The 5 factors fueling the Rim Fire

The 5 factors fueling the Rim Fire
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“A century’s worth of fuel” was left in the Rim Fire’s path, federal forest ecologists told the Associated Press. Beginning around the 1900s, forest managers suppressed smaller, natural fires, which are able to clear brush while moving quickly enough to avoid killing trees. Partially as a result of this, the “megafires” we see today are a different beast entirely, and far more destructive. “California’s mountain flora is designed to burn and even flourish and regenerate healthier after a fast-moving fire,” the AP explains. “Instead, the Rim Fire is killing everything in its path.”
This policy has been rethought since the late 1980s, to promising effect: Only when the Rim Fire hit areas that had been allowed to burn over the past 20 years, one ecologist explained, did it show signs of slowing.


The U.S. Forest Service rain out of firefighting funds in early August, before the Rim Fire even ignited. Budget cuts, mainly due to sequestration, left them down 500 firefighters, 50 fire trucks and two planes, according to Bill Dougan, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees. Limited resources also reduced their ability to pre-treat forest areas, Dougan told Government Executive, leaving plenty of brush for the fire to blaze through.
The Los Angeles Times editorial board penned an Op-Ed yesterday calling attention to “the folly of sequestration” that’s left a basic public safety service underfunded. “This isn’t a sane fire policy for an era of climate change,” they wrote.