But watching
the Dixie, once it crossed the Feather River and made a big run up pass
Belden, it seemed pretty clear to me that the fire was gonna go all the
way to Westwood. Just because of the terrain, and the fuels and the
drought and everything else.
Even if the agencies know this is
happening, they don't have the resources. The state, CalFire, protects
private land, and has enormous pressure to fight fires direct, go
direct. And the Forest Service usually is fighting fire on their own
land, and they often play a long game, trying to contain the fire inside
the ‘big box’ that everyone complains about. And the agencies, they've
kind of talked so much trash about each other's tactics for my entire
career, so there’s a real reluctance for Cal Fire to use big-box
tactics. They just don’t have as much experience working on big box
fires - the Feds have been doing the big box game for a long time. So it
seemed to me, during Dixie, Cal Fire people weren't always thinking far
enough out ahead. If you're looking at a fire that's moving three miles
a day, and it's gonna take you a week to prepare your indirect fire
line, you have to be thinking 20 miles ahead of where the fire is today.
So
you're admitting when you pick that strategy that you're going to give
up 20 miles of ground to the fire. That's really untenable for CalFire.
Because their job, their biggest charge, is to protect private
timberland. So they go direct for as long as you can, and the private
timberland reps are right there on the line, applying a ton of pressure
to keep going direct. The big problem, is, say you keep fighting the
fire direct for three days, and it fails and you have to fall back to
plan B, the indirect line that was 20 miles out three days ago - you
still need a week to prep that line, but now you've only got four days.
Because you spent three days chasing the fire thinking maybe you could
hold it up. When you dedicate resources to direct attack, it’s taking
resources away from building the big box, and the big box is often what
contains these big fires.
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