Why The South Is Decades Ahead Of The West In Wildfire Prevention

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9. Fighting fire with fire? Controlled burns may work in NorCal, but not always in SoCal

KCRW.com

One of the most talked about solutions to the state’s wildfires is also one of the most dangerous for some Southern California neighborhoods: prescribed burns.

“This is an ecosystem that's really adapted to infrequent fire. So it is fire adapted,” says fire ecologist Marti Witter, who works in the Santa Monica Mountains. “But probably the natural return interval in this area would have been between 70 and 100 years, because this is one of the areas with the lowest amount of lightning ignitions in the country overall.”

Angeles National Forest Fire Chief Robert Garcia says prescribed burns aren’t unheard of in the forests of Southern California, they’re just rare, and they’re becoming more difficult to do safely.

“We've had some significant challenges. This year, this prescribed burn season … which is typically January through May, because of how dry things have been, we really had to slow down in order to manage the risk of any kind of escape,” he says.

Fire agencies have to choose days when the plants aren’t too dry and the wind isn’t too strong so they can maintain control of a prescribed burn. As the climate warms and the drought worsens, that window of opportunity has gotten smaller. That’s left some local residents skeptical about whether prescribed burns work in Southern California at all.

I'm a native Southern Californian who has witnessed winds drive prescribed burns out of control.