Forest fires can't be prevented, expert says!

I recently read this interesting presentation given by a federal forester on the potential for forest fires causing damage to homes. The author, Jack Cohen, drives the point that a home's "ignitability" is a very serious factor in the amount of damage any forest fire causes to a home. He shows that even if the home is "buffered" from any type of forest fire, whether a low-intensity or high-intensity fire, a home with a high-ignitability score will likely become a part of the combustion.

Cohen also states that;

"If no wildfires or prescribed fires occurred, the wildland fire threat to residential development would not exist. However, our understanding of the fire ecology for most of North America indicates that fire exclusion is neither possible nor desirable."


Now, that statement seems to me like a truism, or a fairly common-sense kind of assumption--that we can't possible prevent all forest fires. So, the risk of such fire is always present.


And, given that I have sat in on many community conversations where we all admit that the age and design of our homes here cause us to worry about their susceptibility to fire damage, I just don't understand why local leaders are being so dismissive and in public denial of this situation!

I invite Chuck, Peggy, or Dave Henry to provide us with the evidence--documentary support from knowledgable and neutral experts, that the conditions of that block do not increase our risk of loss due to fire. Please, do you know something that you are not telling us? Why can't that contractor just come back and remove a large portion of that debris? Why is that such a hard action to take?



Here is the url for the presentation:
http://www.firewise.org/resources/files/WUI_HIR/Wildlandfirethreat.pdf