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My research objective in this article is to analyze policy change affecting wildfire suppression programs administered by the United States Forest Service and the United States Department of the Interior. Using a variant of the punctuated equilibrium approach, a content analysis of New York Times stories dealing with wildfires over the past two decades was examined in relation to both administrative and legislative policy changes. I conclude by suggesting that administrative shifts were undertaken by federal land administrators in response to crises and media attention to protect decisional autonomy as well as forest resources, while the architect of legislative change was a president taking advantage of the combined effects of increasingly intense wildfire seasons, demographic shifts involving the movement of people and structures to the high-risk wildland urban interface areas, greater media scrutiny, and pressure to act from wildfire weary constituencies.

AbstractMy research objective in this article is to analyze policy change affecting wildfire suppression programs administered by the United States Forest Service and the United States Department of the Interior. Using a variant of the punctuated equilibrium approach, a content analysis of New York Times stories dealing with wildfires over the past two decades was examined in relation to both administrative and legislative policy changes. I conclude by suggesting that administrative shifts were undertaken by federal land administrators in response to crises and media attention to protect decisional autonomy as well as forest resources, while the architect of legislative change was a president taking advantage of the combined effects of increasingly intense wildfire seasons, demographic shifts involving the movement of people and structures to the high‐risk wildland urban interface areas, greater media scrutiny, and pressure to act from wildfire weary constituencies.

For two months in the spring of 2016, the world watched as wildfire ravaged the Canadian town of Fort McMurray. Firefighters named the fire "the Beast." It acted like a mythical animal, alive with destructive energy, and they hoped never to see anything like it again. Yet it's not a stretch to imagine we will all soon live in a world in which fires like the Beast are commonplace. A glance at international headlines shows a remarkable increase in higher temperatures, stronger winds, and drier lands- a trifecta for igniting wildfires like we've rarely seen before. This change is particularly noticeable in the northern forests of the United States and Canada. These forests require fire to maintain healthy ecosystems, but as the human population grows, and as changes in climate, animal and insect species, and disease cause further destabilization, wildfires have turned into a potentially uncontrollable threat to human lives and livelihoods. Our understanding of the role fire plays in healthy forests has come a long way in the past century. Despite this, we are not prepared to deal with an escalation of fire during periods of intense drought and shorter winters, earlier springs, potentially more lightning strikes and hotter summers. There is too much fuel on the ground, too many people and assets to protect, and no plan in place to deal with these challenges. In this book, the author visits scorched earth from Alaska to Maine, and introduces the scientists, firefighters, and resource managers making the case for a radically different approach to managing wildfire in the 21st century. Wildfires can no longer be treated as avoidable events because the risk and dangers are becoming too great and costly. The author weaves a heart-pumping narrative of science, economics, politics, and human determination and points to the ways that we, and the wilder inhabitants of the forests around our cities and towns, might yet flourish in an age of growing megafires

1. Common law liability for fire : a conceptual, historical, and economic analysis / Richard A. Epstein -- 2. Property and fire / Thomas W. Merrill -- 3. Fuel for the fire : liability and the economics of wildfire risk / Jonathan Yoder -- 4. Economics and the organization of wildfire suppression / Dean Lueck -- 5. Norms of fire suppression among public and private landowners / Karen M. Bradshaw -- 6. The political economy of wildfire management : saving forests, saving houses, or burning money / Sarah E. Anderson and Terry L. Anderson -- 7. When "smoke isn't smoke" : missteps in air quality regulation of wildfire smoke / Kirsten Engel and Andrew Reeves -- 8. Private and public provision of firefighting services in rural Australia / Jeff Bennett -- 9. Fire suppression policy, weather, and western wildland fire trends : an empirical analysis / Jason Scott Johnston and Jonathan Klick -- 10. In harm's way : homeowner behavior and wildland fire policy / Carolyn Kousky, Sheila Olmstead, and Roger Sedjo.

Wildfires represent a growing threat to environments, to people, communities, and to societies worldwide, particularly in the United States, Southern Europe, and Australia. Recognition of this growing risk has highlighted a need to develop people's capacity to adapt to annually occurring events that could increase in frequency and severity over the coming years and decades. The goal of ensuring sustained levels of protective measures in communities susceptible to wildfire hazard consequences has proved to be elusive. This book examines why this is so and identifies ways in which sustained leve

Cover; Title Page; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgments; About the companion website; Chapter 1 Introduction; The boreal forest biome; Geographical distribution; Distinguishing features; Boreal wildfires; Major characteristics; Ecological significance; Goals and scope of the book; References; Chapter 2 Formation of wildfire residuals; Factors that affect the formation of residuals; Boreal forest communities; Boreal wildfires; Residual formation and distribution; Spatial heterogeneity in fire behavior; Process of residual formation; Summary; References.

"This book brings together perspectives from sociology, political science, gender studies, and history to produce new ways of analysing wildfire preparedness and policy in Australia. Drawing on data from hundreds of interviews with residents, volunteers and emergency services professionals living and working in wildfire-prone areas, the authors focus on issues of power and inequality, the contested nature of community and the relationship between citizens and the state. The book questions not only existing policy approaches, but also the central concepts on which they are founded. In doing so, the aim is to create a more conceptually robust and academically contextualised discussion about the limitations of current wildfire policy approaches in Australia and to provide further evidence of the need for disaster studies to engage with a variety of social science approaches. Wildfire and Power: Policy and Practice will be of most interest to higher degree by research students, other academics and policy makers examining the evolving patterns and politics of work, employment, management and industrial relations as well as those involved in emergency and disaster management service delivery. It would be most suited to academic and public libraries as well as organisations in the field of emergency and disaster management"--

Includes bibliographical references. ; The purpose of this guide is to assist communities in monitoring and evaluating their Community Wildfire Protection Plans to strengthen future implementation. The steps in this guide outline an effective process for evaluating how well communities have addressed the goals and objectives of their CWPPs and for updating their plans. The Guide recommends collaborative strategies to bring together project partners to conduct the evaluation, gather relevant data, and write the evaluation report. This evaluation will draw out the experiences and lessons learned in collaborative efforts among community members, local government, municipalities, land management, and state agencies, thereby pinpointing the key accomplishments and challenges facing the community in implementing its fire plan. The benefits of an evaluation may also include the identification of strategies to help communities plan for and reduce the risks of other natural disasters.

This report discusses the tragic consequences of the wildfires that struck Southern California in October 2007, which have given renewed attention to the partnership between private providers of disaster insurance and the federal government. It also discusses the role of disaster insurance in that incident.

AbstractWater supply impairment from increased contaminant mobilization and transport after wildfire is a major concern for communities that rely on surface water from fire‐prone watersheds. In this article we present a Monte Carlo simulation method to quantify the likelihood of wildfire impairing water supplies by combining stochastic representations of annual wildfire and rainfall activity. Water quality impairment was evaluated in terms of turbidity limits for treatment by modeling wildfire burn severity, postfire erosion, sediment transport, and suspended sediment dilution in receiving waterbodies. Water supply disruption was analyzed at the system level based on the impairment status of water supply components and their contributions to system performance. We used this approach to assess wildfire‐water supply impairment and disruption risks for a system of water supply reservoirs and diversions in the Front Range Mountains of Colorado, USA. Our results indicate that wildfire may impair water quality in a concerning 15.7–19.4% of years for diversions from large watersheds. Reservoir impairment should be rare for off‐network reservoirs—ranging from at most 0.01% of years for large reservoirs to nearly 2% of years for small reservoirs. System redundancy meaningfully reduced disruption risk for alternative conveyance routes (4.3–25.0% reduction) and almost eliminated disruption risk for a pair of substitutable terminal sources (99.9% reduction). In contrast, dependency among reservoirs on a conveyance route nearly doubled risk of disruption. Our results highlight the importance of considering water system characteristics when evaluating wildfire‐water supply risks.