Forest Fire Smoke IS a MAJOR Health Hazard!

[Fotoware58]

Rod Mendes: Does anyone care about our air?
By Rod Mendes, Redding Record Searchlight, August 24, 2009

For nearly four months last summer, thousands of Northern Californians sat shrouded in thick, brown smoke. Lots of people got sick. Many still have trouble breathing.

Smoke from wildfires that burned more than 200,000 acres blanketed Trinity and Humboldt counties and smothered roughly 4,000 people who live on and around the Hoopa Valley Indian Reservation.

No tribal lands burned, but lightning strikes ignited fires all over the national forests that surround Hoopa land. Those forests were dangerously overgrown, overstocked and choked with dead and dying trees. There was little effort made to extinguish the fires despite the public health threat. Instead, fires were encouraged to burn toward and into designated wilderness areas.

The smoke observed no such boundaries. It settled everywhere.

Vulnerable residents were evacuated, high-efficiency air filters distributed and two public clean-air facilities established. The tribe provided emergency medical treatment for tribal members, non-tribal members, firefighters and residents from nearby communities. Eventually Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and even President George W. Bush declared a state of emergency, clearing the way for the tribe to recover some of the costs incurred trying to protect its people.

While fire is part of the rural-California experience, long-term exposure to bad air need not be.

The Hoopa Tribe manages its forestland to reduce the threat of catastrophic wildfire. It does so sustainably, relying on timber revenues to fund tribal government, support the tribal economy, and provide for its people. Watersheds and wildlife habitat are conserved, invested in and nurtured. Families work in and with the forest.

The forest management directed by the tribal commitment to sustain culture and environment together produces beautiful, healthy, resilient forests.

But the lightning storm proved it’s not enough to take care of your own lands. When tens of thousands of your neighbor’s acres are overgrown, susceptible to insect infestation and catastrophic wildfire, you stand to face long-lasting health consequences regardless of how well you’ve prepared your own forests.

Government agency resources may be strained, but policymakers must be held accountable for land management and firefighting policies that harm the public health. Wildfire smoke causes asthma and exacerbates existing heart and lung issues. Tiny particulates in the smoke can lodge deep in human lungs. For weeks on end, Hoopa residents drove with their lights on during the day because the sun never penetrated the smoke.

We knew exactly what we were breathing, we just couldn’t escape it.

The best way to lower the public health threat is to reduce the fuel loads that drive catastrophic fire and smoke events. An ounce of prevention would go a long way - not just in terms of saving dollars and forests, but in terms of avoiding human suffering.

Forests need to be thinned, and harvested trees and vegetation put to good use. Doing so can enhance biodiversity, protect soils and watersheds, improve public safety and help clear the air. Too often forest management is blocked by administrative appeals when there is overwhelming evidence of an immediate threat to people and communities.

Land-management policies on public lands, including wilderness areas, must be changed to address accumulated fuels before wildfires start, and firefighting policies must change to put greater emphasis on the public’s best interests when they inevitably do. Currently, smoke-related public-health risks are given very low priority in firefighting policies. Firefighter safety is paramount, but when fires can be fought to reduce the smoke impacts on communities, they should be.

There have been encouraging signs recently. Incident commanders in the June 2009 Backbone Fire opened new lines of communication with the community and took steps to address the concerns that were raised. Tribal air quality data was considered by the command team and the initial attack on the fire was more aggressive than originally suggested. Rather than deal with more long-term smoke exposure, our air cleared relatively quickly.

The aggressive suppression tactics used in fighting the Backbone Fire spared a community that has endured more than its share of bad air. But we witnessed the exception rather than the rule. The long- and short-term public-health impacts of smoke have to figure higher in firefighting policy so they consistently receive greater priority in firefighting practice.

Still, the focus should be on prevention and sustainability. Forestry that conserves forest resources protects forests against catastrophic wildfire and people living in those forests from excessive smoke.

Yet while many of California’s public forestlands succumb to unprecedented tree mortality and stand dangerously overcrowded, most fuel-reduction projects planned by the Forest Service are blocked by procedural delays. While ideologies are debated and courts scrutinize paperwork details, real people are breathing real bad air and millions of acres are primed to burn.

When wildfire smoke causes widespread health problems we have a responsibility to consider alternatives to letting unmanaged forests burn. It’s time to clean up our forests and clear the air.

Rod Mendes is the director of the Office of Emergency Services for the Hoopa Valley Tribe in Humboldt County. Courtesy of California Forests magazine.

[Warpy]

1. NM was socked in by smoke from AZ fires a few years ago

Our air is so crystal clear that it looks like you can touch the top of the mountain to the east, a mile above the city.

We couldn't see the mountain for a week.

I got out of breath just walking across a room, even though I stayed indoors with the windows mostly closed and the cooler off.

It didn't even smell much like smoke. It was all fine particulates.

[Fotoware58]

2. Ironically...

the smoke from those same California fires was still quite thick, all the way over in Yellowstone! I am motivated on this issue because my beloved Uncle died from wildfire smoke in suburban San Diego. Just another statistic to be ignored by people who never have to deal with the problems of uncontrolled western wildfires.

[Fotoware58]

3. Smoke from the Yosemite Fire

Two health alerts were issued, first for the local area north and west of Yosemite, and then for the Reno/Tahoe areas a few days ago. I did (and several other neighbors) suffer from burning eyes, irritated nose and headaches. Today, even though the skies are much clearer, I am again impacted by the smoke, with flu-like symptoms.

I can imagine what the Los Angeles area is experiencing because I am a former firefighter and have seen the thickest of smoke. Wildfire smoke knows no boundaries and can impact people for 1000 miles away, as I saw last year when California Let-Burn fires had drift smoke make it all the way over to Yellowstone National Park. When will the Forest Service (and the Park Service) consider people's health when fires are burning.

For the Station Fire in Los Angeles, Feds had 40 years to deal with the buildup of forest fuels on the Angeles NF. I'm sure they made some inadequate progress towards fuels reductions but, you can see the results on TV all too well. The timber industry has been out of the LA Basin for more than 20 years and the resulting fuels buildups have shown that the Forest Service just can't keep up with it under their current efforts.

It will be a costly and difficult process to deal with the issues of all those live and dead fuels that have built up over many, many decades. The San Bernardino NF has made strides to address the problem but, budgets have been tight and they have been quite inefficient and unskilled in planning and implementing fuels reduction work. At least they are trying, though!

Other National Forests in California are in major gridlock, with a great many factors stopping them from doing much. The prospects for the future are grim, indeed, as the Obama Administration just isn't reacting to this ongoing disaster, not only in California but, in the entire forested West.