Look Higher for Wildfire Solutions

A fire in Denton, Montana burned down several structures as the fire approached the town around 1:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec.1. After a mixture of strong wind gusts and a sparking power line caused the fire to spread quickly throughout the town. With climates getting drier and fires getting worse each year, it’s time to make improvements to address climate change driven wildfire danger. Through improvements in infrastructure and increasing fire safety awareness, the threat fires pose can be reduced.

Over the past few months, Montana has felt the full force of climate change driven drought. Snowfall has decreased, temperatures have risen and drought has gotten worse. Cathy Whitlock, a paleoclimatologist at MSU, said in an interview with the New York Times that “We’re looking at conditions we haven’t seen for a thousand years in Montana and probably longer in terms of drought.” According to Whitlock, the current drought Montana is experiencing has taken the state into “uncharted territory.”

According to the Great Falls Tribune, NorthWestern Energy suggested the cause of the fire was high wind stress on power lines in the area that night. There have also been other examples of wildfires being started by power lines. In 2018, NPR reported that a fire in California killed 80 people due to a pine tree falling on a Pacific Gas and Electric power line.

In order to avoid a similar tragedy, power companies need to consider moving power lines underground. By doing so, the risk of fires due to sparking lines or trees toppling over onto the lines would be avoided. Additionally, parts of the Infrastructure Bill passed in Congress are going toward fire reduction such as forest thinning, prescribed fires and increasing the base pay of entry-level wildland firefighters to $42,000, as reported by High Country News.

This investment in infrastructure will go a long way in reducing megafires. One point of contention on how to prevent these fires was the natural importance of fire in ecosystems and whether fighting these fires was counterintuitive. By using planned burns, forests can be managed to a closer degree and allowed to follow the natural cycle of death and regrowth.

Another more cliché way wildfires can be reduced is through simple fire safety education. According to the National Park Service, nearly 85% of wildfires in the United States are caused by human action. This ranges from discarded cigarettes, burning debris, unattended campfires and even intentional arson.

Campaigns involving the likes of Smokey Bear have been around for quite some time now, touting the iconic line “Only you can prevent forest fires.” According to the Smithsonian, after the introduction of Smokey Bear, wildfires in the U.S. decreased dramatically, with most Americans being able to recognize the character and associating it with good citizenship. With increasingly devastating fires, bulking up campaigns like this could prove vital in the effort to protect the vulnerable land across the United States.

Wildfires pose a great threat to the ecosystem of the United States, and with the increasing ferocity at which they burn each year, the environment of states like Montana is becoming more and more threatened. In order to prevent disasters like the one that happened in Denton, it’s time for action on wildfires.