Stephanie Pincetl comments in Popular Science: Wildfires could hit your hometown
‘“If you suppress fire and ignite fire, guess what? You get big fires,” says Stephanie Pincetl, founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA.
And suppressing flames doesn’t just amp up the risk for humans living in fire zones—in places that have been very tightly managed like the Sequoia National Forest, the trees aren’t able to bounce back without natural, low-level fires, Pincetl says.
Going forward, Pincetl adds that it’s crucial that state, local, and federal governments make funds available to people to retrofit their homes, as well as compensate property owners to keep more development from happening in high-risk areas. That way, small fires can happen like they would naturally without causing problems for people living in the area, as we’ve seen in places like Baja in Mexico.
“The Mexicans have not been able to afford fire suppression like we have in California, and there are regular fires and low-intensity fires and you don’t get the property destruction like we have,” Pincetl says. “There’s an example right next door if the natural fire regime is enabled to happen.”
