SOS Forests

Retarding Firefighting

Gag me!!!! ABC News just ran an anti-fire retardant video-bite on their national report. Mop-topped Tim Ingalsbee, sociologist and executive director of Firefighters United for Safety, Ethics & Ecology (FUSEE) appeared with his line about fire retardant being a waste of money and polluting the environment.

For more on Ingalsbee and his Eugene radical associations, see [here]. For more on the radical enviro-Left’s war on fire retardant see [here].

But the real story is that fire retardant saves lives, saves homes, saves wildlife, saves habitat, saves watersheds, and thereby saves money.

The real “cost” of wildfire is much, much more than suppression expenditures. Fire destroys and kills. The damages that ensue from wildfires are anywhere from 10 to 40 times the cost of fighting the fires.

There is utility to firefighting. That’s why we fight fires. The utility is that by controlling the fire (which can be expensive), we prevent the fire from destroying valuable property, resources, and lives (which are worth a great deal more than the costs of suppression).

Fire retardant is an important firefighting tool. The phosphate-based fire retardants in use today are similar to phosphate-based laundry detergents, also in wide use today. Fire retardant, when dissolved in water at parts per million, acts as a wetting agent. It spreads a thin layer of water across whatever it is applied to. That damps fires better than plain water, which tends to bead up.

It’s a wetting agent, people! Nothing magic. But fire retardant is effective. When dropped (in highly diluted solution) from airplanes, fire retardant damps the fire immediately. The flames die down. If you have ever seen a roaring wildfire get hit with fire retardant, you might think it was magic because the fire quiets right down.

The effect is not long-lived. Firefighters have only a few minutes to take aggressive action before the film of water evaporates and the flames rise up again. But in those few minutes lives can be saved. Hoses can be trained on hot spots. Fire lines can be extended. Helicopter pilots can see to drop more water. Those few minutes of quiet provided by fire retardant drops can mean the difference between stopping the fire here and now and not stopping the fire at all.

The claim is made (by groups that are opposed to fire fighting) that retardant “harms” the environment. That’s balderdash. A little laundry detergent never hurt anyone or anything. It doesn’t bother animals, feathered, furred, or finned. In fact retardant can save wildlife habitat from total incineration — catastrophic combustion that most definitely kills animals and roasts their habitats.

You may ask, why are some groups opposed to firefighting? It’s a fair question. Some groups want your watersheds, forests, homes, schools, businesses, etc. to be roasted in wildfire. I am not a member of any group like that, so I hesitate to speak to their inner motivations. You will have to ask them.

I am opposed to allowing wildfires to destroy property and lives, whether in the city or in forests. I think most sane human beings agree that burning down forests, homes, cities, watersheds, etc. is bad news. The most I can offer about those who endorse wholesale conflagration is to look at their politics. Invariably, their politics are extremely anti-social, to say the least.

Responsible members of our communities and society approve of, endorse, and fund fire departments. We recognize the utility of saving property and lives through firefighting. We want our fire departments to have the best tools and equipment, not because we are profligate but because we want our fire departments to be effective and efficient at putting out fires. What we don’t want is to see our fire departments hamstrung by ineffective, defective, or lacking tools and equipment, because then they might not be able to put out fires when we want them to.

Firefighters feel the same way. They don’t want to waste money on tools and equipment that don’t work or don’t do the job. After all, they are the people who get closest to the fire. They don’t want to get burned up. Failure is not an option.

And firefighters across the nation believe in and use fire retardant. They do so because it works. They know that fire retardant saves lives, including theirs. The incident commanders who order the retardant drops don’t do it for show. They are not interested in symbolism; they are concerned with substance. Time is of the essence in firefighting. There is no time for fooling around or putting on a show for gawkers. Firefighters do what works, and fire retardant works, so they use it.

Environmental managers also approve of the use of fire retardant. In our national forest system, the firefighters and incident commanders are also forest managers (at least, it used to be that way). The fire bosses and the forest bosses were the same people. Using fire retardant on forest fires is done to protect the environment. The hands-on people know that, have experienced that, are well-acquainted with the effects of fire and of fire retardant on the environment, and much prefer the latter. A little detergent on the greenery is a lot better than a moonscape.

The New York Times ran an article yesterday complaining about fire retardant [here]. In the first place, consider the source. What do Media twits in NYC know about firefighting? But it was another signal from the Extreme Left that Burn Baby Burn is their favorite environmental policy.

There were a few good quotes. Bill Payne, deputy chief of aviation for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, called the use of fire retardant “critical” and said, “It’s the people whose houses are not on fire that are concerned about it.”

However, Sue Husari, the fire management officer for the Pacific West region of the National Park Service was quoted as saying, “It’s fairly well known that it’s toxic to aquatic organisms, to fish.”

No, Sue, you are dead wrong about that. Fire retardant is not toxic to fish. Fire retardant helps control fires that burn watersheds and pollute streams. Soot and ash are toxic to fish. Boiling streams are toxic to fish. A tiny bit of diluted laundry detergent is completely non-toxic.

There is only one known case where fish were killed by fire retardant. In 2002 a ton of fire retardant was accidentally dropped directly into Fall River in central Oregon, right below the Fall River Fish Hatchery. Allegedly 22,000 baby trout died. They were planted trout. The retardant did not hit the hatchery ponds. The hatchery continued operations unimpeded.

The Fall River Fish Hatchery produces fish eggs for other hatcheries and fingerling rainbow, brook and cutthroat trout for air stocking programs throughout the state. They produce over a million fingerlings per year. Fall River was completely stocked again with trout shortly after the retardant accident. It is completely stocked today.

What is hugely decried as a major environmental catastrophe, proving that fire retardant kills fish, was a minor nothing, an accident that was rectified immediately and caused no lasting harm whatsoever.

The fire, on the other hand, could easily have destroyed the Fall River Fish Hatchery, and thereby eliminated the production of millions of fish eggs and fingerlings. That’s the kind of thing that results from NOT fighting fires.

In 2007 800,000 acres (1,250 square miles) of the Salmon River watershed in central Idaho was incinerated. That burn has had a huge impact on endangered salmon habitat, as massive post-fire erosion has covered spawning beds and polluted streams with toxic ash in concentrations heavy enough to alter stream pH [see here]. It is a prime example of what fire can do to a fishery. Fire retardant has never done anything like that, although it may have prevented similar disasters.

The NYT article questioned the use of fire retardant on the Tea Fire [here]. The ABC News video-bite was critical of the use of fire retardant on the Triangle Fire Complex [here]. Those fires are horrific tragedies that have caused hundreds of $millions (if not $billions) in damages. The use of fire retardant has saved lives and prevented the destruction of hundreds of $millions (if not $billions) in greater damages. Not one fish was killed by fire retardant on these fires; not one single fish.

It is time to get rational. That means the Media needs to think long and hard about spreading wacko rumors and false innuendo that could end up killing people and destroying forests, watersheds, homes, and cities. Fire retardant is a critically important fire fighting tool. Please don’t believe those (with questionable motives) who deny it.