Tending Fire: Coping With America's Wildland Fires
Tending Fire: Coping With America's Wildland Fires
Island Press | ISBN 1559635657 | November 16, 2004 | 256 pages | PDF File | 1.82 Mb
Island Press | ISBN 1559635657 | November 16, 2004 | 256 pages | PDF File | 1.82 Mb
Though there are historical narratives about fire, several by Pyne, a former firefighter and a professor at Arizona State University, few deal with fire policy. Here Pyne argues that firefighting policy is influenced by national traditions and that it is a cultural construct just like art or architecture. There are four ways to deal with fire: do nothing, suppress, prescribe burn, or change the combustibility of the landscape. Focusing on federal lands, Pyne catalogs the evolution of fire policy, tracing unusual influences ranging from FDR's New Deal to the cold war to the culture of protest in the 1960s. While the text sometimes veers toward hyperbole (the 2003 California fires are "an intifada of nature") and hard-to-prove theses (Pyne feels Star Trek influenced fire policy in the 1960s), the author's arguments are frequently thought-provoking. Ultimately, Pyne warns that the U.S. has gone from a "fire-flushed country to a fire-starved one" and calls for reform in wildfire management.
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