A prescribed fire in Hayfork on April 10, 2019. Advocates for the practice of setting planned burns to manage lands and minimize wildfire risk say the exceptional events rule gets in the way. (Molly Peterson/California Newsroom)
Prescribed fire is one of the best tools California has to prevent forest fires from exploding out of control. While the use of controlled burns to reduce vegetation and wildfire risk has increased in recent years, experts say much more needs to be done across California.
In October, KQED reported on the U.S. Forest Service’s decision to halt prescribed burns in California, a directive officials said was meant to preserve staff and equipment to fight wildfires. The pause occurred during the crucial fall window for controlled burns, raising concerns that it could increase long-term fire risks.
The story has been circulating on the internet this week.
The fires in Los Angeles have been politicized online as people search for politicians and policies to blame — and for evidence to reinforce personal beliefs.
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Even if the U.S. Forest Service had continued to allow burning, it would not have prevented this week’s devastation from deadly fires that have destroyed thousands of homes. The fires we’re seeing are primarily spreading through urban neighborhoods, with the possible exception of the Eaton Fire, which is burning, in part, on federal forest lands.
Given the wind, weather and location of the fires, it’s unlikely a controlled burn would have stopped the disaster. The houses and surrounding vegetation are fuels in communities that were not designed for fire resilience when they were planned decades ago.
“There’s vegetation all around homes and trees overlapping, and [residents] love the beauty and the look of that,” said Michael Gollner, a researcher and fire expert at UC Berkeley. “But when a fire comes through, it has a clear path to just keep propagating through the community.”
So what would have helped? Living in communities prepared for fire. How to prepare isn’t a mystery. It just takes convincing residents to get their communities involved.
“I hope that emerging from this [disaster] can be a much more serious conversation around fuels and community design,” said Michael Wara, a climate and energy expert at Stanford University.
California and the federal government have poured a lot of money into fire resilience, but there is room for much more, Wara said. For example, the state has taken steps to ramp up prescribed fire, but there have not been many burns next to communities.
There has been more investment in fuels management crews, but less investment in enforcing tough, defensible space codes, like having a five-foot buffer of non-combustible material around a house, what experts call “Zone 0.”
When an area rebuilds after a fire, adopting stringent requirements — such as using fire-resistant materials and requiring 30 feet between buildings — helps neighborhoods prepare for the next fire.
What’s needed is community support for fire resilience. Some communities oppose vegetation removal or defensible space inspections or prescribed fire near homes. Some areas that have rebuilt chose to waive certain requirements, including parts of Santa Rosa that burned in 2017.
Altadena resident Herb Wilson and his wife, Loyda Wilson, survey their home that was destroyed in the Eaton Fire northeast of Los Angeles on Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. The couple was on vacation in Hawaii when the fire broke out, so they were not able to retrieve any belongings. (Beth LaBerge/KQED)
While adopting new fire safety codes can be expensive and inconvenient, according to Gollner, he hopes the impacted Los Angeles communities will embrace them “so that if there’s a future fire in this area, we no longer would see such a destructive event.”
“If we’re going to have available, affordable insurance in California — not just now, but in 10 years as climate change gets worse — we need to do that stuff now,” Wara said, adding that there is only so much politicians can do.
“I don’t blame the politicians for that at all. It is about the people in communities,” he continued. “It is about community consensus and community solidarity, people taking responsibility for doing the work and for helping their neighbors to do the work.”
Fires that ignited in the San Bernardino National Forest last year were successfully fought, in part, because of prescribed burns by the U.S. Forest Service. The Line Fire threatened the Angelus Oaks community in early September 2024, but it slowed, and firefighters were able to control and redirect it when it entered a burn scar from the previous June.
“They saved that community using prescribed fire,” Wara said. “We need more of that. And the real barrier there is not the money, it’s not the agency, it’s the community acceptance.”
In the Los Angeles area, Malibu fires have become notorious. The despair and folly of continually rebuilding what continually gets burned is captured in The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, the provocative 1995 essay by Mike Davis, former writer and professor at UC Riverside.
“This has occurred across this state at different times throughout history and will keep happening if we’re not prepared for it,” Gollner said.
Stringent codes guiding construction and landscaping can prevent the vast majority of ignition spread and give firefighters a much better chance of saving communities.
“If we prevent 95% of the ignitions — it doesn’t have to be perfect — then firefighters will do a great job catching the few [ignitions] that slip through,” Gollner said. “But we have to help them. When there’s hundreds or thousands of structures igniting, they cannot handle it.”
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