Guest Editorial: Time for a federal agency dedicated to fighting wildfires

This editorial is from the Las Vegas Sun:

As America stumbles into our new annual torment of wildfire season we can look, with smoke-filled eyes, to our oceans for clues to better fight fires.

Specifically, the Coast Guard.

The Coast Guard was established in 1790 and charged with defending our coastal waters — and the commerce on them — from threats such as pirates, smugglers and even attempted confederate naval blockades. In 1915, it joined with U.S. Life Saving Service and its humanitarian mission expanded to protecting the lives of mariners of all types.

In other words, the stakes in the Coast Guard's mission — to save lives and ensure commerce can be conducted safely — are the same stakes as those we face with wildfires.

And the Coast Guard is funded and organized to be ready when the need arises.

As of December, the U.S. Coast Guard has 250 large cutters, nearly 2,000 small boats, more than 200 helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, and an army of 44,000 active-duty personnel, 7,000 reservists, 31,000 uniformed volunteer auxiliary and 8,500 full-time civilian employees. The service's budget is now more than $13 billion annually.

Compare that to the puny, but heroic, force we have assembled to defend us from wildfires.

A recent study by University College London estimated that in 2018, the economic cost of wildfires in California alone to the U.S. economy was $148.5 billion. Another study, funded by the Australian government and published in the Lancet, found that wildfires were responsible for 33,000 deaths around the world each year, including 3,200 in the United States. And these numbers are only going to get worse as the size, intensity and frequency of fires continue to increase due to global climate change. Despite these ongoing annual effects, the current federal budget makes only $2.45 billion available to the U.S. Department of Agriculture and U.S. Department of the Interior for fire suppression. The U.S. Forest Service employs just 14,500 wildland firefighters, only slightly more than the 11,000 firefighters in the New York City Fire Department alone.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, since 2001, 41 states have experienced a statistically significant increase in the average acreage burned by wildfires each year. In that same time, an increase in significant fires in March, April, May, June and July means that the wildfire season is both longer and more intense than in years past.

By April, we already had seen fires in California, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado and Nebraska. Hell is just warming up for the West.

It's time for the United States to invest in a federal Coast Guard-like program to defend American lives and the American economy from the effects of wildfires.

Like the Coast Guard, a federal wildfire guard could protect the U.S. economy from both the direct threat of wildfires — the burning and destruction of lives, resources and structures — and the indirect threats that come from the loss of productivity due to shutting down the power grid, evacuations and smoke-filled air.

In California alone, entire towns are shut down without power for days at a time when high winds threaten to down power lines and cause blazes.

Meanwhile, shortages of the giant supertanker slurry planes to fight the biggest fires bedevil the states. The company operating the last Boeing 747 supertanker, the largest fire suppression plane in the world with a 19,000-gallon capacity, closed last year. That leaves just four supertankers, all 9,000-gallon DC-10s, left in operation. The U.S. Forest Service, California and other Western states own, lease, or contract for a small fleet of a few dozen regular air-tankers and water-drop helicopters, each with a capacity of 1,000-4,000 gallons, but when compared to the hundreds of ships, boats, helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft operated by the Coast Guard, it is unsurprising that wildfires seem to burn uncontrollably so often.

With sustained federal funding and coordination, fire response teams that include both aerial and ground units could be placed strategically throughout the West to ensure rapid response to fires. In turn, that helps forest managers convert wildfires into strategic controlled burns that promote the health of the forest and help reduce the size and intensity of wildfires moving forward.

Such a move could stimulate the economy in rural America by driving investment in U.S.-based production of necessary equipment, much of which is already located in rural communities. Moreover, creating a robust cross-country network of Hotshot teams in and around the communities most likely to be affected by wildfires would require siting facilities for firefighting trucks, planes, helicopters and maintenance facilities across the Western states, bringing opportunities for education, employment and investment in communities and infrastructure.

For 230 years the U.S. Coast Guard has protected American lives and finances from both human and natural threats on tumultuous seas. We're overdue for a similar agency to protect American lives and finances now that wildfires are an annual fact of life in the West.

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