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Week 1 – Fire Policy Over Time

In the early days of the Forest Service it was simply there to protect national land and keep landowner in check. Many of their cries for better management for other people exploiting the timber fell on deaf ears. Much of the forest then was unchecked by man and fires started by lightning strikes came and gone without anyone noticing. But with a lack of un-checked fire behavior understanding a fierce storm was bound to happen. With the big burns of 1910 people all over the US woke to the true destructive power wildfire has. The severely lacking USFS and local fire agencies of towns were under trained and under supplied to fight those fires. Loosing millions of acres of land and hundreds of lives to the fires something had to be done.

The years after the burns, many stakeholders got together and figured out a plan to never again experience these types of fires. William Greeley and Henry Graves were at the forefront to combat these fire issues. Greeley pleaded that fires do more destructive value than anything else, no matter the size, and it be the duty of American foresters to stop it.  Henry Graves would enact the Weeks Act of 1911 which would soon put a complete stop to any future mega fire.

But, with little understanding of the true importance of fire ecology in woodland setting the Weeks Act would invoke a terrible build up of untreated fuels. The act had good intention, to save lifes, jobs, and the environment, but would have unforeseen impacts of the amount of downed woody debris build up and an increase in the amount of canopy closure. The outcome from this act and many more which followed all the way into the 1960s would directly influence fire behavior we see today in our modern world.

I believe the development of many of this environmental polices early on came from a point of “feelings” and not a critical scientific observation and understanding what is causing these large fires. Mismanagement of fuel build-up, densely clustered plantations, uneducated public safety, and inappropriate zoning of the wildland urban interface. These are outcomes which were not analyzed early on and would be in much more danger come decades before the turn of the 21st century.

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