Megafire: The Race to Extinguish a Deadly Epidemic of Flame
By: Michael Kodas. Houghton
Publisher: Mifflin Harcourt
Land on Fire: The New Reality of Wildfire in the West
By: Gary Ferguson
Publisher: Timber Press
Pages: 212 with color photos
Publication scheduled for Aug. 22
If you go
What: Nature and science writer Gary Ferguson speaks and signs his new book, "Land on Fire"
When: 7:30 p.m. Monday
Where: Boulder Book Store, 1107 Pearl St., Boulder
Tickets: Vouchers to attend are $5 and are good for $5 off the author's featured book or a purchase the day of the event.
Info: 303-447-2074 or boulderbookstore.net
It's significant that two major books on the growing epidemic of catastrophic wildfire in the West will hit bookstore shelves this summer. It's also significant, and more than a little disturbing, that so few Americans — not even those living in "suicide subdivisions" built in wildfire-danger zones — recognize the scope of the problem.
"Land of Fire" by nature and science writer Gary Ferguson and "Megafire" by Michael Kodas, associate director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado Boulder, cover much of the same ground, but the authors' respective approaches offer an interesting contrast.
Though not far off in page count, Ferguson's book contains perhaps half as many words as Kodas', and provides scores of color photos. Written in accessible, elegant language, "Land of Fire" feels almost like a series of engaging lectures on the science of fire, the history of fire suppression and the mechanics of wildland firefighting, interwoven with a detailed scenario of how a hypothetical fire in southern Colorado would play out.
Kodas offers the same history — in some cases, literally the same anecdotes — minus illustrations. But "Megafire" is a work of narrative nonfiction focused on the human beings caught up catastrophic real-world fires, mostly in Colorado.
Both books characterize the problem with stark, unsettling statistics:
•Prior to 1995, the United States experienced an average of one "megafire" — one that consumes more than 100,000 acres — per year. Between 2005 and 2014, the average leaped to 9.8 per year.
•Megafires constitute fewer than 3 percent of all U.S. wildfires, but account for more than 90 percent of the area burned. "Make no mistake about it," writes Ferguson, "big fires are becoming common fires."
•In the 1980s, just over 2 million acres burned annually. The average today is 8 million acres. By mid-century, scientists surmise that the acreage will grow to 20 million acres.
•From 1990 to 1999, 217,960 acres burned in Colorado, compared to 889,343 acres from 2000 to 2009.
•The cost to the federal government of fighting fires has grown to $3 billion a year, a tenfold increase from the 1990s.
•In the hills and mountains hovering above Boulder, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs, Kodas writes, "forests that historically had fewer than 100 trees per acre now have upwards of 500," a 400-percent increase in fuel available to the voracious flames that will inevitably come.
•As of 2012, a half a million homes in Colorado — one out of every four — and more than a million residents occupied "wildland urban interface" zones that one expert calls "suicide subdivisions." "Plain and simple," Ferguson writes, "the more houses, the more likely a wildfire will happen."
So what's going on? Ferguson and Kodas identify the same set of contributing factors:
•First and worst, more than a century of aggressive fire suppression has left millions of acres of wildland overloaded with fuels. "A forest, it's like a lawn," one U.S. Forest Service researcher told Kodas. "You have to cut your lawn every week."
•Development in "red zones" not only provides more fuel, but also has become a major source of ignition through human-produced sparks and heat.
•A warming global climate has decreased snowpack, reducing moisture in forests downstream, allowed insect species to spawn twice as often, creating millions of acres of dead, dry, highly combustible timber and increased the length of the fire season, among other problems.
•Political and economic factors, rather than safety and environmental concerns, often drive public policy.
Fire is a natural part of the ecosystem, especially in the dry West, and both books source a century of overzealous suppression to the 1910 "Big Burn" blaze in Idaho, which killed 86 people and was described by one forester as a "veritable red demon from hell."
The fledgling U.S. Forest Service, under the skeptical eye of Congress, which held its purse strings, became a crusader for suppression. By 1932, the agency had instituted its infamous 10 a.m. (Kodas) or 9 a.m. (Ferguson) policy, which stipulated that whenever and wherever a fire broke out, it was to be extinguished no later than the specified hour the next day.
"One of humanity's greatest allies was suddenly one of America's greatest enemies," Kodas writes.
By the dawn of the 21st century, having understood the disastrous consequences of the nation's war on wildfire, fire experts began to promote controlled burning and forest thinning as preventative methods, and even a "let it burn" policy.
But of late, short-sighted politicians (typically from the eastern half of the country) have actually been cutting resources for both firefighting and fire prevention. Between 2010 and 2012, the federal budget for firefighting dropped $512 million, or 15 percent; during the same time period, funds for forest thinning were cut by 25 percent.
Meanwhile, the incursion of private companies into the wildland-fire suppression business has perversely made overzealous suppression a profit center.
"There's a lot of people who see a return to a 10 a.m. policy as a way to make money," one official told Kodas.
Readers who enjoy the drama and character-building of narrative nonfiction a la Erik Larson, Laura Hillenbrand and Boulder's Jon Krakauer may prefer "Megafire," while those looking for something closer to a Great Courses offering may tilt toward "Land on Fire."
But in the end, both books are cogent, well written, entertaining and elegantly informative on a growing threat that too few Americans recognize.
If you are a local author and would like your book considered for review, please email firstname.lastname@example.org.