Putting Out Fires

AROUND 1910 A SERIES OF WILDFIRES raged across the western United States. Panic followed the conflagrations across the previously fruited plain. The federal government responded by pouring water on anything that flickered, and thus began the era of unburned, overgrown underbrush. When fires are quenched before they ever really start to spread, the countryside becomes choked with highly flammable plant life. Now, in the era of climate change and more severe droughts, hotter and longer summers, this policy of fire suppression is coming back to haunt us, after a century of over protecting our forests and grasslands. Shockingly, the world's worst air pollution in 2018 was not in Beijing, China, or Calcutta India, or Mexico city, or Bombay, India. It was in none other than beautiful Seattle, Washington. The wildfires of 2018 have been the most numerous, most severe, and the largest in U.S. history. cities such as Seattle which are largely surrounded by by forests subject historically to fire suppression have been the hardest hit by smoke; no matter which way the wind blows, air pollution is scattered across the city from all directions, a guaranteed blackened skyline. Although people in Seattle have generally not been wearing gas masks this summer, as they often do in places like Beijing, there have been days during which they might have seriously considered doing so. Respiratory illnesses, especially among the very young and the elderly, have skyrocketed in Seattle. The fire season is growing longer, and all across the west now extends nearly the year round. Folks have been encouraged to stay indoors many days this past summer in Seattle, where the summers are not usually hot enough for people to have air conditioning, which filters the air. Denver is more fortunate, since it is not surrounded by deciduous forests, but nonetheless must contend with nearby prairie fires. I recall visiting Yellowstone park in 1988, just one year before one third of it burned in a massive fire, from which it has only recently recovered. Climate change will only get worse. We had better find better ways of dealing with our burning land.