Paradise Recreation and Parks Director Dan Efseaff walks toward the Little Feather River Canyon in Butte County, Calif. Efseaff wants to try a radical idea in Paradise: Pay people not to rebuild in this slice of canyon, to create a safety buffer to prevent future wildfires from spreading.
Debris from a burned grocery store in Paradise still stands six months after the fires swept through. It is estimated that removal of debris from the fire will cost upwards of $1.7 billion, which will mostly be paid for by federal taxpayers.
Trucks haul away debris in Paradise.
Redefining resilience after the paradise fires
It is a very American ethos, after wildfires devastate a town, to clean up, rebuild, and come back stronger than before. But wildfire and recovery experts this immediate impulse to put back what existed before is expensive, dangerous and misguided. After a century of suppressing wildfires, extraordinary amounts of forest fuels have accumulated in dense, wildfire-prone areas, and a warming climate only exacerbates weather patterns that fuel fires. There needs to be limits on how much rebuilding should take place, they say.
Read the full story on NPR.org here.
Truckee, a mountain town near Lake Tahoe, sits in a fire-prone area surrounded by trees.
Bill Seline, the fire chief in Truckee, stands on a road between land that has been cleared of overgrown vegetation (left) and land that hasn't (right). The Truckee Fire Department is involved in an effort to reduce fuel risk on 9.6 acres of land in this area.
Seline drives into a densely wooded part of Truckee. In an effort to reduce fire risk, the fire department banned backyard campfires during fire season.
Seline examines a map of historic fires that have burned over 10 acres of land (yellow) in the Truckee area since 1908.
Replacing wood shake roofing with metal or asphalt can help prevent the spread of wildfire.
Ken Pimlott retired in 2018 from Cal Fire following the Camp Fire. He says that beginning around 2014, fires began getting worse and more frequent.
To mitigate fire risk, the town is increasing tree clearances around power lines to 12 feet from 7 feet.
The wildland urban interface represents an issue across many parts of the West, where homes sit next to land with flammable vegetation.