When Did the U.S. Adopt the Policy of Stopping All Forest Fires?

As forest fires blaze across many of the Western states this summer, the U.S. Forest Service and other federal agencies are confronted with the task of combating them. To date this year fire has consumed more than 3 million acres of forest - an increase of 2 million acres in the same period in 2001. The cost of suppression of these fires by year's end will easily run into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The methods currently used to protect us from wildfire were significantly shaped during the first decade of the twentieth century. In 1910, the year of the Great Fires, millions of acres of forest in the United Sates went up in flames. This conflagration is the subject of a recently published book by historian Stephen J. Pyne entitled, Year of the Fires: The Story of the Great Fires of 1910. In 1910, the national forests of the Northern Rockies alone lost more than 2,500,000 acres. Officials estimated that across the country 40 to 50 million acres of U.S. forestland burned. William Greeley, a graduate of the Yale School of Forestry and eventual chief of the Forest Service in the 1920s, placed the total loss at around one billion dollars. The ecological damage, to rivers, wildlife, and soil was inestimable.

There are two main approaches to forest fire control: "laissez-faire" and "imperialist," and until 1910 both were hotly debated. Laissez-faire describes a policy of using fire itself as a mechanism of fire prevention, primarily by using naturally occurring, or controlled "light burning," to thin out forests. In this way several small fires can be used to eliminate the fuels needed by a large devastating one. H.H. Chapman, an ecologist in the then newly-created Yale School of Forestry, had done studies of Louisiana longleaf pine forests that gave support to a policy of laissez-faire. In 1909 he noted that "fire has and always will be an element in longleaf forests, and the problem is not how fire can be eliminated, but how it can be controlled so as, first, to secure reproduction; second, to prevent the accumulation of litter and reduce the danger of a really disastrous burn." As each area of the country had a distinct geography and different cultural practices to confront, proponents of laissez-faire argued that fire control was best left in the hands of local or state authorities.

Light burning, however, never gained significant political momentum. The sheer immensity of the Great Fires was enough to convince the Forest Service that a policy of "imperialist" fire control was far more desirable. As Pyne writes, "America's emerging elite--its scientists, technocrats, political reformers, those who argued for Progressivism--were less willing to accept laissez-faire settlement with its wastage of soil, forests, waters, fields, and lives .... They believed that its weedy fires were corroding the country's natural wealth and that controlling fire had a significance that was both immensely practical and symbolic."

In 1905 Theodore Roosevelt established the Forest Service under Gifford Pinchot -- an ardent conservationist and former chief of the Division of Forestry -- as a means of protecting the country's vast forest reserves. Presidents had possessed control over these reserves since the passing of the Sundry Civil Appropriations Act in the 1890s. The Forest Service, largely through the leadership of Pinchot, adopted a policy of extensive and compulsory fire control as a means of forest conservation. Pinchot, a master at public relations, persuaded Americans that the active suppression of fire was vital. As soon as fires appeared in the forest they would be extinguished.

Such a policy, however, was difficult to implement. Fighting fires in the extreme backcountry, for example, demanded more financial and human resources than were available . Backcountry fires were also hard to locate and respond to quickly. Shifts in winds could cause fires to suddenly surge out of control, and the presence of lightning, railroads, and humans caused new fires to spring up constantly. As Pyne comments about the 1910 fires in the Northern Rockies, "It was the combination of lightning and wind that ultimately overwhelmed the firefight. The fire organization could cope with one but not both."

The great fires of 1910 humbled the forest service. But officials remained more convinced than ever that fires had to be immediately suppressed. The agency, however, would not gain the resources necessary to implement such a policy until the 1930s. Only then, under the leadership of chief forester Gus Silcox, himself a veteran of the Great Fires, did the Forest Service finally employ a sufficient force to attempt the goal it had set for itself. Half of the work camps of the Civilian Conservation Corps were devoted to firefighting. At that time the agency also gained access to Emergency Conservation Work funds, which provided money for both pre-suppression and active firefighting measures. Under Silcox the Forest Service recommitted itself to the theory of imperialist fire suppression. In the words of Pyne, "Whether the fire was big or small, near or remote, kindled by lighting or by locomotives, burning through pine reproduction or Douglas-fir crowns, one standard applied with equal force everywhere. The best way to prevent big fires was to smash every fire while it was still small."

However, the financial and human costs of maintaining such a fire control policy have been extremely high. In 1994, emergency fire costs ballooned to $965 million to combat fires in which thirty-four firefighters died and two million acres burned. Previously, there had been some effort to produce a more cost-effective alternative. In 1978 the Forest Service had changed its policy to allow for some light burning and uncontrolled natural fires, adopting the principle of the laissez-faire advocates of so many years before. In 1995 the service made more of a commitment to the laissez-fair approach, deciding to contain "bad" fires and encourage "good" ones. In 2000, however, light burning suffered a setback when the National Park Service lost control of two "good" fires in Arizona and New Mexico. Combined, these fires burned around 60,000 acres. As Pyne notes in his concluding chapter, the institutional culture of the firefighting bureaucracy has remained "a culture of fire suppression."