Firefighting and pandemics don’t mix.
By April Reese April 10, 2020
On March 25, the National
Weather Service issued a “red flag warning” for thousands of acres stretching
across six Western states, including New Mexico, Colorado, and Nebraska. A
combination of warm temperatures, low humidity, and strong winds had created
the perfect conditions for a wildfire to spark.
No fires broke out—this
time. But the late March alert was a reminder that wildfire there were many
more red flag warnings to come this spring and summer. While fire experts say
it’s too early to know how severe the 2020 season will be, in areas around the
West, the land is primed to burn. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Association’s most recent three-month drought
outlook has drought conditions across large swathes of
California, Oregon, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado persisting
to the end of June.
But this season,
firefighters—already engaged in one of the world’s riskiest occupations—will
face another invisible threat: COVID-19. The
pandemic has raised the stakes at the worst possible time, forest managers say,
and is forcing firefighters, officials, and communities to rethink how they
combat blazes.
The US has never had
to contend
with a wildfire season like this one, forest officials say.
Almost every aspect of preparing for and fighting wildfires will have to
change. Training sessions and emergency shelters need to be turned into
no-contact zones; preventative controlled burns must be scaled back.
The way firefighters
work—moving from blaze to blaze and camping in groups while not on the front
lines—is the perfect incubator for COVID-19. “You have a bunch of people eating
together and living in a relatively confined space, with maybe less than ideal
sanitary situations going on,” says Greg Griffiths, a board member of the
National Association of Forest Service Retirees, who served as the director of
the Forest Service’s Southwestern Region and helped guide aerial firefighting
efforts. The close conditions have been known to cause “camp
crud”—upper respiratory illnesses that spread far and fast—and could
prove especially dangerous in a pandemic, Griffiths adds.
Federal and state forest
agencies are developing special pandemic guidelines that call for social
distancing and other measures to help reduce the risk of contracting or
spreading the disease among fire fighters. Some training sessions have been
canceled, though they could be moved online. “It was very apparent that
previous suppression methods of gathering and supporting large numbers of
firefighters was not going to be practical for the coming fire season,” said
Joe Reinarz, an incident commander with the US Forest Service, in an emailed
statement.
The close
conditions at firefighter camps have been known to cause “camp crud”—upper
respiratory illnesses that spread far and fast—and could prove especially
dangerous in a pandemic.
Now, officials across the
West are racing to figure out how to protect crews from COVID-19, while still
effectively shielding communities from severe wildfires. One solution would be
to shift the attack to the air—but commissioning air tankers, the small planes
that drop plumes of red retardant, is expensive. In any case, they “wouldn’t be
able to control the fire as quickly and efficiently” as a combination of aerial
and ground crews working in tandem, Griffiths says.
Some states are taking
additional precautions. New Mexico is developing protocols that incorporate
elements of the federal guidance with Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s
COVID-19 directives, such as conducting health screenings on firefighters
before they’re sent out for a job, disinfecting tools and equipment throughout
the day, and providing individually wrapped meals.
"We’re going to need
to be extraordinarily cautious, so that we don’t have a firefighter who’s
symptom-free infecting people,” says New Mexico State Forester Laura McCarthy.
McCarthy and other New
Mexico officials have particular reason to be on high alert. While wildfire is
a natural part of forest ecosystems in the Southwest, New Mexico has had
several unusually large conflagrations over the past two decades, including the
May 2000 Cerro Grande fire that destroyed 235 homes and the 2011 Las Conchas
fire that scorched 156,000 acres. The ponderosa- and conifer-cloaked mountains
northeast of Santa Fe—a mosaic of federal and state lands long overdue for a
major fire—are a “top priority” for fuel-reduction projects to keep the capital
city safe, McCarthy says. Against that ominous backdrop, the state also ranks
among the 10 most vulnerable to COVID-19, based on factors like emergency
preparedness, the quality
of the healthcare system, and high-risk populations, according to an
analysis by Innerbody
Research. As of April 8, there were 794 confirmed COVID-19 cases and
19 deaths.
Even the work of reducing the
risk of wildfire has been compromised by the virus. In some areas, including
the Forest Service’s Rocky Mountain Region and pockets of the Southwest, forest
managers have postponed prescribed
burns—small deliberate fires that clear fuels—to protect crews from
contracting or spreading the virus. And with meteorologists predicting a hot,
dry summer in parts
of the Southwest and California, the land and air will be
primed for super-hot fires that send lung-choking smoke into communities
already under siege by COVID-19.
“I think the risk is
unquestionably heightened to a significant degree” in places where the novel
coronavirus and wildfire smoke could merge, says Christopher Carlsten, who
leads the University of British Columbia’s Department of Respiratory Medicine.
Both COVID-19 and smoke—a mix of particulate matter and gases such as carbon
dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide—cause inflammation of the lungs,
narrowing air passages and making it hard to breathe.
And with fires beginning
earlier in the spring and persisting later into the fall due to
climate change, communities may have to contend with the dual risk
of COVID-19 and wildfire for several months.
As of April 8, there were
four active wildfires in Arizona and one in New Mexico, according to the Southwest
Coordination Center fire-activity map. But the severity of the 2020
season will also depend on the actions of homeowners and forest visitors.
A 2017
study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences shows that close to 84 percent of wildfires in the US are
started by humans. With more people self-isolating out in nature during the
pandemic, there needs to be a similar sense of social responsibility to stop
fires from happening in the first place, says Eytan Krasilovsky, deputy
director of the Forest Stewards Guild, based in Santa Fe. “One thing we don’t
need right now is more fire ignitions that we need to put out.”
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