A Summary on Timothy Ingalsbee’s “Getting Burned: A Taxpayer’s Guide to Wildfire Suppression Costs”
This paper addresses the everyday taxpayer, who inadvertently promotes these year-after-year terrible and expensive fire seasons by dutifully paying taxes. I’m further referring to the tenacious, positive-feedback loop our society has propagated since the total suppression of fires became common policy almost a century ago.“Getting Burned: A Taxpayer’s Guide to Wildfire Suppression Costs” is an article that does a fantastic job at explaining this paradox, uncovering the multi-faceted factors that have led us to continue this absurd routine of overpriced reactive response.
One of these factors is that over 44 million homes are located in fire-vulnerable areas (Ingalsbee, 2010). These wildland urban interfaces are expanding rapidly as private development is “subsidized” by the lack of accountability taken by private investors (Ingalsbee, 2010). Instead, the brunt of this accountability is dumped onto the federal government, who foots the bill for the vast majority of annual fire suppression costs (Ingalsbee, 2010). By paying this majority, private development is essentially encouraged under the impression that the government will pay for the full suppression of any fires that jeopardize properties. Yet where does the government get the funds to pay for all of this? From us, the taxpayers.
Ingalsbee (2010) identifies an “open checkbook” attitude towards fire suppression that promotes reactivity rather than proactivity. This is why we are all too comfortable with throwing money (OUR money!) at fires instead of relying on proactive and cost-effective measures. The fire suppression that we pay for is done in a way that maximizes costs, such as frivolously using aircraft in a political “show of arms”, employing the help of profit-hungry privatized fire fighting companies, or by fighting fires that have very little priority or associated risk.
Ingalsbee (2010) expresses that we can tremendously cut costs if we reform the way we deal with fire. Everyone – homeowners, recreationalists, environmentalists, etc. – needs to acknowledge and take active responsibility for wildfire suppression costs by allocating more money and time on proactive tactics while turning our wallets away from suppression spending. This includes FireWising our homes, or simply not building houses further into fire-vulnerable ecosystems. We must oppose policies that increase fire suppression budgets and instead put our support behind proper land management and suppression tactics that use money wisely. While Igalsbee (2010) says perpetual, landscape-level thinning treatments are non-economical, we can still use these treatments, paired with low-expense prescribed burning, to form defensible spaces around our communities at dimensions that are manageable and cost-effective in the long-run. With these measures, we can hopefully stop burning away our money – literally.
Cited Sources:
Ingalsbee, T. 2010. Getting Burned: A Taxpayer’s Guide To Wildfire Suppression Costs. Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics, and Ecology. Assessed April 10, 2020.
3 replies on “Burning Through Money”
Jessica,
You did a great job analyzing the budget issues within the wildland fire management scene and describing where the money actually comes from. Increased anthropogenic presence in the wildland poses a huge problem in fire management – adding excessive complexity to each occurring incident. One of the greatest issues in fire management seems to be the presence/abundance of smoke emitted in the atmosphere. Increasing the use of prescribed fire to begin repaying the fire debt caused by a century of suppression is faced with many social challenges, with a potential stairway to success being the collaborative process. Increasing the understanding of why prescribed fire smoke actually emits less particulate matter than wildfire smoke, while raising awareness of the financial implications that severe fire seasons have on federal budgets could potentially increase on-the-ground project implementation.
Wow great post! I loved the descriptive vocabulary, as well as the passionate and personal narrative that drives this blog post through til the end! I think this was a great personal summary of the Inglesbee’s paper of the funding of fire suppression. I personally enjoyed this analysis too as I did it for my own blog post, so it was cool to read another take on the same material.
I enjoyed how you had a “call to arms” if you will regarding us as the taxpayers to more diligently paying attention to policies and activities that go into fire suppression and all its auxillaries. I believe it is our job as foresters and natural resource professionals to help educate those around us with sound science and knowledge so that more people have the understanding to vote for the proper policies and acts that grants more proactive land management versus reactive costly management! Thanks for a good post!
Jessica,
This was a great analysis over how we currently fight fires which is similar to how Americans typically fight anything…by throwing a lot of money at it and hopefully it will disappear. This procedure is extremely problematic when it is the tax payers money that is being thrown and there is little evidence of the problem dwindling as is apparent with more hazardous fire conditions building up every year. You mentioned this idea with your comment pressuring to allocate more funds to “proactive tactics” rather than trying to fuel the suppression machine. It can be assumed, at this time, with our best available science, this seems to be our only reasonable course of action going forward that has a minimal amount of risk towards current society. This was a great post, Jessica.