New Guidelines Balance California Wildfire Management, Air Quality
SACRAMENTO (AP) _ Wildfire managers want to let lightning-sparked fires burn in remote areas, but said they need to improve how government agencies decide which blazes can be allowed to continue without harming air quality miles away.
They announced a plan Monday to better coordinate between local, state and federal agencies when fires in the Sierra Nevada range should be allowed to spread, when they must be extinguished, and when they can be channeled and allowed to burn out.
Lightning-triggered wildfires are a natural phenomenon that aids some wildlife, helps control forest growth, and can minimize catastrophic firestorms, said John Kennedy, a manager within the air division of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
But such fires can burn for weeks or even months. The dry Sierra is particularly vulnerable to lightning storms that can spark dozens of fires simultaneously.
Multiple fires or smoky fires on poor air quality days present their own problems with soot, smog and impaired visibility, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley and surrounding foothill and mountain communities.
The new ``wildland fire use'' protocol will help balance those decisions.
Land managers for the U.S. Forest Service, Park Service, Bureau of Land Management and California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection already have plotted where they'd like to let fires burn.
Once lightning strikes, they'll coordinate between themselves and with air quality boards on which fires should be allowed to continue. The decisions will be based on current and forecast air quality conditions and the air and ground forces available to control or extinguish blazes.
