Anyone who has used a fireplace or started a picnic fire understands the role of kindling. Small pieces of dried wood flame faster than the larger wood pile pieces. Most grocery and lumber stores sell packages of kindling in the fall and winter.
It would seem wise for areas where dangerous fires are a risk to do everything possible to remove anything remotely resembling kindling before the dry season starts to keep it from adding to the risk and damage of a fire. You would think so, but you are wrong in a world where anything that makes money is evil, nature is always pure, and government experts are better than untrained individuals.
Trees drop branches and leaves to the forest floor. This material no longer draws water through the tree roots and becomes underbrush. Record rains followed by a drought can make the problem particularly bad.
A Wall Street Journal article entitled How L.A. Bureaucracy Made It Harder to Clear Flammable Brush describes the chaos and confusion in the Los Angeles area that left massive areas with no underbrush removal. I am tempted to cheat and copy the whole article, but I will hit the highlights. The Journal has its material behind a paywall. I am a subscriber. The link above should let non-subscribers read the article.
Environmentalists trust nature more than humans.
At a 2023 meeting, a representative from the California State Parks agency said that, for environmental conservation reasons, the state doesn't typically remove brush. But any concerned citize
n, he said, could remove dry vegetation close to their own property after obtaining a permit.
The permit application requires property owners to schedule a visit by a state parks representative, takes up to eight weeks to be processed and costs $150.
Then there is the difference between when the responsible party is known and when it is not.
David Barrett…executive director of MySafe: L.A…said there are defined rules, inspection processes and fines to compel residents to clear brush off their land, but the process is less predictable on government property. In some cases, it is tough to determine who owns the land because there aren't clearly marked boundaries
"What ends up happening is nothing, and I don't mean that nobody cares. It's just that it's hard to know whose dirt it is and so there's ongoing issues,"
You will note that the quotes above include, "for environmental conservation reasons, the state doesn't typically remove brush." Some environmentalists have made it a law that Gaia must be allowed to leave the underbrush to burn, and no one should profit from nature's forests.
You make sure somebody knows who is responsible by having somebody lose money. That's where logging and farming come in. When bureaucracies make a mistake about responsibility, it is a rarity to see anyone suffer financially. If a company or farmer loses, a family, employee, or manager is the direct loser in a way that hurts. It gives them a reason to pay attention before the damage happens.
Forests contain trees, and the lumber industry knows how to cut them down, clear all the underbrush, and replant young, fresh, healthy green trees. That area produces very little dangerous underbrush. The company then moves to the oldest section it controls and does the same thing. Rotating areas of healthy trees are far safer, even in a dry season with Santa Ana winds.
Another way to reduce the extent of the fire is to reduce or eliminate dry grassland. Farmers want to lease land or retain farmland their families have used for generations. However, this land is often combined into state or national forest land. It is no longer used for grazing and becomes more dangerous in fire season.
It is time to demand rationality in forest management. We insist that people wear seatbelts in cars and helmets on motorcycles to reduce society's costs when there are accidents. We expect states to have building codes in hurricane and earthquake areas.
There is no reason the federal government should continue to subsidize insane forestry management policies that allow the production of vast amounts of kindling in an area with too little water and too much wind.