Wildfire Damage: Towards a Broader Definition
April 1, 2016
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April 2016 WildLands Advocate Article by Esther Bogorov
Our wilderness is where we play, heal, and thrive. Over the last few centuries, our urban spaces have been coming closer and closer to the wild spaces, increasing the wildland-urban interface. We have seen how this development can come with tremendous danger and significant cost. We have policies and procedures that try to keep us safe, including active fire suppression, in hopes of decreasing damage and reducing the total cost. There is ample evidence that countless lives and property have been saved through the hard work of firefighters and the forestry services in this way.
In 2006, Mariam Lankoande and Jonathan Yoder released a paper at Washington State University titled “An Econometric Model of Wildfire Suppression Productivity.” For nearly a century, wildfire studies have looked at the total cost of wildfire as being the sum of cost and damage. If we minimize the cost of fire suppression and minimize the cost of damage, the total amount we spend financing wildfire suppression should, in this outdated theory, decrease.
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