‘We’re Preparing for Wildfire Season All Year Round’—How Wildland Fire Training Has Changed Permanently
Wildfire season used to be somewhat predictable. Typically beginning sometime in summer and ending once the cooler weather sets in, firefighters would generally have a sense as to when they’d be called to a scene that needs to be controlled.
“Depending on what part of the country you’re in, wildland fire is all year round,” says Jeff Pricher, co-author of Wildland Firefighter, Principles and Practice, Revised Second Edition.
There have been several high-profile examples of raging wildfires in the past several years:
- Currently, firefighters are battling wildfires that have burned 1.3 million acres in one week in the Texas Panhandle.
- In June 2023, swaths of smoke from wildfires in Canada spread throughout the continent, seriously impacting air quality in New York City.
- There were wildfires in California, as there are every season. These burned below-average acreage, but the 2021 season saw record fire activity for most of the year.
Hear what Pricher had to say about how training is changing due to the now-ongoing wildfire season:
Pricher attributes the constant nature of wildfire to climate change accompanying dramatic weather events, but also civilization’s movement toward urban living.
“When we look at how many homes we have in that urban interface compared to what we had 20 years ago, it’s completely different,” he says. “It’s those changes that make things difficult.”
He talks in detail about when and how to use “prescribed fire”—the practice of using fire to eliminate dense trees and brush which could fuel a potentially catastrophic fire—to forestall or eliminate threats before they happen.
“We can stop fires from getting even bigger, before a fire can get to where our control lines are for example,” he says.
He adds that there is some controversy in using prescribed fire, saying that there is a fear around clear cutting too much forest. He maintains that this is precisely the reason good year-round training is important.
“There’s a lot of science behind what we do,” he says. “There’s a lot of leadership, training, skills and practice that needs to occur prior to those large emergencies.”
The near constant threat of wildfire has prompted the U.S. Department of Agriculture Forest Service developed a 10-year plan in 2022 to "address the wildfire crisis in the places where it poses the most immediate threats to communities."
Pricher cites examples lifted directly from “Wildland Firefighter” on how indigenous people would use prescribed burns to manage land long before there was applied science or data.
He says that in today’s world, prevention is key, but that work can begin in the classroom and be applied to the field.
“There’s so much more on the prevention side of what we do that it has to be year-round,” he says.
Wildland Firefighter: Principles and Practice, Revised Second Edition
Wildland Firefighter: Principles and Practice, Revised Second Edition meets and exceeds the job performance requirements and objectives as outlined in the following National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) and National Wildland Coordinating Group (NWCG) standards.
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