A debate over fire management in Southern California reignited this week as the Apple Fire tore a blazing path through Riverside and San Bernardino counties.
Updates on the Apple Fire — which by Saturday had consumed more than 32,000 acres and had 2,845 firefighters battling it — from the U.S. Forest Service and Cal Fire identified the point of ignition as a diesel-fueled vehicle's exhaust system spitting out burning carbon. "Fire activity is being driven primarily by record low moisture content of the vegetation combined with high temperatures and low relative humidity," according to the agencies.
But they also highlighted that the fire is tearing through an area with no recent burn history, leading to questions of whether it could've been avoided with more prescribed burns, the practice of torching an area prior to fire season to remove flammable vegetation.
In the fiscal year ending March 31, Cal Fire aimed to burn 20,253 acres to reduce fuel. In total, about 125,000 acres around the state are treated via prescribed burns each year by various government agencies, according to the California Air Resources Board.
So, what place do prescribed burns hold in wildfire management, and could they have impacted the Apple Fire? After more than a century of aggressive fire suppression across the West, Cal Fire and other land management agencies push for large-scale removal of built-up fuel through techniques ranging from prescribed burns to mechanic thinning.
But a growing chorus of researchers and environmentalists argue firefighting agencies have gone too far. They say the use of burns and flora removal is useful in forests but does little to prevent the largest and deadliest fires, especially in Southern California and the Central Coast.
More: Cal Fire officials: Apple Fire heads into make-or-break weekend
"There are very few circumstances where you need prescribed fire for chaparral or shrubland ecosystems," said Marti Witter, a fire ecologist with the National Park Service at the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area.
Instead, Witter said more targeted fuel removal would yield greater returns.
Vehicle malfunctions — where sparks can fly due to a range of causes, from trailers' chains dragging on pavement to older exhaust systems — are a known wildfire igniter. So, removing dry grass along road shoulders or adding something non-flammable like gravel could be more effective in fire prevention, Witter said.
Katie Kramer, a spokesperson for the Forest Service, said the Banning Canyon area, close to where the fire began in the northern reaches of Cherry Valley, had not burned in years.
"The ignitions were pretty close to that, and that was the concern. It burned up that canyon big time," Kramer said, adding that the high levels of available fuel helped the fire burn "pretty hot and quick."
Len Nielson, the staff chief for fire prevention and environmental quality at Cal Fire, said that prescribed burns are only green lighted when a list of variables — wind speed, fuel moisture, temperature and more — are favorable.
“By operating in this window of opportunity in the prescribed fire, the damages of the fire are very limited," Nielson said.
And, the prevailing thinking at Cal Fire is that fires and fuel reduction need to happen, so it's better to set the rules rather than be caught fighting catastrophic blazes driven by high winds.
"It’s not an ‘if’ it will burn, but a ‘when’ it will burn," Nielson said.
Even more than some wildfire researchers, though, environmental groups are pushing back against such burns. They're vocal about their belief that, in grasslands and chaparral, the practice leads to ecosystem removal and increases the severity of future fires by aiding invasive species that are quicker to ignite.
"The research of the past 20 years has shown pretty clearly that fire suppression has had no impact whatsoever," said Rick Halsey, founder of the California Chaparral Institute, a nonprofit environmental group that studies fires and advocates for ecosystem protection.
Halsey said that while some of the areas the Apple Fire eventually consumed were potentially overdue for a fire, the area near the ignition point had burned in the mid-1990s, which he argued was well within its natural fire cycle.
California is also home to another major ecosystem regime — forests that largely occur in Northern California — and there's agreement that those can benefit from burns due to the history of aggressive wildfire suppression leaving fuel on the forest floor.
But chaparral-rich Southern California warrants a different approach, experts like Witter say.
Studies from the University of California Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources and elsewhere have shown that too many fires in scrubland that wouldn't often burn without human-caused ignitions — especially Southern California chaparral — lead to a phenomenon called type conversion. That's when the native vegetation can't compete after so many disturbances and invasive species such as European grasses take over.
"It’s California. We have non-native weeds everywhere," Witter explained, calling the annual grasses, “the perfect fuel to start a fire.”
The reason non-native weeds are so hazardous is because they're not perennial like other California species and they dry out roughly from June through October, according to Dan Silver, executive director of the Endangered Habitats League. He said that burning down that fuel source is a very short-term solution because the first big rain spells the return of the grass.
"Of course, you lose all the wildlife as well, but for what purpose? All you did was spend a bunch of money," Silver said.
But Nielson from Cal Fire disagreed, saying the agency avoids burning the full landscape in order to always leave habitat for wildlife. And, these invasive weeds are well-adapted as pioneer species, meaning “they come back best after a catastrophic wildfire,” he said.
So, the agency's approach is to repeatedly burn grasslands and chaparral at a lower intensity — one that native species' seeds can survive — to kill invasive plants' seeds while avoiding massive wildfires, events that also threaten humans and buildings.
As of Friday morning, the Apple Fire was 30% contained. When it's nearing total containment, government forestry and firefighting agencies will head in to assess the damage.
"After the fire, they will bring in the Burned Area Emergency Response team that looks at ways they can mitigate erosion and damage to life and property after fires come through," Kramer said. They'll also look for further lessons to be drawn from the fire by studying the intensity of its heat and what types of landscapes were torched.
According to Halsey of the California Chaparral Institute, the state and federal agencies tasked with managing wildfires need a new approach. His group and Silver's are suing California to halt the use of landscape-level wildfire prevention techniques, including prescribed burns
"If you keep losing lives and property, you gotta ask yourself, ‘Am I doing something wrong?’” Halsey said.
Mark Olalde covers the environment for The Desert Sun. Get in touch at molalde@gannett.com, and follow him on Twitter at @MarkOlalde.
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Apple Fire adds fuel to smoldering debate over California fire management - Desert Sun
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