RIDER COMMENT:  Shortly after the disastrous 2007 “Witch” brushfire in (primarily) San Diego County, the LOS ANGELES TIMES asked me to debate fire issues with a local UCSD professor.  What followed was a civil 5 day written exchange where good points were raised – mostly by me, of course.  In essence, it’s ten linked op-eds.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-dustup-oct29-nov02,0,4069181.storygallery

 

Fire politics

All this week, UC San Diego's Richard Carson and San Diego tax fighter Richard Rider debate the policy of fire.

November 2, 2007

DUST-UP

Building on the edge of flames

Today, Carson and Rider wrap up their week with a look at housing development in fire-prone areas. Previously, they debated the role of the federal government in responding to fires, the propriety of public fire insurance, the difference between local and federal responses in San Diego, and the city's lack of preparedness.

November 1, 2007

DUST-UP

Feds and fire

Today, Rider and Carson debate the role of the federal government in firefighting and relief. Previously, they assessed the propriety of public fire insurance, the difference between the local and the federal response to the San Diego fires, and the city's lack of preparedness. Later this week, they'll debate the federal government's disaster responsibility and development in fire-prone areas.

October 31, 2007

DUST-UP

Should the government sell fire insurance?

Today, Carson and Rider assess the government's role in fire insurance. Yesterday, they discussed the difference between local and federal response to the fires in San Diego. Monday, they pointed fingers at the city's lack of preparedness. Later this week, they'll debate the federal government's disaster responsibility and development in fire-prone areas.

October 30, 2007

DUST-UP

Second-guessing first responses

Today, Rider and Carson discuss the difference between local and federal responses to the fires in San Diego. Yesterday, they pointed fingers at the city's lack of preparedness, and later this week they'll discuss whether public policy is encouraging risky behavior, when and if the federal government should have a role in disaster management and more.

October 29, 2007

DUST-UP

Was San Diego ready?

Today, Carson and Rider open their debate by assessing the preparedness and response of San Diego. Later this week they'll discuss whether public policy should encourage more or less risky behavior, when and if the Federal should have a role in disaster management and more.

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-op-dustup29oct29,0,568086.story?page=1

Day ONE

DUST-UP

Was San Diego ready?

Is San Diego a public-sector skinflint that skimps on fire preparedness and should have been ready for last week’s fires? Or is it a can-do government that managed to evacuate about half a million people and get the fires under control in a matter of days? All this week, UC San Diego’s Richard Carson and San Diego tax-fighter Richard Rider debate the policy

October 29, 2007

Today, Carson and Rider open their debate by assessing the preparedness and response of San Diego. Later this week they'll discuss whether public policy should encourage more or less risky behavior, when and if the Federal should have a role in disaster management and more.

A failure to prepare

By Richard Carson

Rider,

San Diego is miserly when spending on fire protection, particularly given its fire-prone location. The 2003 Cedar fire drove this reality home, yet little has really changed. On the eve of the 2007 fires, San Diego had the same number of firefighters as it did four years ago, in spite of population growth and a firefighter-per-capita rate half that of many other major cities. San Diego Fire Chief Jeff Bowman quit in 2006 over the city's failure to provide the additional resources he thought necessary to protect its residents. A most prophetic Voice of San Diego article by Will Carless, "Wildfire Preparedness Stills Shows Shortcomings," appeared in July.

Two main factors are behind San Diego politicians' failure to adequately protect their city before last week's disaster. The first was a proclivity to treat the Cedar fire as a freak event for which no amount of local firefighting resources would ever be able to cope. The same "perfect storm" line is being used with the 2007 fires, inadvertently illustrating the point that these large-scale fires are actually regular events in Southern California.

The second is that San Diego's pension fund scandal has effectively gutted its ability to increase spending in response to the increasing fire threat. The public bought into belt-tightening as the way to deal with the pension fund issue and believed that public safety was still being protected. Politicians have been afraid to level with the public and reluctant to impose large impact fees on developers, whose ever-growing expansion into fire country is the root source of many of the problems.

When politicians fail to act, ballot measures often follow. However, a measure that would have increased resources for firefighting by increasing the hotel tax was soundly defeated. It was seen a subterfuge to increase the budgets of particular non-fire related operations, despite the firefighting teaser. The League of Women Voters and other groups that support improving San Diego's firefighting capacity came out against the proposition due to the charade.

The vast majority of the time San Diego gets by fine and runs an efficient firefighting operation. San Diego is able to call upon Cal Fire and surrounding fire departments to help put out the occasional brush fires that threaten its periphery.

This time San Diego was woefully outgunned, with no workable plan to bring in firefighting resources from outside the county in time to stop a runaway fire. New Fire Chief Tracy Jarman was quoted in a Los Angeles Times article as saying: "We're stretched about as thin as we could possibly be." The orderly evacuation of more than half a million people is something San Diegans should be rightly proud of. It is, however, the best indication that efforts to stop the fire before it hit urban areas failed.

The impression deliberately fostered by politicians is that nothing could stop the houses from being engulfed in flames as the fire roared through. Some houses have indeed been destroyed in this manner. Many, though, are burned down, one by one, by smaller fires that creep up canyons and go down streets well after the main body of the conflagration has moved on. This is the sort of fire that San Diego firefighters know how to deal with. San Diego Fire Captain Lisa Blake summed it up best: "We have more houses burning than we have people and engine companies to fight them. A lot of people are going to lose their homes today."

Bowman had estimated it would take $100 million to build and equip the 20 new fire stations San Diego needs to protect itself, and $40 million annually to run them. In light of losses in excess of $1 billion from the 2007 fires, the likelihood of homeowners facing much higher insurance rates from the failure to stop them, and the prospect of future fires, San Diego politicians may have made a bad deal on the public's behalf.

Richard Carson is an environmental and natural resource economist at the University of California, San Diego, where he studies natural disasters, among other things. 

Think outside the tax

By Richard Rider

Professor Carson,

I think you could have shortened your opening essay to two words — "more money." Hardly a new idea, but certainly an ineffective one.

Spending hundreds of millions of dollars to expand the city of San Diego's professional firefighting force to fight a major fire event that happens once every four to 20 years is madness. As it now stands, professional city firefighters spend only 3% to 4% of their average shift actually fighting fires. What will the hundreds of additional firefighters be doing 24/7, 365 days a year between those rare, huge brush fires? Besides getting paid, that is?

And even then, another 300 to 400 city firefighters would not have stopped the Santa Ana wind-driven fires — no way. With TEN times as many firefighters brought in, we were not able to stop such fires during the full fury of the winds. Professor, your extra city firefighters would have saved some additional structures, but there are far less expensive ways to do that. As the cliché says, it's time to think outside the box.

At least you and I agree on one point — few homes immediately burn down when a brush fire roars by a subdivision. Indeed, most San Diego homes burned not from roaring fires but from the EMBERS from fires — fires sometimes a mile away. A glowing ember settles in a bush beside an abandoned home, the bush slowly catches fire, and eventually the flames spread to the house. Wooden roofs used to be a prime ignition point, but few such flammable structures remain.

Aside from better and more prompt use of air support (we'll be covering that scandalous screw-up in a later exchange), there are other options to consider:

1. San Diego County is rather unique in that it has THOUSANDS of trained government firefighters ready and eager to fight the blazes on short notice — but they are never used. Every Navy sailor, officer and enlisted, has received at least rudimentary training in fighting fires. Moreover, the ships and shore stations have TONS of firefighting equipment — masks, clothing gear, portable pumps and enough fire hose to reach to Kansas.

In addition, although Marines are not trained firefighters, they are more fit: ideal for defending structures from ember-fires using garden hoses, shovels, buckets of water and wet blankets.

Would the military provide ground firefighting assistance if asked? In a heartbeat! The brass would love the positive publicity, and the sailors and Marines would relish the opportunity to fight fires.

2. We have volunteer city and county reserve police officers. Why not a volunteer reserve firefighter corps as well? This option is common around the world. For a relatively small cost in equipment and basic training, we could have thousands of motivated citizens fighting fire, especially the ember fires. Some could even be trained to man small, simple fire trucks.

Outlandish? Not hardly. Three out of four trained firefighters in the U.S. are volunteers. People LOVE to be firefighters.

3. End mandatory evacuations, especially in suburban areas. It's un-American to order people to abandon their homes when clearly firefighters cannot defend most abandoned abodes from fires. Instead, make timely evacuations voluntary, leaving to the individual the final decision to stay or go.

Government should be providing advice, training and perhaps even hoses for willing homeowners who want to stay and fight. Over and over, suburban residents who defied evacuation orders in the 2003 and 2007 fires, and remained behind to fight the threat, were able to save their homes. Plus, they often saved nearby homes with simple firefighting tools and garden hoses. Apparently, not a single such suburban lawbreaker died, or was even injured.

Professor, all you can come up with is higher taxes. Believe me, in San Diego — the nut-ball public employee pension capital of the world — that idea ain't gonna fly.

Any tax increase is in reality a pension tax for the benefit of city employees. And the citizens know it. You should come up with a better solution than "more money."

Richard Rider is chairman of San Diego Tax Fighters, a grass-roots taxpayer organization. A businessman and retired Navy Reserve commander, Rider has written dozens of ballot arguments against raising taxes and issuing municipal bonds.

DAY TWO

DUST-UP

Second-guessing first responses

What accounted for the apparently good coordination between city and state services during the Witch fire? For the slow federal response?

October 30, 2007

Today, Rider and Carson discuss the difference between local and federal responses to the fires in San Diego. Yesterday, they pointed fingers at the city's lack of preparedness, and later this week they'll discuss whether public policy is encouraging risky behavior, when and if the federal government should have a role in disaster management and more.

Pols left aircraft on the runway

By Richard Rider

Professor Carson,

While the 2007 state-local fire coordination certainly improved from the 2003 Cedar Fire that ravaged San Diego, that's not saying much, given the abysmal 2003 performance. For me, the real issue is where the coordination and planning did NOT improve — the timely use of Navy, Marine and National Guard air assets.

Here's the story:

In the 2003 San Diego area fires, frustrated Navy firefighting helicopter crews were grounded on the tarmac while officials from the California Department of Forestry (now renamed CAL FIRE) demanded helicopter maintenance records to verify the helos met state specs. Then when they finally were allowed to fly, they were required do practice drops on nonburning targets for a couple of days under bureaucratic supervision to satisfy state officials that they actually could do the job. When they finally were put into action, it was pretty much a "mopping up" operation.

The outrage was widespread. No one was madder than the military pilots and crews. Legislation was passed, new regulations put in place, and the bureaucratic kinks supposedly were ironed out.

Not exactly.

Turns out that safety-obsessed bureaucrats at CAL FIRE can always come up with ADDITIONAL regulations to delay timely air asset responses to fires. And delay they did. For more info on this multifaceted scandal, read this AP story.

It wasn't just the helos. Military C-130s, which can pack quite a firefighting wallop, have been scheduled since before the 2003 fires to be outfitted with water/retardant tanks. But none ever have met the exacting, picky government standards, so we are STILL waiting for these wonderful planes to become effective.

Not angry enough yet? A recent Orange County Register editorial recounts the tale of the big DC-10 firefighting jets that carry huge loads, but are not allowed to fight fires (with one solitary plane being the exception). Also, highly effective Russian bombers are available that have been retrofitted to fight fires, but they're not approved for use in the U.S.

It's popular to blame just the bureaucrats. But the truth is that the real responsibility rests with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders and especially our San Diego County Board of Supervisors. They were ill-prepared to move quickly to get the air assets active. They were too busy holding news conferences and patting themselves on the back.

Indeed, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, State Assemblyman Todd Spitzer, who represents parts of Orange County, said 24 hours after the fires started that "San Diego was eligible for air support and [local officials] didn't even know it."

And yet — trust me on this — not one bureaucrat or politician will lose their job or their pension as a result of this big-time snafu, as we called such screw-ups in the service.

Oddly enough, the bulk of the problem was not the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or the feds. FEMA is largely useless as first-line defenders against fires. Always will be. FEMA is mainly good at giving away money after the fires have done their damage.

Here's the bottom line: San Diego County SHOULD have the world's best air asset response to a big fire. We have not one, not two, but THREE military bases with dozens of firefighting helos and trained crews. Yet we can't get them in the air during the crucial first 48 hours of a fire, when they could be the most effective. Only severe government incompetence can negate such wonderful firefighting capability.

Richard Rider is the chairman of San Diego Tax Fighters, a grass-roots taxpayer organization. A businessman and retired Navy Reserve commander, Rider has written dozens of ballot arguments against raising taxes and issuing municipal bonds. 

 

Where was the Forest Service?

By Richard Carson

Richard,

I could not agree with you more that (a) the federal response was disastrously slow, and that (b) the state and local government bears substantial responsibility for this slow response. We are also in agreement that FEMA was practically useless in the early days of the fire, and that the military was anxious to help out and should have been allowed to do so. You are, however, much too quick to let FEMA and the military off the hook, and you left out the U.S. Forest Service altogether.

San Diego's leaders clearly have not come to grips with how to stop a major wildfire racing toward the city. I suspect the city in that regard is by no means unique among large metropolitan areas in the West. Local and state officials appeared coordinated in news conferences this time because they had decided who was going to be in charge and had developed plans on how to use locally available firefighting resources. Good coordination locally at the start of a big fire is very different from having a plan to get the additional resources needed to stop it. Here they failed.

Setting wildfires in the West has long been seen as one of the major things terrorists could do with minimal resources. FEMA's failure to have a plan for mobilizing the federal firefighting assets of the U.S. Forest Service and the military in a timely manner leads one to ask if FEMA's only real function is, as you say, to "give away money after the fires."

Who has the firefighting resources that could have been brought in quickly? The U.S. Forest Service had a large number of permanent and seasonal employees who fight fires, primarily in the Pacific Northwest and mountain regions. They also have the equipment, planes and experience. The military has resources but they are less relevant and less useful than they should be.

The guiding principle when faced with a fire that has the potential to overwhelm a major urban area is that you throw at it everything you can lay your hands on. Rep. Duncan Hunter clearly deserves kudos for stepping in to work out conditions under which CAL FIRE could let the military help. The fact that he needed to do so speaks volumes about the nature of the problem.

Someone on site has to have the authority to relax the usual rules of engagement for wildfires, and someone close to the firefighting efforts has to be able to order up military aircraft without having to go through four levels of Pentagon bureaucracy. It is clearly frustrating for our local military bases to watch their city burn without being able to help. The U.S. Navy played a major role in dealing with fire after the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco; the initiative seized in the face of that disaster would shock today's rule-sticklers.

The military's problem is that there is too little attention devoted to "getting" ready to help fight fires in the West when there is no immediate crisis. The fact that the new tanker system for the C-130 transport plane is just starting to be delivered is an indication that this is not a priority.

Major urban areas in the West such as San Diego need a plan to quickly deploy U.S. Forest Service and military firefighting resources. The way to make such a plan work is to have large-scale dress rehearsals to iron out the kinks. Such practice runs are expensive, and no one wants to foot the bill, although we seem happy to have FEMA pay out vastly larger amounts later.

Prof. Richard Carson is an environmental and natural resource economist at the UC San Diego, where he studies natural disasters, among other things.

 

DAY THREE

DUST-UP

Should the government sell fire insurance?

California Fair Access to Insurance requirements already allow plutocrats in fire-prone areas to get subsidized insurance. Now Sen. Dianne Feinstein wants to bring in federal subsidies as well. Is this three shades of crazy or an important step toward rationalizing fire risk in Southern California?

October 31, 2007

Today, Carson and Rider assess the government's role in fire insurance. Yesterday, they discussedthe difference between local and federal response to the fires in San Diego. Monday, they pointed fingers at the city's lack of preparedness. Later this week, they'll debate the federal government's disaster responsibility and development in fire-prone areas.

No to subsidies, yes to FAIRness

By Richard Carson

Richard,

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is planning to hold hearings on California's fire insurance in the aftermath of the recent fires. There should be four guiding principles for policymakers thinking about insurance issues.

The first is ironclad: Fire insurance should not be subsidized by the government.

Subsidies help to increase building in fire-prone areas. Existing homeowners who would gain from more subsidized fire insurance are likely to be much wealthier than the average Californian. Real estate developers would be the other major beneficiary, because subsidies of this sort are quickly capitalized into land prices.

The second principle is that fire insurance needs to be available to homes that were already built before the current round of fires.

Mortgage lenders generally require fire insurance as a condition of loans they have already made. Much of the concern about fire insurance is driven by homeowner fear of policies being canceled and not being able to get insurance. The long-standing solution to this market failure is the state of California being the insurer of last resort. This can be done directly, as California chose to do with earthquake insurance, or indirectly by requiring companies selling property insurance in the state to participate in a pooling arrangement that offers insurance to homeowners unable to obtain it through regular market channels.

This is what California (followed by most other states) decided to do back in 1968 after the Watts riots left an insurance vacuum in parts of Los Angeles. This program is known as the California FAIR plan. No doubt there are problems with the plan, ranging from a website that doesn't work with pop-up blockers to the always present concern of whether these pools are run in an actuarially neutral manner, or whether underwriting is appropriately sensitive to differences in fire risks.

The third principle is that California needs to decide quickly whether it wants to make new properties built in high fire-risk areas eligible for the California FAIR Plan.

Making them ineligible is a heavy hammer, but one that could be used, because government at all levels incurs an obligation to protect these homes from fire after they are built. From a pure insurance perspective, though, as long as no cross-subsidy between these properties and existing lower-risk ones exists, there is no reason to deny eligibility. On a related note, the government might want to insist on disclosure of the California FAIR Plan's rate for a property being sold, along with the other disclosures now required.

The fourth principle is that communities need to take action to reduce the risk of wildfires to their citizens, and those citizens need to take action to reduce their own risk and the risk to their neighbors.

This should be reflected in insurance rates and made more transparent. Given the inevitable need for the state of California and the federal government to jump into any large-scale wildfire, they have a legitimate interest in thinking about how to best protect communities.

>Richard Carson is an environmental and natural resource economist at the University of California, San Diego, where he studies natural disasters, among other things. 

 

Get government out of the insurance business

By Richard Rider

Professor Carson,

You were spot-on with your first of four principles - "Fire insurance should not be subsidized by government." But I disagree with your second (essentially contradictory) principle that calls for continuing government insurance for existing homeowners in fire-risk areas.

Whether this insurance is provided/subsidized by government (taxpayers), or by government-mandated "insurance pools" (non-fire-risk insurance buyers), these subsidies are a bad idea, and fundamentally unfair - as you so skillfully detailed in your first principle. You are talking about a permanent subsidy to generally well-to-do homeowners - simply because they built/bought their homes in dangerous fire conditions without being told by government that they couldn't.

Of all the things that government does, legislated risk management (primarily reflected in government insurance programs) is the one area that government almost always does wrong. Consider these examples:

Federal flood insurance encourages people to build in flood plains. Government hurricane insurance pays people to build on the coast in the path of devastating periodic storms. Government savings and loan insurance (and especially the quick raise of the per-account insurance level from $10,000 to $100,000) was the main factor in S&L over-lending and the resulting meltdown in the 1980s, which cost taxpayers scores of billions of dollars.

This government insurance problem is FAR bigger than you'd first think. For instance, the feds unwisely chose to set up the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., which is supposedly funded by a minuscule corporate pension fee. Now the PBGC is going broke because major corporations are realizing that their unsustainable "defined benefit" programs can be abandoned and largely turned over to the taxpayer.

Government guarantees most federal, state and local public-employee pension payout levels while under-funding the asset pools backing such pensions. This will INEVITABLY lead to a multi-TRILLION dollar shortfalls. Guess who makes up 100% of that deficit? Hint: not the tooth fairy.

Finally, let's not forget "old-age insurance" - the "pay as you go" Social Security pyramid scheme. When the plan was founded in the 1930s, FDR supposedly insisted that it remain actuarially sound and 100% funded. That lasted about 18 months. While the plan will technically not go bankrupt, it will likely become a means-tested welfare benefit, coupled by significantly higher taxes.

Oh, did I forget to mention Medicare?

The fundamental problem with government insurance plans is that they are based on politics and "fairness," rather than on risk levels and the commensurate required funding. Inevitably, politicians underestimate the risk and the cost.

In particular, any such government insurance program starts off without a deficit. The politicians putting the plan in place are lauded for their foresight and compassion. Later, when the Ponzi scheme collapses (or requires massive tax increases), the culprits are retired, with buildings named after them.

Professor Carson, let's stick with your first "ironclad" principle: No fire insurance subsidies. And the only way to do that is to get the government out of the fire insurance business.

Richard Rider is chairman of San Diego Tax Fighters, a grass-roots taxpayer organization. A businessman and retired Naval Reserve commander, Rider has written dozens of ballot arguments against raising taxes and issuing municipal bonds.

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DAY FOUR

DUST-UP

Feds and fire

What should be the trigger for federal assistance in a wildfire? How about for use of military aircraft? Should the federal government be taking any role in disaster relief, or is that just encouraging reckless behavior?

November 1, 2007

Today, Rider and Carson debate the role of the federal government in firefighting and relief. Previously, they assessed the propriety of public fire insurance, the difference between the local and the federal response to the San Diego fires, and the city's lack of preparedness. Later this week, they'll debate the federal government's disaster responsibility and development in fire-prone areas.

Only as a last resort

By Richard Rider

Professor Carson,

First, let me say that you were correct when you said I didn't assess enough blame on FEMA and the feds. I bow to your expertise in this matter. I let 'em off too easy.

FEMA should get its ass(ets) in gear. It needs to be more mobile and anticipatory. Even when it guesses wrong in repositioning firefighting planes (based on forecasts), the increased timeliness in response to fires would be worth many times the relatively minor cost of making mistakes. Unfortunately, like any bureaucracy, planning ahead is a weak point for FEMA bureaucrats.

While FEMA's timely firefighting assistance seems like an intractable problem, the quick use of regional military firefighting aircraft SHOULD have been settled years ago. Indeed, we all thought it WAS settled years ago. Apparently not.

Local use of military aircraft to fight fires should be pre-cleared with the Pentagon labyrinth. All that the D.C. brass and bureaucrats should get is an "Oh, BTW" e-mail detailing the great publicity the local military was getting for helping out communities in time of need.

Should the feds be the disaster relief Sugar Daddy? No.

Ideally, disaster relief would be voluntary — through the Red Cross and other philanthropic institutions best geared to providing aid in times of need. In addition to not requiring force to obtain funding (taxes), such organizations are far more effective in getting the aid to the truly needy in a timely and efficient manner. If we were not forced to "give at the office" (through taxes) for the government aid programs — and then assuming that the aid problem is taken care of — most of us would contribute far more to such charitable organizations.

If government must be involved in such efforts, it should first be the local jurisdictions, and then the state. Federal aid is too easily politicized, going to the states or constituencies with the greatest juice in D.C. rather than to the most needy. For example, consider the billions we pay annually for absurd crop subsidies to help "needy" wealthy farmers and agribusinesses.

In addition, government aid — especially federal aid — discourages self-reliance and prudent prevention of predictable misfortune. Not only individuals, but cities and states sometimes abdicate their responsibilities, knowing that the feds will take care of the cost if things go bad. This should not be the American way.

Richard Rider is chairman of San Diego Tax Fighters, a grass-roots taxpayer organization. A businessman and retired Naval Reserve commander, Rider has written dozens of ballot arguments against raising taxes and issuing municipal bonds.

 

The second line of defense

By Richard Carson

Richard,

Again we agree on several of the key issues. FEMA is still a mess and still has a clean-up-after-the-disaster mentality rather than focusing on how to prevent a situation from turning into a disaster. Local military aircraft should have been allowed into the fight very early, when they would have been most effective. The public was deceived about this issue having been solved.

Where we are in substantive disagreement is over when the federal government should get involved, and the extent to which voluntary organizations can be relied upon.

The federal government should be the second line of defense after local firefighting forces (including local U.S. Forest Service and military resources) fail to stop the fire during the first day. If, given the speed and direction of the Santa Ana winds, it is likely that the fire will soon enter a major urban area, then the ONLY relevant question becomes what resources will it take to stop the fire from doing so?

In answering that question, it becomes obvious that the federal government is the only party at the table that has the resources and the ability to get them there quickly enough to matter. Three key factors come into play.

First, the climate conditions that gave rise to the Cedar fire in 2003 and the Witch Creek fire in 2007 occur in a fairly short interval during the fall, and are usually accompanied by advanced warning of several days. This means that the relevant firefighting resources can be put on standby alert.

Second, these conditions give rise to multiple fires throughout the region. This makes it inadvisable to rely on local neighbors, because pulling too many firefighting forces out of position means other new area fires cannot be quickly attacked. Third, if local firefighters fail to contain the fire during the first day, then the best time to stop the fire from advancing toward the city is the next morning. During the night, the fire will have calmed down because the winds diminish and the temperature drops. The course of the fire can then be plotted and the best location to stop it determined.

Only the feds, with the U.S. Forest Service and the military, can get there overnight. A virtual armada of aerial tankers needs to be launched within a couple of hours after the call for help goes out, accompanied by heavy transport planes loaded up with firefighters and equipment. The U.S. Forest Service has thousands of firefighters under contract, and the Marines have a brigade specially trained to fight fires. Federal and state officials, if they actually want to stop a fire rather than dole out aid afterward, should figure how to change bureaucratic procedures and set up quick reaction chains of command to get these resources here overnight rather than four days later.

California firefighters outside of Southern California best serve as the third wave. They can start driving equipment down from Northern California once the fires break out. These firefighters can then serve two critical roles. First, as relief for local firefighters who will have been fighting the fires nonstop for almost two days, and second, they can be diverted to new fires that inevitably break out.

Lastly, the shelter capacity of the Red Cross was quickly exhausted even though the great majority of evacuees were taken in by friends. If substantially more of the area had needed to have been evacuated — which would have been the case if the winds had stayed up another day — the situation would have looked nothing like the happy campers at the overflow shelter at Qualcomm.

Richard Carson is an environmental and natural resource economist at the University of California, San Diego, where he studies natural disasters, among other things.

 

DAY FIVE

DUST-UP

 

November 2, 2007

Today, Carson and Rider wrap up their week with a look at housing development in fire-prone areas. Previously, they debated the role of the federal government in responding to fires, the propriety of public fire insurance, the difference between local and federal responses in San Diego, and the city's lack of preparedness.

Don't get your hopes up

By Richard Carson

Richard,

By now it should be clear to all that Southern California is prone to wildfires. Experts predictclimate conditions that help foster these fires will only worsen in the future. While local governments do not have control over climate conditions, they do have substantial influence over: (1) how many homes get built on the urban/wildland interface, where fire risks are highest; (2) the building codes for the houses that get built; and (3) policies and programs aimed at reducing the accumulation of various types of vegetation and trees that fuel the fires.

In the old days of San Diego's back-country ranches there was no expectation that the fire department would come and put out the flames. The small number of houses in the back country had large, cleared areas to protect them, and their presence there had no influence on the frequency of nearby fires nor on the allocation of resources in the middle of fighting a large-scale fire. So the government had little interest in what happened in the back country. This, however, is no longer the case.

The number of houses in and along the urban/wildland interface has dramatically increased, and most of them no longer have defensible perimeters. There is a clear expectation that firefighters should and will try to save their homes. In both the 2003 and 2007 fires in San Diego County considerable effort was diverted away from trying to prevent the fire from hitting heavily populated urban areas, into protecting these fire-zone frontier homes. Smaller fires in the back country that would help to burn off the vegetation that fuels big fires during fall Santa Ana conditions are routinely put out because they threaten property.

I don't think there is any way to go back to the old days. That leaves the government with two realistic options to effectively deal with the situation: (a) largely banning extensive new development along the urban/wildland interface, or (b) requiring new development in these areas to pay the full cost imposed on the government and existing residents. We are unlikely to see either event happen.

Real estate developers, to whom most San Diego politicians are beholden, have too great an interest in outward expansion. Their profits, in most instances, are maximized by building high-density homes and paying as little as they can in the form of impact fees.

An interesting concept is the shelter-in-place building code, which has been implemented in five new housing developments in the Rancho Santa Fe Fire District. The concept — of seeking refuge in your own protected home rather than clogging up evacuation routes — is still largely untested. A glance at the Witch Creek fire map suggests that these housing developments were among the hundreds of near-misses rather than a clear successful test of the theory. (It is also worth noting these residents were indeed evacuated along with everyone else.)

At some level I am surprised that this building code has received so much press attention, since it is unlikely to ever be applied on a large scale. It requires huge lot sizes and almost guarantees that a house will cost in the $1 million-plus range. If the concept works, it would reduce some, but not all, of the negative effects associated with building new homes in high-risk areas. Going this direction, though, would never satisfy developers, since it would substantially reduce the number of homes that can be profitably built and hence the value of the land they hope to get zoned to higher density.

Unfortunately, I expect to see San Diego County continue to approve fairly brisk development along the urban/wildland interface. No doubt there will be a charade of new regulations in response to the 2007 fires, but there will be no public admission of the increased wildfire risk they are knowingly helping to fuel.

Richard Carson is an environmental and natural resource economist at the University of California, San Diego, where he studies natural disasters, among other things.

 

Let people, not sprinklers, fight the fire

By Richard Rider

Professor Carson,

One problem I have with the inevitable calls for restricting further "building out" because of fire danger is that usually this idea is advanced by environmentalists who don't want further development at all. After all, these proponents have THEIR homes (usually in trendy suburban enclaves), so -- as far as they are concerned -- no further building outside the downtown area is either necessary or desired. For them, the brush fire danger is just a, uh, smokescreen they use to advance their land-use agenda.

But most families with children don't want to live in the crowded urban environment so cherished by environmentalists -- cherished for others to live in. "Greedy developers" are simply building what people want -- free-standing houses away from the city. In addition, the further away one gets from a city, the less expensive is the land; a crucial factor for middle-class families seeking homes.

Professor, I agree with you that the effort to ban such housing will not succeed. Thank goodness!

The "shelter in place" concept can work -- especially if people are given the leeway to stay and defend their homes. Indeed, in the October fires, not a single home was lost in the five "shelter in place" subdivisions in the fire-swept Rancho Santa Fe Fire district.

However, this preventative strategy does not require the degree of fire protection the full concept encourages. Some of these requirements drive up the cost of houses too high for 90% of the citizens.

For instance, the mandatory internal sprinkler system does little to stop an exterior blaze. Such fires, when they doom an inadequately protected home, get into the attic, where they can't be stopped by internal sprinklers.

One can judge the value of such sprinklers by checking how much one's homeowner's insurance would go down if a sprinkler system was installed in your existing abode. This is an objective, first-rate way to gauge the reduction in fire risk.

I checked my home in fire-prone Scripps Ranch, where more than 300 homes burned down in the 2003 Cedar fire. I found that my $800 homeowner's structure/contents policy would drop a paltry $10 a year if I installed sprinklers (compared to more than $200 a year for an alarm system). A new home's sprinkler system would cost at least $10,000, a poor investment return. Plus, the danger from leaks or accidental sprinkler activation makes these devices far less desirable for homes than is being suggested.

Professor, rather than requiring huge, expensive home lots as you suggest, what is really necessary is a deep, fire-resistant border, keeping the chaparral away from the houses. That way, numerous fire-resistant houses can be built rather close together, surrounded by an open-space fire break. Homes catch fire from embers from brush fires -- not from neighboring, fire-resistant houses. Indeed, properly laid out new housing tracts can actually serve as a fire break against the roaring flames.

The bottom line is that we need new ways to fight fires. We need more homeowners trained and allowed to defend their residences. We need a large, well-trained reserve civilian firefighting cadre. We need to promptly fight such big fires with the thousands of military personnel in our area, both in the air and on the ground.

Brush fires are part of California. They aren't going away. Yet, there are solutions -- but only if we choose to implement them.

Richard Rider is chairman of San Diego Tax Fighters, a grass-roots taxpayer organization. A businessman and retired Navy Reserve commander, Rider has written dozens of ballot arguments against raising taxes and issuing municipal bonds. 

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