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