. Varney, 36, had become the first fatality in the Ferguson fire.
To add insult to injury what happened next has caused several Cal-Fire firefighters to contact BVN over the last few months. While Cal-Fire wanted to get to the scene of the bulldozer accident and evacuate Varney’s body before the US Forest Service set backfires, their requests were ignored and the Federal government went ahead and set the fires which completely incinerated the scene including the body of the fallen firefighter.
One firefighter. who spoke to us under the condition of anonymity said, “Varney was a large man who would have never fit in our litter (rescue basket) but he was so severely burnt, he wasn’t all there.”
Tradition is that Varney’s litter would have been carried by his brother firefighters publicly to the Stanislaus County Coroner’s Office. But Cal-Fire tried to talk the family out of having this done publicly in this instance because his body was so badly damaged. They felt it was not the Ferguson fire that caused so much damage to his body but rather the back fire set by the Federal Government. To Cal-Fire, it was disgraceful that this hero’s body was disrespected in this way and they did not want to parade it in public.
Much of the expansion of the Ferguson fire can be blamed directly on the U.S. Forest Service “control” backfires to burn out the fuels on the ground that got out of control. Had Cal-Fire been allowed to continue to attack the fire in the first few days with suppression over U.S. Forestry’s containment, maybe Arrowhead Interagency Hotshot’s Captain Brian Hughes wouldn’t have been killed six days after Varney?
It clearly looks like mismanagement to me. Maybe our President, who says he is going to save the Coal and Steel industries, needs to look at saving the California Lumber industry. Bakersfield Congressman Tom McClintock, a longtime proponent of easing logging restrictions, has called for a “dramatic change” in forest management, with more thinning of the dead and dying trees that can fuel a fire.
McClintock, whose district sprawls across mountainous Sierra Nevada counties where wildfires have raged said, “The forests are dying and the American people want our forests returned to health. They want the scourge of wildfire brought under control.”
Currently, ‘wildfire is a large part of the US Forest Service plan. Behind the scenes this is referred to as the ‘Ten Year Plan’, meaning that one large fire will burn out the undergrowth and not require any more maintenance for a ten year period.
There are at least two other factors that should be taken into consideration when deciding the best course of action in California. First, most Californians will attest that droughts are a regular part of our climate cycle and cannot be ignored when it comes to land management of any kind. Second, there is a segment of Californian environmentalists who actively work against the concept of smaller intentional controlled burns as well as discouraging regulated logging, which would also help control the dead trees and undergrowth that provide the fuel for these huge fires.
What is needed here is leadership which can work out compromise between the differing opinions about how best to control the situation, rather than waiting til a fire starts and then sending in the US Forestry Service to employ the ‘Ten Year (Let it all Burn itself out) Plan’.
So Mr. President, you need to remember who is in charge of the National Forests. California’s forests (along with all other US forests) are managed by the US Forestry Service, whose head is one of President Trump’s cabinet member, the Secretary of Agriculture. This by extension means that this is an issue under Mr. Trump’s responsibility. Rather than tweeting out critical comments which insinuate that these fires are all the fault of Californians and the decisions that Californians have made.
Perhaps he should look at directing his own cabinet member at the Department of Agriculture, which runs the US Forestry Service to take some of the “billions of dollars” that he is threatening to withhold from California and instead use it to clear out our forests and reestablish the thriving California lumber industry, This might be what California needs to rebuild a healthy forest and change what California Governor Jerry Brown is calling the ‘new normal’ in relation to these devastating forest fires and loss of human lives.
Maybe it is even time for Trump to start believing climate change exists and is a real factor in the severity that we are seeing when we experience things like fires, hurricanes, tornados, etc…..
It’s time to Make America’s Forests Great Again.
