Photo_Federal Triangle_Washington D.C.
After a burn-over situation beneath Trinity Lookout near Atlanta, Idaho, in 2006, went on furlough for a couple of days, when talk of the prior week’s decision making activities began turning south.
At the point where tempers flared, Christo, one of the then acting squad commanders, yelled, “Pipe-down all of you.” When he got the whole crew’s attention, Christo continued. “I don’t like what happened last week any more than any of the rest of you. But sometimes to see if something doesn’t work, the guy calling the shots has to actually see that it doesn’t work first.”
This speech, though not on a national level, is akin to the current problem. Overall it seems the larger portion of human energy is being exerted to tactically address the issues on a metaphysical landscape of pen and paper, and this force neglects to address the issues on the physical landscape of fire. Where linemen, and lower ranking officials generally do not read the reviews. Most have brushed over strategy and tactical reports. Reports that were written to cover a wide variety of topographies. This is what policy has tried to accomplish. It has tried to explain everything from the Florida Panhandle, to the Pacific Northwest using one codex of understanding. In order to do this writers have used generalizations to explain policy for a broad range of fire regimes. As a result policy and its direction appears unclear. Somehow getting from the conception of thought, to the actual outcome, policy writers have failed to specify how the policy is actually to be implemented.
If fire managers/fighters know policy, but have no clue how to implement the policy, what good is the policy?
In a 1999 report from the General Accounting Office (41) it was predicted that the cost to adequately reduce all the areas at risk of initiating sever fire behavior after ignition, would accumulatively total $12 billion from then to the year 2015—that’s $725 million annually.
These figures are not about suppression, but are about pre-treatment measures. Measures that eventually will lower the cost of fighting fire, by lowering the amount of fuels available. At present, even with all the agencies competing with one another, instead of working together toward one common goal, they are still agreeing that too much fuel is available.
Fire agency strategy reports read like a broken record. From a Forest Service Management Response in 2000, to the Quadrennial Fire and Fuel Review in 2005, to all of the recent documentation, they state that the long-term effects from the last Century’s aggressive nature to suppress all forest fires succeeded only in allowing brush and small trees to flourish. It allowed trees to encroach on grasslands, allowed trees to grow where fire normally would have weeded them out. These areas are now prepped to accommodate uncharacteristically intense fire through their diminished ecosystem health and lowered resilience to bug infestation.
In the 2000 USDA Forest Service, Agency Strategy for Fire Management, it stated alternatives to a comprehensive problem require comprehensive solutions, and not just simply a Band-Aid. To the lay audience however, the appearance removing some trees is unhealthy. This creates controversy between factions and their overall beliefs. The problem calls for a cohesive strategy, because competition between agencies fits policy for failure. While the standard method for review, finding problematic issues, developing remedies, and implementation of agency “recommended,” strategy has not solved the core dysfunctions (4). As a result the worlds natural resources are being decimated.
Christo was right when he said some people have to see something doesn’t work firsthand before they know it is inapplicable. With resources putting the dollar amount on fire through the proverbial ceiling however, each little mistake that can be avoided saves overall on the fire budget.
What it comes down to is a matter of understanding. Understanding the policy, and understanding how to implement policy for the desired effect. It also comes down to understanding prior mistakes, so that future fire arenas will not succumb to the same mistakes.
The general idea of how to implement strategy or policy would then be based on factual implications of said strategy and policy and not the general sesquipedalism in the Washington D.C. political arena. In other words, at present there is no cohesion between management, and that may prove to last a millennium. The strategy is sound, but if line men and officials have no clue how to implement the tactics of D.C. bureaucracy, and the D.C. bureaucracy fails to recognize the real culprits and the real problems, policy will never address these problems, and they will continue to occur far into the future.
