As emergency managers, we know that wildland fires present an ongoing and evolving challenge that demands more than just a response or containment strategy. It’s time we broadened the conversation around wildland fire to include the bigger picture—one that integrates the whole community, embraces resilience, and, most importantly, asks the right questions.
Recently, I posted on LinkedIn about the need to rethink how we, as emergency managers, address wildland fires. A respondent rightly pointed out that maybe the critical issue is whether we are asking the right questions or if there are others we have yet to explore. This led to a more extensive reflection: are we taking a holistic enough approach to this complex and growing threat? Are we digging deep enough into the systemic challenges wildland fires pose?
I believe we are still grappling with fundamental issues that demand deeper scrutiny.
The Need for a Holistic Approach
Wildland fire is not a crisis that only affects rural or isolated communities. It is an environmental, social, and economic issue that transcends traditional boundaries. Our current policies often reflect a reactive stance—focusing on suppression, immediate relief, and recovery. While these aspects are critical, they fail to address the deeper systemic issues contributing to wildland fires' severity and frequency.
A holistic approach must focus on building disaster-resilient communities around wildland fires by embedding resilience into every stage of preparedness, response, and recovery. This requires shifting how we engage with communities, design policies, and coordinate resources.
But what does this approach honestly look like?
Inclusive Community Engagement: Too often, communities affected by wildland fires are treated as passive recipients of aid, but they must be active participants in disaster planning and mitigation. Drawing on local knowledge, especially from Indigenous communities that have successfully managed fire-prone landscapes for generations, can provide valuable insights. Engaging communities early in the process creates ownership and fosters a culture of resilience.
Policy Reassessment and Adaptation: Wildland fire policies that were influential decades ago are now outdated. We must reassess them in light of climate change, population growth in wildland-urban interfaces (WUI), and changes in fire behavior. A critical question is: Are these policies still preventing or mitigating wildland fires as intended? And if they aren’t, why? Identifying the failure points allows us to adapt our approaches to today’s rapidly shifting environmental realities.
Interdisciplinary Collaboration: Solving the wildland fire crisis requires multidisciplinary collaboration. Emergency managers, fire experts, climate scientists, urban planners, and community leaders must come together to create multifaceted solutions. Wildland fire resilience requires integrating perspectives from various fields and pooling resources to address complex, systemic challenges.
Asking the Right Questions
In response to the comment that we may not be asking the right questions, we need to go beyond just identifying what hasn't been asked—we need to critically analyze the questions we’ve already posed but have yet to resolve. Our current struggles are often rooted in questions that remain unanswered, such as:
How do we better integrate traditional fire management techniques with modern science?
Why are we failing to create fire-adapted communities in high-risk areas?
What social, economic, and political barriers are preventing us from implementing proactive fire management policies?
The focus must be on revisiting these questions with fresh eyes, exploring deeper layers, and seeking innovative solutions.
Exploring Solutions with Impacted Communities
No sustainable solution can be imposed from the top down. The communities directly affected by wildland fires must be at the center of any conversation about resilience. These communities offer local knowledge, traditions, and adaptive capacities that external experts cannot replicate.
When we partner with impacted communities, we can better understand the gaps in our current responses. This partnership creates opportunities to innovate, adapt, and co-create solutions that ensure communities survive and thrive in the face of increasing fire risks.
Insights from Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire
The documentary Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire offers a profound perspective on these challenges. By highlighting the stories of those directly affected by wildfires, the film demonstrates the urgency of rethinking our entire approach to fire management. It underscores the importance of understanding fire not as an enemy to be fought but as a natural force to be managed intelligently and strategically.
One of the key takeaways from Elemental is the need to embrace fire as a necessary part of the ecosystem. Historically, indigenous communities and ecologists have used controlled burns to maintain forest health and reduce the risk of larger, catastrophic fires. However, modern suppression techniques have often disrupted these natural processes, accumulating fuel and causing more destructive fires.
The film also emphasizes the critical role of community involvement and resilience. In one striking example, residents of the WUI must be part of the solution—working with policymakers, firefighters, and emergency managers to develop fire-adapted communities. This includes better land-use planning, creating defensible space around homes, and making building materials more fire-resistant.
Elemental urges us to reconsider our relationship with fire, viewing it not as a disaster waiting to happen but as a predictable and manageable force of nature. The film challenges the notion that fires are always destructive and that our focus should be solely on suppression. Instead, it advocates for working with the landscape, adapting our communities to be more fire-resilient, and restoring ecological balance.
A Call to Action: Resilient Communities Through Partnership
As we rethink our approach to wildland fires, one thing becomes clear: building disaster-resilient communities requires collaboration, flexibility, and innovation. Elemental: Reimagine Wildfire reminds us that resilience starts at the local level, with communities and ecosystems that are better adapted to withstand fire’s inevitable presence.
As emergency managers, we must lead the charge in forging partnerships with communities, reassessing ineffective policies, and pushing for a more adaptive, proactive approach to wildland fire management. The questions we haven’t asked are just as important as the ones we’ve failed to answer fully. Together, we can bridge these gaps and create a more resilient future in the face of growing fire risks.
By integrating the lessons from Elemental, focusing on community-centered solutions, and asking tough, systemic questions, we can pave the way toward a more holistic, sustainable approach to wildland fire management. Let’s continue this vital conversation, and let’s act.