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English > Preventing Fires > Fuel Management > Prescribed Burns
The traditional tactic for preventing wildfires is prescribed burns. Before Columbus arrived in America, the Native American Indians were setting smaller fires to avoid big wildfires. The government has learned from the Indians in this respect, setting 2,240,105 acres of prescribed burns in 1999, and 1,077,314 acres in 2000.
Prescribed burns are fires set during low-risk times of the year. They burn up the fuel that wildfires need to start and burn, thus preventing a more dangerous unplanned wildfire.
There is a certain amount of risk involved with prescribed burns, but foresters say that risk must be taken. Prescribed burns help avoid fires that spread firefighters too thinly, and become so severe that they cannot be suppressed. They are important for forest health because they remove dangerous amounts of fuel, and lessen acute wildfire seasons.
Sometimes the public does not support prescribed burns because of the smoke they create. However, if they are planned correctly, firefighters say they cause less smoke than natural fires.
Why Prescribed Burns Are Better Than Wildfires
Besides being carefully planned and less dangerous then wildfires, prescribed burns are much less costly then suppressing wildfires.
As the graph at left shows, setting prescribed burns is substantially less expensive then suppressing wildfires. For example, in 1999, $99,104,000 was spent on prescribed burns, and $523,468,000 on suppressing wildfires. There were 2,240,105 acres burned in prescribed burns, and 2,315,730 acres burned in wildfires. The cost per acre for prescribed burns was $44.24, while the cost per acre for suppressing wildfires was $226.05. Therefore, suppressing wildfires was 510% more expensive then lighting prescribed burns in 1999.
Though the cost of suppressing wildfires fluctuates from year to year, and the cost of prescribed burns steadily rises, it is still much less expensive to set prescribed burns than to suppress wildfires. Not only would enormous amounts of money be saved if most wildfires could be prevented by prescribed burns, but houses wouldn't be endangered, and no one would have to be evacuated for extended periods of time.
More Prescribed Burns
Because prescribed burns are fairly effective in preventing wildfires, and much less expensive and more convenient than wildfires, more and more prescribed burns are being set. As the graph at right shows, the number of prescribed burns increased drastically between 1994 and 1999. This is due in part to forest management policy that supports prescribed burns, and the recent years of bad wildfires. The sharp drop-off of acres burned in prescribed burns during 2000 is probably due to the 2000 fire season, which was more severe than other recent fire seasons. Besides having firefighting resources stretched too thin and the weather being too dry to set prescribed burns safely, this decline can be explained by the unpopularity politicians would face if they ordered the ignition of more fires.
© ThinkQuest Team C0119184 :: Credits & Sources
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