As McMansion subdivisions spread into forested areas, wildfires are becoming more dangerous.....

From The American Prospect:


Playing with Fire

As Forest Service funding decreases and McMansion subdivisions spread into forested areas, wildfires are becoming more dangerous -- and more common -- than ever before.

Josh McDaniel | June 21, 2007 | web only


During last year's Esperanza Fire in Southern California, five Forest Service firefighters died trying to protect an isolated, unoccupied home. The home was positioned at the top of a series of steep gullies surrounded by dense, highly flammable chaparral vegetation -- normally the type of place firefighters would avoid for a direct fight of a wildfire.

But the Esperanza Fire occurred in what firefighters term the "wildland-urban interface" or "Red Zone" -- the area of transition between developed urban areas and undeveloped wildlands. In this case, the fire was pushed by strong Santa Ana winds out of the chaparral and into a housing development. This has become an all too common occurrence as the wildlands shrink and the suburbs and exurbs steadily grow.

Wildland firefighters are entering the Red Zone more and more often as waves of subdivisions and McMansions have lapped at the edges of our national forests and public lands over the last two decades. The U.S. Forest Service estimates that 8.4 million new homes were added to Red Zones across the country in the 1990s, and this rate of growth is being sustained.

This tremendous expansion has not only made wildfires more dangerous, it has made them more expensive. A recent audit by the General Accounting Office detailed the tremendous increase in the costs of fighting wildfires (hitting $1.9 billion in 2006 and topping $1 billion in three of the past six years), and the feds place most of the blame for the rising costs on fighting more fires in the expanding Red Zone.

In the Red Zone, the normal command system that governs wildland firefighters "goes into the toilet. There is no organized lookout, aerial surveillance, or communications," says Jack Cohen, a former Hotshot firefighter and current researcher with the Rocky Mountain Research Station. "Escape routes go away -- with the smoke it becomes difficult to tell whether roads lead to safety zones."

When a normal backcountry wildfire overwhelms a fireline, firefighters simply retreat to the next ridge or the next road and dig another line. However, when wildfires move out of the forest and threaten homes and communities, there is no fall-back line. Fire managers are forced to throw every available resource -- including expensive helicopters and air tankers -- into the fight. Failure to do so can be a career-ending decision. ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=playing_with_fire

Up here in the CA Central Sierra Foothills, there are several second homes (luxury homes) on various hillsides and crests, totally isolated. Takes 20 minutes to get to them out of town. You can see them shimmering up there when it's twilight, with views of Mt Diablo 75 miles away on clear days. But they are a firetrap. If you have the money to build up there more power to you. But there should be an automatic fire fee before permits are issued. That is rarely the case.