Public Policy Supports FAV
By S. Kriyu

When people believe that the government will protect them from a hazard, the damage potential of a catastrophic event increases.  An example is the widespread misconception among urbanites moving to rural areas that fire protection is solely the concern of the fire department.  Hence, property losses to wildfire are increasing.

Nearly every state in the U.S. has recently experienced large scale wild land/urban interface fire losses, such as the Pine Barrens in New Jersey, Piedmont in North and South Carolina, Palmetto in Florida, Jack Pine in the Lake States, the 1994 Tyee fire in Washington, the 1994 Chicken and Blackwell/Corral complexes in Idaho, the Southern California fire siege of 1993, the 1991 Oakland Hills fire, and the Long Island, NY, and Texas fires of 1996.  All of these are clear examples of the troubling nationwide trend.  In California alone, losses to wildfires have averaged over $78 million per year for the last five (5) consecutive years.

People living in rural settings or at the canyon's edge expect fire protection, but there is, in fact, no central coordination.  City trained structural firefighters are often inadequately equipped to fight wild land fires, but in practice they are expected to do so.  When large fires erupt, multiple agencies typically respond with more suppression forces than can be effectively managed and after-action reports often indicate that over-mobilized resources were under-utilized, while at the same time spread too thin.

A situation comment within the Federal Wild Land Fire Policy pointedly suggests that wild land interface fire protection is not a new problem, nor are there any newly conceived solutions.  The problem is not one of finding new solutions.  This has caused at least one observer to ask, "But why no new ideas?  Is it because the present system has no mechanism to reward good ideas or penalize for mistakes and failures?"