Wildland fire costs vary from year to year, but over the past 15 years or so, the U.S. government has been spending about $3.5 billion annually for direct wildfire protection and suppression efforts.1,2 In addition, direct costs borne by state and local governments are estimated at $1 to $2 billion annually. (2)
But, direct costs for wildfire protection and suppression are hugely outpaced by indirect costs, which are maybe tenfold as great. (1)3 Thus, a very rough estimate is an annual expenditure of $50 billion within the United States for coping with wildland fires. This is not as high as the total expenditures for fire safety associated with buildings,4 but it is nonetheless an enormous sum of money.
For any category of losses, prudent risk management must consider the available strategies for decreasing the losses and implementing sufficiently cost-effective ones. In addition, in almost any category of economic activity, research and development (R&D) are needed, since the consequences of not engaging in R&D are likely to be fiscally dire. In the United States, even mature, noninnovative industries typically spend two to three percent of their sales income on R&D.5 Applying this fraction to the $50 billion annual wildfire expenditure would indicate that $1 to $1.5 billion would be appropriate to spend for R&D. The total R&D spending by the U.S. Forest Service (the only agency that does any significant amount of wildfire-related research) is $0.3 billion. This is patently ineffective if judged by the standard even of mature industries, which do not conduct much R&D to maintain their productivity. But more important, although figures are not available, it is evident that only a small fraction of that small amount goes to wildfire research activities within the U.S. fire service. Of even greater concern is that the overwhelming fraction of that small amount goes to ecological and social science research, with exceedingly little left for physical science research that would support fire safety efforts.
NFPA 921
We are writing about this state of affairs because we are members of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) Technical Committee on Fire Investigations. The committee had its latest meeting in early May 2017, where one important agenda item was to determine the direction for the development of the wildland fire investigation chapter in NFPA 921, Guide for Fire and Explosion Investigations, 2017 edition. Two views were presented: (1) that the committee should develop the chapter based on the application of the scientific method, and (2) that the committee should structure the chapter as a parallel to the Wildland Fire Investigation Guide6 published by the National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG). Despite vociferous views from the NWCG representative, the committee voted overwhelmingly to remain committed to the scientific method and to extend its application into the wildland fire chapter as much as possible.
It is important at this point to understand the origins of the NFPA 921 committee. When the committee was set up in the mid-1980s, the fire investigation profession was in very poor condition. It was generally considered acceptable for fire investigators to “call” a fire on the basis of their experience and intuition, with no recourse to any science or research. The more progressive fire investigators practiced what they termed a “systematic method.” This meant that they (or their employers) had evolved some systematic procedures for doing the fire investigation and for producing the report. But this was still bereft of a science basis. The NFPA 921 committee was established to introduce science into this deplorable situation. The committee necessarily had to approach this in stages. At the very start, it was established that an investigation must be based on the scientific method. This provides a logical framework for setting up and examining relevant hypotheses. But, at the same time, with each new edition of NFPA 921, the committee strove to introduce more science (physics, chemistry, materials science, and so on) into the document. That remains the topmost objective of the committee.
The NWCG, on the other hand, even though it just published the third edition (2016) of its Guide, remains committed only to a systematic method and has not been able to accept the scientific method or the need to make the wildfire investigation specialty a science-based profession. It is alarming for the members of the NFPA 921 committee to note that the 337-page NWCG Guide contains a grand total of seven technical references – actually, only six, since one is a duplicate. Of these references, not a single one has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
We find this situation unacceptable. Fire investigators who investigate wildland fires must come to recognize that to be credible, their work has to be based on the scientific method and that steps must be taken toward establishing the proper science base for wildland fire aspects of fire investigation.
At the same time, the U.S. Forest Service should reexamine its budget management to recognize that (a) fire investigation is an intimate component of fire loss reduction, and (2) a zero budget for physical-science R&D in support of fire investigation improvements is not an economically sensible policy.
Vytenis Babrauskas, Ph.D.
Fire Science and Technology Inc., San Diego;
Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering,
University of California San Diego, La Jolla
Richard (Smokey) Dyer
Chief (Ret.)
Kansas City (MO) Fire Department
References
1. Office of Policy Analysis, “Wildland Fire Management Program Benefit-Cost Analysis. A Review of Relevant Literature,” U.S. Dept. of Interior, Washington (2012).
2. Gorte, R., The Rising Cost of Wildfire Protection, Headwater Economics, Bozeman, MT (2013).
3. ”The True Cost of Wildfire in the Western U.S.,” Western Forestry Leadership Coalition, Lakewood, CO (2010).
4. Hall, JR Jr. “The Total Cost of Fire in the United States,” National Fire Protection Association, Quincy, MA (2014).
5. “Domestic R&D Paid for by the Company and Others and Performed by the Company as a Percent of Domestic Net Sales, Industry and Company Size: 2013,” In: Business Research and Development and Innovation: 2013, National Science Foundation, Washington (2016).
6. Guide to Wildland Fire Origin and Cause Determination (PMS 412/NFES 1874), National Wildfire Coordinating Group (NWCG), Boise, ID (2016).
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