OPINION: Federal forest managers are too tangled in their own bureaucracy to mitigate wildfires
Firefighters walk near fire hoses set up to protect homes and cabins threatened by the Lava Fire near Lake Cascade on Sept. 11.
CLARK CORBIN/Idaho Capital Sun
A wildfire helicopter flies over the U.S. Army wildfire base near Lake Cascade and the Lava Fire on Sept. 11.
CLARK CORBIN/Idaho Capital Sun
Working for the Bureau of Land Management as an initial attack firefighter during my summers in college, you would learn pretty fast how to properly move the hose to quickly fight the flame. During my last summer, our engine had a firefighter on our crew whose only experience was digging lines and not moving water. One night we were trying to quickly catch a growing wildfire, but our new crewmate kept getting tangled in the hose.
Federal forest managers seem to be tangled in their own hose reel as they attempt to manage escalating fire concerns. Inundated with too much federal land, overwhelmed with bureaucratic red tape, and heavily reliant on distant oversight federal forest managers are failing to adequately manage their wildfires. Idaho Congressman Russ Fulcher alongside U.S. Sens. Mike Crapo and Jim Risch recently wrote to the U.S. Forest Service Chief Randy Moore saying: “The scale and severity of these incidents can be attributed to inadequate federal preventative measures and delayed response times.”
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