Proactive Management, Realtime Management, Proactive Recovery
What happens after strategic redesign
Yesterday, I wrote about whether we could organize a better system for strategically evaluating and redesigning some of our global approach to change. Today, I want to note that even when you have a good plan, bad things will happen, and we still need to put in work on the management end of things.
Let’s take a look at wildfire in the US as an example.
The wildfire ‘season’ in the western United States has now pretty much become a wildfire year. No longer is wildfire risk and occurrence confined to a mere season.
And while the West gets a lot of attention, the increase in wildfire risk in the East should also be a concern. The Gatlinburg fires of November 2016 in Tennessee were whipped up by wind gusts over 80 miles per hour, and occurred during a severe drought. Over 2000 structures were damaged or destroyed, 14 people lost their lives and almost 200 others were injured.
Some of the damage from the Gatlinburg fires can be attributed to ‘poor management’. I am not casting blame on anyone - a rapidly-spreading wildfire is no picnic to deal with, and this sort of fire and the conditions that led to it, were not commonly experienced in Tennessee. However, based on our understanding of shifting climate patterns, it wasn’t inconceivable that a ‘western wildfire’ type of situation was possible in Appalachia too. But we certainly weren’t prepared for that.
Among other challenges, power outages to pumping stations led to hydrants running dry, and there were cell-based communication issues between firefighting crews, all of which hampered the immediate management of the Gatlinburg fire and evacuations.
This year, the western wildfire ‘season’ is already off to..…please excuse this….a roaring start. Over 3 million acres have already burned, mostly in New Mexico and Arizona. To put this in perspective, this is an area about the size of Connecticut.
So what have we learned from previous events and from the major western wildfires we’ve seen in recent years, including this one?
Well, the first thing is that realtime management is simply not enough. The fires are too hot and too fast to rely on containing them and saving people’s homes. And our tools to forecast fire spread are better than they used to be, but not sufficient.
We’ve known this for a long time, but time and again, residents and local governments typically reject the ways in which we can proactively manage the fires. I totally understand this. One of the main ways of reducing fire risk (other than curbing climate change!), is by deliberately setting prescribed fires. This is risky, but especially so now that persistent drought is not delivering many acceptable ‘low risk’ windows to even manage a deliberate fire. A case in point: the New Mexico fires now burning have been traced to prescribed burns from the US National Forest Service.
Nonetheless, proactive management has to be part of the equation. We have too much ‘fuel’ in these wildland areas and the only way to reduce that is by manually scraping it out (with backhoes and so on) which is usually very expensive and in these wilder areas, too inaccessible, or by burning it (as would happen naturally before we started suppressing wildfires).
The Biden Administration recently announced more help with this. As part of the Infrastructure Bill, there will be billions of dollars assigned to assist with thinning forest, fuel reduction, and for fire-forecasting, and over $130m will go to help with a 10-year management strategy being implemented by the Forest Service. This is excellent news overall. As Senator Mark Kelly from Arizona said:
“We can’t keep doing the same thing under worse conditions and expect a better result.”
The forecasting support and improvement will also help to develop better realtime management.
A lot has been learned about the emergency management part of the equation. In April of this year, fires developed in Wears Valley - just down the road from Gatlinburg, TN. This time, emergency evacuation notices lit up on everyone’s phone in the affected area and there was no injuries or loss of life. The fires also weren’t as bad, but the practices were sound. It was a good test.
I view realtime fire management as needing to come closer to hurricane preparedness and management now.
The weather forecasters already have a ‘high fire risk’ designation, which should trigger government, emergency services, and resident responses. For example, when you’re in the ‘cone’ of a possible hurricane landfall, people know how to batten down their house, get their emergency kit ready and be ready to evacuate if necessary, along pre-planned routes. With a hurricane, you’re often able to get a few days notice, which is usually not going to be the same in a wildfire situation, but the same process could be deployed. This requires community planning and much more education for residents. It has taken decades for people to get comfortable with hurricane evacuations.
The other aspect of realtime management is to let fires burn where they are not impacting (many) buildings or residential areas. This is the same sort of risk as a prescribed burn, but it’s also the natural way that forests clear out the underbrush. We have to get comfortable with this in some circumstances. (Though we do also have to consider smoke pollution/air quality concerns as well - managing exposure to this will also be needed).
Finally, after all the smoke has cleared, there is proactive recovery.
We don’t talk much about this, but here’s my take: When neighborhoods are destroyed in a wildfire, we have to think very carefully about whether to rebuild. We have to start to remove people from the wildland if we don’t want fires to continue to destroy homes and take lives. This is simple, but also, of course, fraught. Still, I think we have to get a bit bolder.
At the very least, fire-resistant building guidelines or codes, fire shelters within walking distance of neighborhoods, and landscape management (e.g. fewer trees right next to the house) all need to be on the table as regulations for developers and local authorities.
These are all expensive, and are likely to increase the cost of homes that are already out of reach of most people. So, there are lots of considerations, but by far the easiest strategy is to prevent or remove development in areas that are hard to manage in an emergency.
And just to cap off this discussion, it’s worth noting that nature’s recovery post-wildfire, is swift and beneficial. It is only human recovery that needs intervention.
So all of these examples have been about wildfire - it’s the challenge that’s in the news right now, and something that is clearly getting worse in recent decades. But the same systems have to be deployed with heavy rainfall events, which are more intense just about everywhere, coastal flooding events (which don’t even need major storms in some places - a high tide and a bit of a breeze will do it), heatwaves and so on.
Many communities already have decent heatwave management plans, but not everywhere in the US, especially in small or rural communities, and definitely not everywhere in Europe and other places that typically have fewer homes with air conditioning.
The good news is that we are learning.
The bad news is that some of these events are happening more often and more intensely than we have previously experienced, so the bar for anticipating appropriate preparedness, realtime management, and recovery is being continually raised.
We need to do as much as possible to reduce the climate changes that are leading to these changes, but frankly, we won’t be able to do enough, quickly enough to prevent more major fires, or floods, or heatwaves.
So, the management challenge will remain (and increase) for many decades and we certainly need our emergency responders, governments, and federal agencies to step up and implement better management quickly. But we also have a responsibility to learn and be prepared. It’s acceptable to be hurricane-prepared, now it needs to be acceptable to be wildfire, heatwave, and flood-prepared.
Sobering message... But clarifying too. Thank you....